by Jenny Allen
They climbed the remaining floors in a hostile silence that prickled her skin. Why should she care what this demon thought of her? No, it wasn’t Cohen’s opinion that was important, it was her own. Could she live with sacrificing Cohen to death or worse if it came down to it?
As they reached the 11th floor landing, Cohen took the lead, readying his gun and waiting until she gave him the go ahead before swinging the door open. Nicci and Timothy stood by the elevators, waiting somewhat impatiently, but the rest of the hall was vacant. Lilith lowered her gun and slid through the door, heading straight for Tim and Nicci, leaving Cohen trailing behind her.
“Okay, let’s see if our resident bad guy is home, shall we?” Nicci moved down the plain, beige hall with a purposeful stride. They reached Haverty’s door and Nicci gestured Timothy to the right side of the door and Cohen behind him. Nicci took the left side and Lilith hung back to her side.
Once everyone was in place, guns readied, Nicci leaned over to knock firmly on the door. They all strained to hear any signs of life inside. She caught the sound of a pair of shuffling feet, a creak of a floor board, a rustling of cloth. They may not have the superhuman hearing of movie vamps but it was above average. There was definitely someone inside. Nicci heard it too and leaned over to knock again a little louder. Still no answer. Time for business mode.
“Stephen Haverty. NYPD. Open the door!” Nicci’s voice boomed down the hall with the typical commanding cop tone. A few doors creaked open with curious eyes hoping to catch a glimpse of excitement, but the door in front of them didn’t budge.
Nicci nodded to Timothy. Lilith had no doubt that Nicci could kick down the door herself, but why bother when you had a linebacker eager to show off. Tim stood in front of the door, staring it down for a few seconds before landing a massive kick right near the door handle.
That was the trick. Too many people try to kick square in the center of the door, but unless you’re strong enough to break the hinges, it won’t move that way. Kicking near the door handle you just had to break the thin strip of wood that held the locking bar in place.
The door nearly came off its hinges anyway, slamming against the wall with a loud crack. There, in the center of the room, stood Stephen Haverty with a look of shock and horror on his face. Time seemed to freeze for a moment while he stared at the four armed people in the doorway, guns drawn.
There was a slight twitch around his left eye and in that instant Lilith knew exactly what he was going to do. Haverty broke to the left, sprinting as fast as he could toward a back room. Of course he ran. They always run.
Nicci took off like a shot and leapt onto Haverty’s back, slamming him face first into the floor. Before Cohen and Timothy could even get five steps into the door, Nicci had her knees in Haverty’s back, twisting his arm towards her. Apparently that talk about needing a new sparring partner wasn’t just for comic relief. She may have only been 5’2” and about a hundred pounds, but she made every bit count.
“Nice try, Stevie, but I’m faster.” The man on the floor struggled and bucked, but Nicci shoved her knee hard into his spine while she pulled off the sling style backpack. “Got a bag here.” Nicci tossed it across the floor and Cohen quickly moved to scoop it up.
“You got anything else on you? Weapons?” Nicci frisked him one-handed before slapping a pair of handcuffs on him. “He’s clean.”
“I’ll watch the hall.” Timothy nodded at Lilith and pulled the battered door closed behind him. With all the rubbernecking neighbors, it definitely wasn’t a bad idea.
“Clothes, toothbrush, cash, passport, razors…It’s not here.” Cohen threw the bag angrily on the floor.
“You goin’ somewhere, Stevie?” Nicci gracefully bounced off his back and hauled him up by his handcuffs. Lilith found it infinitely amusing that she could shove around a guy that was about six inches taller than her and twice as heavy. It was even more amusing that she did it all with a sleek, waist length ponytail that whipped around as she moved like some Sailor Moon character.
“My name isn’t fucking Stevie. It’s Stephen!”
“Well, look at that. It speaks.” Nicci flashed a triumphant grin. “Why don’t we sit and have a little chat, Stevie?”
Lilith walked toward the back room while still keeping an ear on the conversation. Haverty was trying to get to that room when they broke in and she wanted to know why. It couldn’t be a fire escape, not on a skyscraper like this one.
“Please! They’re coming! I’m dead if I don’t get out of here!” Haverty pulled against the cuffs, but he didn’t seem to have any real strength. He looked like a stereotypical jewel thief, straight off a movie set. Moderately expensive clothes, manicured nails, handsome face, flecks of sophisticated grey in his black hair with an overpriced cut. Trendy metrosexual. However, his blood shot eyes reminded Lilith of his mug shot, desperate and panicked.
Nicci ushered him over to an Ikea sofa and shoved him down on it. She took an authoritative stance a few feet in front of him, but Haverty kept eyeing Lilith and the door to the back room. There was something in there he didn’t want anyone to see.
Lilith stepped into the room, her eyes slowly scanning every inch. To say it was a home office would be like calling a cruise liner a dingy. Along the left wall was a massive computer display with at least a dozen monitors. Bits of tech littered the desk, one of which was probably his security card scanner. On the right were electronics schematics, blueprints, and photographs covering the long wall, all from the Beinecke Library. There was no doubt that Haverty was the one they were looking for.
“You don’t understand!!!” Stephen’s voice was strained with desperation. “I have to leave. Now!”
“Who? Who is coming?” Cohen’s voice was sharp and commanding with a tinge of desperate eagerness, his heavy footsteps sounding across the floor.
Lilith scanned over the blueprints, eyeing Stephen’s notes. The robbery happened just as Chance had said. Even the fist fight between the two guys in the morgue was planned to leave the guys behind as patsies. The police wouldn’t waste their time looking for a third guy if they had two in custody already. Of course there was a flaw in his logic. The book. If it wasn’t recovered, then the cops would chase every lead they could find.
Still, Haverty must have instigated the fight, knowing that in the process they’d leave behind evidence that would link them to the crime. But if he knew they were gonna be killed, why bother? Another hiccup in the logic.
Then Lilith came to a note and schematics that truly caught her attention. He’d been planning to drop a replica of the Voyruich Manuscript. That explained why he’d wanted patsies. A classic bait and switch. So what had gone wrong? They definitely hadn’t found a replica of the book in New Haven. So where was it?
“I don’t know who they are.” Haverty snapped the answer like Cohen was stupid for even asking.
“Who hired you to steal the book?!” Cohen’s voice boomed louder, echoing through the rooms with its hostile tone. A moment of silence and then a scream of pain. It wasn’t a stretch to think Cohen was applying some incentive for talking. Not that it would matter. Looking over all the notes and scraps, there were no names besides Haverty, Walton and Himes. It was very likely that he was telling the truth and didn’t really know who hired him.
“We already know you stole the Voyruich manuscript with Chris Walton and Brandon Himes. We know you double crossed them and ran off with the book. So tell us where it is and who hired you and you’ll be free to go. I give you my word.” Nicci was obviously playing good cop now, trying to get him to confide.
“I told you! I don’t know!” Haverty shouted the words with complete conviction.
“Bullshit!” Cohen’s outburst was followed by shattering glass. He must be taking his anger out on something else.
“How did you get the job?” Nicci’s voice was soft and soothing, playing against Cohen’s rage. Hmm they actually made a great interrogation team. So far Haverty wasn’t holding anything ba
ck. Hopefully he’d actually know something useful.
“Fuck. You don’t understand! I have to get out of here right now!”
“Stephen, just help us out here and we can help you.”
Lilith kept scanning the room until something under the window caught her eye. An industrial size metal loop like the ones they use to hang equipment for the disabled. Fixed to the loop was a long spool of thick climbing rope. So that’s why Haverty was running for this room. This was his escape route and it wasn’t recently added. Paranoia wasn’t new for him, it was a life choice.
Having exhausted most of the immediate evidence, Lilith decided to join everyone else in the main room. Just in time to hear Haverty explain how he’d been contacted.
“I received an envelope in the mail with all the details and three checks that already had the names filled in. They must have known that I worked with Chris and Brandon a few years ago. There was no contact number, no name, nothing but those checks from some phony company. I was promised a bigger check once they had the book. Can we go now?? I’ll tell you anything but I can’t stay here!” His voice was reaching a feverish pitch of a panicked paranoid and it was starting to become infectious. Something was wrong, she couldn’t explain it, but she felt it.
“If you’ve never met who you work for, then why the hell are you panicking like a blonde in a horror movie?” Nicci rocked back on her heels with an inquisitive look. It was an excellent question but Lilith was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Paranoid Personality Disorder. He has an escape route in the other room. That’s what he was heading for. There’s also a ton of info on the heist. Blueprints, itineraries, etc. I didn’t see any sign of the manuscript.” Lilith slowly paced as Nicci and Cohen continued to press Haverty for information. Her mind was working through the puzzle as the pieces were revealed. Then it occurred to her, something she needed to know.
“The fight between Walton and Himes in the library. You orchestrated it didn’t you?” Haverty blinked hard and then the skin around his eyes tightened. Surprise and acknowledgment. Cohen and Nicci both looked at Lilith with complete confusion.
“You knew that you could push them into an argument and you also knew that they’d make the leap to physical violence. A fight would definitely leave some kind of evidence. Fingerprints, blood splatter, skin cells, saliva, something, anything to link them to the robbery. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to run off with the goods.”
Haverty silently chewed at the inside of his lip, but his eyes were glued to Lilith. There was a mixture of fear and attraction. He definitely didn’t want her to know all his secrets, but by figuring them out herself, he saw her as a kindred spirit.
Lilith crouched down in front of him, meeting him at eye level. “So why go through all that trouble if you knew they were gonna die anyway?”
“What?! No! I had nothing to do with that!” His eyes were wide saucers of pure panic as his breath suddenly quickened. “They shouldn’t have chased me.” Stephen squeezed his eyes closed in emotional pain. She doubted he was that remorseful about the deaths of two men that he was perfectly willing to send to jail for a long, long time. Which meant that he probably saw at least part of the murders.
“This is fascinating, really, but I don’t care how he stole the book. I just want to know where the fuck it is!” Cohen stormed over and grabbed Haverty’s chin, yanking it up to look at him. “Where is the book?!”
He panted silently for a moment, weighing his options, but finally sighed an answer. “It’s here.”
“The book is here?” Lilith blinked in shock. Could they really be that lucky? Could it be that simple? “Where? Or do you mean the replica you planned to leave at the Library? But you didn’t get a chance did you?”
That caught everyone’s attention. “No. As soon as I started for the door, Chris and Brandon stopped fighting and tore off after me before I could drop the fake.”
“So you still have the replica?”
“No. I dropped it when Chris and Brandon kept chasing me. I thought they’d take it and let me go, give up the chase. Well it worked.” His face went pale. That’s why the ambush had worked so effectively. The two fall guys were distracted with their fake loot.
The cops hadn’t found the fake one, which meant the mystery killer had it. What if they thought they had the real one? Maybe that would be the end of their mystery killer. Unless, of course, they found out it was a replica…
“To hell with the fake one. Where’s the real one?” Cohen either had no patience left or, more likely, he was just playing bad cop. Whatever the case, it was working.
“I told you before that they are coming. There is no way in hell that I want to end up like Chris and Brandon. The buyer is supposed to meet me here, so I left directions and a key for my mailbox downstairs on the table. Now, please, can we get the hell out of here?”
“You show us and we will.” Cohen grabbed Stephen’s arm and yanked him roughly to his feet. Nicci and Lilith fell in step behind Cohen as he shoved Stephen toward the door.
Almost as if on cue, Timothy pushed the door open and leaned into the room. “Are we about done here? I don’t think we should stay much longer.”
“Yeah. We’re heading out now, Tim.” Lilith helped handle Haverty as he struggled harder the closer they got to the door.
“Cool. I got a place we can take him if you have more questi…”Lilith turned just in time to see Timothy fall to the floor like a redwood tree. When she looked up, she was staring down the barrel of a semi-automatic and it felt like her heart just stopped beating.
Chapter 21
In a split second, Cohen threw Haverty at Lilith, kicked the door closed and dove to the side. Lilith saw Cohen land on his back with his gun trained on the door just before she hit the ground in a jumbled mess with a very surprised Haverty.
Pain lit Lilith’s head up like the fourth of July, cracking hard on the floor. Dimly she heard bullets tear through the door showering them in splinters. For a moment, the world just stopped, pulling her under in a dark wave of nausea.
When she finally managed to pull herself away from the edge of unconsciousness, she felt elbows and knees digging into her. Feet pounded around the floor, but she still couldn’t focus. All she could do was roll onto her knees and crawl away from the deafening gunshots. Her eyes slowly opened just in time to see Haverty awkwardly get to his feet and run at breakneck speed for the backroom.
She just stared at him, her cloudy brain thinking ‘Huh. Why is he going back there?’ Then it clicked. The emergency line. Things snapped into focus and Lilith skidded and stumbled trying to get back on her feet. She crashed to the floor as the whole room spun. “Shit! Grab him!” Lilith shouted as Cohen rocketed over her. “He’s going for his emergency escape. We still need him!” Lilith pulled her gun back out of its holster and tried to force herself up on unsteady legs when a hand grabbed her by the hair.
The man yanked her backward, sending searing sparks through her scalp as she screamed. Without a second thought, Lilith raised her gun and squeezed the trigger, watching the bullet tear through his throat. Hot blood splattered across her face as the hand in her hair jerked and then fell away. The car crash scene flashed through her mind. Why did they always go for the hair?
The uniformed man grabbed at his throat, wide eyes meeting hers in shock, as he gurgled and choked on his own blood. Lilith kicked the body away from her feet as blood quickly pooled around him on the hardwood. She was fed up with anonymous men in tactical gear. It was like she was stuck in a Steven Segall movie or something.
“Lilith! Get down!” Nicci’s panicked voice came from behind the couch. Her little brunette head peeked around the edge of the sofa, firing a couple shots through the door. A spray of bullets lit up the back of the couch, as Nicci leapt back out of view. Lilith plastered herself against the wall as bullets blazed through the doorway again, splinters and couch stuffing flying through the air. The hailstorm of shrapnel held Lilith fixed to h
er spot.
“Lilith!” Nicci was peeking around the couch again. Her muddy brown eyes caught Lilith’s with a look of urgent concern and frustration. “I’ll give you some cover. When I fire, get to the back room. You have to move.” Nicci was right. She had precious seconds to get to cover or she might as well tie the toe tag on herself.
Lilith swallowed her fear and gathered the strength to run for the back room just as Nicci popped up, pistol blazing. Lilith ran, stumbling as the door behind her exploded. She heard boots storming in but she didn’t dare look back. She just kept running with her blood pounding like thunder in her ears and a prayer on her lips. She wasn’t the religious type, but if it helped, she’d pray to whoever or whatever was listening.
“Get down!” Nicci shouted the words desperately and immediately Lilith slid to the floor, her arms covering her head, as bullets ripped through the air above her. She scrambled around the door frame, fighting for every breath. Her lungs were burning as her hands trembled around her gun. She could hear shuffling, a couple shots, something big hit the ground, more sounds of a struggle.
Nicci and Timothy were still out there and they needed help. Lilith had to get it together or she was going to lose yet another partner and one of Chance’s best friends. After a few steadying breaths, she peeked around the door frame. All she could see of Timothy were his blue Nikes. Hopefully he was unconscious but still breathing. Two guys in tac gear were dead on the ground and a third was pinning Nicci to the floor. Shit.
Lilith took a deep breath to steady her rattled nerves before leaning out again and firing. After a couple shots, she scored a hit to the man’s hip just as he was about to crack Nicci in the jaw. Not a fatal wound but it would sure as hell be distracting. The man howled in pain and collapsed against the floor, writhing in agony. Nicci quickly put him out of his misery and scrambled back behind the couch.