by Fiona Quinn
“Fine!” he sputtered. “She must stay in your house during the day. Sally must pick up your mother in the morning and bring her back at the end of her shift.”
“You arrange that with Sally. And you pay that fee. Because Mom could just as easily stay at your house and have Fanny do the watching like I do on the weekends. Or Sally could watch Mom at your house. All that’s up to you. I’m not going to be here.”
“Absolutely no to her being at our house around the clock. I draw the line.” Curtis lifted a righteous finger into the air. “Can you blame me for not wanting her at my house during the day?”
“Whatever.” Avery looked at him like he was out of his mind. “I’m just saying that I’m not paying Sally while I’m away. If you’re using Sally, you’re paying Sally. I pay Sally because I have to go to work during the day to support Mom and me. Fanny, on the other hand, is at home.”
“I am rarely at home,” Fanny countered.
“You’re at home when you’re not having your pedicure done and lunching with your friends. How you spend your time is your choice. You could choose to spend it with Mom. If not,” Avery shrugged, “it’s your dime, not mine. When I get home, different arrangements need to be made. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.”
“And until then I have to do all the work? You’re off to wherever, doing as you please, and you’re shackling me to Mom?”
“This is not a vacation. This is a pain in my ass.”
Curtis sucked in a sudden breath and turned a shocked pink. “Language! And those provisions will not do. I will not allow my wife to persist under such stress. I will not allow my home to become a shambles.”
“But it’s all well and good for me?” Avery asked, spiking a single brow. She was done with this. What needed saying had been said. Avery stalked to the front door and was confused that it stood slightly ajar.
Cold washed through her system as Avery remembered that her mom had escaped just the other day, heading naked to the grocery store.
She pushed the door open, then stood with her hand on the doorknob and her heart in her throat. She looked in on the chaotic scene. The cushions were off the furniture, slashed, the down stuffing was like snow across the carpeting. Drawers upended, the lamp lay on its side.
It took Avery an agonizing minute to process the mess, then slowly her brain thawed.
Blue spray paint graffitied the walls. Cuss words spelled out and hearts with lightning bolts.
What had her mother done?
Why would she destroy everything like this?
Where was she? Where was Sally?
Fear dried her mouth, as she lifted her cell phone to call 911.
Before Avery tapped the send button, she heard pounding on the basement door.
“Help me!”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Rowan
Alexandria, Virginia
Saturday Evening
Avery had texted – My mother’s lost her mind. It’s serious. She destroyed everything in the house. There’s spray paint all over the walls. I can’t see you tomorrow.
Rowan had tried to call, but Avery wasn’t answering.
He tried texting – What color spray paint?
Avery – ??? Blue.
Rowan – I need to talk to you. Answer your phone NOW.
He watched as the text said delivered. He waited for it to indicate “read,” but it didn’t. He called and went immediately to voice mail. She was probably talking to someone else.
Rowan called Lisa.
“Missed me already?”
“I just got a text from Avery. Her house was destroyed, and there’s blue spray paint on her walls.”
There was a long pause, then, “Well, shit.”
“I’m on my way there now. I texted you the address. Can you meet me?”
“Yeah, sure. And you might want to call Iniquus to come, too. I got a report that might shine a light on some of this.”
“But they’re tasked to the Taylor Knapp case, we can’t just bring them in on something because of Avery.”
“Really?”
Rowan could hear Lisa’s fob beep and the door click as she got into her car.
“Thanks for explaining that to me.”
“Stop.” Rowan was on speaker phone as he wound through the weekend traffic aimed for Avery’s house. “I’m sorry I didn’t couch that as a question. Let me try that again. If you’re telling me to pull in Iniquus, that means that you have a link between the vandalism and the Taylor Knapp case, right?”
“That’s better. And bingo. And no, before you even ask for a single detail, I’m not going to talk about it on the phone. My GPS is saying I’m ten minutes out from Avery’s, so much for my hot yoga class. What’s your ETA?”
“Twenty. I’ll call Panther Force now.”
***
When Rowan arrived, people were hovering outside. Lisa probably pulled them away from the crime scene that they hadn’t realized was a crime scene.
Lisa was standing there, her foot resting on the first brick step of a typical nineteen-seventies style split level, a pad out and pen poised.
A couple stood apart, over by their car, looking for any opportunity to jet out of there.
Avery was rubbing the back of a fifty-something-year-old woman with fire-engine-red spikey hair. The woman was dressed in scrubs. That must be Mrs. Goodyear’s care taker.
Mrs. Goodyear was wearing what looked like a pair of her husband’s old jogging pants pushed up to her thighs, and maybe one of his tank tops. Her legs were white with blue marbling. Her breasts skipped and swung untethered as she moved about. On her feet, she wore a pair of bedroom slippers.
“You don’t know who put the chair in front of the basement door?” Lisa asked.
The red-haired woman shook her head.
Lisa turned his way. “This is Sally.”
Rowan held up a hand as he headed over. “Hi Sally. Rough day. I’m sorry.”
“I already told Miss Avery that I quit. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Avery said. Her hand rubbing the woman’s shoulder. She spoke in a soothing supportive tone. “You’ve been through so much. I’m so sorry.” She turned to Rowan. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course.” He glanced at Lisa. “Have you been in?”
“Yup.”
“Is it what we thought?”
“Yup.”
He walked around Sally and up the steps. The door wasn’t pulled all the way shut. He tapped it open with his keys. When the door opened, Rowan looked around without crossing the threshold. Same heart and lightning sign. “Did anyone touch anything?”
“They all said no other than when Avery was helping Sally get out of the basement,” Lisa said. “Sally was locked downstairs, with a chair shoved under the doorknob. She didn’t hear anyone else in the house. She didn’t think to listen if the noise was coming from two places at one time. She didn’t see any strange cars out front today or any other day. But, Sally said that this is the second time she was locked in the basement this week. She had her phone with her this time, but it had run out of battery.”
He focused on Sally. “Ma’am, has Mrs. Goodyear ever done anything like that before? Locked a door…” Rowan asked.
“Mrs. Goodyear didn’t do it this time either,” Avery’s mom said. “It was the bad men. Hey, I know you. You were talking on the computer with Avery the other night.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s right. Did you watch the bad men lock the door on Sally?”
“No.”
“Did you see the bad men spray paint the wall?”
“Yes. What else was I going to do besides watch?” Mrs. Goodyear asked. “They told me to sit in the chair. And I did what they asked me to do. I’m just an old woman, and they were young and big.”
“How many did you see?” Lisa asked.
The woman standing to the side sighed loudly, crossing her arms and tapping her toe.
“Fann
y,” Avery rebuked her.
Rowan repeated. “How many?”
“I don’t know four, maybe five. Two of them were either the same guy or looked a lot alike.”
“Iniquus is here,” Lisa said, her focus on the road.
A Hummer pulled up in front of the house. Honey Honig climbed out of the passenger side. Titus Kane rounded the vehicle. Titus and Honey sauntered in lock step toward them. Rowan’s mind went back to what Avery had said about how hard it was to explain the nuance of personality differences in special operators. The special operators, his brothers, were as different as night and day; but watching these two striding across the lawn, both simultaneously removing their sun glasses, the same stoic facial expressions, Rowan could see the issue for the layman.
Avery sent the Iniquus guys in their camo tactical pants and their charcoal-gray compression shirts a startled look, but focused back on her mother.
“Why did you cut the furniture, Mom?”
“The bad men did it.”
“Where did you get the paint, Mom?”
“The bad men brought it with them. Then they gave me the spray cans after they were done. Then they left.”
“Were they wearing gloves?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, the long, yellow, kitchen kind. But just the two of them that had the paint.”
Sally stood up. “I’m done. I’m sorry for you and your troubles, Miss Avery. You’re a really good daughter. But, no.” She turned and made her way toward an ancient turd-brown Buick.
As Sally passed the couple, the man turned to Avery. “I won’t bring your mother to my house. This is just too dangerous.”
“Fanny’s mother,” Avery said, turning back to Mrs. Goodyear. “Mom, please tell me, where did you get spray paint?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Avery
Saturday Evening
Falls Church, Virginia
“Avery, stop, please,” Rowan said. “Your mom didn’t do this, she’s telling the truth. Those symbols on your wall have meaning.” He looked at Lisa, and she gave a nod. He focused back on Avery. “Do you think you mother needs medical care?”
Avery swept her gaze over her mom. “No, she seems fine.”
“All right.” Rowan looked over to the man, glaring down his nose at the scene. “Avery and I will go in and get Mrs. Goodyear’s medications and things for tonight.” He shifted his gaze to Fanny. “It would probably be best if you go ahead and take your mom to your house and settle her in.”
“Best for whom?” Curtis stormed. “Not best for me, that’s for sure.”
Avery watched as Rowan’s stance changed, his gaze, he transformed from nice guy to what Avery would imagine Rowan would look like when he was on a mission with the Rangers—hard minded, hard bodied, a force to be contended with.
As Rowan’s gaze bore into Curtis, Avery felt sure that Curtis saw it too, and he crumbled into a beta character, swallowing hard and ducking his chin subserviently.
Fanny smacked him in the chest. “Tell him no!” she said. “We can’t take her. I don’t want this responsibility.”
Rowan sent Lisa a look and tipped his head toward Fanny’s car. “Can you get Mrs. Goodyear settled in the back seat of their car? Avery and I will be down in just a minute with Mrs. Goodyear’s things.”
Lisa had morphed too. She didn’t look like the computer-geek girl that Avery had known, now she had the body language of a woman who would be assigned with the Rangers and support their missions. Focused. Muscled. Unswerving.
Avery tucked that into her memory bank for a future plot point. It was very interesting to see it unfold in real life.
Rowan pointed at Fanny and Curtis, shooting them a look that said “behave”, then put his hand under Avery’s elbow to steer her through the front door.
Rowan probably thought Curtis and Fanny would jump in the car and roar off into the sunset, never to be seen again if Lisa wasn’t on guard.
And they probably would have.
But they were intimidated, and Avery revelled in the moment of schadenfreude until she moved farther into her house.
“Are you sure Mom didn’t do this?” She was bewildered by this information.
“Look at the furniture, do you think your mother has the strength to flip things over like that?”
“I don’t know. She can be surprisingly strong.”
“She didn’t have any scratches. No bumps or bruises.”
“Okay, you’ve got me there. These symbols have meaning?” She reached out to touch the blue heart with the lightning bolt, and Rowan tapped her hand to keep her fingers off.
Yeah, if this were a crime scene, then she shouldn’t be messing anything up.
“Lisa and I had the same thing happen at our houses.”
Avery dropped her chin to absorb that information. Processing. “That’s why she was in New York at two in the morning?”
“Exactly,” Rowan said as he reached the top of the stairs and waited for Avery to show him to her mom’s room. Calm. That helped.
“You didn’t tell me,” Avery whispered.
“We had no idea it would touch you. Lisa says she has some information.”
“And the huge men that got out of the Hummer? The ones that look like Rambo’s best friends? I didn’t even know they made human beings that big.”
“Stuff of novels?”
“Apparently not, since they’re standing, flesh and blood, in my living room.”
“They’re going to help us figure this all out and make sure you’re safe.”
Avery opened the door to her mom’s room. It had gone untouched. Everything was where it should be. It took Avery no time at all to scoop up what was needed and head down the stairs.
She handed the things to the big guy with the outstretched hand. “Thank you, ma’am. My name’s Honey. My team leader is Titus Kane.” He lifted his chin to his partner who was walking around the corner of the house toward the back yard.
Honey took the suitcase to Curtis who had to tip his head straight back to look Honey in the eye.
Curtis didn’t say a thing. Simply took the bag, climbed in the car, and they left.
Now what?
Chapter Forty
Avery
Saturday Night
Avery’s not quite sure where
She sat in the back of the Hummer, sandwiched between Lisa and Rowan. Titus was driving, Honey beside him. Avery assumed they were listening to someone talking to them with some communications device in their ears, because why else would they randomly be saying, “Good, copy,” and “That’s a go. Take care of it.”
Honey had said Titus was the commander. Why wouldn’t they send an underling to come pick them up from a vandalized house? Understanding this might come in handy for the next military romance she edited. And understanding her own situation.
Rowan and Lisa sat still and contemplative.
Their houses had been vandalized.
Her house had been vandalized.
What a crazy set of circumstances. Avery almost preferred—okay, she much preferred—thinking this had been her mother.
Lisa, Rowan, and she had left their cars behind, their keys under the front seats. Rowan hadn’t been trying to be funny their first Skype talk; he actually drove a Volt. That really didn’t fit in with the endangered-hero trope. Someone who thought they might depend on their vehicle to save their lives would drive something more muscular like this Hummer or maybe something with a lot of horsepower for flying down the road out of the bad guy’s grasp. A Volt didn’t say lethal and prepared. A Volt said responsible and suburban. Avery would give a beta-hero a Volt. But Rowan was anything but a beta. He was pure alpha-male. So she’d have to rethink character assumptions.
Titus had asked the three of them to leave their vehicles behind. He said someone would move them. Avery’s editorial mind tried to figure out why that would be a plotting point. The only thing she could think of was that they were afraid that GPS trackers were attached t
o their cars and these Iniquus people didn’t want anyone to know that the three vandalism victims were headed toward Iniquus Headquarters. It was really strange that vandalism would get any attention, let alone this level of attention.
Why didn’t Honey and Titus want anyone to know the three of them were going to their headquarters? Maybe they didn’t want to give up their location? Maybe they didn’t want someone to know they were using Iniquus for whatever it was that they were using Iniquus for?
Keeping her safe, Rowan had said.
That could mean a bunch of things. They could be a close protection team. They could be trying to figure out if there were bad people in contact with her. Okay, there were obviously bad people in contact with her—Taylor and now the group that vandalized her house.
This couldn’t be about the vandalism, she decided. It must be about Taylor.
Rowan squeezed her hand. “You’re thinking so hard you have smoke coming out of your ears. One step and then another. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, then went right back to speculating as they pulled up at a gate house.
It hadn’t been far. Avery thought they were still in Virginia but close to Washington D.C.
Titus Kane lowered his window. After the guard looked around the interior, they were allowed to pass.
They motored up to an enormous building with wide verandas that looked like a country club. One that was exclusive enough to require imposing gates and a security guard with a dog who had run around the vehicle sniffing.
They parked in a visitor’s spot.
Honey and Titus escorted their group into the atrium. Men in uniforms, like Honey and Titus wore, walked through the halls, with an air of focused action. The atmosphere had a military quality to it, though Avery knew this wasn’t part of the US military. She didn’t think so anyway.
Avery wanted to cower against Rowan as they walked the long corridor, but decided it would shine her in a bad light. So she tried to look calm, cool, and composed. She remembered her day at the top of the FBI building in New York, the day when she was sure she was going to end up in handcuffs charged with some obscure law. That was the feeling she was experiencing now, creeping doom.