“So you followed us,” Jake guessed. It was the only explanation.
Ball-Cap Boy nodded. “I left the lawyer with his mouth wide open and followed you. I had to hire a taxi to do it.” He smiled. “I told the taxi driver the brunette was my wife and the two of you were having an affair. He was very sympathetic. It seems his wife ‘stepped out’ on him, as he put it.” He shrugged. “We followed you to that car rental place and while she was returning her car, I rented one, and then I followed you back here.”
“And poisoned the hot tub?” Jake asked, and then said with certainty, “No, not then. You didn’t have the poison with you in the rental car.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I saw the hot tub that night. Disgusting things,” he added with a shudder. “Only whores and whoresons use those. Poisoning it was the only thing to do.”
Jake frowned. He was recalling his first night here when he’d arrived with Marguerite. The door had been unlocked when they’d arrived, he recalled. They’d locked it, and then when he’d checked later it was unlocked again.
“You followed us here, you weren’t here before us?” he asked, despite knowing he couldn’t have been.
Ball-Cap Boy looked at Jake as if he were the one who was crazy. “I told you I followed you. The angels led me to you, they don’t give out addresses.”
Jake didn’t react to that, his thoughts were on the fact that the door had been unlocked when they’d arrived. Nicole had claimed she’d locked it behind Marguerite when she’d left, but it had been unlocked when they’d arrived. The only answer was either Nicole had only thought she’d locked it, or she’d locked it and then unintentionally unlocked it when she’d turned the key back to take it out of the lock. But he knew Marguerite had locked it when they’d entered. He’d even checked it himself afterward. Yet it had been unlocked again later.
“You were in the house,” he said with certainty.
“The studio door was cracked open.”
Jake frowned. Marguerite had searched the main floor while he took the upper when their calls hadn’t drawn Nicole out. Marguerite must have just stuck her head into the studio, or maybe she even just glanced through the French doors. Whichever the case, she hadn’t noticed the sliding glass doors being open.
“I was really impressed with the girl’s paintings,” Ball-Cap Boy said now, surprise in his voice. “I expected them to be orgy scenes and such, but they were well-done portraits. Of course, I realized then that the angels had left the door open for me so I could see my next targets. Obviously, a servant of Satan would only paint other minions of hell.”
“Christ,” Jake muttered, thinking of the portrait of Christian and Caro. The man was saying they were now a target too, along with the actress and the politician.
“Don’t you dare utter Christ’s name in vain,” Ball-Cap Boy barked, suddenly on his feet, the gun Jake had been sure he had in view and pointing straight at him. Ball-Cap Boy had held it tucked between his arms and body, hidden until he was ready to reveal it, which was exactly what Jake had suspected.
He eyed the weapon warily, very aware that Nicole, as one of Satan’s minions, was also a target now. He definitely couldn’t afford to be incapacitated, even for moments. Trying to turn the man’s thoughts from his anger and get answers at the same time, Jake asked, “Did the angels lead you out of the house through the front door?”
Ball-Cap Boy looked at him with disgust. “Don’t be ridiculous. I decided to go that way myself after the brunette went upstairs and I’d searched the main floor. It was closer and easier than marching through the snow.”
“Right,” Jake murmured, but at least he knew how the door had got unlocked after Marguerite locked it. “And you tried to run over Nicole in the Canadian Tire parking lot?”
He shrugged. “She’s in league with you.”
Jake nodded grimly. “And you messed with the SUV’s brakes and accelerator?”
“Well, I would have just shot you, but the police are still suspicious of me, and you aren’t my primary target. I can’t get caught until I complete my mission and kill all the politicians in the world.”
Jake’s mouth twitched. As missions went, he couldn’t really say that was a bad one. Jake wasn’t big on politicians. Politics seemed to be peopled with greedy, larcenous, uncaring morons who couldn’t run a corner store let alone a country. Geez, there were at least two mayors of major cities in just this province right now who were in hot water. One was accused of using government funds for the wedding of one of his children, the other of using his position to strong-arm funds for some pet charity of his or something. Charity was good, but using such tactics to get money for it made people think maybe he was getting a percentage of the donations. Why else risk your job?
“Unfortunately, you are turning out to be difficult to kill,” Ball-Cap Boy said with a perplexed frown. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect the devil to make it easy, but I don’t know how you managed to survive the hot tub. I saw you get in, and thought for sure I’d succeeded when you started vomiting blood. I went away thinking I’d come back in a day or so to take care of the girl, but when I returned you were on your feet and those two behemoths were here.”
“So you followed us to the mall and messed with the SUV while we were inside shopping,” Jake said.
“Yes.” He scowled. “But you survived that too.”
Jake wondered if the guy expected him to apologize or something, and then movement behind Ball-Cap Boy drew his gaze to the sliding glass doors and the woman easing into view on the deck outside. For a moment, he was so distracted by the outfit that he didn’t look at the face. Cripes, talk about a sex trap. The only cover the outfit offered was scraps of almost see-through black material over the three most important bits. They appeared to be held in place by crisscrossing straps or lacing . . . and were those thigh-high boots? There wasn’t enough material in them to put together to make a proper shoe. But then there wasn’t enough material in the whole outfit to make anything decent. Who the hell—?
His gaze slid upward, finding a fedora perched at a jaunty angle on long, wavy blond hair and then he focused on the face. Nicole! Jake suspected his heart stopped at that moment and he would never know how he managed to control his expression and keep his jaw from dropping to thud on the floor. She looked fricking amazing, hot as hell, sexy as sin . . . and boy was Ball-Cap Boy gonna want to kill her for that outfit. He could imagine him shrieking Jezebel! and shooting her full of holes. This was not good, not good at all.
“So I thought a personal approach was called for,” Ball-Cap Boy announced.
Realizing he was staring and likely to draw the man’s attention to Nicole, Jake shifted his gaze quickly back to the man as he waved his gun around. He opened his mouth to say something clever, but all that came out was, “Er . . .”
It was the best Jake could come up with, and, really, he thought that was pretty good considering his penis was reacting to Nicole’s outfit by trying to form a pup tent in his pants. Jeans are much more resistant to such things than jogging pants, he noted, shifting uncomfortably as his gaze skittered back to Nicole. She had slid through the door and was now raising something she’d been carrying at her side, something big and white and—a pillow.
Seriously? Jake thought with amazement. This wasn’t a pillow fight. What kind of person brought a pillow to a gunfight? Cripes, she was dressed for a pillow fight too . . . well, a sexy pillow fight that ended in toppling her onto the bed, ripping her panties off and thrusting—