Beauty & the Beast

by Nancy Holder

  Mochi’s entire pee output consisted of a teaspoon, but Tess decided to walk around the block anyway to make sure, and to clear her head. Speaking of crap, she had a lousy case to deal with when she got into work: The son of some friends of Chief Ward had been caught in a drug sting and they were calling in some kind of favor to get him off the hook. Tess was not a naïve rookie, but it galled her that she was expected to extend a courtesy to people she didn’t know. For four years, she had broken laws to cover for Cat and Vincent, and her solid faith in the power of black-and-white, by-the-book police work had suffered many blows. She loved truth, justice, and the American way, to put it in JT terms. She felt so satisfied when the system worked. Proper detective procedure leading to a clean collar resulted in a fair verdict at trial. Period.

  They’re probably rich, Tess thought. And he’s some spoiled prep school kid who was doing this for kicks. And I’m supposed to put myself on the line because he burned his fingers.

  “Can I pet your doggie?”

  A little girl in pink-and-white striped leggings and a fuzzy lavender top decorated with a winged fairy in a tutu tiptoed toward Mochi. She looked so cute that Tess couldn’t help a smile.

  “Better just look,” Tess advised. “She’s a biter.”

  But to her surprise, Mochi sat back on her haunches and silently looked up at the little girl with her big brown marble eyes. Tess tensed, about to warn the girl to steer clear again when the girl approached Mochi from the side and stroked her back. Mochi didn’t move a muscle.

  “It scares them when you pet their faces,” the girl said. “So you do it here. Nicely pet, nicely pet,” she said in a sparkle-fairy voice.

  “Good to know,” Tess replied.

  “What’s her name?” the girl asked.

  “Princess Mochi.”

  The girl nodded. “That’s a good name. That’s what I would name her.” She gave Mochi another couple of strokes. “I have to go.” She gazed wistfully at the pup as she straightened. Mochi made a kind of distressed panting noise. “I wish I could have a dog.”

  “You probably will, someday,” Tess said. But be careful what you wish for.

  The girl kissed her own fingertips and then tapped Mochi on the head very lightly. Mochi licked her fingertips and hopped up on her hind legs like a scrawny petite bear cub. Tess gently tugged on the leash and Mochi came back to earth.

  “Bye, bye, Princess Mochi,” the little girl said.

  “Yip,” Mochi replied.

  The little girl waved at Tess and headed toward a four-story brownstone. Tess waved back.

  Trying to go after her new admirer, Princess Mochi tugged on the leash. At the same time, Tess got a text from JT. Hold on, coming to join you. She smiled. That was sweet of him. Honestly, he hadn’t wanted to dog-sit in the first place. He was only doing it for her.

  But what if I’m pregnant? she thought. What if we’re having a kid? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if the kid was like that little girl.

  She called him. “Hi, don’t bother. I’m on my way back.”

  “But you just left.”

  “A walk with a chihuahua is a short ride.”

  The tugging grew harder. Then Mochi erupted into a barrage of shrieks and barks. Tess looked up—straight into the face of a hulking, mean-looking mutt. Filthy, no collar, all teeth.

  “Back off!” she shouted as Mochi launched herself at the dog. He growled and lunged and Tess hoisted Mochi into the air above her head. Mochi struggled and yodeled, nipping at Tess’s wrists. “Get! Get!” Tess yelled.

  Preparing to spring, the wild dog moved back on his haunches. Tess’s mind sprang forward, weighing her options—either kicking at it or retreating. She saw stitches at urgent care at the end of either decision.

  In a frenzy of pipsqueak barking, Mochi peed on her head. Tess roared in fury.

  The dog backed off, turning tail and disappearing into an alley. Tess did the same, heading back to JT’s place. Mochi had not shut up. Of course not a single New Yorker batted an eye.

  JT was standing at the door when she marched up and thrust the crazed dog into his arms. Fuming, Tess stripped off her clothes and did not pass go. She stomped into the shower and washed her hair.

  When she got out, wrapped in a towel, JT said, “Are you sure your brother gave us the right food? She just threw up.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. In your shoe.” He pointed across the room. “Oh, whoops. Which she is now eating.”

  “What?” Tess ran barefoot to where Mochi was attacking her best black leather pump. The right shoe, in fact, of her only pair of black leather pumps. “No, stop! You filthy little beast!”

  “Tess, look out!” JT cried.

  Too late.

  Tess stepped in Princess Mochi’s vomit, slid, and landed hard on her butt. Ow, ow, ow. Ass! Elbow! She swore under her breath as the dog leaped out of reach, dragging Tess’s shoe along with her.

  I am never having children. Never, ever, ever, Tess vowed, as JT rushed to help her up.

  But what if she was?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Still dressed in her sushi pajamas and drinking coffee, Heather looked around the empty living room of Cat and Vincent’s apartment, which was flooded with daylight, and felt sorry for herself. There was nothing for her from her temporary employment agency and Cat and Vincent were off to Hawaii. Their itinerary was held in place on the refrigerator with a red heart magnet that she had bought them for Valentine’s Day. She couldn’t help her envy. They deserved to be happy. No one had been through more than they had. But it was hard to be left behind.

  Ravi had phoned six times now, and texted at least a dozen. She was sorely tempted to call him back. But a woman had to keep her pride. Still, what if there was a reason he had lied to her face and ditched her at the charity dinner last night? A good reason?

  Another text came in: Heather, please take my call. Urgent!!!!

  “Yeah, what, are you horny?” she asked the phone.

  The phone rang. Ashamed of herself for being so weak, she took it.

  “Heather.” He was breathless, as if he’d been running. “Please answer your door.”

  “My door?” She looked at Vincent and Cat’s door. “Where are you?”

  “At your apartment. I need to see you.”

  Yes, he’s horny, she thought dismally. “Well, I’m not there,” she snapped. “I slept somewhere else.” Let him chew on that.

  “Did you change your clothes?”

  She frowned. “Huh?”

  “Please, see me. Please. Oh, my God.”

  He was frightened. She blurted, “I’m at my sister’s. I’m housesitting.”

  “Let me come over.”

  “I don’t think so.” She cut off the call. Looked at the phone. Almost called him back. What the heck?

  She poured another cup of coffee and picked up the phone again. He’d been a butthead last night, and now this… this weirdness. Was he in trouble? That was his problem. She wasn’t like Cat, throwing herself into oncoming traffic to save a slow pigeon. Wait, that wasn’t fair. Cat wasn’t like that. Heather’s ex-therapist had suggested that Cat devoted herself to saving others because she had been unable to save their mom.

  “And only three hundred and sixty-four more days until next Mother’s Day, Dr. Freud,” Heather said aloud.

  Sunlight glinted on the phone. Heather kept her distance from it as if it were a rattlesnake. She drummed her fingers on the breakfast bar, sipped more coffee, and opened up the pantry. Wow. You could tell when people were trying to do too much when their spices were all jumbled up like this. Anise was lying on its side. Marjoram’s cap wasn’t even on all the way.

  “Basil, cinnamon…” She stopped herself. Alphabetizing someone else’s spices was too OCD even for her.

  Laundry. If she knew her sister, Cat had made the bed with fresh sheets before they’d left for the airport. Heather checked the hamper and voila, there was the used set. Heather could wash them for her.
She got out the laundry basket, the soap, and the fabric softener. It felt good to have something to do, a plan. Something other than wondering what was wrong with Ravi Suresh.

  She added her pajamas and took what she’d intended to be a quick shower before she used up the hot water to do the wash, but in the middle of conditioning her hair, she’d indulged in a pity-party—she and Matthew had planned a honeymoon in Italy, and here she was instead in the city, housesitting, with another Mr. Wrong messing with her heart—

  Was that the phone?

  Who cares?

  The shower sluiced away her tears. She toweled off and slid into jeans and a short-sleeved purple-and-black patterned top. Where on earth was she going to wear that mermaid dress again?

  “There will be other obstetrics charity dinners,” she promised herself aloud. She put on some makeup and twisted her hair into curls. Not that anybody was going to see her today. But still.

  He sounded frightened.

  Resolutely, she picked up the laundry basket and went back down the hall and into the kitchen. She picked up her phone. He had called back.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  That was the apartment’s front door. The sound so startled her that she nearly dropped the basket.

  Her heart thudding, she set down the laundry and peeked through the door’s little peephole. She was shocked to see Ravi looking back at her, his tan face distorted by the fisheye lens. Oh God, how had he found Cat’s apartment? Maybe he used a secret search protocol? Hijacked the GPS coordinates from her phone? JT would surely know…

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Heather jerked back from the door as he pounded on it with his fist. How did he get into the building’s street entrance? Had she been dating a stalker maniac?

  “Heather, please open the door,” he said, loud enough for all the neighbors on the floor to hear.

  A flush heated her cheeks. This was so embarrassing. Also, kind of flattering, but still.

  “Please.”

  No way was she going to let him in but her concern about the racket he was making—and her curiosity—got the better of her. She peered through the peephole again. There was pained desperation in his dark eyes. It looked like he was crying. The sight made her heart clench. Then familiar tender feelings welled up. Was he really sorry for what he’d done, how he had treated her? Did he want to make it up to her? Did he love her after all?

  “Ravi, calm down,” she said to him through the door. “I’m going to open it but I’m keeping it on the chain. You’re scaring me.”

  When she turned the knob he pushed hard, making the door rush inward and the chain snap taut with a thunk.

  “Heather, you’ve got to let me in.” He pressed his face in the gap, his eyes pleading, his cheeks streaked with tears. He had been crying. Over her. “They almost caught me.”

  Not crying over her?

  He sounded crazed and that scared her even more.

  “Who? Ravi, what are you talking about?”

  “I think they’re in the…” He snapped his gaze to the right. “Oh, no…”

  A hand appeared above his head and thick, stubby fingers gripped his topknot. Each finger had a blue-dark tattoo above the first knuckle. Ravi’s eyes squeezed shut as the hand wedged his forehead, cheeks, and chin back into the narrow gap between the door and its frame.

  “Open door,” said a man’s voice from the hall. He sounded like a Russian bad guy in a cartoon.

  Heather couldn’t move.

  Ravi’s head jerked a couple inches to the side and she saw the muzzle of a pistol pressed against his temple.

  “Open door or I blow his brains out now.”

  She couldn’t close the door—Ravi’s face was blocking it, as was the toe of a shoe that was definitely not his. Ravi was a narrow Italian loafer kind of guy; the shoe in the door was a steel-toed boot.

  She tried to unfasten the chain. It was impossible with the door ajar.

  “I can’t!” she cried. “Oh, my God, what do you want? Are you robbing us? I’ll give you my purse!”

  Get Cat, she thought, but Cat was gone. Call the police. But her cell phone was on the breakfast bar.

  “One,” the man said. “Two…”

  “Wait, wait. I can’t get the chain loose unless you move back,” she said.

  “No tricks,” the man said. “I kill him then I kill you. Through door.”

  Where are Cat’s neighbors? she thought. If she screamed—

  If I scream, they’ll shoot Ravi.

  It was more of a stumble than a decision when she stepped backwards, almost landing on her ass in the laundry basket. The chain went slack as Ravi and the boot were withdrawn.

  For a fraction of a second Heather considered throwing her body against the door, but she wasn’t sure she could actually close it with the counterweight of two bodies on the other side. So she whirled and raced for her cell phone. She got just three steps before she heard the chain splinter off the jamb and the door slam back against the wall behind her.

  “You stop!” said the voice. “You stop now.”

  She turned. A thickset man in a dark blue windbreaker and jeans bull-rushed Ravi into the apartment. He had a very tight crew cut, sandy brown hair almost shaved to the skin. Though he was shorter than Ravi, he easily controlled him with one hand in his hair and the other holding the pistol jammed against the side of his head. Eyes huge, Ravi was silently pleading with her. To do what?

  As Heather staggered in reverse on weak knees, a third person entered the apartment. A blonde woman, late twenties. Tall, slender, dressed in fashion-forward black leather pants and a form-fitting black jacket, with a cross-body sleek metallic-gray messenger bag and heeled boots. Her blood-red nails and perfect manicure looked jarringly out of place wrapped around the grips of the ugly black handgun. The woman closed the door and locked it.

  “What-what do you want?” Heather’s words came out in a shrill prepubescent squeak.

  “What is belong to us,” the man said, shoving Ravi forward past her, forcing him to his knees in front of the sofa.

  The woman waved the muzzle of her gun in Heather’s face and then pointed it at a chair beside the dining table. Heather half-fell down into the chair.

  “Put hands on lap,” the blonde said. “Keep them there. Do not move.”

  The woman put her gun in the messenger bag—Heather lurched but realized the man could still shoot her—and grabbed up a pair of lavender latex gloves. She quickly pulled them on with a thwack. Then she trained her pistol on Ravi as the man also donned gloves.

  Heather’s pulse pounded in her head. There was only one reason for latex gloves: They didn’t want to leave fingerprints behind. That was not good. So not good.

  The room spun as the woman zip-tied Heather’s hands to the back of the chair. For a second Heather was sure she was going to faint. Or throw up. She had to keep it together. If there was one thing she had learned from all of Cat’s years as a cop, it was that you couldn’t lose it. The people who gave up were the ones who wound up dead.

  Plus all the other ones who did other wrong stuff…

  Ravi looked over his shoulder at her with mournful puppy-dog eyes as his hands and feet were likewise bound with wide, white plastic straps. “I’m so sorry, Heather,” he said in a choked voice. “I didn’t mean to get you involved in this.”

  “But you did, didn’t you?” she snapped back.

  The short man laughed, apparently amused by her surprise and anger, and the depths of Ravi’s betrayal.

  The blonde’s full mouth compressed into a thin, red-lipsticked line. Disapproval? Heather wondered. Yes, definitely disapproval. Perhaps a little nervous? Yes, almost twitchy. She looked like she could have been a model in her younger years. She had the figure and the face for it. Big blue eyes with a slight slant to them. High cheekbones. But there was nothing feminine or alluring about the way she handled the square-ended automatic. She knew what she was doing, and she had done it before.

  “
You will give it to us now,” the man said to Ravi. “And we will forgive small inconwenience.”

  Yes, he was Russian and so was the woman. Heather looked at the kneeling Ravi and the man looming over him with a gun. How could someone so smart be so stupid to get caught up with the Russian mob?

  “If you make us wait,” the man went on, “give us trouble, it will be painful for you and her.”

  “Where is chip?” the woman asked. Unlike the man, her tone was not twistedly playful; it was businesslike and cold.

  “I don’t have it,” Ravi said.

  The woman glanced at the Russian man. “Where is?” she asked.

  “I hid it.”

  The pistol in the man’s hand arced down in a gray blur. Ravi let out a groan as his head snapped sideways from the impact. Heather could see blood trickling through his hair and onto the back of his shirt collar.

  “Stop!” she cried. “What is going on?”

  “You making me angry,” the man said, once again twisting a hand in Ravi’s hair. Ravi gasped.

  “I parked it.”

  The pistol rose up again. Heather cringed. But before it came down Ravi blurted out, “I put it in the pocket of her black jacket at the party we went to last night. The left-hand pocket when she wasn’t looking.”

  “What?” Heather cried.

  “Where is jacket?” the woman said to Heather.

  “It wasn’t my jacket…” The admission just seemed to pop out of her mouth. She bit her lip. She didn’t want Cat involved in this mess. She was on her honeymoon. Too late now.

  “Who has jacket then?” the woman said.

  Her sister and Vincent were en route to the other side of the country. Soon they would be on the other side of the world. For the moment at least they were out of reach, safe from harm. She wasn’t. She realized if she didn’t manage to survive she wouldn’t be able to warn them about the danger they were in.