Behind Closed Doors (The Mccloud Series Book 1)

by Shannon McKenna

  “I’m going to work here in the office. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay right where I can see you,” he said briskly. “There’s a couch, and an afghan if you’re cold. Books in the bookcase. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.” She curled up on the couch and stared out the window. Connor was staring into the computer, absorbed, and she realized what he must be looking at.

  “You’ve got X-Ray Specs software running on that computer, right? You’re tracking the Corazon!” She leaped to her feet. “Can I—”

  “Stay where you are and mind your business, please.” His eyes and voice were hard. “Try to relax.”

  “Sure,” she whispered. Yeah, right. As if.

  She dropped onto the couch, tucked her feet beneath her and stared out at the fog drifting through the pines. A rent in the clouds revealed a snowy mountain peak across the canyon, glowing a deep, sunrise pink. The shifting colors made her think of opals.

  An ugly chill crawled up her spine. She thought of Seth’s boat. Slipping the Dreamchaser into his inside jacket pocket. She had forgotten all about it. Seth had never known about it at all. He had no reason to think anyone had tampered with his jacket.

  Oh, dear God. It was the necklace. It had to be. It was her fault that assassins had been chasing them, and finding them. She leaped up, her heart in her throat.

  At that moment, gravel crunched under car tires in the driveway.

  “Connor, I have to tell you something,” she began. “I—”

  “Shhh.” He waved her down with a sharp motion of his hand and limped over to the window. “This is weird,” he murmured. “I didn’t know he knew about this place.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy I work with,” Connor peered out the window, perplexed. “Or work for, I should say, since he just got promoted. Go upstairs. Quick. He might come in for a cup of coffee. Stay up there until I tell you it’s clear. And Raine?”

  She turned back from the foot of the stairs. “Yes?”

  “Do not make me regret letting you out of that room.”

  She nodded and ran up the stairs for the attic. She edged towards the window that overlooked the porch roof. There was no curtain. Looking out meant risking being seen, and would infuriate Connor. The man was his colleague, for God’s sake. His boss; surely not a threat to her.

  But Ski Mask’s bloodshot eyes and the blank, dead eyes of the motel assassin haunted her. She had learned to take nothing for granted in the past five days. Not looking out the window meant risking something decidedly worse than Connor McCloud’s irritation.

  She crept closer on tiptoe, keeping back in the shadows, but the men were too close to the porch. She had to get closer. The screen door slammed shut. Connor greeted the visitor. His voice was not particularly friendly, just neutral. Questioning. She could not hear what they said through the double-paned storm window.

  The man responded, his voice deeper than Connor’s baritone. Goose bumps rose up on her spine. She drew nearer. If he looked up, he would see her for sure. From this angle, she saw only that he was balding, somewhat heavy, bulked out in a black winter jacket. Glasses. Connor asked another inaudible question. He responded with a shrug.

  Connor hesitated, then nodded. He said something else, probably inviting the man into the house, and turned around.

  She choked off a useless scream of warning when the man’s hand flashed out, snake-swift. The butt of his pistol connected with Connor’s head, and he dropped to the ground without a sound. The man knelt beside him for a moment, touching his throat. He stood up, pressing against his belly with his hand. He looked around.

  He looked up. Their eyes locked. It was the man she had seen when she had gone to see Bill Haley. Her mother’s friend, Ed Riggs. Older and heavier, minus the mustache, but there was no mistaking him. He had tried to kill her seventeen years ago. He was back to finish the job.

  He disappeared under the porch roof. She looked around the empty room with a sickening sense of déjà vu. God, stuck again in a bedroom with no weapons. The lamp was useless, a fragile frame of dusty bamboo and muslin. There was the whiskey bottle on the dresser. She grabbed it, hefted it. Almost empty. Only slightly better than nothing.

  He was not going to be taken in by her lurking behind a door with a bottle, and there was no point in cowering and waiting for him to come to her. She’d tried that approach, and could say with complete authority that the waiting-and-cowering option truly sucked the big one. Particularly since nobody was rushing to her rescue this time. Seth was off pursuing the Corazon. Connor was laid out cold on the gravel outside. She hoped to God he wasn’t dead or seriously injured.

  It was up to her. But then again, it always had been.

  Raine gripped the neck of the whiskey bottle. Saw the heavy, palm-sized padlock lying next to it, and grabbed that, too. She hid the bottle behind her leg, dragged in a long, slow, hitching breath, and started for the head of the stairs. She was scared to death, but she would pretend not to be. Who knew better than she how to pretend? Her whole life was leading up to this moment. The grand, ultimate pretense.

  She did not bother to walk quietly. In fact, she stomped. As much as one could stomp, in a pair of floppy clown shoes.

  “Hello, Ed.”

  Riggs turned the corner at the landing. His jaw sagged.

  It was a tableau from a cheap graphic novel. The girl poised at the top of the stairs, looking down her nose at him. Legs planted wide, chest stuck out. In that ragged, sexpot outfit with her hair frizzed out all over the place, he could see why Novak wanted her. Even the bruises under her eyes didn’t detract from her allure. She looked like a whacked out fashion model on a cocaine binge, sexy and wild and completely unpredictable.

  Eyes on the prize, he reminded himself. This was for Erin.

  He lifted the gun and pointed it at her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The contempt on her face did not change. “Then why are you pointing that gun at me, Ed?”

  “You have to come with me now,” he told her. “If you don’t do anything stupid, you won’t get hurt.”

  She took a step down. Before he realized what he was doing, he had retreated back a step, as if she were a threat to him.

  “You killed my father.” Her voice vibrated with hatred.

  He kept the gun trained on her, but she didn’t seem to notice, or care. “Old news,” he said, sneering. “Besides, that was a mercy killing. Peter was a suicide waiting to happen. I just put him out of his misery. Come on down, nice and slow, Katie. Make this easy on yourself, OK?”

  Her eyes were glowing oddly, like Victor’s when the mood was on him. Her face was unearthly pale, like a vampire in a horror flick.

  “Why should I?” she said. “You’re just going to kill me anyway. Like you tried to do when I was a kid. Remember that, Ed? I sure do.”

  “You were a snotty little bitch back then, too. I remember that,” he snarled. “Come on, Katie. Be a good girl. One foot after the other.”

  “Fuck you. You killed my daddy, you pig.”

  Her lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl, and her arm whipped out from behind her, where she’d been hiding the liquor bottle. She let out an ear-splitting shriek and hurled it at him.

  He flung up his arm and took the goddamned thing on the same sore arm that had blocked the brass lamp last night. He roared with pain, yelped again at the shiny metal thing that spun out of nowhere right after it, clipping him on the jaw.

  Then the crazy little bitch took a flying leap, right at him.

  Chapter 25

  The bottle shattered. The gun went off, and splinters exploded off of some wooden surface. Raine barreled into him, deafened. They hurtled together down to the bottom of the landing.

  Ed hit the wall hard, and she was savagely pleased at the thud, his heavy grunt. There was no time to savor it, though—in a split second she bounced off him and half-tumbled, half-slid down the rest of the stairs, bumpity-bump, thud. She bounced up and sprinted through the ki
tchen, seizing objects at random and hurling them at him.

  The toaster bounced off his shoulder, the blender missed him and smashed against the wall. She darted into the office, spun around and almost got him with a stereo speaker. He ducked and dodged her missiles, screaming something, but she couldn’t understand what he said, because she was screaming too, as if pure sound could be a weapon. All the rage she’d ever tried to control came rushing out in a shrill, endless, crazy shriek. She felt capable of any violence, any madness or folly.

  He thundered after her into the office. Now he was between her and the other exit. She was boxed in, brainless idiot that she was. No chance now of outrunning him outdoors. She grabbed a sports trophy off the bookshelf and flung it. He shielded his face, cursing as it bounced off his elbow, and charged her again, his face purple with trapped blood.

  She shimmied behind the big desk with all the computer equipment, shoving it away from the wall to give her more room. The wild, manic energy had begun to ebb. Fear was sinking its claws in again. She threw everything that came to hand: notebooks, software manuals, a modem. A rain of paper clips and tacks, a handful of loose CDs. She yanked a handful of pencils and pair of scissors out of a heavy jar, flung it. He dodged the jar. The pencils bounced and skittered harmlessly off his coat. He dove across the desk, and jerked back with a shout when she stabbed at his hands with the scissors.

  Ed seized the desk. It squealed across the floor as he slammed it into her hip painfully hard, squashing her against the wall. He lunged across the desk again, dodging her frantic stabs with the scissors.

  “You stupid bitch,” he panted. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “No, you’re going to kill me,” she panted. “And I won’t let you.”

  “Shut up!” he shouted. “I’m not supposed to kill you! If I had wanted to kill you, believe me, you would be dead! I was supposed to take you to Novak.”

  “Novak?” She froze, clutching the scissors like a dagger.

  He gave her an evil, openmouthed smile, panting and pressing his hand against his belly. She could smell his sour, fetid breath all the way across the wide desk. “Yeah. Novak. He wants you, honey. I don’t think he’s planning on killing you, either, at least not at first. He’s got other things in mind for you. Lucky girl. You know, I was feeling kind of sorry for you before, but it’s funny…I don’t feel so sorry any more.”

  He wrenched the desk away from the wall. Raine scrambled backwards, tripping over the tangle of dusty electrical cords and stumbling into the corner. “It was you who attacked me last night at my house, wasn’t it, Ed?” she hissed. “I recognize your stink.”

  A crazy grin split his distorted face. “Ooh, that cuts me to the quick, honey. What a little charmer.” He wrenched the desk out farther, and the electrical cords attached to the power strip behind the desk began to stretch and pull. “Suffering Christ,” he muttered, his lips curling back in disgust. “You look exactly like your slut of a mother.”

  Those words gave her the jolt she needed. She grabbed the monitor just before it toppled onto the tangle of cords, heaved it to chest height, and launched it at him with her last burst of panicked energy.

  His eyes widened, and his arms flew up. He winced when it hit his chest and stumbled back, trying to catch the thing before it fell on his feet. She seized her chance and reached out, blindly scrabbling for the first thing she touched, which proved to be the fax machine. He was lunging at her again, and she spun around, swinging the thing up in a sidewise arc. Bashing it against the side of his head.

  “I am so sick of you guys badmouthing my mother,” she told him.

  He blinked stupidly. The sudden silence was startling. He toppled slowly, like a tree, and bore her down beneath him. She hit the wall behind her painfully hard with her sore shoulders, and slid down onto her butt with him on top of her, his head lolling heavily against her neck. A rivulet of blood snaked down his cheekbone.

  She lay there for a few moments, shaking and crying, but it was way too soon to start sniveling and falling apart, with Connor lying still and quiet outside and Seth racing towards a cliff with doom in his pocket, thanks to her. She heaved and struggled and finally scrambled out from under Ed’s dead weight, unwinding herself from the tangle of cords.

  She clambered over him, recoiling from the necessity of touching his body. She was shaking so hard, she fell down again, almost onto her face. She noticed, remotely, that her arm was bleeding. Quite a lot, but she couldn’t be bothered with it now.

  First, Ed’s gun. She searched through the rubble on hands and knees, sifting through the clutter with trembling fingers. She found it beneath the desk, a Glock 17. She stuck it into the back of her too-tight jeans. It was cold and hard, and extremely uncomfortable.

  She stared down at Ed. He was breathing, and he had a pulse, which meant he could come to and attack her again. Villains always did in thriller movies. She’d better not take any chances.

  She grabbed him by the feet and dragged him clear of all the fallen equipment, panting and whimpering with the effort it took to heave him out from behind the desk. She stumbled into the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers for rope, twine, anything.

  She found a roll of duct tape, and raced back to the office, strapping his wrists behind his back first, then his ankles. She did his knees for good measure, and then bent his knees back and taped his wrists to his ankles. She ran outside, wondering if she might have overdone it.

  Thank God, Connor was already sitting up, touching the side of his head with cautious fingers. She dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Are you OK?”

  He winced at her loud voice. “What the fuck?”

  “Your boss hit you with his gun. Then he attacked me. He was supposed to take me to Novak.”

  Connor gave her a dubious sideways look.

  “Believe me, I don’t have time to make up stories,” Raine snapped. “Come on, I’ll help you into the kitchen.”

  She retrieved his cane and hooked her arm around his waist, steadying him as he got to his feet. “Ed’s in the office,” she said, guiding him up the porch steps. “I used duct tape, but he’s the first person I’ve ever tied hand and foot, so you might want to check my technique.”

  “Ed?” His eyes narrowed.

  “We’ve met,” she explained. “Seventeen years ago, when he killed my dad. And again, in my house last night. He was the first ski mask.”

  “Ah,” he murmured, as she pulled the door open for him. “You’ve been busy while I was napping.”

  There was a bag of cotton balls and antiseptic ointment lying on the kitchen table. She grabbed a wad of cotton, dosed it with gel and picked her way into the war-torn office. Connor was staring at Ed.

  “You mummified him,” he commented.

  Raine parted Connor’s shaggy dark blond hair and dabbed at the bloody spot on his skull.

  He jerked away. “Ow! I can do that!” He grabbed the wad of cotton. He looked down at Ed, then back at her. “How did you do it?”

  She hugged herself, shivering. “I clobbered him with your fax machine,” she admitted.

  “I see.”

  “He insulted my mother,” she added. As if she needed to justify herself.

  “Remind me never to insult your mother,” Connor said.

  “I have to say, my mother made quite an impression on a lot of men. I’m starting to think she really must have been hell on wheels.”

  She realized that she was babbling, and forced herself to shut up.

  Connor had an odd expression, as if he were trying not to laugh. “Well, uh, if she’s anything like you—”

  “No, not really,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry I trashed your office.”

  “No problem.” He focused on her face, and frowned. “Did you know that you have a cut on your face? Your cheek is bleeding.”

  She shrugged. “Later.” She touched him on the shoulder. “Look, Connor, you’re not going to slip into a coma if I leave you here
with that bump on your head, are you? I can always drop you at an emergency room on my way to—”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  “It’s too complicated to explain the whole story, but I figured out how the killer found us last night,” she explained, through clenched teeth. “And how Ed found me now. Seth has a necklace that Victor gave me in his jacket pocket. That’s what’s transmitting. It must be.”

  Connor’s face darkened. “You put it there?”

  “Yes!” she yelled. “I did! Sorry, OK? I’m an idiot! I had no idea what was going on at the time! If Victor’s watching, he’ll see Seth on his system. He might think that he’s me, but he’ll be on guard.”

  Connor grabbed the phone. He stabbed at the buttons, rattled it. Checked the jack. He lurched swiftly into the kitchen, tried the phone on the wall. “The fucking bastard. He cut the phone line.”

  “Don’t you have a cell?”

  “Out of range. We’re on the wrong side of Endicott Bluff.”

  The dream sensation of helpless panic was creeping up on her. “But I have to find Seth before he gets to that meeting.”

  “How? Even if Riggs hadn’t cut the phone, command central was this office, and you just killed it. Davy’s the computer geek around here, not me. He or Seth could put this mess back together, but I can’t.”

  She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. “I can use the monitor Ed used to find me.”

  Connor shook his head. “Five kilometer radius. You’re out of range. The only way to find them now would be to look them up on a master terminal running X-Ray Specs software that’s keyed to the right transmitter codes.”

  “Victor’s system,” she whispered. “It’s Victor’s transmitter.”

  Connor’s face went thoughtful. “Yeah. Victor’s system.”

  “Where are the keys to the car, Connor?”

  He shook his head. “Forget it. You’re not—”

  “The keys, Connor.” She yanked Ed’s gun out of her pants and leveled it at him. “Now.”