When Stars Collide by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It happened so quickly. An arm dragged her from behind around one corner and another into a deserted corridor that led to the building’s maintenance area and from there into a storage closet. He was big and strong, and his hand across her mouth muffled her screams. The closet door slammed shut, closing them both inside with the scent of chemical fumes and rubber.

Her gown hobbled her legs as she attempted to kick out. He pinned her face-forward to the wall with his body, her neck pulled back at an awkward angle as he kept his hand clasped over her mouth.

His knee jabbed into her back to hold her in place, turned away from him. The sound of his breathing rasped in her ears. He grabbed for her fingers. Pulled at her rings. She struggled to breathe as she heard them hit the floor. The poison ring fit more tightly and wouldn’t come off. He moved to her Egyptian cuff, scraping her wrist as he yanked it free. He reached for a necklace, but she wasn’t wearing one.

Her pierced earrings would be next. Knowing that he would rip them through her earlobes sent a fresh flood of adrenaline surging through her. She stabbed him as hard as she could with the point of her elbow. With a grunt, he edged back just enough so she could twist around.

She stared into the face of Tutankhamen.

He was hiding behind a mask. The cowardice of his anonymity, the threat to her earlobes . . . It was all too much. With her free arm, she clawed at his face. Her dress ripped as she kicked him. She fought—fingernails, arms, legs, and feet. Her shoulder hit something sharp, and light flooded the closet.

She’d triggered the overhead light switch. She tore at his paper mask.

The elastic band snapped.

Kathryn’s son Norman stared back at her.

“That was a mistake.” He slammed her against the wall again. Something hard pressed into her ribs. It could have been a finger, but she knew it wasn’t. He had a gun. He twisted her arm behind her back. Her shoulder screamed with pain, and her cheek smashed into the closet’s cement-block surface. Out of the corner of her eye, next to her face, she saw the gun—black with a short barrel. Ugly. Awful.

“You scream and I shoot.” His voice was a hiss, his breath hot in her ear. “Now I’ve got nothing to lose.”

Because she’d seen his face.

His forearm snaked across her neck and pressed against her windpipe. She clawed at his arm, trying to free herself. He dug the gun into her temple and maneuvered her out of the closet into the dark hallway. She heard faint music from the video that was still playing in the Grand Foyer. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he’d attacked her. A lifetime.

His arm pressed harder against her throat. She made herself deadweight as he dragged her toward the service door at the end of the corridor. If he was going to kill her, she’d make him work for it.

He kicked her hard in the side of her leg. “Walk!”

Thad was going to be furious about this. That random thought kicked through her brain as she struggled to breathe.

They’d reached the door. He hit the bar with his hip. As he dragged her outside, she tried to gulp in the fresh, rain-drenched air.

Through the downpour, she saw that he’d dragged her to the Muni’s loading dock area on the far side of the building, away from the front windows where the guests were gathered. Away from everything except Dumpsters, cargo vans, and the dark coil of the Chicago River.

“A lot of thugs around here.” He dug the gun into her temple, his arm still pressing against her windpipe. “You came out for air. Too bad you got robbed and shot.”

He was going to kill her. No one would stop him. She dropped her head and bit him hard in the arm. He jerked and eased his grip just enough for her to twist free.

She began to run.

Something whizzed past her head. A bullet. The river was just ahead.

He fired again. And again.

She was in the water.

*  *  *

Olivia had been gone too long. As the video played, he pushed back in his chair and wended his way through the tables out into the hallway. No sign of anyone. He headed for the ladies’ room and barged in without knocking. Empty. He checked his watch. It read 9:48 p.m. He hurried down a second hallway. Around a corner.

Her purse lay abandoned ahead of him on the tile floor. His heart kicked into overdrive. There was a service door at the end of the hall. He ran toward it on an adrenaline rush.

He burst outside into a rain-pounded scene from a horror movie. A big man with a gun. The crack of three bullets firing. And Olivia.

Going into the river.

The goon heard the door slam and spun around, gun pointed.

Quarterbacks didn’t usually tackle, but Thad sure as hell knew how. As the goon raised his arm to fire, Thad went low, powering with his legs, targeting the bastard’s chest with a drive from his shoulder.

The goon was big, heavy, and solid. Thad took him down.

The gun flew. Loose ball! A scramble for possession. Even quarterbacks could end up in the scrum, and Thad had been here many times. Grab the ball at any cost. Go for the eyes, the nuts. Gouge. Choke. No gentleman’s code in the pileup, only raw, bleeding violence. Survival of the fittest.

The goon hadn’t been schooled in the NFL’s killing fields and Thad came up with the gun.

The bastard lay curled on the ground, the wind knocked out of him, but Thad couldn’t trust him to stay that way. Olivia was in the river. Drowning? Shot? Fair play wasn’t an option, not with her life in jeopardy. Was she still alive? Thad reared back, aimed for the bastard’s kneecap, and fired.

The goon cried out in agony. Thad raced for the river. Stripping off his jacket as he ran, he launched the gun into the water, kicked off his shoes, and dove.

The shock of the water—still frigid in early May—hit him like a tsunami. He opened his eyes underwater but couldn’t even see his hand in front of him, let alone the glimmer of a white gown. He surfaced, grabbed air, and went under again, fighting the icy temperature and the awful knowledge that she could be dead.

Again and again, he dove and came up, the water shooting needles into him.

The luminous dial of his Victory780 showed 9:52 p.m. Four minutes had elapsed since he’d left the Grand Foyer. At least three minutes had passed since he’d seen her go in. She’d been underwater too long to survive.

Desperate, he swam farther out and went under again. Came up.

Four minutes.

Five.

One of those bullets had hit its target. She was gone. He’d lost her.

He threw his head back and howled at the sky.

The water erupted.

*  *  *

Olivia shot to the top, sucking precious oxygen into her starved lungs. Where had that primitive, animal howl come from? Was Norman Gillis still there?

Numb with cold, she looked toward the riverbank but could see nothing through the heavy rain. Her hands and feet had lost all feeling, and her teeth were chattering. That howl . . . It had echoed underwater like the devil’s own cry. She glanced frantically around for the source.

A man was in the water, maybe fifteen feet away. Not Norman Gillis. She cried out, “Thad!”

He twisted frantically in the water. “Olivia?”

His wet white shirt made a dim beacon in the rainy darkness. She tried to swim toward him, but her limbs were so clumsy from creeping hypothermia she could barely move.

He reached her side and crushed her to him. Strands of dark hair plastered his forehead as he took her head in his hands, his breath ragged. “I thought you were dead. I thought . . .”

Her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do anything but cling to him. Love him.

“Liv . . . My Liv . . .” He had her in his arms, keeping their heads above water. “Where were you? I couldn’t find you. I thought . . .”

Her mouth wouldn’t form the words to tell him she’d been underwater the whole time, afraid if she resurfaced, she’d be shot. She had no breath left to explain the enormous lung capacity of an opera singer or tell him about the contests she and Rachel used to have to see who could stay underwater the longest. The last time, Rachel had won, but only by a few seconds.

“Liv . . .” He kept saying her name as if couldn’t get enough of it. Even in the darkness, she could see his expression. Stark. Stricken. “Hold on to me.” Looping his arm around her, he swam toward the riverbank, providing the power the cold had stolen from her.

They reached the cement wall that edged the riverbank, a place where, in warmer weather, people sat to enjoy the sun. The numbness had spread, disconnecting her from her body. With the arm strength that had served him so well over his career, he hoisted her onto the walkway and pulled himself up next to her.

They collapsed together, him holding her shivering body. She’d never been so cold.

“Don’t ever . . . do that again,” he said nonsensically.

She clung to him. The diadem she’d worn around her forehead was gone, along with her shoes. She heard someone groaning. Not Thad.

He came to his knees. Willing her arms to work, she pushed herself up far enough to see the hulking shadow of Norman Gillis curled on the grass beyond the walkway. He lay there moaning, as if he were coming out of unconsciousness. He wasn’t alone.

“You incompetent fool!” Kathryn Swift bent over the body of her son, grabbing at his clothes. “You’re just like your father. You can’t do anything right.”

Somehow Olivia made it to her knees, but Thad was already on his feet, his wet tuxedo shirt and dark trousers clinging to his body. “Step away from him, Mrs. Swift,” Thad said, in a voice accustomed to commanding obedience.

Kathryn ignored him and continued searching through her son’s clothes.

“I said get back!” Thad barked out the order.

Kathryn straightened. In one hand, she held Olivia’s Egyptian cuff. In the other, a purse-sized pistol.

“R-really?” The word, barely audible, crept through Olivia’s chattering teeth. Why did Kathryn have a gun and Olivia’s bracelet?

“Quiet, Liv,” Thad said softly, undoubtedly remembering how she’d lost her temper with their mysterious limo driver—a man he now suspected was Norman Gillis.

Norman staggered to his feet, whimpering in pain, but instead of standing by his mother, he hobbled toward the loading dock area. Kathryn ignored his desertion, as if he were no more than an irritant. Instead, she kept the gun trained on Thad. “This was a gift to myself when I turned seventy. I had Swarovski crystals embedded in the grip.”

“You’re a real trendsetter,” Thad said.

If Olivia’s tongue had been working, she’d have suggested a nice pair of diamond earrings instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Norman staggering into a car he must have stashed there ahead of time.

Thad, with his wet clothes and the frigid breeze, had to be just as cold as she was, but he stood steady. “Your son is going to survive.”

“Probably,” Kathryn said bitterly. Behind her, Norman’s car peeled from the building. “He’s always been a disappointment to me.”

Thad moved ever so slightly to the left, working to put his body between Kathryn and Olivia, but no way would Olivia let him take a bullet for her. Willing her legs to support her, she came to her feet. With her sandals gone, it was like standing on blocks of ice, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh under her drenched white gown.

She’d drawn Kathryn’s attention, just as she’d intended. “Men make messes,” Kathryn said to her, “and I have to clean them up. First Eugene and his carelessness. And now Norman.”

“What kind of messes, Mrs. Swift?” Thad deliberately drew her focus back to himself.

“This bracelet!” She gripped it tightly in one hand and turned the gun on Olivia. “He was so ridiculously infatuated with you.”

“What’s so special about the bracelet?” Thad said quickly.

“Enough questions!” She made a sharp gesture toward Olivia with her gun. “Into the river with you both.”

“Stay right where you are, Liv,” Thad ordered. “Mrs. Swift, neither of us is going into the river. Now drop that gun.”

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You think because I’m old, I don’t know how to use this? My daddy took me hunting before I was six years old.”

“A tender memory, I’m sure, but let me point out that putting bullet holes in the bodies of two of the city’s more famous people—because that’s the only way we’re going in—is a very bad idea. The police will be relentless.”

“Chicago can be a dangerous city.”

“The police aren’t stupid.”

“No one would ever suspect me. Now move!”

Olivia could read Thad’s mind. As surely as she knew anything, she knew he intended to go after Kathryn and take the bullet himself.

The riverbank was deserted. No one inside the Muni would hear if she screamed, and her strength was sapped. She could sense Thad getting ready to spring, and Kathryn could, too, because she pointed the gun directly at his chest, right at his beautiful heart. If Olivia could make Kathryn drop her guard for a few seconds, he might have a chance of disarming her. But Olivia had nothing to distract her with. No pebbles of glass from a broken limousine partition. No shoe to throw. All she had was her voice.

The idea was ludicrous.

But it was the only idea she had.

Thad tensed his muscles, waiting for his moment. Garnering her strength, Olivia pulled in every molecule of air she could collect—opened her chest, her throat, her soul—and sent Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie battle cry out into the wild night.

“Ho-jo-to-ho!”

A punch of furious, ear-shattering sound. The roar of the earth cracking open. The scream of the universe exploding.

“Ho-jo-to-ho!”

The high was strident, the middle broke. She was a mezzo. She didn’t have the voice for Brünnhilde, but the Valkyrie’s battle cry did its job, startling Kathryn Swift into jerking her head around and lowering her pistol just for a moment.

Just long enough for Olivia to rush at her with every bit of strength she had left.

Thad, of course, got to her first. He grabbed the old lady’s arm, forcing her to drop the pistol.

“Everybody freeze!”

Brittany stood thirty feet away, her service revolver at the ready.

Is everybody in this city armed?

Kathryn let out a pitiful shriek, puny compared to Olivia’s battle cry, and collapsed to the ground.

*  *  *

The Muni’s docking area filled with flashing red lights and emergency vehicles. The EMTs wrapped Olivia and Thad in Mylar blankets and checked their vital signs while Brittany phoned in the information about Norman Gillis. The Egyptian bracelet was already tucked away in an evidence bag.

Some of the crowd exiting from the gala grew aware of the commotion. With umbrellas over their heads, they huddled in the parking area and watched Kathryn Swift being hauled away in a squad car.

Thad gazed at Olivia from his Mylar cocoon as if he expected her to disappear at any moment, but he said nothing, and she had a shocking glimpse of how he would look as an old man. Still handsome, but tired, the cares of a lifetime etched in his face.

She wanted to rest her head against his shoulder, but he’d erected an invisible barricade she had no right to cross.

*  *  *

The EMTs urged them to go to the hospital, but they both refused. Thad watched Olivia being helped into a squad car that would deliver her home. He couldn’t go with her. He couldn’t be with her now.

He drove himself home and took the longest, hottest shower of his life. As the remnants of the Chicago River eddied down the drain, he wished he could send the images swirling in his brain along for the trip. That moment when he believed he’d lost her would be seared in his memory forever . . . Believing that this brave, smart, funny, ambitious heartache of a woman was lost to him forever had been the worst moment of his life, worse than sitting on the bench, worse than playing backup, far worse than knowing he’d never be number one.

*  *  *

Piper sat with Olivia at the police station the next morning as she gave her statement to Brittany. Olivia appreciated having Piper with her today, but it should have been Thad by her side, both of them giving their statements together.

And whose fault was that?

She’d barely slept last night. Even after she was warm, clean, and awash in Throat Coat tea, she couldn’t fall asleep. It was ironic. Like every opera singer on the planet, she was paranoid about catching a cold. She guarded against drafts, stayed away from cigarette smoke, slept with at least one vaporizer running, and didn’t drink water that was too chilled—only to end up underwater in the Chicago River in early May. She was lucky to be alive, but that wasn’t what kept jerking her awake. It was the image of Thad’s face when she’d come up for breath.

Olivia and Piper had barely settled into the chairs across from her desk before Brittany told them they’d caught Gillis. “He was apprehended on Sheridan Road a little before midnight.”

Brittany looked as if she’d spent the rest of the night interrogating him instead of sleeping. She’d abandoned her ice-blue gown and high, strappy sandals for dark pants, a wrinkled white blouse, and sensible loafers. Leaning against the side of her desk was the same big purse she’d been carrying last night. Olivia had wondered why she hadn’t brought a more fashionable evening bag to the gala, and now she knew. A pretty evening bag wouldn’t have held her service revolver, and like most cops, she liked having it with her.

Brittany looked up from her notepad. “Tell me about the bracelet.”

Tell me about Thad, Olivia thought. Is he all right? Have you talked to him? Did he ask about me? Do you love him?

Olivia didn’t say any of that. “Kathryn’s husband Eugene loved Aida, and not long before he died, he sent me the bracelet. He told me one of his buyers had picked it up at a souvenir market in Luxor. I remember that. He called it a costume piece and said it was unworthy of my talent.” She rubbed her temple. “I think we can safely assume it’s not a costume piece.”

“How long have you known the Swifts?” Brittany asked.

“I knew Eugene for almost ten years. He was a fixture on the Muni’s board of directors. Our friendship was never inappropriate, if that’s what you’re wondering. He enjoyed reminiscing about singers he remembered from his boyhood or talking to me about obscure operas—La finta giardiniera, Medea in Corinto,Tolomeo—that sort of thing. I loved listening to his insights. I adored him.”

Piper forgot she wasn’t the one leading the interrogation. “What about his wife?”

“I never met his first wife. As for Kathryn . . . She was always cordial to me, but she didn’t share Eugene’s enthusiasm for opera. Eugene told me she used to sneak out of performances at intermission. Art museums are Kathryn’s passion. That and maintaining her status with Chicago’s social elite.”

Brittany clicked her ballpoint pen. “She doesn’t like opera, but she’s on the Municipal Opera’s board of directors? That seems odd.”

“She took over Eugene’s seat after he died. It added to her social currency. She’s also a good fundraiser, so the Muni was more than happy to have her.”

“What about Norman?” Piper asked.

“Eugene never said much about his stepson. They weren’t close.”

Piper pulled out her own notepad. “I’ve done some research on Swift Auction House. It’s a high-end operation dealing in fine arts: paintings, sculpture, jewelry—a smaller version of Sotheby’s.” She raised her head from the notepad. “It specializes in antiquities.”

“Not all of them legal,” Brittany informed them. “Norman was chatty, at least for a while last night. He said Eugene Swift was running a side business dealing in illegal artifacts—pieces smuggled from their home countries and sold to wealthy, and very discreet, private collectors in Asia, the Middle East, Russia, some in the US.”

“Never!” Olivia exclaimed. “Eugene would never have done anything like that. If the auction house was involved with illegal antiquities, Kathryn was behind it.”

“Not according to Norman.”

“He’s a snake. Dig deeper, and you’ll find if anything illegal was going on, it happened after Kathryn took over the business.”

Piper stepped in. “Dozens of museums have pieces of ancient Egyptian jewelry in their collections. That’s what I don’t understand. What makes this bracelet valuable enough to kill for it?”

Brittany shook her head. “Norman clammed up before we got that far, and right now, Mrs. Swift isn’t talking.”

Piper closed her notebook. “Let’s hope that changes.”

*  *  *

Thad had gone for a five-mile run after he gave Brittany his statement, but the exercise hadn’t lightened his misery. He needed someone he could take out his ugly mood on, so he called Clint, but when the kid arrived, Thad couldn’t summon the energy to watch film with him, or even tell him he was an idiot, so he kicked him out again.

On his way to the door, Clint dead-eyed him like the leader he already was. “You’d better get your shit together, old man, because right now you’re useless.”

Thad mumbled something under his breath and closed the door on him.

He spent the next few hours on the Internet learning everything he could about ancient Egyptian jewelry. All the time, he was thinking about what had happened in Las Vegas. Olivia had been wearing her bracelet the night Gillis had abducted them, just as she had the whole time they’d been in Las Vegas, but Gillis had initially gone after Thad’s wallet and watch. That had obviously been a diversion, a way to make it look like a robbery and keep anyone from suspecting Gillis had only been after the bracelet.

Last night, when the police had interviewed Olivia, she’d said that Gillis had pulled off her rings before he’d taken her bracelet. One more attempt at a diversion. It seemed obvious that Kathryn wanted to keep anyone from linking the bracelet to the auction house, but once Olivia had seen Norman’s face, that was no longer possible.

Toward midafternoon, he couldn’t endure the knot in his stomach any longer. He had one last thing to do.