Three Times a Lady

Chapter 38

Kill two birds with one stone, Nicholas thought as he watched Dana Whitestone and her former boss enter the vacation house across the street. Just murder them both right now while they were together and speed along the entire process of achieving fame.

He shook his head to chase away the thought, knowing in his gut that he needed to stick to the game plan here; no matter how strong the temptation might be to alter it.

Nicholas sighed, knowing that the authorities would make short work of tracking him down now with all the evidence he’d left behind. Still, he didn’t really care. That had been the goal ever since the very beginning, after all, hadn’t it? To go out in a blaze of glory.

Of course it had.

On national television.

Nicholas pressed his lips into a tight line of anticipation. The simple fact of the matter was that you could murder anyone, just so long as you were willing to give up your own life in return. Even an FBI agent. And Nicholas was more than willing to give up his own life in exchange for Dana Whitestone’s. Always had been ever since the day he’d watched his little brother brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of his shocked and disbelieving eyes, killed by the same woman who’d given them both life before she’d snatched it away again with her sick compulsion to live her own dreams of fame through her two little boys. Two little boys who hadn’t known any better. Two little boys who’d never stood a chance against a woman like her.

Nicholas went into his kitchen and pulled out a Heineken from the refrigerator. The tinkling sound of glass hitting glass filled his ears as the bottle made contact with the rest of the twelve-pack inside. Time for some suds. And why not? Things were about to get very interesting now.

Returning to his living room, Nicholas popped the top on his beer and kicked back on the couch, at the same time positioning the tiny listening device in his ear. With any luck, the bugs he’d planted around Dana Whitestone’s vacation house would pick up every word of her conversation with Bill Krugman, the head of the FBI.

Nicholas took a long swallow of his beer and listened in as they talked. Krugman was updating his former charge on each of Nicholas’s exquisite murders, including the horrific butchering of Dinah Leach the previous year.

‘Dinah Leach was de-sexed, Dana,’ Krugman told his former protégé, an underlying knife-edge of irritation sharpening voice. ‘Her breasts and vagina were sliced off with a knife, for Christ’s sake. Please come back to the Bureau. We need you.’

From the comfort of his own living room, Nicholas could almost see Dana Whitestone’s face go white at her former boss’s words. God, how he wished he’d have thought to put a video camera in there, as well. The look on Whitestone’s face had to be absolutely priceless. Why in the hell had he skimped on costs this close to the end?

Nicholas sighed again and shrugged his shoulders. To hell with it. There’d be plenty of cameras around when the final cut was made and delivered to the general public. That much wasn’t a concern. Whether or not anyone liked it, his fame had been all but assured now.

Dana Whitestone cleared her throat softly and Nicholas sat up straighter on the couch, pressing the listening device farther into his ear. This was it. The vaunted FBI agent would return to the hunt now – and then the fun and games could really begin in earnest. Leaning back his head, Nicholas took a long, celebratory sip of beer.

And then he nearly choked on it, spitting it out all over the floor at his feet.

‘No,’ Dana Whitestone said in response to Krugman’s request that she rejoin the FBI. ‘Absolutely not.’