Maks nudged his chin toward the Nest thermostat on the wall next to the bed. “Ninety . . . eight . . . degrees,” he said so softly I could barely hear him.
“Gilley!” I called, but then lowered my voice to just above a whisper. “Set the thermostat to ninety-eight degrees!”
Gilley looked at me in confusion, but I motioned to the thermostat sternly and he seemed to catch on. He left the wall and began to head toward the thermostat when a series of shots exploded through the bedroom door.
Gil dove for cover and I laid down and pulled Maks out of the line of fire. When the shots stopped, the area near the handle was riddled with bullets, but the door held . . . barely.
And then Greta began to kick on the door. It was a fairly feeble sound at first, suggesting the wound I’d given her was taking its toll, but she was a determined bitch and I knew she wouldn’t stop until at least one of us was dead.
I lifted my head to look toward Gilley, who’d disappeared behind the other side of the bed. “Gil!” I cried. “You have to do it now!”
To my relief, Gilley’s head popped up, his eyes wide and panic-stricken, but still he found the courage to crawl up onto the bed, make his way across the mattress, and reach up for the thermostat. After he moved the rotating dial to ninety-eight degrees, the Nest’s face suddenly turned from red to green and there was a whoosh sound across the room.
The hidden door slid to the side and revealed a small room with three blank walls and one made completely of glass, mirroring the design of the wall facing the ocean in the living room.
It dawned on me then that this was the hidden space between the fireplace and the outside wall that linked the bedroom with the living area.
And huddled in the far corner, sitting on a thin mattress on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest, was Chanel. She was staring at us with the terror of a cornered little fawn.
Meanwhile Greta continued to kick at the door, and the first sound of it giving way reached my ears. “Help me!” I yelled to both Gilley and Chanel as I got to my knees and tried to pull Maks to the doorway.
Gilley reached me and lifted Maks under the arms. Maks cried out, his eyes rolling back into his head one final time, and he went limply into unconsciousness. Neither Gilley nor I paused in our effort to get him into the panic room, because along with the sounds of the door beginning to give way, there was a barely detectible beep coming from the Nest thermostat. One glance in that direction and I saw that the temperature setting had counted down from ninety-eight to twenty-one and I realized that the dial was giving us roughly thirty seconds and counting before it would close the door again and either shut us in, or lock us out.
“Hurry!” I urged. Gil pulled Maks, and I moved to his middle, lifting him around the waist.
Somehow we managed to get Maks through the doorway with just three seconds to spare, but in those three seconds we saw the door finally burst open, and a sweaty, bloody, enraged Greta appeared. She lifted her hand as the waves and surf crashed against the rocks below us, sending shudders through the floorboards, and the door closed as she got off three more shots.
Gilley and I collapsed onto the floor, but I quickly looked at him to make sure he wasn’t injured. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“No!” he yelled.
I sat up to check on him and it appeared he wasn’t hurt, just shaken. I then looked to Chanel, who hadn’t moved from her spot in the corner and appeared to be in a state of shock as she stared listlessly out in front of her, but otherwise she didn’t look injured.
I then focused on Maks, who was so pale, I thought at first that he might be dead. Putting my head down onto his chest, I listened and was rewarded to hear his heart still beating, albeit far too weakly.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” I said. “Gilley, call the police!”
Gilley patted his jacket and then his hand went to the inside of his jacket to fish around in the pocket, but suddenly his eyes widened and he pulled his hand out to slap the side of his face. “I dropped my phone in the kitchen!” he said. “When we first saw Shepherd, I pulled it out to call nine-one-one, but dropped it as soon as Maks showed up.”
I looked down at myself. My phone was in my Birkin, which was also in the kitchen on the floor, next to Shepherd’s body.
Wincing at the memory of realizing my friend and lover was dead, I sucked in a steadying breath. I would mourn Shepherd after we got out of this mess. “My phone’s in my purse, which is also in the kitchen,” I said.
“You can use mine,” Chanel said. Gilley and I turned to her. She’d obviously snapped out of whatever shock she’d been in, and was holding her phone out to us. “It won’t matter though,” she said as Gilley got up to retrieve her phone. “She’ll find a way in.”
Just then a particularly large wave crashed against the rocks below us and the entire house shook to an alarming degree. I glanced out the window at the oncoming waves and felt the first twinges of foreboding weave their way through the tapestry of emotions coursing through me since entering this horrible house.
“Gilley,” I said.
“Yeah?” he replied, taking Chanel’s phone from her.
“Tell them to hurry!”
Chapter 19
Moving over to Chanel’s bed, I pointed to a sheet. “Can I have that? I need to make Maks comfortable.”
Chanel got up from the bed. “I’ll help you move him.”
While Gilley called the police, Chanel and I moved Maks to her bed. I had a chance then to look around and realized she’d been staying here for quite some time. There was a stack of paperbacks, and snacks, and extra batteries for the lantern next to her lone mattress, along with a case of bottled water.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
“Two weeks.”
My eyes widened. “Two weeks?”
She nodded. “Boris was unloading assets, getting ready to flee back to Chechnya for a while. He knew the Feds were closing in. He found me at my grandaunt’s and told me he didn’t want to pay over a point and a half to sell his house in the Hamptons. He knew that if I listed it, he’d only have to pay the agency the one and a half percent, because I’d work for free.”
“You would?” I said.
Chanel eyed me with a wisdom born from experience. “Nobody said no to Boris.”
“Ah,” I said. I understood. “And in exchange for your taking on the listing, he let you stay here?”
“Yep. And as you can see he provided all the luxuries. . . .” Chanel made a sweeping motion with her hand, and I frowned. Boris had been an obvious ass. “Still, I figured it was safe to come back, and if I’d sold this place, I could’ve continued on with the agency and tried to get a few more listings.”
“You were running out of money,” I said.
Chanel nodded. “My grandaunt was generous to allow me to stay rent free for the past two years, but I had expenses I couldn’t ask her to cover. I needed to work.”
“Guys?” Gilley said, interrupting us. When we turned to him, he said, “I can’t get a signal.”
My jaw dropped. “What do you mean you can’t get a signal?”
Gilley pointed to the wall of windows, and the waves that seemed to have grown even larger from only moments ago. “The storm must’ve taken down a cell tower or something. Chanel’s got no bars.”
Chanel made an impatient sound. “Stupid cell company!” she growled, taking the phone from Gilley’s hand. “I had to go with the cheapest carrier, and cell service around here is always spotty, but I never thought their service would go out altogether!”
“What do we do?” I asked, hoping Gilley had an idea. And I’d take any idea at that moment because our options—especially where Maks was concerned—were quite limited.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
We fell into silence, because we all knew that there was very little hope of saving Maks now, much less ourselves. Greta wouldn’t let us remain hidden for long. I believed Chanel whe
n she said that the Angel of Death would find her way in.
“Why is she after you?” I asked Chanel. Maybe there was something we could use to convince Greta to let us live.
“Because I left her,” Chanel said simply. “Greta wouldn’t have let that go for long.”
“How could you even date her, though?” Gilley asked. “I mean, the woman kills for a living!”
Chanel nodded. “Would you believe that for the longest time I didn’t know? Maks didn’t either. Boris used to call Greta his personal accountant. I thought she worked with numbers, and that’s why Maks befriended her, I think. I was always suspicious of Maks. I thought he was an informant, but of course I never said anything. By the time I found out what Greta really was, I was in way too deep.”
“Why did Greta kill Lenny?” I asked next. That was a question I wanted to know the answer to more than anything.
Chanel bit her lip and tears formed in her eyes. “Greta suspected I was having an affair and she was right. Shortly after he and I stopped seeing each other, I began wearing a necklace that Steve had given to me. Greta noticed, but she didn’t let on that she’d noticed. She secretly worked to hunt down the jewelry store it came from and then she broke in to their accounting office and stole their receipts. She discovered that Shepherd’s credit card had been used to pay for it and she started to put what she thought was two and two together. But she was off about which of the Shepherds I’d been cheating on her with.
“She assumed that, because I was into her, the person I was having an affair with had to be a woman. She thought I was sleeping with Lenny, and she assumed that Lenny had used her husband’s credit card to buy me the necklace. Since I was also working with Lenny, Greta assumed she was a threat to our relationship, so she eliminated the threat.”
I put a hand to my mouth. “She killed Lenny because she thought she was having an affair with you?”
Chanel nodded. “Yes,” she said in a choked whisper. “I never told Steve, but that’s why Lenny died.”
“But the Suttons . . .” Gilley said.
“Greta knew they were trying to find a house here in the Hamptons and that they were going to launder money for Boris. She was the one who went to Boris and told him that she’d just cleared the way to have the gallery owners move here—and she’d also just tied up Hampton’s lead detective in a case he’d never solve.”
“She was the mastermind behind it all,” I said.
Chanel sniffled, wiping a tear that had slid down her cheek. “She was. She confessed it all to me, probably to punish me. She didn’t kill me then, but she might as well have. She murdered one of my closest friends and business partner, and still expected me to take on the Suttons as clients. Cold doesn’t even begin to describe Greta. She’s subzero.”
I wondered if Chanel knew about her grandaunt’s murder. She hadn’t mentioned it, and I didn’t feel brave enough to bring it up to her. Or to tell her about Shepherd’s body out in the kitchen.
“Did you know we were here?” I asked her, trying to ferret out what she knew about our arrival—and Shepherd’s.
“Not you specifically, but I knew someone was in the house. The storm started getting bad and I was thinking about leaving when I heard somebody at the front door. I’d just made it into this room when I heard Greta’s voice and a shot ring out. I’m assuming one of Boris’s henchmen came here looking for treasure and arrived right around the same time that Greta figured out where I’d been hiding. Unfortunate for him, but that’s what he gets for looting the boss’s house.”
Gilley and I exchanged a look. So, Chanel didn’t know that the person who’d come here and had gotten shot by Greta was Shepherd. Gilley subtly shook his head. I agreed. No way were we going to tell her.
At that moment another huge wave rattled the house, and the three of us looked out the windows at the terrifying sea. It was like something out of the movie The Perfect Storm. The crests of the waves were at least thirty to forty feet high and the bottom of the window was wet with ocean spray.
I didn’t know then if I was more nervous about Greta gaining access to this room or the increasing violence of the storm. Either way it felt like we were sitting ducks.
“We have to do something,” Gilley said.
“I’m all ears,” I told him. I was open to any idea. Gilley looked at the other three walls, which were solid except for what appeared to be the only exit out. “Chanel, how do you get out of here?” he asked her.
She pointed to a green button on the wall. “You punch that.”
Gilley looked at me, and there was a sort of resigned sadness in his eyes. “She can’t shoot all three of us if we rush her, can she?”
“She’s a trained assassin,” I said. “She probably could.”
“She’s a wounded assassin,” he corrected. “And she could very well be unconscious right now from all the blood loss.” For emphasis he looked to Maks.
I weighed the thought of staying here and hoping the authorities eventually showed up, looking for Shepherd, against the likelihood that, if the three of us opened the door and rushed out of here, Greta might only shoot one or two of us as we fled.
My mind drifted to Matt and Mike, and my heart broke for a future where I wouldn’t be alive to see them grow into men.
But then something came to mind that gave me some courage. My sister—Abby—had once predicted that I’d own property in Hawaii. Just a year ago she’d said she’d had a very clear vision of visiting me on the island of Kauai, where I had a lovely vacation home on the southeast side of the island. She said she also saw the boys there, but they were in their early twenties so she knew it was at least a decade away.
I realized that if Abby had seen me vacationing in Hawaii when the boys were in their twenties, then I must be fated to make it through this day.
Still, I felt my chest tighten at the thought that Gilley and Chanel had no such assurances.
Another wave hit the rocks below the house with tremendous force, and the entire structure reverberated, and then something else sounded and shook the house.
It almost sounded like the snapping of wood, but it was sharper, and louder, and the whole house creaked and strained.
We looked at each other, realizing there was no way we could stay in this room and survive, but there might still be a chance for us beyond the door.
“Well,” I said. “We don’t seem to have much choice. We have to go.”
Gilley pointed to Maks, and I felt my fists clench with frustration. We couldn’t leave him in this room alone either. I motioned to Gilley. We’d carry him out between us.
Chanel moved over to my side and said, “Let me. I’m taller.”
I moved out of Chanel’s way and over to the green button on the side of the door. Gilley and Chanel had a tentative hold on Maks, each gripping an arm and the waistband of his jeans. His body sagged between them.
“Get him clear of the house, then set him down and run,” I whispered to them. “We can’t carry him to safety beyond the front door.”
Gilley nodded. “Got it. Now get us out of here, Cat.”
I moved over to the nightstand and picked up Chanel’s lantern. It was the only weapon in the room. I was going to launch it at Greta, create a diversion, and pray the three of us could skirt around her and out the door.
My heart pounded in my chest as the surf pounded against the rocks. With a final nod from Gilley, I punched the green button and the door slid open.
Across the room Greta hovered near the thermostat, turning it this way and that. She held herself nearly double, her body coated in sweat. She turned as the door opened, obviously surprised. Gilley and Chanel ducked low with Maks and tried to run, but their effort was more of a fast shuffle. The second they were clear of the door I stepped through and hurtled the lamp toward Greta with all my might.
Her arm came up and deflected the lantern to the side, and she screamed in pain as her arm connected with the heavy plastic object.
Th
e second the lantern struck its mark, I bolted, ready to race after Chanel and Gilley, but something flew past me and struck the wall. A glance to the side showed me it was a knife. Greta was armed with more than a gun, it seemed.
Gilley and Chanel made it out of the room, but I slipped on the pool of blood on the floor from Maks’s wound. I went down, tried to scramble up, but went down again.
Greta came at me with another knife and barred teeth, beating me to the door. Changing course, my arms and legs moving in any and every direction, I tried to get away from the arc of the knife as she brought it down in my direction. She nearly sliced me open twice as she too slipped in the blood.
I backed away from Greta, my gaze darting between her and the door where Gilley, Chanel, and Maks had escaped, trying to find an angle I could move that would take me to them, but Greta was too quick for me. Even critically wounded she was a formidable opponent.
She and I both gained our footing at the same moment, she, hovering in the doorway, and me backing away toward the windows.
“It’s over, Greta!” I yelled at her.
“Oh, it’s far from over, Catherine,” she growled.
A wave struck the rocks below the house with tremendous force and the whole house didn’t just shake, it dropped several inches. I lost my footing again and went down, but so did Greta.
Several of the windows broke, and a cold forceful wind entered the room, whipping our hair and pulling at our clothing. All I wanted to do was make it out of that room, but Greta continued to block the way.
And then, a lone figure appeared in the doorway. He was small, but he was carrying what looked like a police baton. “Catherine!” he shouted to me.
“Willem!” I cried.
Greta turned and raised her arm, lashing out at poor Willem. He got the baton up in the nick of time, blocking the blow, but Greta held tight to the knife. She lunged again, but Willem was still quicker, and he dodged out of the way with only a fraction of space between him and the knife.
To Coach a Killer Page 30