Fifty-Nine

Sabrina had Ben drop her off at home. It was just before ten. The second day of SWAT recertification was shooting qualifiers, which meant that Nickels didn’t have to be to the range until noon. With any luck she could catch him before he left for the day.

“I have to talk to Nick—get him to take Val and Lucy somewhere until this is all over,” she said while Ben pulled curbside to let her out.

“Michael already took care of that,” Ben said.

She paused as she was getting out of the car and looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

“Last night,” Ben said with a shrug. “Michael arranged to get them out of town; they should be gone by the end of the day. He didn’t tell you about it?”

She shook her head, trying to reconcile the man she woke up to this morning with someone who made arrangements to keep her family safe. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.” She gave Ben a quick smile. “I’ll just do a quick walk-through, make sure everything’s okay, and then I’ll be over,” she said to him, shutting the car door before rounding the hood and heading up the driveway. Nick’s truck was gone but Val’s car was in the driveway, so she headed for the back door and let herself in. From the kitchen she could hear the murmur of voices in the living room. Val was talking to someone.

“Hey, it’s me,” she called out as she locked the door and reset the alarm.

“Hey, we’re in here,” Val answered. “Grab a glass if you want mimosas.”

Mimosas? Sabrina looked at her watch as she came through the dining room. “You know, adding orange juice doesn’t negate the fact that you’re drinking champagne on a Wednesday morning,” she said, looking up to see Val sitting in the living room with the woman she’d seen on the porch yesterday. Obviously Nick hadn’t shared their imminent travel plans with his wife.

“One won’t kill you, right Courtney?” Val smiled. “Besides, we’re celebrating. You remember Courtney?” she said with a be nice warning look.

“I’m on duty.” She so did not have time for this. “And yes, I remember.” She jerked her mouth into a quick smile. “Nice to see you again. What are you celebrating?”

“Only that she has the cutest baby in the whole wide world,” Courtney said, tipping a bit more champagne into her flute. “Our photo shoot this morning was fantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever shot a more photogenic little girl.”

Something about the way she said shot stiffened Sabrina’s spine. “Where is Lucy?”

“Sleeping,” Val said, taking a sip of her drink, sloshing a little over the side of her flute.

She looked around the room. Nothing seemed out of place but, Val’s day drinking aside, there was definitely something off about this whole scenario. “Where’s Nick? He doesn’t have qualifiers for another couple of hours.”

“Devon?” Val said, taking another drink, looking at the woman sitting across from her. “She calls my husband Nick—he used to be in love with her.” Val looked up at her then with a look that might have been jealousy, but it passed too quickly to cause anything more than a momentary clench in her gut. “Devon was gone when we got here—just us girls.”

“He was never in love with me, he was just too stubborn to admit it,” Sabrina said.

Before Val could answer Courtney leaned in, taking the glass from her friend’s hand. “Why don’t you go get the proofs from our shoot and show them to Sabrina?”

Val nodded and stood, the tension that had suddenly sprung up between them set aside. “Good idea! You’re gonna love these, wait here …” she said, her voice trailing down the stairs.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Sabrina cut Courtney a scathing glare. “What the hell did you do to her?”

The woman sitting in front of her gave her a wide-eyed look. “Me? I didn’t do anything. You, on the other hand …” She wagged her finger back and forth. “I think the two of you have some deep-seated issues to work out.”

“Val and I are fine,” she said, the insistence in her voice sounded like a lie, even to her.

“Everything can’t be fine all the time, Sabrina,” Courtney said, lifting Val’s flute in a mock toast. “Honesty—one of alcohol’s finer side effects. You should try it sometime.”

“How many has she had?”

“Just this.” Courtney set the half-empty glass on the table between them and sat back in her chair.

“Really? Because she looks like she’s half in the bag.”

“She’s a bit of a lightweight—and totally starved for fun,” Courtney said, slouching back in her chair, taking the champagne bottle with her, leg draped over the low-slung arm. She looked to be around thirty, her long brown hair pulled away from her face in a simple pony-
tail. Her jeans were faded, frayed at the cuffs. Her T-shirt had a picture of Einstein with the words keepin’ it relative across the bottom. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and took a drink before continuing. “But I like her. She’s … uncomplicated. What you see is what you get.” She tipped the bottle in her direction. “Not like us.”

Apprehension tingled along Sabrina’s scalp. She stood. “I think you’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”

Now Courtney laughed, swinging the leg that was hooked around the chair’s arm in a lazy circle. “I haven’t even gotten started.”

“I’m sorry; let me be clear.” Sabrina leaned over the coffee table, putting her very much in the other woman’s personal space. “Get the fuck out of my house. Now.”

“We’ll leave in a minute …” Courtney said, looking up at her and smiling as if she hadn’t just been asked to leave. “You know, she barely knows me. Didn’t even ask me my last name. That’s another thing I like about our Val; despite her harrowing, near-death experience at the hands of a serial killer—a harrowing, near-death experience that was completely your fault, by the way—she’s still trusting. Another thing you and I lack.”

“What is your last name?” Sabrina heard herself ask. Somewhere upstairs she heard a muted thump, like something heavy had fallen onto the carpeted floor.

Val.

She reached for her SIG, had it cleared and aimed at Courtney’s chest in the time it took to draw a breath. “What the fuck did you do to her?”

“Please, one question at a time.”

Sabrina answered by thumbing the hammer back on her SIG.

“I’m chipped, the same as Michael,” Courtney said, that playful tone of hers suddenly gone. “I die, my chip goes dark; my chip goes dark, your boyfriend’s an oozing pile of muck that’ll have to be cleaned up by a hazmat team.”

Sabrina reset the hammer but kept hold of the gun.

“Good. We’re beginning to understand each other.” Courtney smiled, setting the bottle on the table. “Now, don’t get mad, but … I drugged your friend,” she said, holding up her hands in a stay calm gesture. “She’s fine; it’s nothing life-threatening. She’ll wake up in about an hour with a pounding headache, swearing to never drink champagne again. And Lucy is fine too, scout’s honor.” To prove it, she picked up the baby monitor on the end table and turned up the volume. Behind the soft crackle of static, Sabrina could hear the baby’s even breaths.

“I know who you are,” she whispered, unable to understand how she’d been so dumb … so blind. “What do you want?”

“It’s simple. I want you to disarm yourself and follow me out that door,” she said, finally standing. “There’s a car waiting that will take us to the airport.”

“And then?”

“And then we’re going to get on a plane and fly away,” Courtney said, as if she were asking her to go to the movies.

Sabrina shook her head. “I don’t have to kill you. I could shoot you in the arm. Or maybe just kick the shit out of you.”

“You and I will have our day in the sun, Sabrina … someday. But not today. Today we’re on a bit of a schedule.” She looked at her watch, quirking her mouth into a sheepish grin. “We have less than a thirty minutes to get to Moffett Field. If we’re not there, my boss is going to rain holy hell on this place. A lot of people will get hurt—including your BFF and that pretty little girl of hers. Tick tock.”

Sabrina ejected the magazine from the grip of the gun and set both of them on the coffee table before doing the same to the LCP strapped to her ankle.

“Your pockets too.”

She hesitated a moment too long before digging into her jeans and pulling out the red silk pouch Phillip had given her the night before. Panic flexed its muscles, spreading inside her chest like wings unfurled. “It’s nothing, just—”

“I don’t care what it is. Drop it on the table.”

She gripped the pouch tighter for a moment, as if hoping to be able to absorb whatever it was that managed to keep Wade at bay through the fabric and into her fingers. But then she let it go.

“Good girl,” Courtney said an encouraging smile on her face. “Circling back to your original question, my last name is Tserkov’. It’s Russian for Church.”