by Snow, Nicole
Someone else is in the house. A stranger.
I push myself up carefully, just as the bedroom door opens.
For half a second, I'm staring at a pair of cold, glittering dark eyes in a ski mask. I can’t see his face, but I’ll never forget those eyes.
I’ll never forget the look of cold malice and triumph in them, or the dark and murderous intent.
My mind flashes through a million things in half a second: bone-chilling fear, the box of 9mm bullets in the bedroom closet, the gun safe under the bed, the passcode, whether I can get to it before he does anything, whether I'd survive a fall out the second-floor window to escape.
Then he lunges.
And all thought disappears as I give in to an animal instinct and bolt.
He comes at me from one side of the bed, and I tumble off the other, darting for the door.
I'm almost free, so close to free – but a hand snares my hair.
Scalp on fire, neck whiplashed, he jerks me back into him.
I start to scream, calling for help.
His hand clamps over my mouth with something soft clutched between us, almost forcing it into my open mouth, silencing me. It smells noxious and chemical, and suddenly my brain is floating.
My body ignites in fear, nerves prickling everywhere, knees wobbly and weak, fingers twitching, but my mind lifts away, leaving me there, alone.
So alone, terrified, and sinking.
Lost in a darkness I don’t expect to wake from.
12
Not Even a Little (Riker)
Em calls my talent for sensing danger from afar my “Spidey senses.”
Well, right now, my Spidey senses are tingling on high alert, even before I take the last turn to my house and see the black car parked at the end of the block.
I know every car on my street, and this one doesn’t belong to any of my neighbors.
Sure, it could be a visitor, but something about the ominous, imposing presence it makes crouched there like some hulking black beetle tells me that car is trouble.
I don't care if it isn't in front of my house. It has something to do with me.
And something to do with Liv.
“Daddy?” Em says from the passenger seat, looking up from her book. “What’s wrong?”
“Not sure, baby,” I murmur. “But I’m going to need you to stay with Mrs. Baum for a little bit. Just until I check the house, okay?”
Mrs. Baum is in her garden, her house bumped up to ours.
As I pull up outside her fence, she looks up with a smile and a wave, her blue-washed curls matted with sweat. “Riker,” she calls cheerfully as we slip out of the car. “Hello! How are you? I’ve hardly seen you since that girlfriend of yours moved in.” Her eyes twinkle. “I miss being in love like that.”
Any other time, I might've spluttered and protested, but right now, there's just my inner darkness.
It slips over me like an oily second skin, into mission mode. I guide Em forward with a hand against her back, offering Mrs. Baum a forced smile.
“You’ll have to come by for dinner to meet her some time,” I say. “Would you mind keeping an eye on Em for a few minutes? I forgot something important at the office.”
Mrs. Baum blinks, then smiles indulgently.
“Of course, dearies!” She beckons to Em. “This way, darling. You’re in luck. I’ve just finished a batch of those cookies you love so much.”
Em perks. “Cinnamon swirl?”
But as they head up the walk, Em glances back, giving me a heavy look that says she’s still worried about me.
Fuck.
She’s worried, she loves me, she trusts me, and she needs me to be careful.
I will, sweetheart, I telegraph silently.
I wait until they disappear into the house before I text our preset code for this – 11324 – to Landon.
He knows that means there’s trouble at my place, and it involves Liv. We use numeric codes on different cases when there’s no time to explain and we need to mobilize a specific response.
There’s no time for a briefing or a breakdown. Not when I need to check on Liv.
I put my phone away and slip off, rounding the other side of my house to the back fence. Mrs. Baum will be too busy feeding Em enough sugar to keep her up all night to notice my car’s still parked outside when I was supposed to be going back to the office.
Carefully, I ease my back gate open without the slightest creak, then creep up to the back door and look through the glass insets.
I can only see the kitchen and a glimpse of the living room.
No sign of Liv.
Yet, when I hear a muffled squeal and a thump from upstairs...
My blood runs cold, freezing into sharp and cutting spears, the color of my vision as black as murder.
I slide the key into the lock and turn it soundlessly, then slip it open just enough to let me in before I close and latch it silently. My hand is already inside my suit coat, on my Beretta, as I move upstairs as quickly as I can, missing every loose step and every old board.
I know my house. Just like I know how to move through it quickly, soundlessly, dangerously.
There's another thump as I crest the top of the stairs. My jaw tightens.
If I were capable of still feeling shit after everything in me shuts down in favor of focusing on finding and eliminating a target...
I'd be terrified.
Because that sound is too much like a slack body hitting the floor.
Liv, fuck. Hold on.
Flattening myself against the wall outside my room, I risk a quick glance around the doorframe.
What I see turns my heart to iron.
A man in a ski mask, all in black, dragging a motionless and unresisting Liv across the floor, her heels thumping, her head lolling, a damp cloth clasped against her mouth. Even from here I can smell chloroform.
I’m going to kill this bastard. I want to kill this bastard.
Finger on the trigger, I rip the pistol from its holster.
But not before I make him talk.
He’s so busy struggling to heft Liv that he doesn’t even see my shadow fall over him. There’s a darkly satisfying thunck as I whip the Beretta against the back of his head.
Asshole goes limp as a puppet with its strings cut, grunting as he tumbles to the side, his grasp on my woman loosening.
I catch her just in time, before she hits the floor, shielding her with my body and letting her tumble against me. She’s too light – like some essential part of her has vacated, and I have to check her pulse to be able to breathe easily.
She’s alive. Thank God.
Just unconscious but breathing steadily. I lift her onto the bed and lay her out gently, then rise to my feet, moving to stand over the prick who tried to take her.
He’s conscious. Still groaning, blood leaking from the back of his head, while he fingers the trickle and rolls on the floor.
I take a deep breath, baring my teeth. This raw, real fury rises up inside me, catches my throat, and I hear something like a shrieking, vengeful eagle inside my head.
This is it.
It’s up to me whether or not he gets to live.
And right now, the part of me that knows where to cut, where to strike, where to puncture, where to bend, where to fucking hurt, that part is in control.
It knows every part of his body that can suffer to the point of breaking without killing him, until I’m good and ready for him to go.
His eyes creak open then, and he groans. “What the hell, man –”
He doesn’t get a chance to finish.
I press my polished leather shoe down on his throat.
Slowly, deliberately, exerting more and more barely controlled pressure with each passing second.
Gagging, choking, grappling at my ankle, he arches his body, but he can’t budge my foot.
Thirty seconds later, the skin around his eyes turns purple and he’s wheezing, his look wide and panicked behind the mask. I
know those eyes.
I saw them once, brown and muddled, above a mask. The same man who tried to break into my car.
His struggling grows feebler until I finally let up.
He sucks in a hoarse, wheezing gasp. I watch him coldly, then say, “Now you understand the position you’re in. As long as you give me the answers I want, you get to breathe. You decide to get smart, you don’t tell me what I want to know, you even get a little rude, and breathing suddenly gets optional. Are we clear?”
To make my point, I press down again. Not enough to fully cut off his air, but enough for him to feel the grind of my sole against his skin. Enough to make his next sucking, choking breath very uncomfortable. He rakes his nails against my shoe, my slacks, then nods frantically.
“Good.” I ease up again, but keep my foot perfectly positioned. “Take your mask off.”
Practically sniveling, he grapples with his ski mask and pulls it off, getting himself tangled in it and stretching it out and blubbering before he manages to rip it away.
There's a flushed, haggard face with pockmarked skin and sunken hollows under dark-brown eyes. He’s a sort of pasty-fish pale that says he’s got a substance abuse problem.
Not the kind of substance abuse that makes him the kind of shit who’d go after an innocent girl just because their pestilent coward of a leader, Lion, told them to. His lank, greasy, blond hair spreads around his head as he looks up at me, his rubbery lips trembling, his eyes hot with a mixture of defiance and fear.
“Show me your tattoo,” I order.
He shakes his head. “Tattoo? I don’t know –”
Snarling, I cut him off, shoving my heel against his trachea hard.
Almost hard enough to crush his esophagus. He chokes out a gargling, pained sound, his body jerking and twitching, his eyes bulging as he scrabbles and claws. I hold for a good fifteen-count while he wheezes, then let go.
“I thought,” I murmur coolly, “I'd made my point? Lie to me, and your air quota drops to nil. Now, fuckhead, tell me very nicely. Where's your Pilgrim tattoo?”
He’s slow to respond. Probably from lack of oxygen to the brain.
I give him a second to recover, knowing he’s no good to me if he can’t talk.
Finally, though, he scrapes back the cuff of his leather jacket, over his left wrist, and thrusts his arm out so I can see the three dots tattooed on the underside of his wrist.
“Thank you.” I cock the slide on my Beretta, flick the safety off, and point it right at his forehead.
Right between the eyes.
One shot, and he’s a splatter of red. No more Pilgrim.
I meet his eyes over the barrel of the gun, a silent promise between us. “Okay. You’re going to tell me why you’re in my house, and why you hurt my girl, or you’ll never tell anyone anything ever again.”
“I wasn’t gonna hurt her,” he straggles out, voice raspy and broken. I’ve probably damaged his vocal cords. Fuck if I care. “Lion...he just told me to get her. Honest. I wasn’t gonna do nothing else, I –”
“I don’t believe you, asshole, considering she’s unconscious.” A touch more pressure on his throat, and my finger slips past the guard to rest on the trigger.
I don’t need to say anything else to threaten him. All it takes is one little movement, a wordless statement of intent, to make a man feel like a guillotine is hanging over him on an increasingly fraying thread.
“What does Lion want with her? She’s innocent in this. You’re after Milah for drug money.”
“Fuck the money!” he flares – only to squeak as I grind my heel. He gulps, his Adam’s apple moving against the sole of my shoe, and I ease off to let him speak again. He’s meeker this time, quieter, as he says, “We don’t care about the money. This is about blood.”
“Liv didn’t kill your men. Neither did Milah.”
He stares at me – like I’m the one missing something here.
Like I’m the powerless one, and he’s got an advantage over me.
Then he actually grins, although I could shoot him with one reckless, careless twitch of a finger. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“No,” I admit. “But that's why you're here. Gloat and die, or tell me and live. I turn you over to the police, you have a chance to walk. Break out. Whatever you’re going to do. Keep testing my patience, and...”
“You won’t kill me,” he sneers. “Because if I die, you still won’t know shit. So I don’t have to say anything, because as long as I’m alive there’s a chance I’ll tell y—”
His loss.
I calmly reverse the Beretta, flick the safety on, grip it by its barrel, and smash it across his jaw, putting all of my strength into it.
His mouth explodes in a fountain of teeth and blood.
Two of his teeth knock loose and arc across the floor, clattering when they land. From the amount of blood spurting out of his mouth, he’s likely bitten his tongue.
He’s shrieking, clutching at his face with both hands, a mess of pain it's impossible to feel any sympathy for.
Calmly, I straighten, gaining a proper grip on the Beretta again, and take a moment to meticulously wipe the blood from the barrel onto his shirt. Then I flick the safety off once more, regarding him flatly.
“You’re right,” I say. “I can’t kill you if I want to know what you’re hiding. But there are quite a few interesting things I can do to you while you're alive. Did you know a man can survive a Y-incision?” He’s staring up at me with blank terror in his eyes, confused.
I cock my head. “I see you don’t know what a Y-incision is, do you? It’s simple. Basically what a coroner does when they perform an autopsy, my friend. They cut a V from either shoulder to the center of your chest, right over your sternum...and then they cut you open from sternum to navel right...down...here.” I trace my free hand down my own chest to mark a path. “Afterward, they generally grip your ribs to either side and pull. They come loose from your spine. That, I’m not so certain you’d survive, but we'd try it. Oh, fuck, we'd try.”
I hadn’t thought he could get any paler.
I was wrong.
He makes a blubbering sound, his split and swollen lips wobbling, and his tongue lolling and fumbling around words I can’t understand.
More like pained noises that meld into each other. I arch a brow, letting him go for a few moments, then stop him by nudging the toe of my shoe against his cheek.
“Slower, now. I understand you’re willing to talk, but we’ll have to work around these new developments, won’t we? Start again from the beginning. Slowly. Tell me what I don’t know. If I can’t understand you, I’ll make you start over. I imagine talking hurts quite a bit now, doesn’t it?”
He nods – a small, frightened motion.
Good. He believes me, now, that I'll make him suffer.
He’ll tell me anything I want to know.
“A-Alec Holly,” he slurs out, contorting his ruined mouth to try to make the muffled syllables come out clear. “It...it’s not about M-Milah anymore. F-Fuck her drug money. Alec H-Holly took out a hit on our guys. He’s the reason...” He breaks off, choking a little, then turns his head to the side and spits out another tooth before continuing, glaring up at me with a mixture of terror and defiance. “He’s the asshole we want. It’s a b-blood vendetta now. Easy. He killed our family. We kill his.”
I close my eyes, taking a deep, centering breath.
Because if I don’t keep my calm, I’m going to put him down like a suffering animal.
Snap his neck right here and now.
“Who did Alec Holly hire?” I ask as I tighten my finger on the trigger. “Only gonna ask you once.”
He shakes his head, waving his hands frantically.
“All right! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!” he blubbers. “It was the damn Runners!”
The Runners. Not a name I recognize instantly, though vague memory tells me they’re another underground crime syndicate.
Not as b
ig as the Pilgrims. Not someone we’ve really needed to have on our radar at Enguard, but they’ve come up a couple of times on small-time protection jobs for a few other music industry people who had an occasional white powder problem and might need to be on guard for their old dealers. They’ve never come up as the kind who hired out for assassination work.
That's probably why the job went so wrong and was so fucking clumsy.
I narrow my eyes at the man beneath me and lean down, enough to press my weight on his throat, enough to tap the cold tip of the Beretta’s barrel against his nose.
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “Alec Holly paid a rival gang to kill your men? And instead of going after Alec and the gang, you decide to target his innocent daughters?”
Maybe I’ve knocked a few of his brain cells loose. Maybe he’s just stupid and suicidal. But he actually grins at me, baring the bloodied remnants of his teeth, separated by black gaps.
“Milah Holly’s no innocent,” he spits. “I bet her sister’s a rich, whacked-out whore just like her.”
I don’t need to hear more.
I know what I need to know, and he’s not getting another word about Liv past his filthy fucking mouth.
Without a word, I whip the pistol across the side of his head. He makes a guttural noise, and his head slumps to the side.
He’s out cold.
I flip him over and dig his wallet from his back pocket to check his name.
Scott Richards. Ridiculously fucking ordinary surfer boy name for this pathetic waste of space who’d actually tried to kidnap a defenseless girl.
I pull my handcuffs from my belt and shove his wrists into them, being none too gentle as I snap them in place and leave him trussed up on the floor. I’m just standing when I hear a strangled, upset noise from the bed, and jerk my head up, staring into wide blue eyes.
Liv’s awake.
Liv’s awake, and she’s shaking, staring at me with horror, tears streaming down her face.
* * *
I don’t have a chance to reach for her.
To comfort her, to explain, to nothing.