Page 79 of Lie for a Million

The phone was still ringing.Don’t pick up, Jasmine told herself. Her room was closed but the door was thin. Louis could easily hear the ring and the sound of her voice if she was to answer.

The phone had gone silent. Had it been Sam calling her? No one else had the number, but the call could have been misdialed. She would leave it for now and check later.

She tried to concentrate on the résumé, but her thoughts kept returning to the phone call. Sam wouldn’t call except for an urgent reason. She could always call him back when she knew it was safe. But maybe he’d left a message.

Overcome by the need to know, she walked to the door, opened it, and looked up and down the hall. She could hear puttering sounds from the kitchen, the running faucet, the hum of the microwave. She would be all right for a few minutes.

Rummaging in her dresser drawer, she found the phone where she’d hidden it under layers of underwear. The battery was low. She would need to charge it tonight. But there was enough for now.

No text message. But there was a voice mail from Sam. Jasmine was tempted to play it. But that might not be safe. She would wait until Louis had left.

She had the drawer open and was about to turn off the phone and hide it again when the door swung behind her. Louis stood in the doorway, a suspicious expression on his swarthy face.

“What have you got there? Let me see it.” He held out his hand.

“It’s just a phone. I’m an adult. I’m entitled to my privacy.”

“I said, let me see it!” He reached behind his back and drew a small, nasty-looking black pistol from a holster attached to his belt. If she refused, Jasmine knew that Louis was capable of shooting her. And then what? Would he shoot her mother as a witness? Jasmine couldn’t take that chance. She handed him the phone.

He glanced at it, scowling. “Hmm. I see you have a voice mail. What do you say we play it on speaker?”

His finger stabbed at the phone. The voice on the speaker was Sam’s.

“I’m worried about you, Jasmine. If your mother’s keeping company with Divino, you’re in danger. You need to get out of there while you still can. If you need help and can’t reach me, Nick Bellingham at the Bureau has connections to agents in Austin. His number is—”

Divino slammed the phone onto the floor and crushed it under the elevated heel of his boot. His dark eyes had gone leaden. “You conniving little bitch!” he growled. “I should have guessed you were working with the feds.”

The gun’s muzzle came up to point at her heart.

“Please, Mr. Divino.” Jasmine spoke through the knot of terror in her throat. “If you’re going to kill me, don’t do it here, where my mother can see. Take me away. I’ll go with you, I promise.”

“Shut up!” His expression was a predatory snarl. “I should have shoved you off that balcony when I caught you checking my phone.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

The deafening gunshot rang out from directly behind him. Louis Divino pitched forward, his skull obliterated by the bullet that had entered from the back and exited at a steep angle.

As he crashed at Jasmine’s feet, she saw her mother standing in the open doorway. Madeleine’s lilac negligee was lightly spattered with blood. Her right hand clasped the grip of a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special.

EPILOGUE

Shocked speechless, Jasmine stared at her mother. The gaze Madeleine returned was calm, almost cold.

“Gather your things, sweetheart,” she said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Jasmine struggled for words. “But you just . . . What about the police? What abouthim?” She gestured helplessly toward the body of Louis Divino lying at her feet, his blood soaking into the white Flokati rug.

“It’s all right, dear,” Madeleine said. “I know people who’ll come and clean up this mess. I’ll call them. But you will need to be gone when they get here.” She stripped off her blood-spattered negligee and laid it over the body. Underneath, her mauve silk nightgown was undamaged. “This isn’t quite the way I planned it, but it’s as good as anything, I suppose.”

“What did you plan? Mother? You just killed a man!”

“A man who would have shot you. I believe that’s justifiable homicide.”

“But you said you planned something,” Jasmine sputtered. “What’s going on here? I don’t understand!”

“Louis was getting soft,” Madeleine said. “He’d been making some bad decisions—bad for the organization. I’d been planning a way to take over, with plenty of support from his former friends. But I never expected I’d have to take him out myself.”

“But—”

“That’s enough, dear. The less you know, the safer you’ll be. Now get your suitcase and start packing.”

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