I could see his blurred image and fired. The .32 didn’t slow him down. I tried to roll out of his way, but he landed on my back, half knocking the wind out of me. I pointed my pistol over my shoulder and pulled the trigger. I evidently missed because his response was to club me in the back of the head, bouncing my forehead off the concrete. Stars and comets and darkness.
I didn’t completely lose consciousness. My vision cleared, and I saw his gun lying on the floor in front of me. I reached for it, but it was just beyond my fingertips. Then I felt his arm stretch out on top of mine. With a lunge, I managed to flick the gun a few inches farther away.
His hands felt out my form, found my shoulders, and followed them in. I felt his fingers wrap around my neck. His fingertips dug into my throat and cut off my breath.
My left leg was free, so I drew it up, pulled a knife out of my boot, and buried it in his thigh. With a scream like an animal, he lurched away from me. He almost wrenched the knife out of my hand, but I have strong hands, and giving Peter Grenier a knife was at the absolute bottom of my to-do list. His flesh tore as the knife ripped out of his leg.
I saw his pistol disappear and knew he’d picked it up. I always wore my bag with the strap across my body, from my left shoulder to my right hip, where I could easily access my pistol and other equipment. I dropped the backup gun into the bag and drew my main pistol.
As soon as I had it in my hand, I leaped to the side, then dropped to the floor again. Three reports sounded from his gun, and I heard the pop of the bullets passing over me. I fired in the direction the shots came from, then saw the telltale blur heading away from me. I took my time and squeezed off two more shots. His blurred form seemed to stagger, then straightened and continued on toward the other side of the garage.
The door of a car opened, then the car started. As it squealed out of its parking place, I heard the garage door behind me. I fired once, then scrambled to get out of the way as the car angled toward me. It sideswiped a couple of parked cars, then vaulted out of the garage, hit a constable standing there, and with a screeching slide, fishtailed out onto the street.
Unblurring my form, I chased after, but the car turned the corner as I emerged into the sunlight.
A couple of cops ran toward me with their weapons drawn. I held my hands in the air and let one of the cops take my pistol.
“Was it Grenier?” Donofrio asked. I was sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance with an ice pack strapped to my forehead.
“Him or some other invisible man.”
“So he was waiting for you in the garage?”
“Yeah. Tried the old sneak up behind me and blow my head off trick.”
Donofrio shook his head. “I don’t know how he got in. We’ve had the whole building cordoned off.”
I wasn’t in the most tactful of moods. “Please. Are you slow? He’s invisible. He just walked in, if he wasn’t there already. He could have followed Latour into the building and hung around to watch the fun.”
A light went on in Donofrio’s eyes. “I wonder…”
A paramedic stepped in between us and held up her hand. “How many fingers?”
“Seventeen.” My voice sounded harsh even to me.
She flinched, and I took pity on her.
“You’re holding up three fingers, but each of them has a Siamese twin.”
“Should I have someone drive her home, or does she need to go to the hospital?” Donofrio asked the paramedic.
“I’ll call someone,” I informed them. “I don’t need the hospital. This isn’t my first concussion, and it’s relatively minor. I know the drill.”
In addition to a blinding headache, my ribs hurt. Every, single, one of them. The bulletproof corset didn’t protect against some lout lying on top of me, grinding me into a concrete floor. My left elbow hurt. The paramedic said nothing was broken, but the bruise promised to be impressive, and the joint was stiff. I hadn’t pulled up my pant leg, but I was fairly sure my right knee was the same color as the elbow.
I fumbled around in my jacket pocket and found my phone.
“Nellie? I need you to do me a favor. Call Paul and tell him I need him to come over here to get my bike and take it home. He’ll need you and Mike to pick him up at the club and bring him over here. Okay?”
“Here? You’re at my place?”
“Oh, yeah. Your place. Kandi’s place.”
“Are you all right?”
“Not really. I got beat up a little.”
“Aw, crap. Okay, I’ll call him. You stay right there.”
I tried to think of a smart answer to that, but I wasn’t feeling very smart. “Yes, ma’am.”
Nellie was too small to handle my bike, even if she knew how. Mike hated motorcycles. Paul, on the other hand, had a bike of his own, and we learned to ride together.
“Inspector?” I called to Donofrio, who had moved off a few feet. “I’m pretty sure our boy is wearing a vest.”
“A bulletproof vest?”
“Yeah. I shot him point blank with a .32 and it didn’t faze him.”
“He’s been collecting them.”
“Collecting what?”
“Vests. He’s been taking them off some of the men he’s killed.”
“Probably got tired of getting shot. He does have a nasty knife wound in his thigh, though. You might want to send a few men over to cover Lady Vivien, and maybe alert the area hospitals. He’s going to need someone to stitch him up.”
“Good idea.” He walked away, taking out his phone.
I leaned back against the ambulance and closed my eyes. It wasn’t even noon and it had already been a long day.
Mike, Nellie and Paul drove up, got out, and clustered around me making comforting noises. My headache didn’t want any noise at all. Paul got my bike from the apartment’s parking garage, and I crawled into the back seat of the car and lay down.
“As little noise and jostling as you can manage will be appreciated,” I told Mike. Then I closed my eyes and silently prayed that I would pass out and not wake up until the headache went away.
Mike stopped by Lilith’s and ran inside for a few minutes, then came back, and we went to my house. My friends helped me limp inside and upstairs to my bedroom.
Nellie helped me undress, then Mike brought in ice packs for my elbow, knee, and head, and a roll of cloth that he wrapped around my ribs. The cloth was infused with something, it was cold but dry and smelled of mint.
“You make a pretty good nurse,” I told him as I lay back against a couple of pillows.
“Your father wanted his field agents to be able to patch themselves up,” Mike said. “Hard to stay incognito when you have to go to an emergency room.”
“Grenier just kidnaps doctors when he needs them,” I said.
“And that isn’t terribly discreet, now is it?”
They left me to rest, and whatever was in the pill Mike had given me reduced the pain. Mercifully, I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 19
Paul came by the following morning to check on me. Mike and I insisted that he call Pong and reinstate his security.
“If you get killed, who’s going to take care of my bike when I get wounded?” I whined.
Paul rolled his eyes and Mike snickered.
“You’ve said that this guy doesn’t go after men,” Paul said.
“Depends on what you mean,” I said. “He’s only tortured men he found with women, but he’s killed half a dozen men by shooting them.”
“For pity’s sake,” Nellie said from the doorway. She stormed into the room and stopped right in front of Paul. “You either act like you’ve got some sense, or I’ll talk to your father.”
Paul’s mouth dropped open and he stared at her. “That’s not fair!”
“Oh, hell,” Nellie responded, “you whine even worse than Libby. What are you, a teenage girl? I am not going to put up with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth if you get your head blown off. Call Pong, or I’ll call Richard and
tell him I need to talk with Francois.”
When your father is also your boss, you’re kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. Paul called Pong.
Mission accomplished, but my headache was back. I threw up my breakfast and went back to bed. I hated concussions. Unfortunately, I seemed to get hit or fall on my head a lot. Everyone hovered over me for a while, then did what I wanted them to and left me alone.
I fell asleep until someone pushed the door open slightly and I heard a voice say, “Are you sure she’s okay?”
“Wil?”
He came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so hot, but I’ll get over it. What are you doing here? I thought you were in San Francisco.”
“I was. Devon called me and I took a transonic flight.” Transonic upper atmospheric flights were frightfully expensive.
“Why?”
“He said you were hurt.”
“You came because I got hurt?”
“Yeah.” He brushed my cheek with his fingers and sent shivers through me.
“That’s sweet. You’re a sweet guy when you’re not being an asshole and arresting me.”
I must have fallen back asleep, because if he answered me, I didn’t hear him.
When I woke again, I sat straight up and scrambled for the water closet. The headache was gone, and the world wasn’t fuzzy any more. My stomach growled at me like an angry animal.
Nellie awaited me when I came out. “How are you doing?”
“Starving.”
“Wil is making you breakfast.”
“He what?” I knew my kitchen worked because my father had cooked in it at times. I only used the microwave, refrigerator and coffee pot. I decided I must have misunderstood. “Oh, for a moment there, I thought you meant he was cooking something.”
“He is,” she said with a grin. “Banana nut pancakes.”
Bananas were a luxury item, even more rare and expensive than fresh apples. I gave her the side-eye. “You shouldn’t tease someone with a concussion. It’s not funny, you know. I could be damaged for life.”
“I remember you making fun of me when I had a concussion,” Wil said from the doorway. He held a tray in his hands. “Sit down somewhere.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the tray loaded with a plate of pancakes, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of tea. I didn’t remember owning a tray.
With a bit of trepidation, I tasted the pancakes and discovered they tasted wonderful. A small pitcher sat next to the plate. I picked it up and sniffed it.
“Maple syrup,” Wil said.
“No one but Dominik ever made me a breakfast like this,” I said.
“I’m honored.”
“You should be,” Nellie said. “That’s high praise.”
When I finished, Wil took the tray downstairs to the kitchen. Nellie and I watched him go, then she turned to me.
“He’s really sweet on you. He was so worried about you.”
I didn’t want to think about that too much. When my thoughts veered in that direction, they wandered into all kinds of unrealistic fantasies. And those led to the probability of massive, crushing disappointment. Better to always think of Wil as a friend.
Over the next couple of days I had two minor headaches, but the fuzzy vision didn’t reoccur. I still didn’t trust myself to drive, and the one time I got in the car with Mike and Nellie to go out to eat, I got dizzy and a bit nauseous.
So I had a lot of time to think. Grenier had targeted me, and I had to consider pure luck as the reason he hadn’t blown my head off the way he had killed those security guards and cops. What did that mean? Obviously, he considered me a threat. I had interrupted his game with Sandra and with Lady Vivien. He couldn’t write that off as coincidence.
Then the attack on Kandi. Did that mean he was back to his original pattern? If so, then Latour’s family would be the next target. I drove myself crazy running possibilities around in my head and got another headache.
The next day, I spent all morning and half of the afternoon checking my security. There was a possibility that Grenier might find out where I lived.
Then I got a call from Inspector Donofrio.
“Miss Nelson, are you feeling well enough to come out and see a crime scene?”
My stomach flipped over.
“Yes, Inspector. Where is it?”
I called Wil and he came to get me. The apartment building was near the university, not as fancy as Nellie’s place, but nicer than most student digs. The police and their henchmen swarmed over the place in a way that was becoming routine.
We showed our IDs and made our way up to the second floor and met Inspector Donofrio. He took us into the two-bedroom apartment where we found three young women. All had been murdered and disemboweled. A wedding dress hung in the open closet.
None of the women had been mutilated, nor did I see any grotesquely-broken limbs. The sado-sexual torture we had come to expect was missing.
Back out in the hallway, Donofrio looked at us expectantly.
“Who are they?” Wil asked.
“Carla Thomas, her sister Jane, and their friend Robin McMaster.”
“And their connection to Entertaincorp?” I asked.
“None that we can find. Entertaincorp was catering Carla’s wedding and providing the entertainment.”
The news of Grenier’s murders were the talk of Toronto in spite of the police trying to keep them quiet. Too many dead, and the killings were too spectacular and grisly, not to mention the victims were so high-profile. But the cops had managed to keep a lot of the details from leaking.
“Copycat,” I said. “That’s not Grenier’s work.”
“My conclusion also,” Donofrio said.
“Who found them?”
“Carla and Jane’s mother. They were all supposed to meet her for lunch. ME puts the time of death sometime yesterday—late afternoon or early evening.”
“I assume you’re looking for the groom.”
Donofrio nodded. “He’s a student, as are the victims. We haven’t tracked him down yet.” He turned to me. “Thank you, Miss Nelson. I’m sorry to call you out, but I’m grateful for the confirmation. It will help to convince my bosses that we need to look beyond Grenier for these murders.”
“Well, glad to be of service, Inspector. Please don’t hesitate to call me out again the next time you have a stomach-turning crime scene you wish to inflict upon an innocent bystander.”
He blushed. Past him, I saw Wil frown and give me a slight shake of his head.
“Sorry, Inspector,” I said. “I understand why you called me, and I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just that seeing that was a bit upsetting.”
As we walked away, I muttered to Wil, “Was that nice enough?”
“Yes. Almost unrecognizable. I’m encouraged that someday you might be ready for polite society.”
“Ah, Mr. Wilberforce, you’ve only seen me at my best. When casing a job, I fit in with polite society as if I were one of them.”
The look on his face caused me to burst into laughter in spite of the scene I’d just witnessed.
Polite society reared its head the following day when I got a call from James McKenzie, my on-and-off almost boyfriend. James was Vice President of Information Security at Ontario Power and Light, a position that would have attracted me like a moth to a flame, even if he wasn’t so funny, handsome, and sweet. The sweet part was probably the major reason I hadn’t tried harder to get his passcodes.
“Libby, how have you been?”
“I should ask you that. I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth. What’s it been? Two, three years?”
His chuckle came through the phone. We’d known each other less than six months, and we’d attended a gallery opening together shortly before Grenier started his rampage. Coincidentally, it was the week before the gallery owner suffered a burglary at his home. As I expected, the security on his
home was just as shoddy as that on his gallery, but the art he collected for himself was much nicer than the stuff he sold.
“Let’s not be clingy, shall we?” he chided. “I have a wedding I have to attend this weekend, and I need an escort.”
“And you want me to protect you from all the bride’s friends? You should know I’m allergic to weddings. There’s some evidence they’re contagious. What happened to the current girlfriend?”
“Current girlfriend?”
“James, there has to be a reason I haven’t heard from you in over two months.”
“Oh, well, my mother introduced us, and I was simply being polite until I could let her down easy. You know there isn’t a woman in Toronto who can hold a candle to you. You’ve ruined me for anyone else.”
“You are such a cad. Whose wedding?”
“Marc Latour, the younger brother of a guy I went to university with. He’s marrying a girl named Jocelyn Tremaine.”
I sobered immediately. “Do their fathers work for Entertaincorp?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, they do. Do you know them?”
“I know the fathers.”
“You are a constant source of surprise, Libby. Is there anyone in this city that you don’t know?”
“Most of the decent folk. I mainly hang out with the crooks at the bottom and at the top.”
He laughed. “So, you’ll come?”
“Yes, I’ll go with you.”
We finalized the arrangements and hung up.
“Was that James? What’s going on?” Nellie asked. A frown played across her face. “What about Wil? You have enough problems dealing with one boyfriend, let alone two.”
“I don’t have two boyfriends. I don’t even have one.”
Her frown deepened. “Do you really believe that, or are you just trying to convince yourself so you don’t have to worry about getting hurt?”
“I’m not sleeping with either of them. I think I can handle it.”
She shook her head. “You’re amazing. How can anyone so smart be so blindly dense sometimes?”
“I’m not dense. I’m just realistic. All either of them wants is to get into my pants, and if I don’t put out, they’ll just get it somewhere else. But, hey, listen to this.” I filled her in on the wedding. “What I can’t believe is they’re throwing a wedding in the middle of everything that’s going on. Kandi got killed only last week. Do these people even care? Are they completely oblivious?”
Chameleon's Challenge (Chameleon Assassin Series Book 3) Page 15