Sullivan's Last Stand

“If you missed anything at all about me, it was nobody’s fault but your own. You had me. You got bored. End of story.” Her tone was barbed. “But since you like it when I cross the line, I’ll oblige. Tell me, Sullivan, why did you have to destroy me? When you were talking on the phone to your newest plaything that morning, you knew I was right behind you and hearing every word you were saying, didn’t you?”

“I knew.” His admission took her aback for a moment, but his next words floored her. “I planned it that way.” He shrugged. “You had a concept of me that wasn’t real. A clean break seemed best.”

His words were completely uninflected. Unhurriedly he swung the Jaguar down a smaller side street lined with older, slightly dilapidated homes, as Bailey scrambled to cope with his unwelcome revelation.

She’d lied to herself, she thought. She’d never gotten over him—not totally. It had taken this latest admission of his to open her eyes, but this time she wanted to be absolutely sure she understood him.

“You say my concept of you wasn’t real. What do you mean?” she asked carefully.

“You were beginning to think of me as someone you could build a future with.” He could have been talking about the weather, there was so little emotion in his voice. “Your faith in me was all wrong, but you couldn’t seem to see that. I did you a favor, Bailey. I let you see what kind of man I really was before it was too late.”

“Your timing could have been a little better,” she said, still not looking at him. There was a far-off roaring in her ears that made it hard for her to hear her own voice. It was as if she were holding a conch shell and listening to imaginary waves crashing against an imaginary shore, she thought foolishly—as if she was standing in the middle of a desert, longing for a sea that didn’t exist.

“My timing could have been a lot better,” Sullivan said harshly. Pulling in to the curb in front of a small bungalow, he switched off the ignition and turned to her. “I never should have gotten involved with you at all.”

“So why did you?” she rasped, amazed to find that her voice still worked in any fashion at all. “If going out with me in the first place was such a big mistake on your part, why did you?”

His eyes darkened as he looked at her. “For God’s sake, do you think I had any choice?” he said tightly. “You came into my life. I took one look at you and I was lost. I didn’t care if it was the smart thing to do, the responsible thing to do, or the right thing to do—I wanted you. Even knowing that I was going to have to make you walk away in a day or two didn’t matter, honey.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his mouth in frustration. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What’s there to get, for God’s sake?” Her eyes, wide and uncomprehending, were fixed on his. “You haven’t told me anything yet! I’m a pretty simple girl, Sullivan, so why don’t you give it to me in words of one syllable, so I can finally grasp it and get on with my life?”

Her voice had risen, and in the close confines of the Jaguar’s interior they sounded shockingly loud. He looked away.

“Hell, I’ve said too much already. I’m a bastard, honey, and you’re better off without me. There’s your simple answer, so let’s just leave it at that.” He reached for the door. “Come on, let’s see if Jackson’s here and get some answers from him.”

Without waiting to see if she was following him, in one swiftly fluid movement he got out of the car and started up the cracked walk to the bungalow.

Bailey didn’t move. She’d told him she’d come to get some answers about her sister’s whereabouts, and that was true. But if she was honest with herself, after they found out where Angelica was, there was still another mystery she needed to find some answers to, another woman she wanted to ask him about.

Maria Salazar was dead. If she existed at all, it was as a ghost. There was no reason why she should still have any power over Sullivan.

But she did, Bailey thought fearfully. She didn’t know why she was so certain about that, but she was. Maria Salazar had taken Sullivan away from her, and she was going to find out why.

She looked up. His hands in his pockets, he was waiting at the bungalow’s front door, and with sudden resolve she got out of the car. Her determination wavered for a moment, but then she set her shoulders and started up the concrete walk. Even as she did, she saw him slip something out of his pocket.

He was breaking in, she thought in faint shock. She quickened her pace and reached him just as the door swung open.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, nervousness overlaying the jumble of conflicting emotions she’d just been experiencing. “That’s breaking and entering, Sullivan—we could both lose our licenses!”

“This was stuck in the mail slot.”

His voice was curt. He handed her a business card and she took it from him reluctantly. It bore the name of an S. Wilkes, who was apparently a regional sales director for some unknown company, and a phone number. Flipping it over impatiently, she saw a scrawled message.

“Hank—missed you at the last two meetings. Call me.”

“Wilkes is a friend from AA,” Sullivan said. “Hank’s mentioned him once or twice.” He frowned. “Those meetings are his lifeline, Bailey. He doesn’t miss them. There’s something wrong here.”

She met his eyes. “I agree, but it’s pretty obvious what it is,” she said, trying not to sound brusque. “He’s fallen off the wagon, Sullivan. Your boy Jackson’s probably out on a bender.”

He turned from her abruptly, his expression unreadable. “I don’t believe that. I’m going in.”

Before she could say another word, he stepped across the threshold, and without even having seen him reach for it, she saw that his gun was in his hand. She looked apprehensively over her shoulder. It was midafternoon, and apart from an old man a few houses down dozing on his porch, the street was deserted. Stifling her annoyance, she slipped quickly in after him and closed the door quietly behind her.

The minuscule front hall opened immediately onto a cramped, untidy kitchen. On the counter an empty bottle lay on its side, and the broken shards of a smashed glass were strewn nearby on the linoleum floor.

“Hell.” In front of her, Sullivan slowly holstered his gun. He turned to her, his mouth tight. “Looks like you were right, doesn’t it? I’ll check the bedroom in case he’s sleeping it off in there.”

Shrugging in resignation, he started to step across the broken glass, but then he stopped, his glance sharpening on the fallen bottle on the counter. He set it upright, turning it so that the label faced them. She looked at him, confused, and saw the broad shoulders stiffen under the impeccably cut jacket.

“Hank’s not a rye drinker. Somebody didn’t do their homework,” he said grimly.

His hand went to his holster again, and all of a sudden the Armani suit might just as well have been fatigues, and the small, untidy kitchen an ominously silent jungle. He hadn’t put his former profession behind him at all, Bailey thought with quick insight. He reacted like a soldier. Just below the casually lazy surface of the man was a tense alertness, and at the first sign of trouble his military instincts took over.

Except she couldn’t see what had aroused his suspicions.

“He’s an alcoholic,” she said dismissively. “If he wanted a drink badly enough he’d break into the cooking sherry.”

“Maybe he would, at that. But he still wouldn’t choose a grain-based alcohol, and if he had, he’d be lying on the floor with that glass, his throat swollen closed,” Sullivan snapped. “He’s even allergic to bread, for God’s sake. This is some kind of setup.”

“A setup for what? To make it look like the man fell off the wagon?” She stared at him in frustration. “For crying out loud, Sully, it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, who knew we were coming here today? Who would have expected you to barge in illegally the way you just did?” A strand of hair had escaped from her clip, and she blew it away from her eyes with an impatient breath. “Let’s check out the rest of the house before we jump to any conclusions. Maybe he’s in the bedroom with an empty bottle of vodka, sleeping it off. Maybe the rye was for a friend.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she pushed past him with more annoyance than the situation warranted. With a muttered oath, he grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“I’m armed. You’re not. I’ll take point position and you bring up the rear,” he said tightly. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you stayed right here.”

“Forget it. I’m a real woman, not one of your bimbos,” she retorted. “If you’re going to lead, lead, but I’m coming with you.”

He wasn’t happy about it, she knew. Too bad, she thought as she shadowed him from room to room, hanging back a little as he cautiously entered each one. She wasn’t happy with the situation, either, but her reasons were harder to figure out. Why did his loyalty to the man who worked for him, however misguided she might see it as, irritate her so? They entered the bathroom, and she was jolted out of her thoughts.

“Wait a minute,” she said as Sullivan turned to leave. “There’s something odd here.”

“What?” He shrugged and looked around. “There’s nothing out of place.”

“That’s just it,” Bailey said slowly. “Hank’s a single guy, and the rest of the house is as untidy as you’d expect it to be. But this bathroom’s immaculate. The taps actually sparkle, for heaven’s sake.”

“And the floor’s been washed.” He looked down, and then over at the towel rack. She followed his glance.

“Not even a facecloth,” she said, frowning. “What does he use to dry himself with?”

“A towel, like everyone else does.” His eyes darkened. “But towels can be used to mop up blood, too.”

She felt an icy chill settle over her as his words sank in, and it was all she could do to stop herself from backing instinctively out of the small room. Had a man been killed here? Had he been killed so violently that his murderer had had to get down on his hands and knees after the deed and scrub every square inch of the floor to remove all traces of his blood? The bath was a combination shower, she noted. There were plastic rings on the rod, but no curtain. Had it been pressed into grisly service as a makeshift shroud by someone desperate to dispose of a body?

She was letting her imagination run away with her, Bailey told herself sharply. What they had here was an empty house, an empty bottle and an empty bathroom. Combined with Jackson’s absence from work and the little she knew about him, her first guess had to be the right one.

But Sullivan wouldn’t accept that. He seemed willing to stand by the missing Jackson no matter what.

And that was what stung, she realized. His loyalty to a man who worked for him was unshakable. His loyalty to her had been limited to three days, at most.