Domino (5 page)

Glass crashed somewhere outside, followed by a
heavy thud and a strangled cry. Clarissa jumped and the angel slid
from her hand, falling with a crash onto the desk. The tip of one
wing broke off and skidded across the polished mahogany. Clarissa
caught it before it fell onto the white carpet. Suddenly, fearful
that Morgan would discover her, she put the empty box back into the
drawer, slipped the crystal angel and the piece of wing into her
purse, and turned off the light. Clarissa knew of a jeweler who
could repair the angel's wing. She could take it to him first thing
in the morning and have it back before Morgan knew it was
missing.

Morgan had driven the Jaguar yesterday morning
and his set of keys might be upstairs on his dresser. Clarissa
snapped on the upstairs hall light, entered the bedroom, and turned
on the pink shell lamp by her side of the bed. She found the Jaguar
keys in the marble tray on Morgan's dresser. She turned out the
light and was about to leave the room when the argument outside
seemed right below her window. There were shouts and running, what
sounded like a scuffle, and Morgan's growling voice. Clarissa
separated the lace drapes and peered into the blue-green half-light
of the pool area.

From her second floor vantage point, Clarissa
saw Byron Roth run from Marco's cottage. Alex was right behind him,
and landed with a flying tackle on Byron's back.

"Got him!" Alex shouted to Marco who had run
around the pool to cut Byron off. Morgan strolled casually up to
the scene as if he were bored with it. Alex hauled Byron to his
feet and whirled him around to face Morgan and Marco. The glint of
a gun shone briefly in Marco's hand and Clarissa was riveted to the
window, not daring to move or breath.

"Your brother tried to run out on us, too,"
Morgan's voice was filled with anger in the still, crystal clear
night. "We warned both of you what would happen if you tried to get
out of our partnership. We had an agreement."

"I tried to talk Avery out of leaving,"
Byron's voice was shaky and edged with terror. "You said you would
give me that chance. Forty eight hours, you said. It wasn't even
five hours. Instead, you murdered him."

"It was robbery," Morgan snapped. "Almost a
million dollars was missing from his office safe. Police haven't
found who did it."

"You lying bastard," Byron cried as he tried
to lunge at Wolfe. Alex kept him tightly restrained as he continued
to struggle against Alex's strong hold across his throat. Wolfe
never flinched but pulled a piece of paper from his suit coat
pocket. Clarissa strained to see in the dim light. It looked to her
like an airline ticket.

"I don't like business partners who steal from
me. Both of you were planning to leave the country. How much were
you taking with you, Byron? We know Avery was taking close to half
a million in that briefcase of his and another two in transferred
funds."

"What are you talking about?" Byron was almost
pleading. "I'm staying. I'm going to run the galleries for you.
Avery cut out, but I'm staying."

"Not according to this," Morgan waved the
airline ticket under Byron's nose.

Clarissa flinched and drew back a little from
the window. She could easily imagine Wolfe's hideous glare boring
into Byron's soul, and felt Byron's terror. Her own hands began to
shake at the thought of the hell that the art gallery owner was
experiencing.

"I've been loyal to you, Mister Wolfe,"
Byron's voice was high pitched and whinny. "Avery bought that
ticket. I told him I wouldn't go with him."

"I can't let this go, Byron," Morgan's voice
was deadly even and it made Clarissa's skin crawl. "What if all my
other business partners heard of this? I don't need those kinds of
problems." Morgan tucked the ticket neatly back into his pocket.
His reached out and patted Byron on the cheek. "Roth Galleries will
be in good hands, Byron, I assure you. Your wife and children will
be taken care of properly. You need not fear for their
welfare."

Morgan nodded to Marco. The burly body guard
wrenched Byron from Alex's grasp and shoved him toward the
pool.

"Please, Mister Wolfe," Byron was sobbing. "I
wasn't going to leave. Please."

The silenced .357 Magnum in Marco's hand
flared in the dark for only an instant. Clarissa gasped audibly,
then put her hand quickly over her mouth. Suddenly, she felt sick.
Byron fell into the pool, a darkening cloud of blood floated on the
surface, dimming the pool light.

Clarissa was close to panic but she stood
riveted to the window. Then she realized that she had not turned
out the hall light. Too late. Alex was looking up directly at her.
Her panic turned to sheer horror as Morgan Wolfe slowly turned to
where Alex was staring. Wolfe's eyes blazed with hell fire hatred
as he saw Clarissa framed in the bedroom window. Without so much as
a nod from Wolfe, Alex and Marco ran toward the house.

Chapter 3

The house was still and heavy with a
terrifying darkness. Clarissa was conscious of every sound,
overwhelmed by the thundering of her own heart. She dared not move.
The dusty carpet under the bed was rough against her cheek and wet
with her tears. She lay on her stomach, one knee pulled up to her
chest and the slim gold chain strap of her evening bag wound firmly
around her wrist. She clutched the Jaguar keys so tight that they
were cutting into her palm. Any moment they would search this room
again and find her, huddled and shivering in the little used guest
room at the end of the hallway.

The door had opened a moment before. Someone
had given the dark room a brief scan. Clarissa had squeezed her
eyes shut, her body rigid with apprehension, waiting for the rough
hands that would pull her from the meager hiding place. The door
had closed as quickly as it was opened and Clarissa dared a sigh of
relief. She could not lay there much longer. She had to move, to
get out of the house and off the grounds, away from
Morgan.

She could not push the vision of his fury from
her mind and her every nerve recoiled involuntarily at the
nightmarish memory. He meant to kill her. She had read it in every
line of his face as he stared up at her from the pool deck. How she
had managed to move from the bedroom to her hiding place under the
guest bed was little more than a dim blur. She had heard Marco and
Alex enter the french doors downstairs and she willed her feet
forward. That was all her panic-ridden mind would allow her to
remember. That and the door opening to the guest room, the awful
moment waiting for discovery, then the silence.

She listened to the muted sounds of the night,
breathing in the dust and lint in small audible gasps. Morgan kept
at least a half dozen armed guards in and around the estate at all
times. They were mostly invisible to the regular household staff or
visiting guests, but they were always there, watching from the
shadows or continually scanning the monitors in the security office
in Marco's cottage. She knew they would be searching the grounds
and the thin veil of her reserves began to crumble when she
realized that escape would be almost impossible. She barely stifled
a sob.

Clarissa's instincts screamed at her to move
and, like a hunted animal, she had no mind but to obey. She slid
out from under the bed, wiped the tears that fell freely down her
cheeks, eased open the door, and peered into the glaring, lighted
hallway. She could hear them moving below, and quickly and
soundlessly shut the door. Even as she searched for an escape, she
heard footsteps on the stairs and muffled voices. Almost without
thinking, she pulled over a small vanity chair and wedged it under
the doorknob. The knob began to turn as she backed away.

"Where is she?" Morgan's level voice sent a
renewed chill through her.

"Not in the master bedroom," Marco replied
from the other side of the door. "She could have gotten down the
stairs before we got into the house."

"Search the first floor again," Wolfe
instructed. "All the doors are locked. If she's still in the house
we have her."

"Dalton and Santos are searching the front
grounds," said Marco. "I've got Markel on the gate and Amato
searching the tool sheds, any place that she could
hide."

"Who's on the monitors?"

"Rogers. He's secured the gates and charged
the perimeter. She can't leave the grounds."

"How did she get back in the house in the
first place?" Wolfe snapped.

"Everything was secured, Mister Wolfe, I don't
see how..."

"That was your job," Wolfe said angrily, "to
see that the house was secure tonight. Especially tonight. Find out
how she got back in and fix it so it doesn't happen
again."

"Yes, Mister Wolfe," Clarissa heard Marco
reply.

"When you find her, dispose of her body with
Byron's. Then get rid of her personal things."

"Yes, sir."

With a shaking hand, Clarissa wiped a sweaty
lock of blond hair out of her eyes. She felt a prickling of her
scalp and an icy contraction of her skin as she heard Marco's quiet
footsteps retreat downstairs to follows Morgan's orders. She could
not hear Wolfe and that unnerved her. Was he there just beyond the
door or had he moved on to continue the search in another room?
Clarissa stared for a long moment at the chair under the doorknob.
She felt trapped and the small room seemed to close in upon her,
yet she could not will her hand to reach out and open the door. She
closed her eyes to hold back the tears and Clarissa saw again
Morgan's face distorted with evil animosity. Byron's futile
pleadings for his life played over and over in her head like a sour
discord and she pressed her hands to her ears to shut them out. She
wanted to scream.

The doorknob rattled violently and it jolted
her out of her madness. She fought back wild panic, sought another
means of escape. A tall window with a french door opened out onto a
small wrought iron balcony overlooking the front of the house.
Clarissa looked down onto the driveway and the garage just beyond.
The full moon cast a dusting of silver on the cobblestones but
there were enough shadows along the trees and bushes to the garage
if she could somehow get down there from the balcony.

Clarissa started to pull the bed sheet from
the guest bed when his voice stopped her cold.

"Clarissa!" Morgan's voice was but a whispered
hiss on the other side of the door and the knob turned. Dread
flooded through her as she watched the chair move slightly under
the pressure. Terror held her. She could only stare at the chair
under the knob. It would not hold long. Then he would have her, his
cold eyes impassive as she begged for her life as Byron Roth had
done.

She blinked back tears and slowly backed away
from the door. Her hands trembled as she pulled the bed sheet back
with her. When it snapped free of the mattress, Clarissa stumbled
back into the vanity table, knocking over a small lamp.

"Clarissa," Morgan's voice was smooth as
poisoned silk. "It's over, darling. Don't think that you can run
from me. Open the door."

The dread seemed to drain from Clarissa as
quickly as it had come. It left an emotional emptiness that allowed
her to think with crystal clarity as if she were watching the scene
in slow motion on television. She had one chance to escape as long
as the chair held in place against Morgan's weight. He had not
called out to Marco or the other security guards. He wanted her to
come to him, defeated and afraid.

"There is no escape, Clarissa," said Morgan.
"No one has ever escaped me. Now, open the door. I have no choice,
my love. And you have no options."

Clarissa wadded the sheet into a ball and
pressed it up against the long curved handle of the balcony door to
muffle the audible click. She stepped out onto the balcony and tied
one corner of the sheet to the wrought iron railing, then threw the
bulk of it over the top of the railing.

"Clarissa, you are only prolonging the
inevitable. You will feel nothing, I promise you, if you open this
door at once. If you do not obey me, I will have no choice but to
turn you over to Marco."

The sudden jolt of terror shocked her. Marco's
very presence around the estate had always frightened her. He was
loathsome and crawly as a scorpion. She had heard things, vague
insinuations from the house staff, of Marco's appetite for violence
and reputation for sudden intense anger. The thought of his hands
on her wrenched at her stomach. She had to escape. Death waited on
the other side of the door, held at bay by a flimsy chair giving
way under the blows from Morgan's shoulder. With no other thought,
Clarissa put the Jaguar keys in her purse and slung the strap over
her shoulder. She straddled the railing, easing herself down until
she could grab the sheet. She clung there for a moment, not wanting
to let go of the railing, fearing she would fall.

The agonizing scrape of the chair, as Morgan
forced the door, loosed Clarissa's feet from the balcony and she
swung precariously, grasping the sheet in a white knuckled
grip.

"Clarissa!" Morgan shouted.

She could hear him moving about the guest
room, slamming the closet doors. Fear of Wolfe stripped away the
fear of falling and the sheet burned her palms as she slid to the
ground. She pressed herself tightly into the shrubbery next to the
house as the French door above her was flung open and Morgan
stepped onto the balcony.