Free Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? by Ann Rule

able to come up for air, she realized that she had
    no way to get home.   Her Cressida was at the Madison Tower.   She called
    her sister Margie and asked for a ride there.   On the way, she stopped
    at the Broadway Toyota dealership and arranged to have keys made so
    that she could drive her car.   It had been such a weird, upside-down
    day.   Who could remember keys and cars and details when the specter of
    Cheryl's death loomed over everything?   Sara just wanted to get to Brad
    and the boys and help them through whatever might lie ahead.   Then
    suddenly, incongruously, she remembered that Michael's birthday was
    only three days away and asked her sister to turn into the Toys S[' Us
    parking lot to buy him a present.
     
    When she got back to Brad's apartment, to her shock, Sara found him in
    a state of silent terror.   She had neverþeverþseen him like that
    before.
     
    He had always been a man totally in control, fully capable of handling
    whatever came his way.   But she could see that something was very
    wrong, something more than Cheryl's strange death.   Brad drew Sara away
    from the windows and asked her to sit down.   He told her softly that he
    had no choice but to warn her that they might all be in terrible
    danger.
     
    Cheryl's murder was only the beginning, he said, only the "first shoe"
    dropped in a massive plot to eliminate himþand everyone connected to
    him.
     
    "But who?   W?"   Sara gasped.
     
    "It's too complicated for me to explain.   You'll just have to trust me
    to take care of us."
     
    Brad showed Sara a loaded handgun he was carrying for protection.
     
    Then he led her around his apartment, showing her where he and Brent
    had tied ropes between interior door handles to prevent anyone who
    crawled through a window from gaining entrance to the center of the
    apartment.
     
    He and Brent had also arranged pop cans and coffee cans filled with
    pennies so that they would crash and warn them of any unexpected entry
    through the main door.   Brad had even loaded another gun and given it
    to his fifteen-year-old son, two guns would be better than one.   Even
    though they were in a security building, he told Sara they couldn't
    count on protection.   The people they were dealing with were far more
    sophisticated than the rent-a-cop security guards at the Madison
    Tower.
     
    '^Who?"   Sara asked again, baffled.   "Who would try to hurt us?"   But
    Brad wouldn't tell her whom he feared.   It was enough for her to know
    that they all might be in danger.   He said the little boys would sleep
    in his king-sized bed, and Brent would stay in his own roomþwhere he
    had a good view of the walkway around the eighteenth floor.   If someone
    could murder Cheryl, Brad said tightly, that meant that none of them
    was safe.
     
    At 9:15 that night, a loud knock sounded at the door and Brad signaled
    Sara to he quiet.   They peered out a security peephole and saw a
    uniformed man standing there.   He was an extremely big man, probably
    six feet four or five and solidly built.   He looked to Sara like either
    a Portland policeman or a state trooper.   The uniformed man waited,
    balancing on one foot and then the other.
     
    Brad held a finger to his lips, shushing them, and shook his head.
     
    He wouldn't let anyone answer the door.
     
    "But, Brad, wlfy?"   Sara asked again, appalled.
     
    He sighed and said he guessed he would have to level with her.   He told
    Sara he had every reason to believe that Cheryl's family was going to
    come after him and that, quite possibly, they meant to murder him.
     
    If they didn't come in person, he felt they would hire someone in a
    cop's uniform to do it.
     
    Sara, who had never led anything but a safe existence, who had never
    known anyone involved in such James Bond-like intrigue, was
    frightened.
     
    Cheryl was dead and Sara knew absolutely nothing about her family,
    nothing beyond Brad's conviction that Cheryl and her mother had planned
    to