Linc groaned.
She clenched her teeth, keys fully in hand, wide eyes searching his face.
His groan kept going, moving into a whimper as he stretched, his face pulled tight, lifting both arms over his head. A deep, trembling wave rippled through him, tightening his muscles from head to toe, as the stretch moved across his body. Then, he relaxed once more, one arm falling back across his stomach and the other remaining propped on the arm of the couch over his head, showcasing the tattoo on the inside of his massive bicep—Lisa—more clearly that Veda had ever seen it.
After that extensive runner’s stretch, she found herself waiting with baited breath for him to peek one eye open and blaze it right at her. For him to shoot up into a sitting position with a manic face, informing her he’d been pretending to be asleep the whole time—that he’d always known something was off with her—and demanding an explanation for why she was attempting to steal his keys.
But he remained asleep.
Still, Veda’s heart skipped every other beat, warning her that it was mere moments from throwing in the towel, angry that it had somehow ended up connected to the body of the craziest bitch in all of Shadow Rock.
Sure, she’d gotten the keys.
But she still wasn’t in the clear.
She still hadn’t made it to the precinct where she’d have to use Linc’s keycard to get into the forensics lab. She still had no guarantee that the DNA samples would still be there. Worst of all, she still couldn’t guarantee that Linc wouldn’t wake up while she was gone and notice his keys were missing.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she spiked his drink?
She’d give anything to go back and do it, because no matter what Jake said, Veda knew something was different in the way Linc was behaving around her. Some new shift in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read. Would that shift be amplified if he woke up and found her gone, along with his keys? Had that shift already been amplified, moving him to leave his keys out on purpose, knowing she might get desperate enough to swipe them? Was this all some elaborate set up to catch her in a sticky web that was much more complex than she ever imagined him capable of?
Realizing she could stand there all day, waxing on about the million and one ways this could all end in disaster, Veda reminded herself that she was already on the fast track to disaster.
What could it hurt to add one more?
——
The Shadow Rock forensics lab sat across the street from the police precinct, in a small building on the edge of a rocky cliff. Ocean waves assaulted the jagged black rocks at the bottom. Their crashes filled the quiet air. Night stars twinkled down on Veda, gasping under the black ski mask over her face, drawing in the heavy scent of dew that always lingered in the island air.
Her gasps moved to pants as she approached the glass door of the forensics lab, careful to stay in the blind spots of the surveillance cameras that were perched on top of the building, slowly rotating.
She looked up at the cameras. If Hope’s calculations had been correct when she’d briefed Veda in the car minutes earlier, Veda had another ten seconds to get inside before the camera caught her. She was covered head to toe, so even if she was caught on tape, her face and body were covered, but she’d still rather not be caught at all.
She threw a quick look across the street. Hope’s Honda sat in the parking lot of a magnet school with the lights and engine off. Veda couldn’t help but wonder, once again, how Hope had become such an expert in criminal activity. How she’d gotten her hands on a blueprint of that forensics lab. How she knew the blind spot of every camera down to the millisecond.
At the moment, however, Veda had bigger fish to fry than her criminal mastermind friend, and with a deep breath, she pinched her fingers around the remote access keycard hanging down from the key ring and swiped it through the card reader.
It instantly blinked green, and Veda knew Linc’s credentials had now being logged in some database she’d never see. All she could do was pray that it never came to anyone’s attention that his card had been swiped in the dead of night, while he’d been passed out on the couch in his apartment. She also prayed that he was still passed out, not awake and scouring his apartment for two important things that were suddenly missing.
She opened the door to the lab and stepped in. It was freezing cold, so much so she half expected a cloud of smoke to leave her pursed, gasping lips as she moved across the linoleum floors. The room was quiet. Not an employee or security guard in sight.
Dozens of desks lined the middle of the room, stacked with computers and printers that had been shut down for the night. A camera hung down from the middle of the ceiling, spinning slowly. Veda tucked herself into a corner and waited for the camera’s blind spot, which Hope had informed her had a thirty-second duration, before pushing away from the wall and blazing through the room.
She only had a few precious seconds to look into the glass windows that lined the walls, windows that looked into the rooms she was really interested in. The labs themselves. One lab after the other passed. Her heartbeat tripled when she found herself unable to spot the buccal swab holder the technician had been using the day he swabbed her cheek at the hospital. The plastic holder that was now burned into her memory and had caused her many nightmares in the days since she’d first seen it.
Racing through the lab, camera swirling overhead, alerting her that her blind spot was seconds from becoming no more, Veda worried that she might be too late.
Perhaps the swabs had already been sent away for testing.
Just as that idea carried her to the verge of all-out panic, she came upon the window that looked into the lab at the farthest end of the room.
And there it was.
Sitting on top of a long, gleaming lab table was the plastic buccal swab holder. Hundreds of sample tubes the forensic tech had taken still stood upright in small holes that had been built into the holder, beckoning her inside.
With the camera less than five seconds from capturing her, Veda wasted no time swiping Linc’s keycard again, waiting for the green indicator light to flash before she opened the door, bolted into the lab, and immediately collapsed onto the floor, crouching behind a wall that shielded her from the spinning camera. Thankfully, there were no cameras in the labs themselves, so she simply had to wait for another thirty seconds to elapse.
It went in a flash, and Veda stood, shooting a look into the main room to ensure her blind spot was back before hurrying over to the plastic holder.
Her gloved fingers shook as she pursued the hundreds of clear plastic tubes before her, picking them up, reading the names, and dropping them when it wasn’t the tube she was looking for—the tube with her name—one by one.
Fifteen seconds.
“Where the fuck is it?” she begged, understanding that time was of the essence. If she weren’t able to find the tube with her name on it—with her DNA inside—in the next fifteen seconds, she’d have to pause and hide until the next blind spot came.
So when she lifted a tube from the middle of the pack with her name scribbled onto the sticker that had been wrapped around it, Veda nearly screamed. She shoved it into the pocket of her black jeans before seizing the tube she’d brought with her. The tube that had her name written on the sticker, but contained a swab with Hope’s DNA. She slid Hope’s tube into the slot that had once held hers and then fell to the ground, crawling into her hiding space behind the wall again, waiting for the seconds between blind spots to come and go once more.
When the thirty seconds had passed, she jumped to her feet, bolted out of the room and raced for the front door as fast as her legs would allow, the starry sky beckoning her from behind the gleaming glass.
——
“You’re not a criminal right?” Veda asked, minutes after climbing into Hope’s car where the quiet streets of Shadow Rock now blazed by from outside the passenger window.
Hope shot her a smirk, taking a left-hand turn that led to Linc’s apartment building. �
��You just tampered with police evidence. Maybe you should be asking yourself that question.”
“If the police have ever taken your DNA then it’s in their system. Your name will come up when they run the buccal swabs.”
“I’ve never been arrested,” Hope said, putting her out of her misery.
“Why do I find that so surprising?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
Veda stared at her profile, amazed, and then faced forward. A long silence passed with her staring ahead, blankly.
Then, Veda screamed. She screamed with everything in her, so loudly it seemed to roll across her body, bending her spine into a C-shape and lifting her ass from the seat.
“Holy shiiiiit!” she roared, jamming the heels of her feet into the floor, deep thuds following each kick before she finally grew winded and collapsed into the seat, breathless, as Hope’s laughter filled the car. “I have never been so terrified, and sick, and fucking exhilarated in all my life!”
“Try to reject that rush. It’s habit forming. It’s how the real criminal masterminds are made,” Hope chuckled. “And you’re not in the clear, yet. You still gotta put those keys back where you found them, and pray that cop hasn’t already woken up.”
Every bone in Veda’s body collapsed, including her face. “Way to kill my hard on. Jesus.”
Hope pulled her car into the lot of Linc’s building, killed the engine and faced her. “So what’s next?”
“Liam O’Dair. He’s attending an engagement party at the O’Dair estate. End of the week.”
“How you gonna get him alone?”
“Haven’t figured that part out yet.” Veda took a deep breath before grabbing the door handle. “I gotta go. Every second I’m in here is another second Linc could wake up.”
“Call me later,” Hope said.
Veda puckered her lips in an air kiss before jumping out of the car, closing the door, and racing toward the building.
——
The lock to Linc’s apartment clicked. Veda twisted the door handle as slowly as she could, cursing when it squeaked as she pushed it slowly open. She only opened the door a hair, squeezing her body through the small crack the rest of the way, removing the key from the lock with her shoulders in her ears.
She closed the door just as slowly, twisting the handle so it didn’t click, then shot a wide-eyed look over her shoulder, holding her breath.
Her chest and shoulders collapsed when she saw that Linc was still fast asleep, none the wiser about her illegal deeds that night. She could tell he hadn’t woken up since she’d left the apartment because his body was in the exact same position. Plus, if he’d woken up, there was no way he’d have been able to fall back to sleep once he’d realized her and his keys were gone. He’d have been waiting on her ass to return, sitting on the edge of the couch, staring at the door with accusation in his sleepy eyes. Like a woman who’s dirty-dick husband had been out on the town all night.
Realizing she was no better than that dirty-dick husband—that she was perhaps even worse—Veda hurried across the room and lowered the keys back onto the coffee table as quietly as she could, hoping that the shower she planned on taking would wash away the dirty feeling her exploits had left lingering on her skin.
As it turned out, setting keys down quietly was a lot easier than picking them up quietly, and once she had them down, Veda really was home free.
She fought back the scream of celebration that she hadn’t hesitated to shout at the rooftop of Hope’s car.
It was far too soon to celebrate.
There still remained the problem of Liam O’Dair, who’d just been released from prison in a breathtaking failure of justice. Who was still walking around with his gonads perfectly intact. There still remained the problem of the five men who’d succeed him. Five men who’d also yet to learn the depth of her fury.
No, Veda decided, as she tiptoed into the bedroom.
No more celebrating.
The war wouldn’t be completely won until she’d finished them all. Every last one of them—all the way up to the grand finale.
All the way up to number ten.
Whoever he was.
26
Linc jammed his middle finger into the buttons on his desk phone at the busy police precinct the following morning, unable to stop a roll of his eye or shake of his head as he clapped the receiver to his ear.
Too much time had passed with Veda living in his apartment, and he wanted her gone. Not because he didn’t enjoy her company—quite the contrary—but because he knew the only way she was leaving his apartment was if she was perfectly safe.
She wasn’t. And that fact was beginning to eat him alive. Almost as much as the proverbial brick walls he’d been running into like wildfire. He’d found the driver of the car, but not the driver’s boss, the person who’d ordered the attack on Veda.
“P”.
Who the fuck was P? It was a question that was quickly beginning to drive him insane. A question that—after a judge had denied yet another request for a search warrant—had driven Linc to dial the phone number he’d been doing everything in his power not to dial. He’d promised both his boss and his partner that he’d stop cutting corners. That doing things the right way might take longer, but would work out in their favor in the end.
“Fuck doing things right,” Linc grumbled, catching Sam’s amused eyes from where she sat at the desk across from him.
“Hey, Linc,” Veda answered from the other end of the line, the noises of the bustling hospital petering in from the background.
Linc didn’t split hairs. “I need you to go into the hospital database and give me the name of a doctor who treated one of my vics.”
Sam gave Linc a heavy-eyed look, clearly disapproving of his professional choices at the moment.
Linc ignored her as Veda’s teasing voice floated through the phone.
“Do you have a warrant, Detective?”
“No.” He didn’t even try to think up a witty response, curling his hand into a fist on the desk.
“You just love going under the table,” Veda chided. “I’m going to start calling you Detective ‘Under the Table’ Hill.”
“Can you just do it, please? Now?” Linc clenched his teeth.
“Sure, I can drop everything I’m doing to tend to your every need. It’s not as if I’m a doctor with sick patients on the verge of death or anything.”
When Linc rolled his eyes this time they stayed at the top of his head, but he bit his tongue. Only because he could hear her long nails tapping against a keyboard even as she did what she did best—ran her mouth.
“I’m in,” she laughed. “What’s the patient’s name?”
“Zena Jones.”
A long silence followed, and Linc knew Veda was now aware of the severity of the situation, mostly because it involved her.
“Um…” The click of her nails on the keyboard came faster. “Yeah, it looks like she did see one of our ObGyns, let’s see…” Veda paused again. A few more keyboard clicks. “Yeah, she saw Dr. Penny Nailer.”
Linc’s heartbeat tripled, eyes widening. “Penny?”
Sam straightened in her chair, abandoning the paperwork she’d been filling out to share a look with Linc.
“Yeah,” Veda said. “She saw her twice, just a few weeks before she went missing. Best ObGyn at the hospital. I can attest.”
“You were a patient of hers too?” Linc asked, scribbling on his desk pad.
“Of course. Like I said, Penny’s the best. And I only mess with the best.”
“I gotta go.” Linc hung up the phone before Veda could say another word, cursing under his breath as he spat at Sam across the desks. “The name of Zena and Veda’s ObGyn is Penny Nailer.”
“Or perhaps ‘P’, for short?” Sam ventured, damn near reading Linc’s mind.
Linc snatched his jacket up from his chair. “We’ve gotta get down to the hospital.”
“Should we run it by Chavez first?”
Sam asked, standing and seizing her jacket as well.
“No, she’ll just fuck it up. After.”
They came into step as they moved toward the precinct doors, dodging the officers and civilians buzzing through the room left and right. Just as they made it to the front doors of the precinct, they swung open, sunlight spilling in. Linc’s face fell, pace slowing as he caught sight of the two people who’d stepped through the doors.
His eyes immediately zoomed to the most important one. “Zena…”
Zena kept her head down and didn’t acknowledge Linc. Eyes lowered, her long red hair fell forward and shielded most of her face. Her stomach had grown, belly button distended and pressed against her royal blue sweater dress.
Linc moved his eyes over to Zena’s father, Kent. He stood beside Zena with a hand on her shoulder, his salt and pepper hair in disarray, clutching her so tightly his knuckles had gone pale.
“The fuck…?” Linc’s lip curled as he drank in Kent’s battered face, which looked like he’d been tossed around a UFC ring. Kent’s left eye was black as night and swollen shut, making his light blue eye stand out even more. The bruise was so large it screamed against his pale skin from miles away. His right eye wasn’t shut but had a deep gash right underneath it, split open so deeply that it nearly showed bone. A split lip finished the look, dashing across his entire mouth, leading into a welt that had risen high on his chin, like someone had implanted a balloon under his skin.
“The fuck happened to you?” Linc craned his neck back.
Kent bared his teeth and sucked in a breath, his hold on Zena’s shoulder tightening. “As if you don’t know!”
Kent’s roar caught the attention of several people in the precinct behind them. Some stopped what they were doing to look over, curious what all the fuss was about.
Linc raised his eyebrows high, shaking his head. “I really don’t.”
Kent jabbed a finger at his own disfigured face. “You did this!”
Pulse (Revenge Book 5) Page 23