After all, Nevis ran this business on the shady side of the street. He couldn’t trust his electronic ledgers to cloud computing. Those systems had you send your info via the Internet to be stored on giant servers in rooms in Silicon Valley and the like. Those rooms—along with that equipment—could be subpoenaed. But a private server, positioned high in Nevis’s gambling house and cut off from the World Wide Web, would link all his laptops together and allow him to keep track of his debtors—and law enforcement would be none the wiser.
In other words, Nevis’s gotcha list lived in the bits and bytes of his own hardware.
And I was going to find it.
Nevis’s ever-present cameras monitored my progress up the stairwell, but with the glare of white light blasting from the industrial-grade wall sconces to cloak me, I moved quickly and with purpose, as if I had a place to go and a legitimate reason for going there. No one met me on the second floor to toss me out on my ear, so I hustled to the third. There, the hum of flirty, male/female conversation had me suspecting Nevis kept a crop of prostitutes to entertain his suckers who had deep pockets.
At the top of the house, the staircase ended abruptly against modern drywall. A plywood door, short enough to accommodate a miniaturized Alice on her way into Wonderland, had been built into the newly fashioned wall. Dropping to my hands and knees, I yanked the door open and crawled inside.
The space was close, hot, dry, and black. The glare from the stairwell illuminated little. Ahead of me, pinpoints of yellow, orange, and blue blinked incessantly like overexcited fireflies.
I fumbled for a light switch, found one, and flipped it on. The sudden brightness revealed skeins of fiber-optic cables, bunched together like sailors’ ropes. Swag after swag festooned the walls like holiday garlands.
I’d found the nerve center of Nevis’s operation.
Images from every closed-circuit camera mounted throughout the house certainly streamed through this space on their way to Nevis’s security office. Landlines for telephone communications emerged from flat, gray junction boxes mounted on framing studs. Squat routers sent invisible signals to boosters throughout, providing Wi-Fi for electronic devices. But at the distant end of the narrow space was the heart that made the rest of the system tick. Not that finding it would do me any good.
Bolted to a metal rack, eight units, each the size of a Victorian family’s Holy Bible, were wired up with more cables than I could shake a stick at. Black-bladed heat sinks whirred quietly to cool them. And information skipped between them at the speed of light.
The truth about Nevis’s business had to be inside them. But I couldn’t extract it. The data I sought could’ve been on any one of the microprocessors fused to the units’ metal surfaces.
Worse yet, I couldn’t destroy it. It would take a hell of an electromagnetic pulse to erase all that information, or a thermal event hot enough to melt all that metal. And if I tore the cables from the servers and tried to bust them free, Nevis’s entire network would shut down. Surely, a technician would hustle to the attic to set things to rights. I’d be caught red-handed.
No, Nevis’s gotcha list was beyond my reach. I’d need to think of another way to get to it. But Nevis’s list was the last thing on my mind when I raced down the stairs—and nearly collided with a blonde emerging from the third-floor hall.
Monique Wells’s heavily shadowed eyes went wide when she saw me. She pounded a round panic button mounted beside the doorframe with the side of her fist. Instantly, the lights cut out, plunging us into total darkness.
Chapter 21
Far below me, in the deep, dense well of the staircase, a door ratcheted open and clanged shut. Boots thundered on the treads. And my pulse kicked into overdrive.
“Monique, wait!” I implored. “I was on the riverboat with you and Damon!”
But Monique was already in motion, ripping open the door to the third floor and disappearing behind it.
I lunged for her, for the door handle, for the wedge of light spilling through the opening. The boots grew closer, echoing off the walls that hemmed me in. And Monique slammed the door shut before I could reach it.
In the pitch dark, I fumbled for the door’s pin pad and tried the combination that had worked wonders downstairs. Four-two-two-five-six. The door refused to open, so I hit the digits again.
The pounding of the boots was only one flight away. I abandoned the door and fled toward the attic. I’d barricade myself in the crawl space. At least that was my plan. But as I rounded the banister, a heavy hand clutched the tail of my sweater. A man yanked me backward. I toppled from the step beneath my feet and slammed into the wall hard enough to lose my breath.
The need to breathe had me doubling over. I bent at the waist, wheezing, in time to hear a hefty swoosh as some kind of club swung past my head. The plaster above me crackled with the impact.
He’s got a baseball bat.
The realization sent panic crashing through me like river ice. But I knew panic could get me killed. I chose to let instinct take control.
Without artificial light, I couldn’t see my assailant. But that meant he couldn’t see me. Imagining he was still in his batter’s stance, I ducked past him, darted toward the descending stairs and safety.
Unfortunately, he and I weren’t alone.
Rough hands closed over my shoulders. I set my feet and shot upward with the heel of my hand. Instead of the crunch of cartilage, however, my palm met a heavy cap of some sort covering this man’s right eye.
Glasses?
When he turned with me, when he threw me down the stairs, the answer came to me.
Night-vision goggles.
Tumbling ass-over-teakettle down the treads, I ended up on the next landing, lying on my side like a latter-day Sleeping Beauty. Pushing myself onto my palms, I took a hasty inventory of my injuries. My hip had borne the brunt of my fall. It would be black-and-blue later. But it wouldn’t prevent me from getting up—and it wouldn’t stop me from defending myself.
Besides, I’d come prepared.
Grabbing the handbag I wore across my body, I scrabbled in the dark for the bamboo-like detail decorating the clasp. Bounding to my feet, I tore the thing free from the haphazard stitches I’d whipped into the fabric with the hotel’s free sewing kit. It fit perfectly in my palm. Its ridges nestled between my fingers for a secure grip, and its chiseled end extended beyond my fist in a toughened point. Because the thing was a polycarbonate kubotan. And it would give me a fighting chance to make it out of this stairwell alive.
Before I could use it, however, one of the thugs grabbed me by the throat in the darkness. He bent me backward, over the banister. Still, I raised my fist high.
I drove the kubotan’s pointed tip deep into the meat of his hand. With a howl of pain, he let go of me. The second he released me, I was on the move.
Pivoting, I raced blindly down the stairs.
I stumbled onto another landing, took to the steps again. I lost my left shoe as I rounded a tight corner, kicked free of the right. I’d lost count of the flights of stairs, too, and that worried me. If I bypassed the first-floor mudroom, if I ended up in the basement, I’d be done for.
I was sure I was close to the ground floor when a grasping hand seized my ponytail and yanked back and down, stopping me mid-stride. My eyes watered with pain as my scalp threatened to come loose from my skull. Reason whispered that my attacker had to stand close in order to tear my hair out. Clenching the kubotan tight, I swung my fist down and in. And stabbed its point into my assailant’s thigh.
We twisted sideways, like two in a tango.
He shoved me down the stairs, backward this time. I tripped, fell onto my sore hip. The kubotan flew from my hand.
My assailant laughed, the sound coarse and ugly.
His buddy grunted. “Now we can really have some fun.”
Fear nearly made me vomit. But I refused to give in to it. Because beneath my palms, I felt the curling surface of linoleum.
I’
d made it to the mudroom.
Sightless, I jumped up, groping frantically for the door to the busy hallway where bartenders came and went, and for the pin pad that would set me free. The code was like a mantra in my mind. Four-two-two-five-six. Four-two-two-five-six. My fingertips brushed cool aluminum at last. I punched in the magic numbers. But the door wouldn’t give.
I entered the code again and again.
“I get her first,” one of Nevis’s cretins told the other.
Over my dead body, I thought.
I beat the door with my fists, hollered for help, raised the biggest ruckus I could manage. Someone—a waitress in the break room, a patron in the restroom—had to hear me. Someone had to help me.
Clammy fingers closed over the nape of my neck and shoved me face first into the steel-core door, smashing my glasses against my cheek. I aimed an elbow at a face I couldn’t see, kicked with my heel, but barefoot and in these close quarters I couldn’t connect with more than a shin. My attacker pinned my wrists above my head and immobilized me with his bulky body.
His breath was hot in my ear.
“Give it up, sweetheart. Your ass is mine now.”
He ground his groin against my rear. I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t shout because I couldn’t draw breath. This ape was crushing the life out of me. I braced for whatever came next, determined to keep my brain in the game.
Determined to fight at the first opportunity.
But with a shout, the door behind us burst open. Light, glorious light, flooded the mudroom. And so did a familiar voice.
“Let her go!” Marc bellowed.
I heard the crack of the first attacker’s bat—and a grunt and a sickening thud as a body hit the floor.
Fear for Marc’s safety gripped me, but the goon at my back let me go. I whirled around, saw him move in on Marc. But his companion lay in a stunned lump on the linoleum floor and the baseball bat was in Marc’s hands now.
Marc swung.
With the crunch of bone and the spray of blood, the ash bat met my assailant’s jaw. The man shrieked and spun. He fell on the ground and he didn’t get up.
Marc’s chest rose and fell as if he’d run a marathon. He offered a hand to me. “Time to roll, babe.”
I scooped the ridiculous high-heeled shoes I’d bought just that afternoon from the floor, grabbed Marc’s hand, and ran.
Chapter 22
The quiet of Ray and Corinne’s pleasant neighborhood was a sweet dream after the nightmare of Hunch Nevis’s mansion.
Once we’d put some distance between us and the gambler, Marc had wanted to drive me straight to the cops. But I told him I didn’t want to involve any form of law enforcement in this whole affair until I’d talked to Ray. I figured Ray must have a good reason for sending Bran to spy on Nevis—and to order him to get his mitts on Nevis’s gotcha list.
The fact that Monique, and maybe even Eddie, were likely connected to Nevis made the situation even more sticky. If I alerted the cops now, the cops would alert the feds. I wasn’t sure what would become of Monique in that instance, but if April Callahan caught up with Eddie Jepson, she’d toss him into some secret cell where a crew of interrogators would go to work wringing every bit of information from his brain until all that was left of him was blood and water.
Sure, Eddie needed to pay the price for taking the lives of forty-one people who didn’t deserve to die. But to my way of thinking, intensive interrogation wasn’t justice. It was torture. Especially since Eddie wouldn’t be able to cough up an intricate set of terror plans to satisfy his questioners. He was no criminal mastermind with complex sociopolitical ideals. He was just a small-time hustler who wanted small-time jobs for some small-time pay. Asking him for something he couldn’t give would be wrong, and no one would ask him nicely.
In any case, I couldn’t say for sure Eddie was hiding out at Nevis’s. I only had Bran’s word for it. And even April Callahan would need greater confirmation than that.
“You’re shaking,” Marc said.
He’d eased the Escalade to the side of the road, three doors down from Ray’s house, and cut the engine. The moon was a waning sliver in the night sky, and if the stars were out, I couldn’t see them past the thick pine boughs arching overhead. I couldn’t see Ray’s back deck, either, but the lamps on each side of his front door were ablaze with welcome. At the corner of the house, I caught a glimpse of paper lanterns bobbing in the fresh breeze. Peppy music drifted on the air with the buzz-saw beat of zydeco.
“I’m all right,” I told him, and it wasn’t the first time I’d said it. I’d been repeating it to Marc—and to myself—ever since we’d flown from Nevis’s enormous house, ready, willing, and able to plow down anybody who got in our way. “Ray makes the best gumbo. A bowl and a beer will fix me up.”
Marc didn’t reply.
Because he didn’t agree.
“You should come with me,” I said.
He jerked his chin toward the Walthers’ house. “Looks like a private party.”
“Just a little one.”
At least, that’s how Corinne had described it. But a dozen parked cars of all makes and models crowded her driveway. More spilled out along the street. None of the vehicles was Barrett’s, however, and a niggling fear that I’d pushed him too far with my stuttering speech about the pitfalls of long-term relationships took hold of me. Before I could banish the feeling, Marc laughed, slow and low, for my sticking to Corinne’s script.
Suppressing my unease, I said, “Corinne will be glad to see you, and so will Ray.”
“You’d do just about anything for Ray, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course. He’s done a lot for me.”
But that sounded lame, even to my ears.
“Ray gave me a chance,” I said, trying to explain, “when no one else would.”
Of course, that wasn’t all of it.
I didn’t know how to describe all of it.
“He, um, he let me be me.”
“Really?” A shadow slanted across Marc’s handsome face. “Who were you before?”
I clammed up, feeling ridiculous and like I’d confessed too much already. But Marc sat silently, as if waiting for me to speak my mind in the half-light and the still of the night. He watched me with eyes as dark and deep as the universe, and in the end, I screwed up my courage and tried to tell him about it.
“My father has very high standards,” I said.
“And your mother?”
“She died when I was two days old.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged.
“I didn’t know her, so it doesn’t hurt.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Marc’s question struck awfully close to the emotions I held deep in my heart.
And I didn’t like it.
“Motherless or not,” I challenged, “I turned out all right. My father poured a major part of his life into mine.”
“But only part?”
Was it narcissism if a parent didn’t give his child everything? Or was it the natural way to teach her she’d have to make her own way in the world? In either case, my upbringing was the way my father had wanted it. He’d raised me like the son he’d never had. Like a chip off the old block. It hadn’t dawned on me until I left for college that he simply viewed me as an extension of himself. When he began introducing me to marriageable young army officers, I realized he expected me to be an extension of my future husband, too. In some relationships, that might spell an equal partnership. But not in all of them. And intentionally or not, I had been an extension of my husband. Just as Corinne—with her bookkeeping skills and her business acumen—was an extension of Ray.
Because of Ray, Corinne had given up going for greener professional pastures. Maybe she was happy with that. But maybe she was unhappy—until she met Bran.
The thought made me uncomfortable, and without meaning to, I blurted, “Have you ever been married?”
“No,” Marc replied, “but I came close on
ce.”
“Was breaking it off her idea? Or yours?”
“It was a conclusion reached to mutual advantage.”
Uh-huh. “And you don’t regret ending the relationship?”
Marc leaned from his seat to mine. He brushed a lingering kiss across my cheek. “Not one bit.”
All of a sudden, I couldn’t get out of the SUV fast enough.
I jerked open the door and slid to the ground.
“Come on,” I told him. “Gumbo’s getting cold. And you’ll want to meet Corinne’s middle sister. She’s cute and she’s single…”
“I’ll pass. Besides, the jarhead wouldn’t be too happy to see me taking up space in your friends’ kitchen.”
“Barrett’s a soldier,” I reminded him. But Marc knew this well enough. He just got a kick out of sticking the United States Marines’ nickname on him.
Case in point, he grinned. “Soldier. Jarhead. Whatever. I’ll stick around out here for a little while, though.”
“I doubt Bran’s going to be breaking car windows. And Eddie Jepson won’t drop by tonight.”
“Bran Laurent,” Marc warned, “is a lightweight and so is Eddie Jepson. He may’ve bombed a riverboat, babe, but I doubt he’d send lackeys to assault you in a stairwell.”
I doubted it, too.
I may not have learned who was on Hunch Nevis’s gotcha list, but I’d certainly learned the gambler was one cold customer who’d do just about anything to protect his piece of empire.
“I won’t go far,” Marc promised me. “You’ve got your phone?”
I patted the little evening bag that still dangled from its slender gold chain.
The kubotan was long gone, but Vivian Sternwood’s possessions were still tucked inside, and so were mine.
“Call me,” Marc said, “if you need me. Later, I’ll drop off this behemoth at your hotel.”
“Sure. Thanks.” And because he was always willing to do so much for me, I added, “Thank you, too, for keeping me safe at Nevis’s.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Jamie.”
The Kill Radius Page 17