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Calmed, she went back to Belle Meade. She found Troy sitting on the steps at the base of the entrance to Cheekwood. She spent nearly an hour talking him off the ledge. She felt derision toward his limitation, his inabil

ity to put the plan before his own needs. She just needed to get away. The excitement, the danger, it was intoxicat

ing at the begi

prentice. He was out of her control. She’d returned to the hotel, intent on formulating a new plan. One with her as the hero.

The answer became readily apparent. Arresting Troy wasn’t a real possibility; he would have to be killed. Alive, he would implicate her in his schemes. But death, now that would make all the difference. She took a couple of pills and plotted for an hour, lost in her alternate world. It would be easy enough to kill them both. Stopping the apprentice would make her famous. The fact that she was Snow White’s daughter, well, that would make her a legend.

She took another hit of X, stared out at the Christmas lights lining the buildings by the hotel. She had it all plotted out. The headlines, the interviews. How she’d decided to stop home to wish her old, sick father Merry 322

J.T. Ellison

Christmas and found him up to his neck in blood and gore. Oh, she’d have to kill that little girl in the attic, as well. The thought excited her. Tremendously. The checkmark in her win column would catapult her into the position she so longed for, the head of the BSU. A knock on the door had startled her. Troy had come to the hotel room, shaken like a little boy who has been exposed to a scary movie. Promised that it would never happen again. Begged her to stay with him, to help him. The sight of him, so handsome, so remorseful—she decided one last little fling couldn’t be all that bad. No sense wasting the X.

They’d had frenzied sex, him plunging into her over and over so hard she felt the bruises form. He promised to take care of her forever. He told her he would do anything she wanted as long as she let him stay. He loved her. He’d never felt anything like this before. He’d made love to her then, taking his time, doing all the things that he knew she loved, until she’d screamed his name, and God’s, at the top of her lungs. Her breath was starting to return to normal. Maybe there was a way to make this work after all. He was still in her, had her pi

“Let me up. I need to wash.”

“No, Charlotte. But I do.”

The blade was so sharp she didn’t feel the cut. Didn’t feel the knife sweep through the tender skin on her neck like it was butter. It took a moment to register what was happening, that he’d just done what he’d done. The lying bastard. Her eyes teared, and she tried to scream. There was the pain, finally, as she realized he’d cut her so deep, 14

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her vocal cords were severed. In a moment of disgust, she felt him harden in her and realized he was pumping away, coming again, crying out her name as she went away. Forty-One

New York, New York

Tuesday, December 23

8:00 a.m.

Lieutenant Tony Eldridge and Detective Emily Callahan sat across the breakfast table from Taylor and Baldwin, in

dustriously sucking down cappuccinos. They were in the Heartbeat restaurant of the W Hotel, ostensibly coming up with a game plan, a breakfast strategy session. Ordering the food had taken nearly five minutes with all the specifics the New York cops asked for. Emily had requested organic granola, fruit cut with a fresh knife, local farm yogurt, wheat grass juice and an immunityboosting smoothie, smiling unapologetically at Taylor. Eldridge opted for the steel-cut oatmeal with brown sugar, cranberries, raisins, toasted almonds and warm milk. Even Baldwin got caught up in the health frenzy, taking pastel eggs with fruitwood bacon and roasted potato veggie hash. Taylor tried to play along but felt like a child, ordering peanut-butter-and-jelly crepes. It was as close to normal 14

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as she could find on the menu. Even the food added to her sense of dislocation. The one thing of comfort was the orange gerbera daisy in the stainless-steel vase. Hard beauty for such a gentle flower, but fitting, somehow. After the waitress left, Taylor fiddled with a ripe pear and took in the multicolored reflective glass column to her right. She wanted out of New York, wanted to get back home and…and…she didn’t know. She didn’t know what she wanted. Home seemed like a haven now, a place to escape to, to be rid of this city and its implied threats. Baldwin turned over the cell phone. Eldridge promised to do everything he could to trace its origins, see if they could find some answers.

They talked of the things that gave them common ground until the meal was finished. Eldridge slurped the last of his espresso, setting the cup in the saucer deli

cately.

“Okay, Lieutenant, let’s run through this again. Tell me everything you remember about Delglisi, everything he said. We must be missing something.”

Taylor set the pear on her plate. She focused her thoughts, went back to that dank room. Smelled his cologne, heard his voice. Chills ran down her arms.

“A few things stood out. He said he had a business proposition for me. I asked if this had anything to do with the Snow White case, and he said I was closer to him than I thought. He said there was a situation that needed to be handled, and that if something happened to screw with his interests in Nashville he’d take the heads of my team. He talked about family.”

If something happens to jeopardize my interests in yourfair city, I’ll start taking your friends’ heads off, one by 326

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one. She swallowed hard at the fury that rose in her gut. Just talking about the threat pissed her off.

“Did you get the sense he was referring to Snow White, or something else?” Baldwin leaned back in his chair, his coffee cup held loosely in his hand.

“Something else. He didn’t feel Snow White was a danger, that’s for sure. He called him a peon of a killer. Didn’t seem to think he was worth his time. I think there’s more to it, too. Lieutenant Eldridge, why don’t you fill us in a little more on Edward Delglisi? Maybe if I know more about him I’ll have an easier time making sense of his threats.”

Eldridge looked at Callahan, nodding as he took a sip of water. Her show to run. Callahan cleared her throat and launched.

“Okay. L’Uomo has been around for about twenty years now. We don’t know much about him, only get a string of murders that crop up with his signature every once in a while. Businesses fail, storefronts close, and three or four bodies show up. People who cross him don’t get to hang around for long. He runs an import/export business, but he’s quiet and quick. He floats people around, has a lot of money, and has never been caught. He’s got deep pockets and a lot of people on the payroll.”

“How does Burt Mars fit in?” Taylor asked. Callahan handed a file across to Taylor. “Mars. He’s a stool. But smart. He was the single biggest reason the Tartulo family went down. He’s L’Uomo’s bank. Here’s some reports you may find interesting. Mars has been shuffling L’Uomo’s money around for quite a while. Uses that Manderley REIT hedge fund. Only we can’t find it. Every time we get close to the source of the funding, it 14