Play Nice (6 page)

“They’ll be waiting for you at your place,” Dade continued. “That’s where we’ll catch up to them. I want to know who these fuckers are.”

As much as her instincts told her to run, run like hell, she knew he was right. She wanted a face-to-face with them, too, though for entirely different reasons. She already knew who they were. She wanted to know how they’d found her. How they’d penetrated the illusion of safety she’d worked so hard to build around herself. She’d been careful. But somehow, somewhere, she’d slipped up. She needed to know where.

Because if she got out of this alive, she vowed she’d never slip up again.

“You’re out of bullets,” she said, amazed at the false calm in her voice.

“Glove box.”

She pulled the compartment open, lifting a box of ammunition onto her lap. She reached across the console, grabbing for the empty gun still shoved, along with hers, in his waistband.

Immediately his hand covered her skin, fingers closing around her hand like a vice grip.

She winced. “I’m loading your weapon for you.”

He looked down at her hand, then up at her eyes. His still dead black.

He paused a moment, then nodded, let go of her hand.

Gingerly she took his weapon, loading the ammunition into the magazine, then set it down on the console between them. She would have given anything to be able to reload her own gun, but at the moment that wasn’t an option.

One bullet.

She glanced across the interior of the SUV at him again. If it came down to it, that would be all she needed.

She leaned against the headrest, her mind turning over a million different thoughts, questions, scenarios. Dade had been watching her, that much was apparent. It was unnerving, jarring, knowing that someone had been peeking into her life uninvited. How much did he know about her? How long had he been watching? Was her apartment bugged? The shelter?

And, maybe most importantly, why?

She took a deep breath, forcing questions she couldn’t answer now out of her head as they approached her street. Questions could wait. What she needed now was focus. Keen focus on the threat at hand.

They’ve found you.

No matter how many deep breaths she took, that thought had her biting back desperation and panic, nausea growing in her belly, tears she wanted desperately to shed threatening the back of her eyes. Deep down, she’d always known this day would come. But somehow she’d tricked herself into hoping that knowledge was wrong. That she really could live a normal life, that Anna Smith was her future and that her past didn’t matter, didn’t exist, a distant memory she never needed to call up again. Now that little kernel of hope had been completely crushed. The normalcy she’d pretended to live for the last fifteen years shattered in an instant. It was clear now that her life in San Francisco had all been an illusion, a failed round in a game she couldn’t hope to win. Today had proven beyond a doubt that as hard as she tried, there was no denying who she really was.

She’d never be able to outrun Anya.

CHAPTER 4

Dade turned the corner, and Anna leaned forward in anticipation as her apartment came into view. In the early morning sunlight the tall, yellow building trimmed in white wooden latticework looked bright and fresh, the last of the rain clinging to the paneling and Victorian moldings along the roofline. It had once supported a large, wraparound porch, long ago demolished to make way for a more modern lobby when it had been converted to apartments. Now the face sat back mere feet from the street, nondescript squares of lawn separating it from the sidewalk. Cars lined both sides of the street, making it impossible for Anna to check the interiors of each for signs of life as she would have liked.

For signs of her attackers laying in wait.

Her hands twitched in her lap, feeling oddly empty without a weapon.

Dade double-parked the SUV beside a green Chevy dotted in rust spots and motioned Anna out of the car. She complied, head down, using the Chevy as cover. He crouched low, moving with catlike stealth as he came around the car, keeping his back close to the SUV. He held his gun in both hands, tight to his body, though she could see his index finger rested loosely on the trigger. His eyes scanned the street. He quickly assessed the terrain before giving the slightest nod of his head in her direction, motioning for her to follow.

She did. One eye on the front door of her building, one on Dade’s back, silently calculating just how fast she’d have to be to outrun him.

He moved quickly, fluidly, across the grass, up the front steps, pausing only briefly at the wood and glass door, before motioning her forward.

“Key?” he asked.

Anna shook her head. “It was in my purse.”

Dade didn’t hesitate, ramming the butt of his gun down hard on the door handle, splintering the old wood surrounding it. He shoved a shoulder into the door, and it easily pushed open, allowing him inside.

She followed. But she took just one step before he blocked her path with a sturdy arm, flattening her against the front wall as he scanned the interior. She held her breath, felt her fingertips tingling with that familiar surge of what was to come.

Satisfied, he turned to her, nodded toward the stairway, moved forward, gun trained above his head as he ascended. She was a quick step behind him, wishing like hell she had a weapon. It was like walking into the lion’s cage armed only with a juicy flank steak. She could draw them to her, but once they got there she had no recourse but to trust Dade’s aim.

Trust. The word instantly made her nervous.

They reached the second floor landing, opening up to three apartments, all three doors shut. The smell of frying bacon wafted under the door of the first, the third vibrating with the loud bass rhythms of her downstairs neighbor’s stereo. Dade gave them only a quick glance before continuing on, climbing the next flight. As they neared the top, he put a hand out, urging Anna to wait as he took the last three stairs, stepping onto the tiny landing.

It was empty. Silent. Anna was sure her ragged breath echoed like screams in the still air. But Dade didn’t seem to notice, his full attention riveted to Anna’s front door. He took slow steps forward, his sneakers squeaking against the hardwood. One hand reached out, pushing on the door.

It easily swung inward.

His eyes immediately cut to Anna in a silent question. She shook her head. There was no way she’d leave her place unlocked.

They’d beaten her here.

Dade took a step forward, over the threshold, then froze, his eyes cutting to the apartment to the left. He stiffened. Anna followed his gaze.

A thin line of red liquid oozed out from under her neighbor’s front door.

Anna’s stomach seized. Her right hand twitched again for the comforting grip of a nonexistent gun.

Mrs. Olivia.

With a backward glance at Anna’s door, Dade moved to the left, gun straight out in front of him, his body rigid. Anna left her crouching position in the stairwell and followed a step behind, keeping one eye on her own door, expecting armed gunmen to jump out at any minute.

“Stay close,” Dade whispered, untucking his shirt and using the hem to cover his prints as he slowly turned the doorknob to Mrs. Olivia’s apartment.

She did, standing just at his back.

The first thing she saw was a foot. It was encased in a pink house slipper, worn on the sole, twisted backwards at an unhealthy angle. Mrs. Olivia was wearing a matching pink housecoat, buttoned clear up to the top, the shade pale, like her halo of white curls, still perfectly coiffed in place as she lay sprawled on the floor just inside the door. Her eyes were open, wide behind her bifocals. A deep red stain spread across her chest, leaking onto the floor, creating a trail of sticky red as it congealed along the door frame.

Numb. Just go numb.

Dade did a silent sweep of the apartment, moving quickly through the tiny room. A television sat in the corner, muted as
The Price Is Right
flickered across the screen. A glass of milk, half finished, sat next to a faded armchair, the bed along the far wall unmade. The kitchen was a carbon copy of Anna’s, though the bathroom was situated to the left, opposite Anna’s apartment. Anna watched Dade enter, only to emerge a moment later lowering his weapon. The apartment was clear.

He leaned down beside the body and placed two fingers at the side of Mrs. Olivia’s neck, even though it was obvious no blood pulsed there now. He looked up, shook his head silently from side to side.

Anna nodded, took shallow breaths, tried not to remember the last time she’d spoken to Mrs. Olivia. She’d been complaining about the noise, saying that Lenny’s barking was so loud she couldn’t hear
Jeopardy!
Anna had promised she’d do her best to keep him quiet. She’d ended up feeding him close to an entire box of bacon treats just to keep him complacent enough to stave off an angry call to the landlord. She’d cursed Mrs. Olivia all night long as Lenny’s digestive system had protested, emitting enough noxious gases to warrant a Haz-mat. The woman had been nosey and annoying.

But she hadn’t deserved this.

Dade let out an audible breath through flared nostrils before standing.

“You knew her?”

“Not well,” she answered truthfully.

“There’s nothing we can do for her now,” he said, then he moved past Mrs. Olivia’s prone form, raising his gun in front of him again as he stepped back out onto the landing.

Anna followed, forcing herself not to look at the body of her neighbor.

I’m sorry.

Instead, she focused on the rigid line of Dade’s back, moving toward her apartment, pushing the door open, disappearing inside. Again the thought occurred to her to flee, run now, run as fast and as far from here as she could. But she knew she stood little chance of escape against these men. None if she fled unarmed. So, instead, she crossed the threshold a beat after Dade, staying as close to his back as possible.

They’d broken easily through her locks, the brass fittings dangling uselessly in their splintered wooden settings. Her security chain had been snapped in half, the alarm box ripped open, exposing a jumbled mass of wires, completely disabled. All the measures she’d installed to protect herself were laid bare as the childish illusions they were.

And they’d been just as thorough with the rest of her belongings. Every dish in Anna’s kitchen lay in pieces on the floor, knives, silverware, utensils littered throughout. Every piece of clothing from her closet was strewn haphazardly across the apartment. Her bed had been plucked clean of sheets, the mattress upended. Stuffing from her sofa covered every surface, cushions slit systematically one after the other. A pile of bullets sat near the linen closet where she kept her stash of emergency ammo. The chaos was designed to distract her, but she knew already what they’d taken. The laptop from her desk, bills from the table by the door, and a toothbrush from her bathroom. Recent activity, records, DNA. That’s what she’d take.

Dade did another sweep, even though they both knew that had someone been in the apartment, they’d have been targets by now. The gunmen had come and gone. They were too late.

“Lenny?” Anna called softly, not entirely trusting the steadiness of her own voice.

Silence.

Tears pricked the back of her eyelids, but she refused to shed them, hanging on instead to that blessed numbness.

“Lenny?” she asked again, scanning the room, praying to see some pile of clothes shift, some whimper from beneath her bed, any sign of life.

Dade circled the room, pausing in the kitchen. He shoved his gun into his pants, reaching down to pick up the discarded bag of dog chow. He held it up and shook it, the few remaining pieces of kibble bouncing around inside.

A wet, black nose emerged from the closet next to the bed.

Anna sucked in a breath, diving toward it.

“Lenny!”

She threw open the doors, wrapping her arms around his neck as he regaled her with wet, slobbery kisses. This time she couldn’t help it. Warm, wet tears slid down her cheeks as she hugged his furry neck to her face. Jesus, he was just some dumb animal. She didn’t know why it meant so much to her to see him alive. But it did. As if he were the one thing in the world she still had, the one thing that hadn’t been ripped from her this morning.

Dade’s rough voice cut into her relief. “We have to go.”

Reluctantly she released her grip, using the back of her hand to wipe at her cheeks.

“There’s a body next door. The police won’t be far behind us.”

Anna sniffed. Nodded. “Let me get some things first.”

Lenny followed her as she dug through the mess. She spied a duffel bag in the corner and grabbed a change of clothes at random, quickly shoving them in. Then she crossed to the dresser on the far wall.

The drawers had been pulled out, two of them smashed into unrecognizable splinters. She stuck her hand in the top opening, slipping her fingers into the crack between the body of the dresser and the top rim. It was a tight fit, one that she knew large, masculine hands wouldn’t be able to manage. She ran her fingers along the edge until she felt raised plastic numbers. She dug with her fingernails, prying the credit card away from the wood until it slipped loose into her waiting palm. Behind it, a plastic ID fell away from the wood as well. She quickly shoved them both into the back pocket of her jeans.