“Why do I have to go back here? Jesus, all I did was a little trespassing! You don’t have to shoot me!”
“Maybe I do,” Rhys said.
Kendra was standing a few feet in back of her partner, taking in the show.
“No, please!” Travis said.
“Turn around,” Rhys said.
Travis, hands skyward, burst into tears as he turned his back to Rhys and Kendra.
“You have no idea, do you?” Rhys said.
“What?” he said.
“No idea why this is happening.”
“I told you, I’m sorry! I’ll never step foot on this property again. I swear.”
Rhys raised his arm, aimed directly at Travis Roben’s head.
That was when Kendra thought she heard something behind her, and started to turn around to see what it was.
A millisecond later, Sandy swung Travis’s Louisville Slugger into Kendra’s face, making her nose blow up like a tomato.
Forty
New Haven, CT
Dorian, whose phone contained the digital equivalent of the world’s biggest Rolodex, and who could find anyone, anywhere, to do just about anything, had someone from the DNA testing lab at Miles’s house by nine. Chloe hadn’t even had breakfast yet, unless one counted flavored coffee pods. So far she had tried a caramel espresso, a vanilla espresso, and something with the word Guatemala in it, and was pretty close to bouncing off the walls when it came time to provide a DNA sample.
“Will this hurt?” Chloe asked the technician, an East Indian woman in her early thirties. At Ferrari speed, she added, “Because if it does hurt I’m okay with that because I have a pretty good tolerance where pain is concerned unless you know someone is hitting you in the head with a hammer or something and then, whoa, that’s kind of my limit, not that anyone has ever hit me in the head with a hammer.”
“It’ll only take a second,” the woman said. “And it’s not a blood sample. I’m not sticking a needle into you. I’m just taking a swab and putting it into your mouth.”
“Okay,” Chloe said.
She put the sample in a small vial, sealed it in a plastic bag, labeled it, and put it into a pouch.
Dorian asked, “How long?”
“We’ll put a rush on it,” the woman said. As she headed for the front door, Chloe called out to her, “After all this coffee, don’t be surprised if my DNA shows I’m Ethiopian!”
Dorian said, “Maybe your next one should be a decaf.”
Chloe said, “Where’s Miles?”
“He was feeling tired and went to lie down for a bit. He didn’t sleep well.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of shit going down, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Dorian said.
“I need to eat something before I go totally buggy. Gotta soak up this caffeine. Has Miles got something like that thing in Star Trek? I tell it what I want to eat and a little door opens and it’s there?”
“Sadly, no. The closest thing Miles has to that is a housekeeper, and she doesn’t arrive until ten. But help yourself to anything. See that door? That’s a pantry. All kinds of stuff in there.”
Chloe looked, marveling at the shelves lined with canned items, boxes of cereal and pastas and rices, a dozen kinds of olive oil, veggie chips, potato chips, corn chips. There was an extra freezer in there as well, where Chloe found half a dozen flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, steaks and chops and whole chickens.
“Miles is definitely a meat-a-tarian,” she said, loudly enough for Dorian to hear.
“Yes.”
Chloe popped her head out, pointed a finger at Dorian. “I’m betting you’re vegan. You’ve got this vibe about you.”
“And what kind of vibe is that?” Dorian asked.
“Vegan goes along with the whole androgynous thing.”
“I like my steak rare,” Dorian said, adding, “And bloody.”
“Well, there you go. So much for stereotypes.” She glanced back into the pantry. “There’s more food here than where I work.”
“And where’s that?”
“The Paradise Diner in Providence. I wait tables.”
“Oh.”
Chloe came back into the main part of the kitchen, went into the fridge, and came out with a container of eggs and a bag of shredded cheddar cheese.
“I don’t work in the kitchen, but I still know my way around,” Chloe said. “I’m gonna scramble some of these. You in?”
“I’m good.”
“Would Miles want some?”
“He ate.”
“Okay.” Chloe found a bowl and a frying pan. She cracked four eggs into the bowl, tossed in a handful of cheese, beat it, then put the pan on the stove. She turned on the burner, dropped a pat of butter in, poured in the eggs, and stirred them around with a wooden spatula. The entire process took less than five minutes. When the eggs were ready, she slid them onto a plate, salted them, and perched herself on a stool on the other side of the island from Dorian.
“So what’s your story?” she asked.
“My story?”
“How long have you been Miles’s assistant?”
“About ten years,” Dorian said.
“Good guy to work for?”
Dorian hesitated. “Sure.”
“Whoa, hard to read between the lines when it’s just one word, but that doesn’t sound great.”
“I’m sorry. That came out wrong. He’s demanding. Often short-tempered. Irritable. But I wouldn’t have given him a decade of my life if I didn’t believe he was, ultimately, fair. And a decent person.” Dorian paused. “These last few weeks have changed him. He knows what’s coming and he’s dealing with it. And …”
With a mouthful of eggs, Chloe said, “And?”
“And I see a difference in him even today. He’s stressed, but there’s a softer side coming out. I wonder if that has something to do with you.”
Chloe said, “Me?”
“I think finding you, and his quest to find the others, has given his life some renewed meaning. However long that life may be.”
Chloe said nothing.
“Do you have any idea?”
“Any idea about what?”
“What this will mean to you? How your life will change? I mean, look around.”
“I don’t care about this.”
“Really? You look like you’re settling right in.”
Chloe shrugged. “So I’m impressed. That’s all.”
“You and the others will share millions.” Dorian couldn’t hide a look of some disdain. “And done nothing for it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What have you done to deserve it?” Dorian asked.
“Sweet fuck all,” Chloe said. “Not arguing with you there. Shit, you deserve it way more than I do. Working for him for the last ten years. You must be getting a cut, right?”
Dorian did not respond.
“Oh,” said Chloe. “Maybe he’s leaving you something but hasn’t told you.”
“Miles has been very forthcoming about how his portfolio will be distributed. I’ve seen the documents. Every piece of paper and email and text that goes to Miles goes through me first.”
“Huh,” Chloe said. “That’s gotta burn a little bit.”
“I’m an employee,” Dorian said. “It’s very simple. Eventually, Miles will have to work out a succession plan, choose someone to take over. Maybe he’ll even sell. I might be kept on, but maybe not. I’ll manage.”
They heard footsteps. Miles walked into the kitchen, gave Dorian a nod, then turned his attention to Chloe.
“Eat up and get dressed. We’ve got places to go, people to see.”
Forty-One
Fort Wayne, IN
It wasn’t clear which sound made Rhys spin around first.
It could have been Kendra’s scream as the bat caught her square in the face. It could have been the sound of the bat striking flesh and bone. It might have been the scuffling of shoes on pavement as Kendra los
t her footing. And it might have been the girl herself, the one wielding the bat, who let loose a scream of her own when she took the swing.
Given that all these various sounds happened within a millisecond of one another, it might not have been any one sound but their combined effect. Rhys heard a minisymphony of chaos behind him, and regardless of how focused he might have been on his current task, which was to shoot Travis Roben in the back of the head, he could not stop himself from whirling around to see what had happened.
It took another millisecond for him to assess what had happened.
The girl—he did not know her name was Sandy, as they’d not been properly introduced—had returned, observed that the two of them were about to kill her boyfriend, grabbed a bat from someplace (he was guessing the van), and crept up behind Kendra before whacking her in the head.
In the time it took for Rhys to spin around, Kendra was hitting the pavement, her face a bloody, pulpy mess. Any movement she was making was due to gravity. After her initial scream, she’d not made a sound, and she’d made no attempt to brace her fall. She went down like a stringless marionette.
Rhys and Sandy locked eyes briefly. That was when he raised his arm and pointed the gun directly at her chest.
While all this was happening, Travis was also reacting.
He’d had his hands in the air, pleading for his life, tears running down his cheeks, wondering how something as minor as trespassing could result in a death sentence. A couple of cops catch you making out on private property, you figure the worst that could happen is you get a ticket. In most cases, they’d give you a stern lecture and order you to get lost.
But the guy had pulled a gun! What the hell was that about? What kind of cops would react that way? Travis hadn’t threatened them. He wasn’t armed.
So when Travis heard the commotion happening behind him, he turned around.
He could not believe what he was seeing.
Sandy standing there with his Louisville Slugger, now smeared with a dark red blotch, in her hands. The woman cop was on the ground, not moving, blood all over the place. The male cop had his back to Travis and was aiming his gun at Sandy.
Travis didn’t think. He just acted.
He wasn’t even six feet from Rhys, but in that short distance he worked up some speed and leapt onto his shoulders, wrapping his arms around his neck and holding on to him as though he were about to go on a piggyback ride.
As Rhys was thrown off balance, the gun in his hand went off. But the bullet went wild, whizzing past Sandy and pinging off the upper shipping container.
Rhys shouted, “Get the fuck off—”
But that was as far as he got because Travis had moved his hands up from Rhys’s neck and was now grabbing him around the eyes and nose. A finger slipped into his mouth and Rhys bit down, hard. Travis cried out in pain, but he held on.
And Rhys released his grip on Travis’s finger when Sandy took the bat to his left knee.
It folded on him like an old, rusted lawn chair. He hit the pavement, Travis still clinging to him. Rhys didn’t release his grip on the gun, at least not until Sandy swung the bat down hard onto the back of his hand.
The gun slipped from his fingers and skittered across the pavement. As he struggled to get Travis off his back, Sandy ran for the gun and scooped it off the ground, holding it as though it were radioactive. She looked about frantically, wondering what to do with it.
She pitched it skyward, hoping to land it atop the shipping containers, but her throw came up short and the gun bounced off the side of the upper container and clattered back to the ground. She stood, torn about whether to go after it or take another swing at Rhys as he lay on the ground.
Sandy chose the latter.
She took a couple of wild swings, the first more or less aimed at his thigh, because if she went for his upper body, she was just as likely to hit Travis. The bat caught him a few inches above the knee that she’d already hit.
Travis scrambled off him, scurrying a couple of yards along the pavement like a crab before he got to his feet.
He pointed to the van and screamed:
“GOGOGOGOGOGO!!!”
Kendra still wasn’t moving, and Rhys was struggling to get up. As Travis and Sandy ran for the van, Rhys tried to get to his knees, but could put no weight on the left one. That bought Travis and Sandy enough time to open the driver and passenger doors and get in. The retractable side doors remained open.
The key had never been removed from the ignition. Travis put his foot on the brake, turned the key, and the engine came to life.
Rhys was on his feet, limping in their direction.
“He’s coming!” Sandy screamed.
Travis, looking ahead through the glass, could see that. By the time he had moved the shifter into Reverse, Rhys had gotten to the open side door and was reaching for the handle to haul himself in.
But Travis hit the gas and the van shot backward, tires squealing. He abandoned the idea of making a three-point turn to get the van pointed forward. He was afraid that would give Rhys an opportunity to jump in.
So he shifted around in his seat to see where he was going, one hand over the back of the seat and one on the wheel, and he backed up all the way along the side of the disused warehouse, the transmission whining like a banshee as the car went far faster in reverse than it was ever designed to do, and when Travis got to the gate he just kept on going, knowing it was not locked and would swing out of his way.
The gate, however, was installed to swing in the other direction, so while it did give way when the van hit it, it snapped violently off its hinges and bounced off the side of the vehicle with a huge metallic crashing sound.
Travis didn’t slow down. Since he’d kept his eyes on where he was going, he didn’t know whether they were still being pursued.
“Is he coming?” he shouted.
“No!” Sandy said.
He kept reversing the van until he had reached the street, cranking the wheel to line up with the road. The front end of the van swerved hard before he brought it to a stop and threw it into Drive. Fast-food debris and the pink blanket slid off the back seat and went flying out the door.
Travis floored it.
“What the fuck was that?” he shouted.
Sandy, stammering, her voice shaky and high-pitched, said, “I decided—I came back—I saw them—he had a gun—he was pointing it—I grabbed the bat—oh my God—fuck I think I killed her—oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck did I kill a cop?”
“Why would they want to kill me?” he asked, his hands gripping so tightly on the wheel they felt welded to it. “The police don’t kill people for trespassing!”
“He was pointing the gun right at your head!” she said. “He was going to do it! I swear he was!”
He glanced over at her quickly. “You fucking saved my life!”
Sandy, too stunned to acknowledge the comment, had her hand braced against the dash, as though expecting them to crash at any moment.
“It was them,” she said suddenly.
“Them?”
“The two people in the bowling alley. The ones I thought were watching us.”
“Are you sure?” Travis asked.
“You didn’t get as good a look at them as I did. It was them.” She shot him a wary look. “Why would they have been watching you?”
“Me?” he said. “No reason. Maybe they were watching you.”
Travis swerved to avoid a dog that had darted out into the street. He cranked the wheel hard left, then right, the van feeling like it was going to roll over for a second.
“You gotta slow down,” she said.
Before easing his foot off the gas. Travis made a few random turns, figuring that if they were being followed, this would shake any possible tail.
Once he’d slowed the van to something close to the speed limit, he said, “What do we do now?”
“Maybe close the doors before one of us gets thrown out?”
He pulled over to the
curb, slipped between the two front buckets, slid the doors shut, then got back behind the wheel. He put the van back in Drive and kept moving.
“Okay, now what else do we do? Go to the police? Tell them what happened?”
Sandy’s face paled. “Are you kidding?”
“What?”
“They were the police!”
“I don’t think so,” Travis said. “I mean, maybe, but they never let us get a close look at their ID, they never identified themselves, and like I said, cops don’t go around killing you for being on private property.”
“No,” Sandy said. “No no no no no. Not a good idea.”
“But what you did, it was justified,” Travis said. “He was going to shoot me! In the head!”
“I have to think about this,” she said, suddenly going very quiet. Then, “Pull over! Pull over!”
“What?”
“Pull over!”
He hit the brakes and veered over to the side of the road. Sandy barely had her feet on the ground before she bent over, put her hands on her knees, and threw up.
Travis jumped out, ran around to the other side of the van, and rested a comforting hand on her back. He could feel her heart pounding.
When she believed she was done vomiting, she spat a few times, dug a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed her lips, then stood up straight and looked at him.
“No police,” she said. “Promise me.” When Travis didn’t respond right away, she added, “It’s how you can thank me for saving your life.”
She put a hand atop his shoulder and squeezed.
“Okay,” he said.
“Motherfucker,” Rhys said as he gave up trying to run after the van.
His knee, while still barely workable, was throbbing. He leaned over, touched it delicately. His upper thigh hurt, too, and he’d no doubt have a hell of a bruise there, but it was the knee he was more worried about. He wasn’t sure, at this point, whether it was broken, but he sure wanted to get some ice on it as soon as he could.
“That bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
How the hell didn’t they hear her come back? Why weren’t they watching for her?
Find You First Page 25