Extreme Danger

by Shannon McKenna

“Calm down, Becca. Nadia’s wonderful. I met her a couple days ago, and we’ve been together twenty-four-seven ever since, and now she’s invited me to move in with her. Todd can have my room in the HellHole, since he’s been sleeping on the downstairs couch for three months anyhow, and I’ll move in here and help Nadia with the rent on this place. I can work extra shifts at the Electronics Barn to cover—”

  “Moving in with her? You just met this girl when?”

  She was being a hysterical harpy, which never worked with Josh, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was too freaked out, too scared.

  “Night before yesterday. But you’ve got to understand, Becca. She’s amazing. She’s sweet, and smart, and she’s so amazingly beautiful, I just can’t believe that she—hey! Stop that, Nadia. No, it is true! No, really, stop…that tickles…oh, shit…”

  The voices on the other end of the line degenerated into a goofy, giggling scuffle, and Becca waited, teeth clenched, for them to sort it out and get themselves under control. “Becca?” Josh’s voice came back, raw with laughter. “You still there?”

  “Yes. I am,” she said grimly.

  “It’s weird. I just turned on my phone for one second to call the pastry place to send us some cupcakes, and the same second, boom, you call me. You must be, like, psychic.”

  “No, just desperate,” she snapped. “Look, Josh, I’ve been calling all morning. I’ve been out of my mind, because Carrie—”

  “Don’t worry,” Josh wheedled. “Everything’s great. I’ve never been so great in my life. Oh, hey. That’s a great idea—hold on a sec—” There was a murmur and Josh came back on. “Nadia says, why don’t you just come over? Come have brunch with us or lunch or whatever! See for yourself how special she is. She really wants to meet you. I told her how you basically raised me and Carrie, and she said that when her mom died, she and her little sister in Moldova were just like—”

  “Joshie, I can’t,” she said. “I’m in trouble, and I need to—”

  “Sure you can! Tell me all about it here. I’ll text you the address. Come over. I’m turning off my phone. I really want you to come. OK?”

  “Josh, please, I—”

  Click. The connection broke. Becca stared at the phone in dismay. She tried the number again. Sure enough, he really had turned off his phone. She could have shrieked in frustration.

  She already disliked this seductress Nadia. Whoever the hell she was, she had to come out of the woodwork right now, at the worst possible time, and turn Josh’s brain to mush.

  Which was kind of unfair, considering her own whirlwind romance, and the distinctly mushlike state of her own silly brain.

  Still. God help them all. She tried Carrie’s number. Still off. She wished she’d mentioned that to Josh before he turned his phone off.

  Her phone chirped. Message. She checked it.

  855 Gavin St. Garden Apt. C u there!

  Argh. The only thing to do was just go there and jerk on the lovesick little punk’s ear in person. If she could get him alone without Nadia, the perfect shining angel, in attendance, she’d just lay out the whole damn story for him. The real deal. Uncensored.

  Maybe it would scare some sense into him. She could only hope.

  She leaned forward to get the cabbie’s attention. “Excuse me. You have to take me to another address. Do you know Gavin Street?”

  Nick wasn’t sure why he was driving by Richard Mathes’s house. It didn’t make sense to tip the guy off to being observed, wiping out any chance of following him. But planting a beacon on Mathes’s car without being seen, now that was a risk that could yield big benefits.

  He was startled by how rattled he’d been from finding Diana Evans’s body, although stuff like that tended to take him by surprise long after the fact. He’d be thinking he was fine, as cool as a popsicle, and then he found out he couldn’t sleep for a month.

  Evans’s murder was definitely Zhoglo’s work, but he was sure this prick Mathes had something to do with it.

  He drove by the house. Hell of a place. He guessed that famous heart surgeons had to make a pretty decent buck, but this place looked like more than a pretty decent buck house.

  This place looked like a bottomless bank account house.

  It was a sprawling white mansion. A three-story, turn-of-the-century Victorian, with lace and frills, a widow’s walk, pointy towers, turrets and beveled bay windows. More like a cake than a house. A big, perfectly landscaped flowering garden. A huge lawn, dotted with majestic, century-old trees.

  He circled around the big loop and took another look. The black BMW with the plates that Davy had detailed for him was parked in the driveway, not inside the enclosed garage. Nick took that as a written invitation from fate to go plant a discreet slap-on beacon bug. Five days of battery juice to monitor the good doctor with X-Ray Specs. Yeah.

  Anybody stopped him—well, he didn’t think he could pass for a Jehovah’s Witness or a vaccum cleaner salesman, but fuck it. He’d improvise. He was good at it. In fact, a lot of the time, his seat-of-the-pants solutions to problems were ultimately better than when he slapped his brains around for an advance plan.

  He parked his truck a discreet distance away and strolled through the pricey neighborhood. Dappled sun filtered through the moving leaves, making a constant green shadow-show on the ground. The ground was still fragrant and humid from the rainstorm the night before. It was beautiful…birds twittering, wind rustling.

  And all he could see was that naked woman on the floor, eyes bugged out, the marks of hands clutching her throat. The image was burned into his retinas.

  The long driveway stretched and curved before him. Here went nothing. He peeled the protective film off the powerful rubber cement that backed the beacon as he walked by the car, and bent as if checking his shoe. Slipped that sucker right under the bumper.

  He straightened up, hands in pockets, and looked at the house.

  Mathes was home. He should beat hell out of here. It made no sense to get closer now that he’d tagged the car. He risked tipping the guy off, losing his link to whatever project Zhoglo had planned.

  And yet, he kept drifting closer, as if the place pulled him. He gazed up at the big, ornate porch, Diana’s pale, twisted body still superimposed in his mind over the image of the handsome old house.

  He was gathering the presence of mind to turn away and leave when the door opened. Adrenaline jolted through him.

  An elegant, slender blond woman in her forties stepped out onto the porch. “Hello?” she asked suspiciously. “Can I help you?”

  He did what he always did in these seat-of-the-pants situations. He opened his big mouth and let ’er rip.

  “I’d like to speak to Dr. Mathes,” he said. “I’m a colleague of his.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. She was very beautiful, in a chilly, stretched sort of way. She might have had help from the knife to keep the line of her jaw so sharp, and her eyes and brow so unlined. Hard to tell.

  “He’s asleep,” she said. “He was at the hospital all night, doing an emergency transplant. I’m afraid I can’t wake him for you.”

  “Too bad, then,” he said. “Another time. You’re Mrs. Mathes?”

  “I am.” She took a step forward, gripping one of the porch columns. “May I tell him your name, Dr…?”

  “Warbitsky,” he said. His birth name was buried in obscurity, not on any of his records, so it was fine as a throwaway alias.

  Her eyes narrowed to pale blue slits. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before. What’s your specialty, Doctor?”

  “Pathology,” he said. Close enough as far as it went.

  But Mathes’s wife wasn’t buying it. She came down the stairs towards him, a strange, almost avid look on her face. She stopped about two yards away from him. “You’re no doctor.” Her voice quivered with strain. “You’re lying.”

  He kept silent. Quietly waited to see where she was going with it.

  “What are you here for?” she demanded,
voice rising. “What is my husband mixed up in?”

  Now that she was closer, he saw the lines of strain on her face. The shadows under her eyes, cleverly concealed with makeup. Her excessive thinness. She wasn’t a stupid woman. She was catching a strong whiff of rot, and she didn’t like it.

  Well, she shouldn’t. He slowly shook his head.

  “Tell me!” She was almost yelling at him. “What is he involved in?”

  He blew out a breath to buy him a second to decide whether or not this was a mistake. Too late now. He saw Diana’s bugged-out eyes.

  “Nothing good, ma’am,” he said quietly.

  She crossed the distance between them with a lunge and grabbed his arm. “I have two children,” she said sharply. “Two young girls.”

  He looked down at the manicured white and pink claw that shook with strain as it dug into his arm. “I’ve got a piece of advice for you, then,” he said. “Take your girls, put them on a plane, and get them the hell away from here.”

  She stumbled back, and put her hand to her throat.

  “I say this as a friend,” he added.

  “You’re not his friend,” she hissed. “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “Not his,” he admitted. “But I’ve got nothing against your girls.”

  Her throat worked. She looked older when her mouth was pursed up. “I am not involved with it, whatever it is,” she said stiffly.

  He looked around and a mean laugh jerked his chest. “Get real, lady,” he said. “You’re living in it. You’re driving it.” He gestured at the double-strand pearl necklace held together with diamond baguettes that gleamed in the vee of her silk blouse. “You’re wearing it.”

  She jerked back as if she’d been burned. “Get out,” she said. “Get off my property, before I call the police.”

  Typical. Concerned for her girls’ safety, sure, but don’t fuck with the diamonds. He turned, and got the hell out of there. He could feel the unfriendly pressure of that woman’s eyes against his back.

  Well, shit. Chances were good that she would tell her husband what she had seen, and the guy would make whatever he liked of it. But even so, Richard Mathes didn’t seem to care about letting the women who were close to him die at Zhoglo’s hands.

  He guessed that was the real reason he’d come here. Fuckup or no fuckup, after seeing Diana Evans’s body lying on the floor, he was glad he’d given that woman a heads-up. He hoped she was smart enough to take it and run with it. Before Zhoglo ate her kids for lunch.

  He got into his truck and took off with a roar of the engine, but when he turned the first corner, he had a weird, déjà vu zing to his brain. He’d noticed it before when driving around that particular block.

  He swung around the loop again to see if he could pin it down.

  This time he saw it with his conscious mind. That car. He’d noticed it out of the corner of his eye before, but he hadn’t put it together. A shiny black PT Cruiser. Becca said that Diana drove one of those. He pulled in ahead of it, and checked the plates, just in case.

  Holy shit. It really was the woman’s car. Parked right there.

  He got out and went to take a look. It was a mess inside. A long beige raincoat was crumpled in the back seat, as though she’d slept on it. The passenger seat was littered with junk. Too many people driving by on the busy avenue for him to be comfortable with jimmying the lock, but he remembered Becca’s experience, and tried the door handle. Just for the hell of it.

  It opened. He got into the driver’s side, and was hit with the heady stench of whiskey. A short search revealed an uncapped flask of what smelled like scotch. The liquor had drained out onto the floor.

  The glove box had nothing but the registration and a fistful of maps. He went through all the garbage on the seats; crumpled tissues stained with makeup, receipts, paper coffee cups with bright red lipstick marks, medical journals, a silk scarf, breath mints and chewing gum to hide her alcohol breath, not that it ever worked. The package for the digital voice recorder Becca had noticed. A couple of mismatched earrings. They looked expensive.

  The center console yielded a handful of CD’s, more garbage, more mints, and a stash of quarters for tolls.

  He checked out the back seat and hit pay dirt with the beige raincoat. There was a small, hard object in the depths of one of her coat pockets. Just what he’d been hoping for, ever since Becca’s tale of blood and urine samples.

  He fished out the voice recorder rod and stared at it, then pushed its on button. Nothing happened. Nothing lit up.

  The phone rang. He pulled it out, hoping it was Becca, but the display informed him that it was Davy. He pocketed the recorder, let out a flat sigh of disappointment, and hit talk. “Yeah?”

  “Nick. Get your ass over here right now.” Davy’s voice was hard and clipped. As grim as death.

  His gut clenched. “What happened? Did Zhoglo—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Hang up, and move.”

  Chapter

  26

  “Aw, Becca, come on,” Josh wheedled, scratching tufts of hairon his naked chest. “I wish you’d get this bug out of your ass and chill.”

  “Joshie, you had an appointment with Carrie on Friday night!” Becca’s voice was getting shriller. “You blew her off, and then you were incommunicado all weekend! And now we can’t get in touch with her at all! Don’t you think she would have at least left us a text message?”

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Josh grumbled. He leaned over the big dining room table, which was covered with the remains of a bacchanalian breakfast; a bowl of fruit, a towering heap of breakfast pastries, ziplock plastic bags of sliced deli meats and cheeses. He snagged a glazed lemon cupcake. “Have a muffin and relax. What’s the big deal? So we’ll drive down to the college today and roust her out. Give her a hard time for scaring us.”

  “You don’t look overly scared,” Becca observed sourly.

  In fact, Josh looked like he was having the time of his life. He looked like a prince wallowing in the lap of sensual luxury, naked but for baggy silk paisley boxer shorts. He pinched a slice of honey-roasted ham out of one of the bags, and dangled it over his mouth.

  “I will go with you,” Nadia volunteered. “I wish to meet this little sister.” Her cool glance in Becca’s direction clearly implied that she hoped that the little sister would be an improvement on the big one.

  Becca clenched her teeth, and reminded herself to be polite. Something about this over-the-top sexpot blonde put her teeth on edge. She had already told herself that maybe it was just Kaia fallout, and the girl could hardly be blamed for that—but even so.

  Becca would never have chosen to meet her new boyfriend’s sister in a pink ostrich-feather-trimmed silk robe that gaped over her breasts and barely covered her butt cheeks.

  Besides. There was something strange about the whole thing. That girl was too perfect to be real. Granted, Joshie was a cute guy in his own right, with a nice body, if a bit skinny, and bright green eyes that made lots of girls swoon. But there was something so polished and gleaming and smooth about Nadia. She would look more believable on the arm of a much older man. Or, rather, a much richer one.

  Or maybe Becca was just feeling jealous and insecure about a beautiful younger girl, in which case, she should be smacked. Becca sipped her coffee and fought for a more adult perspective.

  It was hard to come by. Now Nadia was amusing herself by squirting whipped cream out of a tube can onto a ripe, red strawberry, thoroughly licking it all off, and then slowly inserting the pointed red end of the strawberry between her shiny lips.

  Josh watched, rapt, and grabbed a berry. “Can I have one?”

  Nadia licked bits of berry juice off her lips. “Of course, Josh,” she cooed. “You can have anything you wish of me.”

  He held out his berry. Nadia anointed it, both of them giggling.

  Oh, for the love of God. Becca couldn’t take any more of this crap.

  “Nadia,” sh
e said. “Please don’t be offended, but would you mind letting me speak to my brother in private for just a few minutes?”

  Nadia froze, her pink mouth dangling open, her blue eyes wide. She stuck Josh’s berry into his open mouth, and wiped her fingers daintily with a deli napkin, looking hurt. She got up with a fluttery swirl of pink silk and feathers that revealed a whole lot more than Becca had ever wanted to see of her anatomy. She was clearly not a believer in underwear. Or even pubic hair, for that matter.

  “Very well,” she said. “I go to the bedroom now. Please let me know when I am welcome again to come into my own kitchen, no?”

  “Nadia!” Josh leaped up, alarmed. “Wait! She didn’t mean—”

  Slam. The door to the living room rattled in its frame.

  “Nice going, Becca. That was just swell,” Josh said stonily.

  “Joshie, please. I need you to listen to me. You don’t have time to be fooling around like an idiot while Carrie—”

  “You’ve been fooling around like an idiot with your boy toy thug, right?” Josh shot back. “Works for you, so why not me?”

  That barb hit the mark. Becca tried to rally and think of some way to express her misgivings about Nadia in a way that would not alienate him.

  It was a useless exercise. “Joshie, something’s off about this—”

  “Don’t start with me,” he snarled. “Just shut up, OK?”

  “No, really. Look at this place.” She indicated the huge, beautiful kitchen. “Tuscan tile? Marble countertops? State-of-the-art appliances? This furniture?” She swept her hand at the antique dining table, the mellow blond parquet, the restored molding of the townhouse. “This isn’t housing for a foreign student, Joshie. This kitchen alone is bigger than my entire apartment. You can’t pay rent on this place with extra shifts at Eric’s Electronics Barn. There’s something else going on here. Can’t you feel it?”

  “What I feel is that you’re doing your best to fuck this up for me,” Josh snarled. “And I’m not going to let you do it.”

  “No. Joshie, I swear—”

  “Life will kick you in the teeth every fucking chance it gets. You know that. So when something great comes along, you should grab it! Appreciate it! Not just spit on it because it’s too good to be true!”