I took the four steps that led to the front door two at a time, treading lightly as I crossed the porch. I pulled open the screen door, paused a moment to listen, and then knocked on the interior door. I cocked my head and listened again. Nothing. I knocked again. This time I heard a light scuffling coming from beyond the door. A second later, Lena called out, “Yes, come on in. It’s open.”
That’s when I knew something was definitely wrong. Not only because her voice held an undercurrent of strain, but also because a woman supposedly living in fear, who’s installing a security system, wouldn’t just invite someone in who hadn’t announced themselves. I felt my muscles gather and tense as I reached to open the door and gently pushed it open. It swung to my left, about halfway. Lena stood in the shadows of the front entrance, clutching a dish towel, perfectly still.
“You came,” she said.
“Yeah, of course,” I said, “I got here as quick as I could.” I darted a glance around. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, and as she took a step forward, the waning daylight from the open door caught her eyes, and I saw them flick once, briefly, to her right. To the half-open door.
“All right, good,” I said with a single nod, and took my own step forward. “Have you got any more of that beer in your fridge? I could really use one.” With my chin and my eyes, I motioned her to back up, to get out of the way.
She started to back away, I took another step into the foyer, and then whoever was behind the door decided to make a move. In the space of a second a hand grabbed the door, the other hand suddenly appeared, holding a gun, and a figure jumped out from behind the door. I twisted, then propelled myself forward and up, reached for the arm with a quick grab, and shoved. He was taller than me, and lean, with wiry, muscled arms, but he was off-balance and I had the advantage. He slammed back into the wall and I drove my right fist into his midsection.
His breath was forced out of him in a painful Umph! I wrenched his arm and kicked out at his right knee. He screamed as I connected, and the gun tumbled out of his grip as he dropped. I deftly caught it before it could hit the floor, shoved it into the front of my jeans, and quickly removed my own gun as I backed up to look at my assailant.
Panting lightly, my adrenaline up and my heart pounding, I was startled to see a very clear resemblance to Lena in his pain-filled features. He had the same chestnut hair, hazel eyes and high cheekbones.
“On the floor, buddy,” I barked at him, “flat out, hands behind your head.”
“What the fuck is this?” he cried out, directing his words at Lena. He looked confused, bewildered. “You said she was a tech for a fucking security company!”
“Well, it was a good thing I lied, then, wasn’t it?” Lena answered him coldly.
“ON THE FLOOR!” I shouted. “NOW!”
He lowered himself the short distance to the floor on his belly, placed his hands behind his head, laced his fingers, and lay still, making a breathy, whistling sound.
I moved off to one side, keeping my gun trained on him. “Lena, what the hell is going on?” I demanded. “Who is this guy?”
She came to my side. “That is my brother, Leonard.”
“Your brother?” I shot her a confused look. “But I thought your brother was dead.”
Now it was her turn to look confused. “What? What made you think that?”
For a moment I faltered. “Because…you said he was gone.”
Lena nodded, lips pressed firmly together. She exhaled fiercely. “He was gone. He’s been in prison for three years. His release date was today, but the policy is that if the release date falls on a weekend or holiday, that date falls back to the preceding weekday. Which was Friday.”
“Okay.”
“He was supposed to spend some time in a community correctional facility—”
“And I did!” Leonard’s growl made us both jump. “They said I could leave. And this is my home too—”
“Shut up!” Lena practically shrieked at him. “Shut up, shut up!” She was red-faced, very upset. I got the feeling that a lot more was going on here than something as simple as sibling rivalry.
“Okay, okay, enough,” I told her gently, and put a hand on her arm. “Take it easy.” I glanced around. “Is there somewhere we can put him for now, while we talk?”
She pressed her lips together again. The hate that radiated from her eyes was unmistakable. “Upstairs. His office. I’d rather not look at him.”
An image came to mind of the very solid oak chair sitting behind the very solid oak desk. “Okay, that’ll do.” I looked at her brother. “On your feet, Leonard.”
Unclasping his hands, he gave me a baleful look. “You broke my fucking leg! How am I supposed to walk?”
“I didn’t break your leg,” I told him coolly, “but I can, if you think that might legitimize your complaint.”
He brought his hands up under his chest, pushed himself up, and with the help of his left leg and the wall, raised himself to a hunched standing position. He started to turn around, but I stopped him.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just stay like that a moment.”
I looked sideways at Lena, and pulled the other gun from my jeans. The short-barreled revolver, a Taurus, was nothing complicated. I saw that the safety was on and I shook my head. Leonard was obviously an amateur when it came to guns. I swung out the cylinder. It was fully loaded. I snapped it closed, took a step back, and motioned Lena closer. I held it out to her in the palm of my hand.
“Can you handle this?” I asked her very softly.
She gave me a firm nod.
I released the safety and handed her the gun, butt first. She gripped it with confidence and held it away from her side, muzzle directed at the floor. I gave a jerk of my head to indicate she should stand behind me.
“All right, Leonard,” I said, raising my voice. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He turned to face me, with a little hop-skip movement. “Un-fucking-believable,” he muttered.
“It is what it is,” I said with a shrug, and then motioned with the gun. “Get moving.”
He looked me over with squinted eyes. “Are you a cop?”
“That’s not really any of your concern, but yes, I was once.”
He shook his head in either despair or disgust or both, and began to limp down the hallway. At the foot of the stairs, he whined, “Can you at least give me a hand up these stairs?”
“No,” I said without hesitation, “I’m afraid not.” He struck me as a sly and sneaky fellow, and I wasn’t going to let him get the upper hand. “You can crawl, if you have to.”
“Fucking bitch,” he muttered and did his best to hobble up the stairs.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
There’s a reason why people are told to never assume. I had assumed that Lena’s brother was dead and that she, no longer feeling safe without a man about the house, had decided to install the security system. It would never have crossed my mind that the security system was to protect her from him.
We sat across from each other in the dining room, the length of the table between us. It was almost seven thirty. A band of thunderclouds was moving in from the north. There was probably a good hour of daylight left. I wanted Lena to answer the questions I hadn’t asked of her before. I wanted to know her story. And I wanted to know before we called the police, if indeed we did call the police, to ensure that whatever happened, Lena would be safe.
Leonard was upstairs in his office, tied to the large oak chair. I had improvised with a six-foot length of brown extension cord, one hand to either padded armrest. Too tight, according to him, which made me tie them tighter still. I had then gagged him, with Lena’s handy dish towel. He was outraged, but neither Lena nor I cared. Our only concern was that he was fully secured and silent. It wouldn’t be for long, at any rate. We had left the office doors open so we could hear him should he start to get restless.
“Do you know why he was in prison?” Lena asked me. T
he window behind her was open but the blinds were closed. A breeze rattled them every once in a while. The dim light shining in from the kitchen was hard on the eyes.
“No, of course not,” I responded gently.
She sighed deeply. “Sexual assault. A co-worker. He’s a pharmacologist. It was after hours.” After a pause, she said, “She pressed charges, obviously, and he was arrested.” Another pause. “The two before that were students while he was in college. He was their tutor. My brother is very smart.” She said this with a rueful grin. “Sometimes.”
She took a sip from the glass of water that sat beside the revolver in front of her. “The students couldn’t be convinced that nothing would happen to them if they testified. The charges were dropped.” She heaved an even deeper sigh this time, and then met my eyes with a sad smile. “And before that, there was me.”
I sat perfectly still.
Her gold-flecked eyes were troubled and didn’t hold my gaze for long. “I knew it was wrong,” she said, her voice soft and directed at the tabletop. “I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do about it.” Her brow suddenly furrowed. “And he kept saying, It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
She glanced up at me and looked unutterably sad. “I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t know what to do. I was eleven years old, for God’s sake.”
“How old was he?” I asked softly.
“Fifteen.”
I could feel my blood beginning to boil, but I kept my feelings tamped down.
“That fall he went to Beijing on a student exchange program,” she continued. “He was gone for a year. And when he returned my parents had separated and I was living with our mother. He went to live with our father. I didn’t see him. Not for about ten years. Didn’t see him, didn’t hear from him.”
She looked at me with a resigned expression. “And then our parents were killed in a horrible multi-car pileup near Toronto five years ago, and this house was left to me. I was to show ‘discretion’ where he was concerned. I was never quite sure what that meant. And then he showed up one day with a moving van, and barged his way in, saying something about ‘squatter’s rights’.”
She paused, and I could see she wasn’t finished yet.
“He hasn’t been around much, since then,” she went on. “But I don’t want him here at all.” She started to cry. “I don’t want him here at all. It’s my house, it’s my home. I don’t want him here!”
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed softly. I hastily got to my feet and retrieved a box of tissues from the sideboard.
She took the tissues, covered her face for another minute or so while she got herself under control. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I’m sorry, I just—he showed up here, and I didn’t—it was completely unexpected.”
I returned to my seat and covered her hand with mine. “The alarm system was for him, wasn’t it? To keep him away?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “It should have worked out, the timing—”
“And it would have worked out,” I reassured her, “by the sound of it. What do you think he’s doing here?”
She gave that a moment’s thought. “I think he bolted. He was likely on a day pass or something, because he hasn’t been missed yet. I’m guessing someone would notify me, but I don’t know for sure.”
“So why come here?”
“He’s always come here when he couldn’t cope, when he was in trouble. It’s his pattern.” She was unable to hide her disgust.
“Well,” I said, giving her hand a light squeeze, “his pattern is about to be broken.” I hesitated. “I hate to ask this, but has he tried…”
“No,” was her immediate reply. “Not since I was young. But that’s not really the point, is it?”
Even though her words were not harsh, I still felt as if I had been mildly reprimanded. “No, of course not,” I said quickly. “I think we should probably contact the police and—” I was about to say, and have him removed, when a staccato thumping erupted above our heads. The noise caused us both to jump. We looked at each other with startled, wide eyes, and leapt to our feet.
“You stay here,” I told Lena firmly.
She went from upset to stubborn in a heartbeat. “No,” she said.
“All right, all right. The gun,” I instructed her. I pointed at the revolver as I reached for the Glock in its customary place at my back. “Stay behind me.”
A terrific crash overhead was followed by a very brief scuffling. I heard Leonard cry out, “Who the fuck are you?” and then a heavy thump. By then I was out in the hall headed for the stairs. I took them two at a time with Lena right behind me. When we reached the top, I moved quickly and quietly toward the open door, took a breath to steady myself, and then peered around the corner into the room. The chair was knocked over, empty, the cord slashed, lying in two pieces on the floor.
“Don’t move or make a sound, asshole,” someone muttered, just out of my line of vision.
I shifted to see further into the room. Leonard lay prone on the floor, face turned away from me, a hiking boot holding his head firmly in place. Kael’s hiking boot. I felt my belly make a strange little flip as I watched her restore a knife to her boot and then straighten. She shifted her gun from her left hand to her right and pointed it at Leonard’s head. Her eyes were on him, her expression grim. She wore green shorts, black gloves, and a gray hoodie partially zipped up over a white T-shirt. Beyond her the French doors to the balcony stood wide open; we had forgotten to check them. Kael’s knapsack lay between the doors. Beyond them, I could just see the tops of the side rails of the extension ladder. I quietly shifted back into the hallway. I do not fucking believe this, I thought.
I looked at Lena; her eyes were full of questions. She held her gun pointed at the ceiling. I lowered my weapon, and waved to indicate she should lower hers, which she did, though she looked confused. Seconds were flying by, and I didn’t know what to do. Kael must have known that someone else was around, yet she didn’t seem concerned.
I gestured to Lena to follow me and stepped into the room.
“Hey, Kael,” I said conversationally. “Need some help?”
She whipped up her gun and pointed it at me before recognition took hold. Her eyes widened as she lowered it again. “Amy! Jesus! I almost shot you!”
“Sorry about that.”
I felt very strange, disconnected almost. The situation was completely surreal. I had thought I would likely never see Kael again, but there she stood, right in front of me, her boot on Leonard Bowman’s head, gun fixed on him once more. She was undoubtedly going to kill him. She couldn’t be there for any other reason. It occurred to me that she knew something that I did not.
She said, “I assume you’re the one who tied him up?”
I nodded.
“Nice job. We should go into business together. Team up.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. “Only if you promise to use your powers for good, and not evil.”
“But I am,” she told me, perfectly straight-faced.
I decided not to respond to that. I pointed my chin at Leonard. “He’s not even supposed to be here.”
“I know,” she said, surprising me further. “I’ve been following him.”
Leonard squirmed and started to make a noise, but she shifted her weight and ground down with her boot.
“Stay still, you piece of shit,” she told him. He subsided immediately. She cocked her head. “What are you doing here?”
“My job,” I said.
She frowned, thoughtful a moment, then shrugged. “You and I need to stop meeting like this.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve been following him?” Lena spoke up, stealing my question.
Kael’s attention switched to her. “Since he rabbited. I thought that was a very bad sign. I couldn’t just let him run around free.”
“Who are you?” Lena asked, intrigued.
And at that
moment, I realized what I had missed. I turned to her. “Lena, how old were the two students who wouldn’t testify?”
She looked at me with a combination of sorrow and fury, and her eyes flashed. “They were young girls, eleven and twelve.” She looked down at her brother and I thought for a moment she was going to stride forward and kick him in the ribs. “He was their tutor, they were in an accelerated learning program, and he—”
I nodded, and placed a hand on her arm. That was the missing piece of the puzzle. I had assumed they were older, high school students, maybe college freshmen, and wondered why they wouldn’t testify. But they were children, traumatized, too scared to speak up. Before I could say anything further, Lena gasped. I glanced at her sharply. One hand had flown up to cover her mouth. She was looking at Kael with wide eyes.
“Oh my god,” she said, sounding horrified and amazed. “That’s who you are. I saw you on the news.”
That was when all hell broke loose.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
We were distracted, all of us. All except for Leonard. He must have been paying very close attention for the slightest break in Kael’s focus. Lena’s exclamation provided that break. Kael visibly started. Her weight must have shifted, lightening the pressure on Leonard’s head. He twisted like a ferret. His hands came up; he grabbed her ankle and jerked.
Kael’s legs went out from under her, one arm shot out to break her fall, while the gun dropped from her other hand with a clatter as she crashed to the floor.
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