Noise. An intrusive, annoying clanging, too close to her head to be her alarm because her phone was charging in the kitchen. She’d have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm.
The bed shifted as the warm body beside her reached for the nightstand. Through the stupor of sleep she heard Matt fumbling for his iPhone in the mess on top, then a solid thunk as something hit the carpeted floor—the Sig or his department-issued Glock, probably. Maybe the knife. Possibly the economy-sized bottle of lotion she slathered on her hands before she went to bed. Most likely a gun.
“I’ll take it,” she said, her voice thick, trusting he’d hand her the shrill electronic device, not a semiautomatic.
He dropped the vibrating, buzzing phone on her abdomen and rolled onto his back. “Christ,” he muttered.
She sat up, then paid the price for moving. He’d held her in place by gripping the hip that hit the linoleum the night someone shot out her windows, so when she sat up fresh twinges shot through the joint. Muscles in her thighs and calves protested vehemently when she moved.
None of that compared to the shredded ache she felt in her heart.
She swiped at the screen to shut off the alarm, then automatically checked various accounts without really seeing the comments and replies. It was something to buffer her against the turbulent emotions eddying in the air.
“Time is it?” he asked, his voice morning thick.
“Noon. Sorry. I should have set it back an hour, but I fell asleep instead.” And she’d forgotten to charge the phone as well. She’d lain awake, unwilling to follow him down into the bar and badger him further but exhaustion finally won.
She felt like she would never be rested again.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I think that’s my line,” she said.
His arm covered his eyes, and his chest rose and fell evenly. Too evenly. In for a count of four, out for a count of four. Repeat. She looked at the hand loosely curled on his chest. The thin skin covering his knuckles looked like her heart felt.
He wasn’t going to answer her. Finally she said, “I’m fine.” Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes. She blinked hard, and after a few moments the sensation faded. “I’m sorry, Matt. I pushed when I shouldn’t have.”
I wanted something I shouldn’t want … something I can’t have.
“I’m sorry too.” He lifted his arm from across his face, looked her right in the eye. “I was too rough.”
“It was fine. You were fine.” She could handle that. Handle more. “I won’t break, Matt.”
“I might.”
She knew he’d meant to make a joke and defuse the tension, but the words sounded like he’d forced them out through steel wool. A wave of mortified regret crawled up her throat. Ten seconds earlier she’d told herself she had to stop pushing, and here she was … pushing.
Give him some space, some time. “I’m going to get in the shower.”
“Okay.”
She untangled her legs from the light quilt and managed to walk to the bathroom without stumbling, then managed to shower without crying. Fifteen minutes later she stood in front of her tiny closet with her hair wrapped in a towel, wearing her bra and the short black skirt with the small front pocket for her iPhone. She pulled out a white sleeveless cashmere turtleneck, yanked off the towel, pulled the sweater over her head, and slid the phone into the pocket so she’d remember to charge it. She looked over her shoulder at him. Matt was steadily going about his business, avoiding her eyes. “Make sure you charge that,” he said.
“It’ll be fine as long as I don’t make a call,” she replied. “I need makeup more.”
She stood back to let him into the shower, the thin plastic curtain like a brick wall between them. She dried her hair and scrunched the waves into a simple style. She’d begun to dab concealer under her eyes when she heard a soft thump and a single knock at the door.
The UPS guy, delivering her latest shipment of boxed groceries she’d ordered online. She walked out of the bathroom, gently unchained and unbolted the door to the landing, and crouched down to grab the small white box.
She looked up into the barrel of a dull black gun. Lyle held it, staring down at her, expressionless. Staring at a gun looked just as unremarkable on television as getting shot at, but in real life Eve’s entire body went numb.
Lyle took the box from her and shoved it onto the counter beside the door. “Downstairs. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, as her brain kicked into overdrive. In a split second she ran through the circumstances. Matt’s small arsenal was in the bedroom on the nightstand. He was in the shower, defenseless. She was an idiot.
“Sure you are, Evie,” he said gently. He gave her a smile so full of toothy malice the hair stood up on her arms. “Because if you don’t I’ll shoot you. And then I’ll leave you here and go and shoot your father, your mother, your motherfucking brother. I’m sick of this fucking bar and all the trouble it’s caused me. It ends now.”
She went utterly still. Natalie, her best friend, or Cesar, supporting his family, or Pauli, who was just a kid. Her family.
The shower shut off. In a few seconds Matt would dry off and walk through the bathroom door, and maybe Lyle would shoot him too.
But he didn’t know Matt was a cop.
Matt would find her.
She hurried past Lyle, out the door and onto the landing.
“Nice and quiet going down those stairs,” he said, eyeing her four-inch heels. “Don’t want lover boy getting alarmed.”
No, they didn’t want that, not until lover boy had gone and gotten all of his biggest friends with their semiautomatic pistols and concussion grenades. Lyle gripped her arm, hustled her across the parking lot, and shoved her into the backseat of the SUV. His cell rang. “Keep an eye on her,” he snapped at Travis, sitting in the driver’s seat, then slammed her door and took the call with a snarled “Yeah?”
Twisting sideways to fumble for the seat belt, she pulled her iPhone from the pocket of her skirt and slipped it between her thigh and the seat. After she fastened the belt she swiped her thumb across the screen to wake it, and tapped the phone button.
“Hey, Travis,” she said as she lowered the volume. She bent over and pretended to adjust her heel, dialing a memorized phone number, praying adrenaline would make her fingers accurate.
Voice mail. The voice was faint, audible only to her ears as the relentlessly pleasant female operator asked the caller to leave a message. She hung up, waited a few seconds, pressed Call twice to redial the number.
Oh shit, Matt! Oh shit oh shit oh shit! Please answer your phone!
Travis wouldn’t meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. She’d known him her whole life. He’d always worked to ingratiate himself into whatever circle was closest. The fact that he wasn’t chatting her up, let alone looking her in the eye made her stomach lurch. Driven by the most basic impulse of all—survival—she reached for the door handle.
The locks clicked shut. She looked over the back of the driver’s seat at Travis, who still wasn’t looking at her.
“They’ll meet us at the warehouse,” Lyle said as he slid into the Escalade’s leather seats. The truck pulled away from Eye Candy, into traffic.
* * *
After a firefight, routine mattered. Shower and dress. Jeans, polo, running shoes, gun at his right ankle, knife. Stick to the routine, the last stand against feelings, memories, images. Eve walking up the stairs with a sociopath. Eve taunting him, Eve trembling under him until he’d wrung every last drop of fight out of her and she turned to flame in his arms. The misery on her face this morning.
The silence in the living room triggered a mental alarm. Maybe she was in the office, doing paperwork. He walked into the living room and saw a package on the counter, but the office door was closed.
“Eve?” he called as he opened the door.
The office was dark, the door leading down the spiral staircase to Eye Candy’s dance floor closed and dead-bolted from the inside. No light shone through the curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Eve!” he called again. His voice tauntingly bounced around the cavernous space as he hauled open the door and launched himself at the stairs, his hands skidding down the curved railing. He jogged into the storeroom, the dish room, then behind the bar. Nothing.
“Eve!”
She’d vanished. He took the curving stairs three at a time and bolted through the office, back into her apartment. Her purse was still on the counter. The pegs by the back door held her car keys. On the landing he scanned the empty alley, then dashed down the wooden staircase and around the side of the building. The parking lot was empty but for his Jeep.
Cold certainty crawled up his spine and settled into the base of his brain. She was gone, taken from the apartment from under his nose, while he was in the shower.
He was drowning. He knew how it felt, a deceptive lack of feeling that marked the leading edge of a tsunami. Then the surge hit. He stood stock-still as the wave engulfed him—fear, anguish, terror, anger rising inside him, forcing their way up his chest, into his throat—then he was moving. He had to get away from this rampaging, acid-skinned, sharp-clawed thing inside him, threatening to gut him from the inside out.
He was headed for his Jeep, when his phone, slipped into his front pocket, buzzed. Chad’s cell had a distinctive ringtone. Matt’s was an old-fashioned bell-tone ring. He pulled it from his pocket. Eve’s cell number appeared on the screen.
Oh shit.
He tapped Answer.
“—a little over the top back there, don’t you think?”
He immediately muted the call, so he could hear her but nothing from his surroundings would be audible to Eve or anyone with her. Her voice sounded distant, melded with the radio, like the phone wasn’t up to her mouth.
He could make out Lyle’s voice, but his reply was too muffled to understand. But it sounded dismissive. As if Eve didn’t matter anymore.
“Would you turn that off, please? I hear music so much at Eye Candy, I hate listening to it when I’m not at work.”
That was bullshit, pure and simple. She must have gotten an assent, because the background noise shut off.
“Much better,” she said. A pause, then, “Travis, I heard Maria’s working at Two Slices. Is her mom watching the kids?”
Fight back the terror, the emotion that would get her killed. Phone to his ear, he sprinted to the sidewalk and pulled up a mental map of Thirteenth Street, running through the East Side, thirteen blocks from the river that formed the city’s eastern boundary. The next mention will either be Spattered Ink or the crazy psychic doing business out of her house with about thirty cats for company.
“Can you believe Madame LaMoue is still in business? She gets a booth at the East Side street fair every year. Local color. That’s how I describe her to people considering opening up shop on the East Side. Every community needs someone with the eye.”
No response from Lyle, but Matt was in the Jeep, the gas pedal floored. He used Chad’s cell to dial Sorenson.
“Lyle’s got Eve,” he said when she answered. “Took her out of the apartment while I was in the shower. They’re moving south on Thirteenth Street. I’m on my way to the precinct.”
“Shit is about to go down,” Sorenson said. “Caleb Webber just came in. He got an anonymous call suggesting he track down his father. Pastor Webber made it to the men’s breakfast at seven but not the volunteer lunch at noon. No one’s seen him since eight a.m.”
“Not answering his cell?”
“He doesn’t carry one. Caleb checked the restaurant because sometimes his dad stays and works there, and his car’s still in the parking lot, doors locked. No signs of his dad.”
“It wouldn’t take much to overpower him,” Matt said. “I’m ninety seconds away.”
He braked to a halt in the parking lot at the back of the building. Both phones in hand, he sprinted through the back door, shouldering aside officers in his haste to get to the team. Hawthorn, Sorenson, McCormick, and a couple more uniforms crowded into a conference room with Caleb Webber.
Caleb looked over Matt’s shoulder. “Where’s Eve?”
“Gone,” Matt said, then set his phone down on the table.
“Jesus fucking Christ! You said you’d—” Caleb began, but the sound of Eve’s voice echoing tinnily from Matt’s phone cut him off mid-bellow.
“Where are we?” Matt could hear the fear running under Eve’s question. A car door slammed shut, then Eve said, “Is that the old Tyson plant?”
“Has she been relaying her position the whole time?” Lieutenant Hawthorn asked.
“Yes,” Matt said. “She’s dropping hints like bread crumbs, and there’s long stretches of silence. Two Slices, Madame LaMoue, then a shooting that happened at Lassom Park.” All heading toward the river, toward the maze of abandoned warehouses weighing down the East Side.
“Counselor, make a list of places your father could be,” Hawthorn said. “We’ll dispatch a squad car to check them out.”
“Mom checked his appointment book. He wasn’t due anywhere until this afternoon,” Caleb said.
Sorenson stood in front of the large map of the East Side. “The Tyson plant is at Sixth and Harrison,” she said as she tugged on a bulletproof vest.
“And before that, at First and Hancock,” Caleb said, moving to stand beside her. He tapped an intersection an inch further north and east from Sorenson’s. “Tyson moved operations in the nineties before they shut down. If they’re deep in the alleys, Eve’s not going to know exactly where she is. She’s got a shit sense of direction.”
Matt moved the phone to a safer location and searched for his size in the pile of gear on the table. Hawthorn and Sorenson were suiting up. McCormick and the other uniform were already in bulletproof vests, but McCormick was checking his equipment, patting his extra clip, turning down the volume on his radio.
“What’s he doing down there?” Sorenson asked under her breath. “It’s not near the projects.”
Caleb surveyed this ratcheting up of firepower. “Isn’t this the kind of situation for the SWAT team?”
“They’re serving a warrant on a violent offender in north Lancaster,” Hawthorn said.
McCormick woke up Hawthorn’s laptop. “Is her phone GPS enabled?”
“Yes,” Caleb said, still staring at Hawthorn. “You’ve only got one SWAT team?” he asked disbelievingly.
“Yes,” Hawthorn said tersely, tuning his radio and staking claim to a channel. “A city this size barely justifies one team, and they all have other duties.”
“What’s her phone number?” McCormick asked.
Matt and Caleb rattled it off in unison. Caleb’s eyes locked with his. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not,” Hawthorn said.
“The hell I’m not. That’s my sister,” Caleb said, pointing at Matt’s phone.
“I’ve got her,” McCormick said, his gaze focused on the computer screen. “She’s at First and Hancock.”
“How accurate is the read?” Caleb asked.
“Depending on her phone and service, could be accurate to within inches, or it could be pinging off the nearest tower,” Matt said.
“So she just as easily could be at Sixth and Harrison. That’s a lot of territory in blind alleys. I grew up running those alleys. I know them better than anyone in this room,” Caleb said.
“Regardless, you are not coming with us,” Hawthorn said imperturbably.
Matt could see Caleb assessing his chances. There were six police officers in the room, and adrenaline was running high. “This won’t help Eve,” Matt said.
“She’s my sister,” he said again, helplessness twisting his features.
Sorenson looked over her shoulder. “How would you characterize your relationship with Murphy?” she asked.
Caleb blew out a deep breath and gave her a searing look. “What do you think, Detective? He hates my guts.”
“Then you need to stay here,” she said quietly. “Best-case scenario we resolve this quickly and without injury. Worst-case scenario, you can’t help us deal with Murphy. Stay here. Please.” And she turned back to the map.
“Which warehouse would Eve mean by ‘the old Tyson plant’?” Matt asked Caleb.
He shook his head. “Either one.”
Eve’s voice rang out. “Where‘s Lyle, Travis?”
“Two targets,” Hawthorn said, making eye contact with each of the officers to make sure they knew this. “Travis Jenkins and Lyle Murphy. Assume someone else was waiting for them at the warehouse, to make sure it was empty.”
Caleb stared at the phone. “Travis’s not answering. That’s not good,” he said. “He’s an obsequious little suck and he’d lick Eve’s boots if she’d let him. If he’s gone silent, she doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Look, I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know where Lyle went. This is freaking me out a little.” Matt could hear panic in Eve’s voice. Keep it together, he thought, as much to himself as her. You’ve got this. “Is that the Tribune’s old production plant?”
“Sixth and Harrison,” McCormick said. Two more uniformed officers had been rounded up after a trip to the city jail, briefed in low tones, and now focused intently on Matt’s cell phone.
Still nothing from Travis.
Hawthorn and Caleb joined Matt and Sorenson in front of the map. “These are the old warehouses from the days when shipping along the river was as important as railroad, right?” Sorenson asked.
“Yes. They’re all two-story warehouses,” Caleb added, obviously desperate to help. “Big. Lots of open space on the ground floor, maybe an office upstairs along one wall. They’ve been empty for years. If the redevelopment plan passes, they’re all razed for the business park.”
Matt tapped the corner of First and Hancock with his index finger. “I’m betting on this one,” he said. “The river.”
“Oh, that’s clever,” Sorenson breathed, eyes alight. “Old-school clever. You think they’re moving the drugs into the city via the river.”
“It’s a good strategy,” Matt said. “They drive the drugs to one of the state parks south of here, then move them upriver on fishing boats and unload into one of the warehouses at night, when no one’s around. We don’t patrol the river, so it’s less risky than driving through the city.”
“You don’t patrol the river?” Caleb said incredulously.
“Lost funding two years ago,” Hawthorn said without looking at him.
“I’m developing a strong opinion about the current bond issue,” Caleb muttered.
“Get out.”
The room went silent as everyone stared at Matt’s cell, relaying the drama unfolding in a back alley. There was a scuffling noise, then, “Ouch! Good grief, Lyle, take it easy!”
A rumble, slow then speeding up before clunking to a stop, obscured Eve’s next words. “Sounds like a garage door,” Hawthorn said.
“The loading docks down there all had big manual doors,” Caleb said. “We used to pop the locks off the doors and set up skateboard ramps inside until the cops ran us off.”
Matt shook his head in increasing frustration. “Still nothing that tells us which warehouse.”
“She’d tell us if she could,” Caleb bristled.
“I know she would,” Matt snapped back, then took a deep breath. “But if we head to the wrong one—”
Caleb couldn’t understand. Every second counted. Milliseconds counted. Sweeping the wrong warehouse would waste precious minutes, not to mention the possibility of losing the tactical advantage of surprise if someone saw them and called Lyle.
She could be beaten, raped, or killed on the filthy cement floor of an abandoned warehouse while he listened, unable to find her, helpless to stop it.
Hawthorn looked at Matt and Sorenson. “We go with Matt’s instincts,” Sorenson said. “First and Hancock.”
“Dorchester, you’re on the roof,” Hawthorn said as he handed Matt a rifle, then pointed at the four uniformed officers. “You two take Harrison to the river and come up along the canal trail. You two, come around from the north,” he said, pointing at the map to the alley running behind the warehouse at First and Harrison. “Let us know when that alley’s secure. Sorenson, you’re with Dorchester. McCormick, you’re with me.”
A logical division of duties, given that Matt achieved expert marksman status before he left the Army, and he’d kept up his skills. But he wasn’t operating on logic. “Sir, put Sorenson on the roof,” he said. “She’s as good as I am, and I want point.”
Caleb looked at Sorenson, both eyebrows raised. She met his eyes without flinching, then looked at Hawthorn. “I am,” she confirmed.
“No,” Hawthorn said.
“Sir.” Matt fisted his hands on his hips, squared up, and looked his lieutenant right in the eye. “I want point.”
Hawthorn heard Matt on multiple levels—Army, cop, man. His LT studied him for a moment, his gaze completely expressionless. “Sorenson, you’re on the roof.”
Matt swapped Sorenson the rifle for extra clips for his Glock and shoved them into his vest pocket.
“Lyle, who’s that?” Fear made Eve’s voice high, uncertain.
“Oh, no,” Caleb said. His gaze locked with Matt’s across the room. “No.”
A laugh filtered into the room from Matt’s cell phone, a low, derisive, mocking laugh, taking pleasure in her uncertainty and growing fear. Eve’s voice rose, loud and panicked, and cut off his train of thought. “Oh my God!” she cried. “Dad!”
* * *
Eve stumbled across the cracked, dirty cement floor, twisting her heel on a loose chunk of concrete before falling to her knees at her father’s side. The sun streamed through broken windows high above, light and shadow lying in jagged angles over him.
“Dad,” she said again, reaching out to steady him. His face was waxy gray, the skin slack and shining with sweat. His arms trembled as he pushed himself up.
Lyle, circling the two of them, kicked and knocked her father’s hand out from under his shoulder. He dropped heavily to the floor again, and this time made no move to get up.
“Stop it!” she screamed at Lyle over her shoulder. “Stop this right now! Do you hear me?”
Under the cover of hysterics, she slid her hand down her father’s arm, the comforting move intended to cover transferring the cell phone to his palm. He pressed his palm to his chest, either to conceal the phone or assuage the pain.
“He had a heart attack last year,” she continued, no need to fake the tremor or fear in her voice. “Please, let him go!”
In response Lyle spat on the floor by her father’s head. “Ready to talk business, Evie?”
“First, let him go.”
Lyle laughed. “You’re in no position to negotiate, Evie. In fact, by the time we’re done, you’re going to be thinking of really creative ways to keep me happy. You think Mr. New Boyfriend’s going to be okay with that?”
Her brain couldn’t keep up, spinning wheels at seeing the terrifying emptiness in Lyle’s eyes where a soul should be. It looked like something she should recognize, but she couldn’t find the word. “Who?” she asked, distracted. Because she didn’t have a new boyfriend. She had a cop.
He dropped to his heels beside her, and despite her tough façade she flinched back. “Not a good sign if you can’t remember his name. Chad. He’s in your bar, in your apartment. In your bed. So serious, so quickly,” Lyle said, studying her face. “Are you in love with him?”
Evil. That was the word. Evil. After a lifetime of hearing about it in church, she was seeing it personified for the very first time. She controlled the impulse to look at the phone, still hidden in her father’s palm. “Maybe,” she said
“Maybe? The Eve I remember was either in love or not in love. So impetuous, all these whirlwind, passionate affairs. You were like something off a soap opera.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. “That was ten years ago. It was high school,” she snapped.
“Do you love him?” he said again.
The nearly inaudible words somehow drew Travis’s attention from his position standing guard by the loading dock’s door. Eve looked at him, wide-eyed and pleading. Maybe he wasn’t having as much fun playing with the big boys as he thought he would. Maybe he’d help her.
Travis didn’t move.
Dying in this warehouse was looking more and more likely. She didn’t want the words to go unsaid. She knew the core of Matt Dorchester, and she loved that man. It didn’t matter if he could love her back. She loved him. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I love him, but he’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
Lyle dug his fingers into Eve’s arm and dragged her to her feet. “You think Lancaster cops don’t have something to do with this? Don’t lie to me, Evangeline.”
For the first time in her life, impulse compelled her to freeze. Still holding her, Lyle swung his gun, clenched in his fist, at her face. She screamed and ducked, heard her father’s weak shout from the floor behind her. The blow glanced off the top of her skull. Lyle hauled her upright and stepped into his swing, this time with the full weight of his body behind his arm. When he connected, white-hot pain exploded under her eye, replacing her bones with a strange sense of weightlessness. Then the back of her head hit something hard and the world went black.