“I know it. But only because it’s along that block that’s slated to be torn down in the summer. My brother was holed up near there before Chuck Delta shot him.” She paused, thinking about it. “Could it be a fake address?”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Chapter 21
Anderson slipped a twenty-dollar bill into the palm of the taxi driver. “Thank you.”
“You sure you don’t want me to wait?” the other man offered.
Anderson shook his head. It was risky enough to have taken the taxi in the first place, and he didn’t want to put the guy in any more danger than he already had.
“All right,” said the driver. “You two enjoy your day.”
Anderson climbed out of the taxi, helped Nadine do the same, then slid his arms to her waist and pulled her in for an overly enthusiastic kiss on her lips, hoping it would send the cabbie away quicker. It worked. The tires crunched on the well-worn road, and when Anderson freed his lips and opened his eyes, the vehicle was gone.
“You think he’ll remember us too well?” Nadine wondered aloud.
“Probably,” Anderson admitted. “But that’s why we had him drop us a block over.”
She shivered and drew her fresh Whispering Woods Lodge sweatshirt closer to her body. Guilt tickled at Anderson. He’d set a fifteen-minute limit on their time in the hotel room, and her hair was still damp from the quick shower they’d shared. The air was cool from the recent rain, and judging by the clouds overhead, it wasn’t going to warm up anytime soon.
“Let me give you my coat,” he offered.
“Then you’ll be cold.”
“But you won’t, and that’s what matters to me.”
She made a face. “And then I’ll feel bad. And I don’t like feeling bad.”
He chuckled. “Okay. Let’s get moving instead. Maybe that’ll warm you up.”
She nodded, then led the way up the road. With a quick glance back and forth, she grabbed his hand and tugged him to a paved path between two houses. When they came out the other side, Anderson was surprised to see what a change just those few hundred feet made. On the one street, the homes had been well cared for, the lawns nicely mowed, the walkways in good repair. On this street, everything was different. Roofs showed moss, windows were boarded up, and more weeds than grass grew on every lot.
“This is one of Garibaldi’s projects,” Nadine said. “He bought out all the homeowners and has plans to tear everything down and rebuild. Twice as many houses on half as many lots. He’ll make a mint.”
“Good,” Anderson replied grimly.
“Good?”
“He’s going to need it to pay for his defense team.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Let’s find the right house.”
They stepped along silently. Anderson was careful to stay close to Nadine, using his body to shield her as best he could. If any unseen forces lay in wait, he wanted to be the first line of defense. But the street remained as quiet as they were. The barricade at the end kept cars out, and there was no hint that anyone was moving around in the run-down homes.
“That’s it.” Nadine’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the otherwise still air.
Anderson frowned at the house she was indicating. It was in even rougher shape than most of the rest. A chunk of shingles had blown off, and the wreckage sat in a pile on what was left of the lawn. The front door was missing completely, and the paint everywhere else was peeling so badly that raw, rotten wood could be seen underneath.
“No way is anyone living here,” he muttered.
“Should we look inside anyway?” Nadine replied. “Just to make sure?”
He considered it for a second, then nodded. “We’re here. Might as well have a look. Carefully.”
Still shielding her—and now with his hand on his weapon—Anderson guided her up the crumbling steps. Wary of an attack, his senses were on high alert. As they stepped inside, he cocked an ear and strained to hear any evidence of someone inside. His body tensed with anticipation of someone jumping out at them. What hit him as they approached the stairs, though, wasn’t a physical assault. It was a nasal one. A peculiar, unpleasantly tangy scent that wafted through the air and filled him with unease. Both things—the pungent aroma and his disquiet—grew stronger as they started their ascent, and when they reached the top stair, Nadine noticed it, too.
“What’s that smell?” she whispered.
Anderson drew in a breath. It was familiar, and he knew he ought to be able to place it. It wasn’t until they hit the landing, though, that he finally made the connection. And the second he did, his mind screamed at him to grab Nadine and run. When he reached out his hand, though, she’d already stepped out of touching distance.
“Nadine.” He heard the urgency in his own voice, and couldn’t understand why she didn’t come hurrying back. He tried again. “Nadine. That smell is accelerant. We need to get out of here. Fast.”
Instead of turning his way, she inched farther into the room.
“Nadine!”
“My God.”
The tremulous exclamation finally distracted him from his need to run. He took two wide steps to join her, and as he followed her gaze, he realized why she hadn’t been listening. Across the living room, propped up in a grimy chair, was a body. And not just any body. One he knew. One they knew. They’d last seen it slumped over in the forest with a gunshot wound to the chest.
“What the hell?” Anderson muttered.
“Look.” Nadine inclined her head to the other side of the room.
A second body—this one a woman’s—was on the couch. A pill bottle lay to her side, its lid off and its contents spilled into the folds of the microfiber. A gun sat on the coffee table, and there was no doubt in Anderson’s mind that it would be a forensic match for the hole in Salinger’s chest.
“Someone wanted this to look like a murder-suicide, didn’t they?” said Nadine.
Anderson nodded his agreement, but as he took another look around, he knew something was off.
“They weren’t very careful,” Nadine stated. “You can see the drag marks where they brought the doctor in.”
She was right. A faint streak led through the dirt. It started at the stairs and ended right at Salinger’s feet.
“It’s like they just wanted to create the idea superficially,” Nadine added.
Anderson thought that was a pretty apt description, but it made him shake his head. “Why go to all the trouble of setting the scene when anyone who’s watched an episode or two of the latest crime drama could see that it’s fake?”
“I think I know.”
Something in her voice set every fiber of his being on alert. “What?”
She pointed. “That.”
There, in the otherwise empty fireplace, sat what looked like an oversize piece of dynamite. Anderson knew what it really was, and it was no better. Inside that plasticized tube was a regular old kitchen timer, the kind used when boiling an egg or making the perfect chocolate chip cookies. Innocuous on its own. The other pieces were what made it deadly. A battery. A detonator. And an incendiary substance.
“We have to run,” he said.
Nadine was two steps ahead of him already, her hand outstretched to grab his as she ran toward the stairs. They hit the top step. Then the third one down. Then the world exploded.
* * *
All around Nadine, thick, black smoke pressed in. The scent of charred wood and plastic mingled in the air, making her choke.
It’s the nightmare.
The thought made sense, but its cool logic seemed out of place in the chaos.
She drew in a breath and willed herself to move. She couldn’t. She was sluggish, as she knew she would be.
A scream built up in her throat.
Her mouth dropped w
ide.
She threw back her head.
Her mouth drew in soot and smoke, and the scream didn’t come because it couldn’t come.
But her eyes opened.
And the nightmare didn’t end.
Her head was throbbing and spinning simultaneously. She was lying on her back and, overhead, along the edges of her vision, she could see smoke and orange flames licking at everything above her.
“Oh, God,” Nadine croaked as she realized it was all real, all over again. “This is happening. Anderson, it’s—”
Anderson.
Where was he?
She turned her head one way, then the next. He wasn’t anywhere in her sight lines. She said his name again, but she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t answer. She’d barely been able to hear her voice herself over the ringing in her head.
You have to find him.
Nadine rolled over and pushed to her hands and knees, and the movement made her ache. Her stomach heaved, and though there was little in it, everything that was there came back up. But she didn’t let it stop her. She wiped her mouth and sat up, trying hard to focus on where in the rubble Anderson might be. It wasn’t an easy task. Pieces of drywall and wood littered the space that surrounded her.
“Anderson!”
The attempt to yell sent a fresh burn down her throat. Automatically, she tried to combat it with a breath. But it just made the pain worse, turning it from almost bearable to dizzying. She collapsed back down, this time to her side. The whole thing reminded her of the dream all over again. The details were far too similar. Right down to the pipe bomb.
Pipe bomb?
She wanted to shake her head. The dream had never had a pipe bomb. Just the awful smell of the world on fire and everything that went along with it.
But she remembered it anyway, and not just because of the one she’d seen in the fireplace. The plastic tube went along with something else—a terrifying realization that she wasn’t simply going to walk away from the inferno all around.
Her vision swam for a second, and strangely—eerily—her half brother’s voice carried through the increasing fogginess of her mind.
“You’ve got this, Nadine. I’ve got you, and you’ve got this.”
If she hadn’t been so fearful of dragging in another breath, she would’ve gasped. The words were so very real and so very clear that she knew they were more than a thought manifesting itself as Tyler’s voice. They were a memory. And as soon as she realized it, another one came swimming to the surface. She closed her eyes, relishing it because it had been so long since she’d been able to claim it.
“Tyler,” she said between her teeth. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“Mr. Garibaldi said for us not to mind the mess,” her half brother replied.
Nadine’s gaze skirted around the dirt-packed walls. “This isn’t a mess. It’s a...dungeon.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. Dad’s down here waiting for us.”
“Says Garibaldi.”
“He’s Dad’s boss.”
“I know, but...”
“But what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know that you don’t know?”
“Shut up.”
He smiled, and she caught a glimpse of their father in the curve of his lips. Their father. It was a strange concept, considering that just days earlier, she hadn’t even known she had a sibling.
He gave her a playful shove as they stopped in front of a wooden door. But as he pushed it open, any hint of joviality disappeared.
In the memory, she’d been puzzled at why Tyler’s demeanor had changed so abruptly. Now she could recall the next sequence of events, albeit hazily. She knew what was coming, and the dread of seeing it played out again in her mind made her open her eyes.
But the current situation was no better.
In the few moments she’d taken to embrace the unexpected recall, the space around Nadine had gone from smoky to near-black. She had a feeling that if she lifted her hand, she wouldn’t be able to see it. And the heat had risen ten degrees.
The only thing that’s saving you is the fact that the burn is upstairs, and the blast threw you down.
But the heat and the blackness told her that wouldn’t keep her alive much longer. She had to move. And she had to find Anderson.
Groaning at the pain and nausea it caused, Nadine forced herself to try again. She inched up from the ground, paused in a seated position, then continued. She pressed a hand to the wall and used it to pull herself to a crouch. She paused again. Took a shallow breath. And straightened up.
From overhead, the heat beat down on her. But she made herself ignore it in favor of sweeping her gaze through the smoke-laden room. She couldn’t see anything. Not even the rubble that she’d spied before.
Despair threatened. She closed her eyes, trying to ward it off. Instead, more memory rushed to the surface.
Nadine pushed past her brother to see what lay waiting in the room. As she stepped in, the bizarreness of it struck her as much as the horror.
Their father sat tied to a chair, his mouth bound, and something that looked like a stick of white dynamite duct-taped to his feet. His hands were taped to something, too, and it took Nadine a second to recognize what it was.
His phone.
Shoving aside the strangeness of it, she tried to make her way in farther, but Tyler’s arms came up to stop her, and her father shook his head frantically, the motion making the phone flash as it somehow switched to the camera function.
“Let me go!” Nadine gasped.
“That’s a bomb!” her brother replied.
“So we just leave him here?”
“I—God.”
Tyler released her, then stepped past her. He ripped the gag from their dad’s mouth, and immediately the older man urged them to go.
“Leave me,” he said. “I’m a dead man either way. That bomb’s on a timer, and I think Garibaldi only gave himself enough time to get him and his men out.”
Nadine’s eyes pricked with tears. “We can’t just—”
“You can,” said her dad. “And you will. Tyler. Get her out. Now!”
Her brother grasped her by the shoulders and tried to drag her away. She fought back, slamming an elbow into his chest hard enough that he cursed and released her.
“Tell me what’s going on, Dad,” she pleaded.
Her father looked at Tyler again instead, and spoke in a long, quick rush. “Listen to me. I sent you something in the mail. It’s insurance. Information that will keep you and your sister alive. I don’t know what Garibaldi said to you, but whatever it was, it was a trick to get you to come down here so he could take us all out at once. You need to get out of here and you need to make sure he knows you’re alive and that you have it.”
Tyler looked uncertain. “Dad.”
“Whatever else I’ve done, I’ve always protected you,” their father stated. “Go. Take your sister.”
Tyler nodded, then reached for Nadine, but she once again sidestepped him. She knelt at her father’s feet and started to free the bomb.
“Nadine,” her dad growled. “Stop.”
She ignored the order and kept working.
“Nadine,” her dad repeated.
Her brother’s hand landed on her shoulders, and she shrugged it off. “You might be willing to leave him, but I’m not.”
“I want you to go,” said her father. “I want you to live. To have a normal life and to forget about all of this.”
“Forget it? That’s never going to happen.”
“You’re going to have to force her, Tyler.”
And her brother’s hands found her again, this time with far more force. She tried like crazy to fight him off. But he was too strong and seemed oblivious to the way her fists beat at him. She s
creamed and begged as he lifted her from the ground. She kicked and bit as he swung her over his shoulder, then sagged helplessly as he started to move toward the door. Her eyes were fixed on her father as Tyler carried her back through the door. But they only made it a few steps into the hall before the bomb went off and rained fire all around.
The devastation was the same now. Searing heat and an overwhelming feeling that all was lost.
From deep in Nadine’s chest, a sob built up. She could feel it wanting to escape. But then—against every odd she could imagine—a sound gave her hope. It was weak, but she was sure it was a cough.
“Anderson!”
She strained to hear a reply above the crackling flames. There was nothing.
C’mon, she said to herself. No one’s going to save you this time. Tyler’s dead, and Anderson needs you.
Drawing from some inner determination that she didn’t even know she had, she dropped down to her knees and crawled toward the cough.
“Anderson?”
Another choked noise met her ears, and she adjusted her course. A few shuffles forward, and her hand slammed into a boot. She fought a need to sob with relief, and ran her fingers from his foot to his leg, then to his chest, which rose and fell with a reassuring steadiness.
“Thank God.” She crawled up to press her mouth to his ear. “Can you hear me?”
Her question got no response, and neither did a shake of his shoulder.
“Okay,” she said. “I can still get us out of this.”
She lifted her eyes and thought she saw a faint break in the smoke. She blinked, trying to ascertain if it was an illusion. As she stared, she realized that it wasn’t just a break—it was path. The smoke was trickling out. Hope flooded through her again.
“Okay, Anderson,” she murmured. “Here’s hoping that a couple weeks off Pilates hasn’t totally dulled my strength.”
She slid around to position herself in a crouch at Anderson’s head, then hooked her forearms under his armpits. She took a smoky breath, anchored her body as best she could and then pulled. Hard. And remarkably, Anderson skidded along under her exertion. Nadine cast up a silent prayer of thanks for slick linoleum floors, then pulled again. Every inch made her shoulders ache more, and the effort and the heat sent sweat down her back and forehead in rivulets. And just when she wasn’t sure if she could make it any farther, the air grew cooler and clearer. Freedom was within reach. A final tug sent her tumbling backward. She thumped to the ground, taking Anderson with her. And even though his body was almost crushing in its weight, Nadine was still able to draw in a sweet, oxygen-rich breath, and instead of pushing him off, she slid her arms around his waist and held on tightly.
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