Templeton had barely even questioned her story only made her feel that much worse. Then again, lying was something she’d needed to do.
Much like the woman in the black dress had told her, Dana wanted the other woman for herself.
CHAPTER 29
Two days after he’d provided Special Agent Dana Whitestone of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with her very rude and extremely long-overdue wake-up call in order to snap the dumb bitch back to the reality of the lowly station she actually occupied in life, Nicholas checked into his room at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City and laid out his clothes for the night on the king-sized Tempurpedic bed featuring six matching pillows.
First there was his red dress – Armani, of course – a perfect replica of the one that his mother had worn the day she’d dragged him inside the walk-in freezer at the butcher’s shop back home in Chicago way back in 1971. At his mother’s insistence, Nicholas only wore name brands. Annabeth Preston had taught him very early on that to wear anything else would be beneath the Preston name, trashy. And if there were one thing in this world Nicholas was not, it was trashy.
To go along with his pretty red dress, Nicholas had selected six-inch-high black heels, silver Tiffany jewellery and a matching silver Tiffany clip in his hair. His mink coat would keep him warm against the frigid winter air that had put the Big Apple into such a deep freeze it didn’t seem likely to thaw out until somewhere around mid-April. Nicholas’s confidence was strong, his colour was good and his spirits were high. He was ready for this.
Nicholas looked around his well-appointed room and sighed. The hotel had cost a pretty penny, no two ways about it – almost six hundred bucks a night. But he considered it money well spent. After all, money marked the main theme of his entire trip to America’s largest and most famous city. And while he was here in New York City, Nicholas figured that he might as well see how the other half lived for a little while. Enjoy the good life for a change.
Moving to the window of his twentieth-floor room and opening up the curtains, Nicholas looked out at the breathtaking New York City skyline and admired the view. Taking in a deep breath through his nostrils, he let out the air again in a satisfied rush over his teeth. This was it. He was here. He’d made it. And if he could make it here, he could make it anywhere. Wasn’t that what the song said?
Nicholas checked his Mickey Mouse watch and stretched his neck to loosen up the muscles there, steeling himself for what would come next. The impending heart of the storm wasn’t scheduled to arrive until later on in the night, but New York City had already been blanketed in a light dusting of white – a powdered-sugar topping for the Big Apple. And the weather reports were calling for the worst blizzard since – well – since only the previous February, really. Still, that didn’t mean this particular blizzard wouldn’t be just as historic as the last, which in actuality had been two storms rolled into one, with the second coming hot on the heels of the first.
The First North American Blizzard of 2010 had devastated the United States from California all the way to the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as having caused extensive flooding and landslides in Mexico. In New York, it had been followed quickly by the Second North American Blizzard of 2010, a cataclysmic weather anomaly that had rivaled the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 and the Great Blizzard of 1888 in both ferocity and duration, leading to the deaths of dozens of people.
Nicholas smiled, knowing that tonight’s blizzard would lead to the death of at least one person he knew of. An extremely famous person.
The second name on his special little list.
Nicholas hummed to himself as he continued to survey the wintry landscape, trying to get a feel for the lay of the land. Once again – just as had been the case with Dinah Leach down in Atlanta – Mother Nature would act as his accomplice tonight. She was a natural fit for the job. Once again, law-enforcement officials and emergency responders would be stretched far too thin to stop him. Once again, he and Annabeth Preston had planned this out perfectly. And once again, Nicholas would show the world exactly who was in