"Bitch." Sin whispered the word just as her air was cut off.
Ann Evalyn's full weight hit her spine and Sin used the opportunity to step forward. She didn't stagger as most people would. It was an odd moment to think fondly of her deceased husband, but in his own way, he'd helped her out today. If she could throw Lee—a six-foot, two-hundred-pound, trained fighter—Sin could throw Ann Evalyn.
What a stupid name, she thought not for the first time, and used a lurching step to bend her knees without the other woman necessarily catching on.
She needed to end this quickly, but leave Ann Evalyn alive and friendly. Unfortunately, Sin didn't have a lot of time to execute her plan as there were sparkles beginning to dance at the edge of her vision. Dammit.
Grasping the arms around her neck, Sin pushed. One shot, then her vision would go. Ann had the hold mostly right. Then again, Sin had always believed it didn't really matter just how "right" you had done something if it worked.
So she grabbed Ann Evalyn's shoulders and bumped her hips out, sending the other woman flying.
Whoops.
But Sin was too busy taking in her own restoring gulp of air to care too much that she'd overshot her throw.
Ann Evalyn rolled. Right into the corner of her room. Almost behind the big overstuffed chair that Sin was pretty sure had never been sat in before her. More importantly, it was a good weapon.
It was lightweight, hard, and oddly shaped. Sin's foot snaked out and caught the front scrolled leg, flipping the chair towards herself as Ann Evalyn resumed her stance.
The other woman reached for the chair but the top side was padded, and though she caught it, Sin pulled it easily from Ann Evalyn's grasp.
She tried a move, but Sin held her off, chair between them. Though, honestly, it turned out to be a nice looking piece of shit. There was every possibility that slamming Ann Evalyn with it as hard as she could would hardly leave a mark.
Ann Evalyn feinted one way, ducked the other, but Sin moved the chair with her, keeping the woman in the corner, her back literally to the wall.
"What am I?" Ann Evalyn was furious now. "A lion?"
"You're snarling like one."
Blue eyes narrowed at her but nothing else happened.
A moment later, the two of them were still in a standoff, when Ann Evalyn visibly startled and her eyes darted off to just behind Sin's shoulder.
"I'm not falling for that. No one is here." But Sin did put down the chair and even faced it toward Ann Evalyn. Carefully, she sat down, but shot her hand out rapidly, stopping the woman from coming at her. Chair or no, Sin was in charge here.
"Don't. We're here to have a discussion."
"What? I don't want to fight?" Sarcasm firmly in place, Ann Evalyn leaned back against the wall, seemingly conceding that she was trapped.
Sin didn't trust her any further than she could throw the woman, and as of two minutes ago, she'd learned that exact measurement. "We need to talk."
Ann Evalyn rolled her eyes.
"We have two options. One—I dispose of you. Making certain that everyone in all organizations knows that I did not kill your husband. Or Two—you decide to work with me."
For a moment, silence reigned.
"Someone's coming to meet me. He'll be here any minute."
"You're lying. No one comes to meet you. Not on Monday nights, or any evening. It's two a.m. Try again." Sin appeared patient. But she wasn't patient. She had shit to do.
Sadly, the current incarnation of her plan involved a willing Ann Evalyn Kimmel. If this didn't wind up as intended, Sin would need another plan and fast.
"How do I know you're her?" Another snarl.
"I don't know that you ever will. But I've given you a small demonstration. You can get more, but you may not survive it." She bounced her leg as though she had nothing better to do.
The mafia wife seemed wholly unable to make the decision. She looked borderline ridiculous in her disheveled party clothes. Part of her mascara had migrated beneath her eyes; her eyeshadow and lipstick had smeared. While she sat there keeping an eye on her quarry, Sin cataloged this and wondered how much of what had been on the woman's face was smeared across the back of her own jacket.
She wanted to reach up and touch her fake hair, be sure her wig was still in place. But it either was or it wasn't, and touching it would only draw attention. Keeping her hands at her lap, Sin waited.
After about two full minutes, the words came. "What do you want?"
This was the hard part, telling Ann Evalyn what she needed. She did not like depending on the other woman. So she took a deep breath in and reminded herself it was about Lee. "I need you to get me and my friend in to see the Kurevs."
Ann Evalyn threw her head back and cackled.
Sin thought about how to kill her. A triangle choke hold seemed the most fitting. No slicing and dicing. Ann Evalyn's crimes had not been horrid enough to warrant that, but the choke hold would also shut her up. "And this is funny because?"
"You," She waved her hand up and down. "I don't think they work with yoga moms." She laughed again, "Do you have an info graphic to present? Market share analysis?"
Sin smiled. Not a pretty smile either. "Nope. I do think I've proved that I'm hardly a yoga mom. I'm whatever I need to be."
Sin enlightened her. “I’m friends with your neighbors, the gate guard, too. They already like me better than they like you.” The right side of her mouth pulled up in a small mock of a grin. It was an expression she'd gotten from Lee.
Sin fought the urge to explain about her husband. She didn't think it would garner any sympathy. After all, like a mantis or some other insect, Ann Evalyn destroyed her own husband.
Small shifts in the other woman's stance told Sin that her information about the neighbors didn't sit well. Still pinned into the corner of her own bedroom, her body stayed rigid, defiant. "So?"
"You know who else I'm friends with? An FBI Agent!" She grinned and almost clapped her hands with joy. Never mind that it wasn't technically true. Sin wasn't sure she'd call them 'friends' and Dunham wasn't even an agent anymore.
Ann Evalyn's eyes narrowed. That was a neat trick, Sin thought, they were already so narrow, yet she somehow managed to look even more put out.
"How do you think I'm sitting here? How do you think I stayed out of jail for so long?" She leaned back as though she were bored. "And that's not even the issue. I know you did it and I can prove it wasn't me. I have the evidence, the resources and the channels. The Kurevs already know it was you—it's how you got in the door with them."
There was no hiding the slight jerk. The information was a surprise.
Amateur.
"I can go right to the police. . . and not the ones in Kaspar's pocket."
All the whimsy left and Ann Evalyn’s smile slid right off her face. The look replaced with a dangerous countenance, backed by steel.
"I'm in your house. Didn't trip the wires—and you know your system is good. I know what you did and can prove it. I know where Kaspar's cronies are and who they are. Do. Not. Fuck. With. Me."
Sin sat back. "You have two choices. You help me get in or you don't. In option one, you introduce my friend and me as personal acquaintances and recommend us to the Kurevs. You get us access inside the home. Option one has the advantage of cover for me and life for you."
"Option 2?" It was asked with a sneer.
Sin did not like this woman. But she did have the possibility of making her own life easier, and Sin and Nick had not been able to locate anyone else who could do it as well or as soon. "Someone finds you dead here tomorrow or whenever they sell you."
Sin sat through another extended silence, as always, ready for anything.
In that moment she realized it wasn't true. She believed she was ready for anything, but the events of the last week showed her how wrong she was. At least, sitting here, guarding Ann, she was in her element.
"One."
That was it. Just the one word. But Sin was tired. "Excellent."
She didn't move. Just pulled out her cell phone and called Annika. Standing up, she wanted to stretch but didn't. "Now walk me out the front door."
Again, she gave the woman her back, showing trust, or dominance. Again, Mrs. Kimmel made bad choices.
Just one step was all she needed, the heavy thud into the plush carpet revealing that Kimmel was coming at her.
Sin swung, right arm flying backward, left arm reaching around her back, just as she had made Nick practice. Her elbow connected with Ann Evalyn's jaw even as the woman's manicured hands reached out.
Unable to stop her own forward momentum, Ann Evalyn ran her very nice dress into the silencer on the end of Sin's 9mm gun.
That was going to leave a mark. Sin pressed the gun forward, letting Ann Evalyn feel the strength of the barrel and the woman behind it.
Her hands dropped.
At gunpoint, Ann Evalyn walked toward the front door and reached for the knob.
Sin rapped the back of the woman's hand as she reached to open the pretentious double lock. "Security code."
Grudgingly, Ann Evalyn moved to the box and started punching digits.
"Wrong code."
Again, the eyes narrowing.
Man, this woman was pissed off. The plan might not fly. Her voice was as surly as the rest of her. "I just changed the code."
"No you didn't." Right now, Sin loved her brother more than anything. Lee had been good at rewiring the system, but it was Nick who got close enough to Ann Evalyn at her club the other night, tampered with her phone, turned it into a broadcasting device they could listen in to whenever they wanted. Keypads with associated tones were about the dumbest thing, Sin thought. She knew what the correct code sounded like.
This time the right notes played.
As the door opened, Sin saw Annika sitting in her rented Mercedes, fitting right into the neighborhood if not for the three a.m. time. Having smoothly stashed the gun, Sin waved, grinned and turned to give Ann Evalyn a girl-hug. Then she smiled again.
To anyone on the street it would have looked like she was thanking the woman. But with her face turned so no one, and no security camera, could lip read her, she reiterated in a dulcet tone, "Don't fuck with me." Then she bounced down the steps and into Annika's waiting passenger seat.
"How did it go?" The other woman asked, the nearly black hair seemingly changing the shape of her face, just as she had said it would.
"Only as well as expected." Damn, she was tired. She used to stay up all night. Used to climb through windows and listen into conversations as alert as you please.
"It's the pregnancy." Just those three words from Annika, and Sin realized she'd slid back into the seat, her back done with staying straight, her eyelids already drooping.
"Don't worry. I don't think it's obvious." She took a turn and Sin waved and smiled at the man at the gate. He was reading a paperback and barely looked up. Annika continued. "It's normal."
"Good." She sighed and just managed to stay awake until she reached the hotel. She came and went as the blond woman. Sin—as herself—had never been here.
Annika wished her goodnight and headed back to her own hotel, never climbing out of the car or asking for more. Owen's wife had cleanly passed every test, every check point Sin had put before her. Tonight, she'd simply been a pick-up driver. At a time past two a.m.
Annika had excelled.
Ann Evalyn had been a bitch.
The elevator felt sluggish, the hallway longer. When Sin arrived in her own room, she found Nick, already sitting at the small table. She'd given him the spare key, rented the room for two, and having him come and go reinforced her story. She just hadn't expected him to be here now.
He held up one of his many phones. "Nothing yet—"
But the sound of a standard ring cut off his words. "Well, there we go," he said to Sin, then held up a finger for her to wait while he pressed a button and spoke.
The ringing went on while he talked, but that was supposed to happen. Nick's voice was solid, serious. "Kaspar doesn't like being awakened in the night by a woman who let someone break into her house. This is your last warning. Next time, Option two is enacted."
Then he waited.
Though Ann Evalyn didn't say anything, she disconnected before the ringing stopped.
Sin wondered if the socialite was shaking in her boots. Clearly, her phone had been doctored. Though Sin and Nick hadn't wanted to give that fact away, it was better to rein in the woman than have to go it alone.
"Now we wait." Sin sank onto the end of the bed, hands planted on her knees, shoulders drooping.
"You look tired." Nick said it calmly, but his expression was a bit worried. "You know what. I've got this." He held up the phone. "I'll stay up, no point in two of us doing it. And I'll come get you if she tries something else stupid. In the meantime, do you think you can get to sleep?"
Sin laughed. "I think I may already be asleep."
With a grin, Nick leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She almost startled. Aside from fighting and Annika's almost forced hugs, she was rarely touched. But clearly she needed it.
A kiss on the forehead from her big brother.
Who would have guessed?
Nick let himself out the door and she forced herself to stand up, flip the locks behind him. She had plans. Brush her teeth, take off the wig, her shoes. But she didn't do any of them.
Crawling up onto the comforter and leaving the soles of her shoes hanging off the end of the bed, Sin fell immediately into a drugging sleep.
Nick hadn't given her the envelope that Kaspar had passed to him. Sin seemed off. She'd seemed tired and that was probably good.
Nick understood. She'd always been driven, much like he was. Though he hadn't suffered a single defining event, he'd suffered all along. She'd chosen Lee. Chosen that life and found something good in it.
But here she was, once again, having her life ripped out from under her in a short time. As much as it was the same, it was horribly different this time.
This time, she hadn't seen it happen, not really. She didn't have a body or closure. In the original accounts of the attack when she'd been a child, she'd tried to save her parents despite the gangland style bullets they'd each taken through their skull. But she'd tried. Sin, at eleven, could say she'd done everything in her power.
As an adult, she couldn't say that.
His sister had been running on odd cycles since she'd turned up in his easy chair a week ago and probably even before that. She'd waited, how long? Maybe four days for Lee to come, before she returned to the cabin. Before she realized she was once again on her own.
So if he could let her sleep, he would. If he could hold off some of the shit the Kurevs were dishing up for one more day, he would.
He sat in the hotel room next to hers, unwilling to leave her alone.
Nick desperately wanted to text either Riker or Dr. Owen Dunham about what was happening at the cabin. Had Sin and Lee been drugged?
It seemed they had to be. He couldn't imagine any other way one of these pricks could get the jump on them. His heart turned over for her. She was taking it as well as she could, even though she often looked a little green around the gills.
Flipping the envelope over in his hands, he thought for a minute.
He was awake, but most of Chicago wasn't.
He couldn't really order room service, and a beer and hot dog was an L ride away. This weather wasn't something he was built for.
He wanted to have Sin running this city, but knew she wouldn't get her hands into any part of what she'd worked so hard to scrub away. Though she had no tolerance whatsoever for the Kurevs, she'd found an uneasy truce with Nick. Showing that her relationship with him changed her views, even before she had the whole picture.
He wondered if she was paying for it.
Or if Lee already had.
Shoving that train of thought aside, he picked up his phone and dialed a number he knew. Dana Block likely wasn't awake, but she answered her phone with a nearly chipper "Hello?"
She would know it was him. That burner phone rang only on his line. He didn't identify himself; they both knew the rules. But the thoughts he was thinking . . .
He had to talk to her, see if it was even plausible. Because what good was the number on his Caribbean bank account? He didn't have Reese. He didn't really have Sin. And though he had Atlanta, he didn't have Chicago.
Yet.
"I've been thinking."
He could almost hear her smirk. "Are you in town? Because I'm pretty sure I can hear the gears in your head from here."
"You probably can." Despite what she did, she was a good person. One of the best. One of the believers. He needed that. "Can we meet?"
"Now?" Her tone was incredulous.
So despite the cheer infused in her voice, she really did seem to realize it was the middle of the night.
"Tomorrow's good."
Nick needed answers.
Owen and Riker had run in at the sound of Nguyen's exclamation.
"Did you see this? Did you know?" The lab guy was on his hands and knees, his blue gloves marked on the back, with time on, time off, room he was in. He was saving them all in bags in case he inadvertently touched any evidence. The man was nothing if not thorough.
Owen wondered if he was going to bag his pants, since he'd been kneeling on the floor. But Nguyen was too busy gesturing. "Look, there's a space here!"
Owen knew what he'd found, but Riker dropped to his knees to investigate. "Damn. It looks like a regular bed, but it's fortified." He reached under and knocked on the metal sheeting that both supported the mattress and protected the space. "That is slick."
Nguyen grinned, his love for all things Sin clearly growing by the moment. "It gets better. Trap door."
He pushed on it and Owen watched as the two men baby-crawled under the bed and out the other side. For a moment his brain overlaid the sound of their glee with Sin's terror. When she'd last crawled out that hole, she'd woken in the night to gun shots, blood, and Lee pushing her out of bed. These two were treating it like a fun park, despite the evidence in the mattress right over their heads.
Once the two came back inside and finished admiring the panic options, they spent three more hours sweeping the place before heading out, carrying the added weight of evidence this time. Once again, Caleb Riker humped most of the burden, while Nguyen carried mostly just his thoughts.
Owen had packed his concerns as efficiently as his things. Though they hadn't been a lively group on the way in, the three men were positively somber on the way out. Owen stayed silent, holding out for cell signal, waiting to hear from Annika that she was okay.
The fact was that Annika was going to be okay regardless of him. He had learned years ago that she didn't need him. Of the two of them, she was the more capable, the more resilient. But she liked him and she kept him around, and he needed her voice in his ear, letting him know she was still here, still his, still in one piece. It kept him in one piece when things around him fell apart.
Like they had in the past forty-eight hours.
Owen had found nothing. But Riker's drill hole in the well cap was telling. When they tested the water in the house, there was a trace of GHB. That was definitive proof.
Caleb Riker had also found the generator had been tampered with. The leaves and debris on the ground had obscured the damage—as they had been meant to. The very things that Sin and Lee used to hide their own presence had hid the signs that they had been found.
Together, Owen and the detective had dug up a small pipe. Run from the output on the generator, it gathered not all but most of the gas emitted and piped it directly into the bedroom. Carbon monoxide gas could be fatal, but it appeared they couldn't get enough of it.
Also, anything strong enough to have a real effect would likely alert one or the other of them. Sin and Lee were not regular people. If one of them had started acting funny the other would have taken care of it. So that couldn't happen. Not if the assassin wanted to make it real.
So they'd been hit with GHB then with CO gas.
Shit, Owen thought, there had almost been no way around that. And there was every possibility there was more in the water, but they hadn't brought tests for it. To be sure, Riker was hauling a good sized sample of it back to civilization.
Nguyen had also taken a portion of the bedding with him in a paper bag. He lifted fingerprints, though Owen and Nguyen both were convinced none of those would belong to anyone other than Sin or Lee. These guys had drugged the pair in at least two different ways simultaneously. They didn't fuck around. They wouldn't leave prints behind.
What they did leave was markings in the woods.
Owen and Nguyen didn't have much trouble at all finding where they had parked, that they had driven in an SUV, four-wheeling their way in.
Part of the reason it had been easy to find had been the blood. A trail led from the small house out to where the vehicle had been parked. In places it was clear that blood had spilled in some way, or the assassins had seen it and used something to push dirt over it. It didn't make it any less obvious. And Owen wondered why they had done it.
What he did know was that they had dragged a body of the size and shape of Lee Maxwell. That body had been bleeding badly.
The real news was startling, and as the three men quietly drove down the road toward Atlanta, Owen wondered how he would tell Sin.
Nguyen had checked the bedding. The ground. The trail. And there was a problem with Sin's conclusion. A problem that would hurt her more than she was already suffering.
After Nguyen checked out the bedding, traced the blood trail into the woods and then came back, he stood before Owen and presented his findings.
"The thing is, it's a lot of blood. If this were an open case, we'd be looking at a murder." His hands had gone to his hips, fisted, as though he were still wearing gloves. The lab never left the man. Gloves or not, he was careful about what he touched and how. "But the amount . . . it's not conclusive. We'd investigate a murder, as that's what I think is here. But it's not definitive."
"What?" Owen and Riker had looked at him, speaking simultaneously.
"The blood trail—" Nguyen pointed in the general direction. "The spatter suggests a body still actively bleeding. They dragged a dying body, not a dead one. So they either shot him and dragged him all that way while he died, or they did it super-fast."
He shrugged. "Did our girl see them take the body?"
Only able to shake his head, only able to relay what he'd been told, Owen said, "No. She watched the house for a while and didn't see anything."
No. If she'd seen it, Sin would have followed them. Drugged or not, she would have hunted them down and dispatched them post haste. There was no way she would have let them take Lee.
"So, they didn't shoot and run."
"What are you saying?" Owen had asked, though he already had an idea.
Nguyen looked dubious. "If I had to commit it to a report, I'd have to say I’m not sure he’s dead."