Tuesday
I’m not the kind of person to dwell overmuch on the details, but even I knew I couldn’t talk my way out of my current predicament if I got caught.
I looked both ways down the deserted alleyway to make sure I was alone. A dumpster and crumpled trash that rolled across the cracked pavement like tumbleweeds were my only company. I’d gotten lucky—the moon was only a sliver in the sky and not enough to make me visible to any passersby. I was still new at this whole breaking and entering thing.
I opened my brand new Kate Spade clutch and pulled out the black cloth packet of lock picking tools I’d bought online. I’d had to practice my new hobby incognito because my best friend and boss, Kate McClean, sometimes got an eye twitch when she knew the lengths I’d go to research my job.
My name is Addison Holmes, and I’m a private investigator in training for the McClean Detective Agency. That basically means I spend most of my time spying on adulterers, making coffee, and being babysat by my trainer since I have a tendency to get into trouble whenever I’m out on my own. But in my defense, I usually managed to get the job done. I had the scars to prove it.
I’d been practicing my B&E skills by watching YouTube videos and using the back door of my house as a test dummy. It had only taken me three tries before I’d managed to click the tumblers into place, which was terrifying considering I was a woman living alone and there were more talented lock pickers than I out there. I couldn’t really afford better locks, so I kept a chair pushed under the door and my gun under my pillow.
It was fortunate the back door of the clinic I was trying to break into couldn’t afford better locks either, but it still took a good fifteen minutes before the lock gave. The night air was cool, but I was sweaty as a stripper’s G-string due to nerves. I had to rub my hands on my shorts twice before I could turn the knob. I cursed as I thought about fingerprints, so I quickly wiped off every surface I’d touched with the hem of my Bon Jovi T-shirt, pulled a pair of rubber medical gloves out of my purse and snapped them on.
I slipped into the clinic, closed the door at my back and then swallowed a yelp when the air conditioning unit came on with a rumble.
“Shit,” I breathed out. I relaxed and decided I should’ve gone to the bathroom before I’d left the house. My bladder couldn’t take the stress of illegal activity.
The clinic smelled of Lysol and antiseptic and it was long and rectangular in shape. Ugly gray brick on the outside, metal roof. White industrial blinds were on all the windows so those who frequented the clinic had ultimate privacy.
The reception desk divided the rectangle into two parts—offices on the left and the patient rooms toward the right. Even the thought of what happened in those rooms made me throw up in my mouth a little. There wasn’t enough Lysol in the world to cleanse away what happened in there.
The door I’d entered was on the side with the offices, and I passed through a long narrow hallway with white floors and wood paneled walls. The lights were off and the only reason I could see at all was because of the red nightlights spaced every twenty feet or so in the ceiling.
I stifled a nervous giggle at the thought that I’d once seen a horror movie that reminded me an awful lot of my current situation. I reached into my purse and pulled out my gun just in case there were zombies. At least I’d worn tennis shoes instead of high heels in case I had to make a run for it.
I’d wasted enough time building up my courage so I set forward with determination. I snuck past two bathrooms and a water fountain and wondered if it was against the criminal’s code to sneak into the bathroom and relieve myself. But with my luck, that’s when the SWAT team would break down the doors and the Enquirer would be standing there to take pictures.
I pulled the strap of my purse over my body and held the gun in a two handed grip. In my mind I was just like Laura Holt from Remington Steele, only curvier and without eighties hair. I made my way to where the hallway met the main area, squatting low and peeping around the corner to make sure I was alone.
The place was silent as a tomb and I crossed in front of the reception desk without even a squeak from my sneakers. My stealth abilities had improved by about a hundred and fifty percent since my first day on the job. Which wasn’t saying much. It was the same thing as saying a kindergartener could finally use the paste without eating it.
My heart was thudding a hundred miles a minute and the red glow from the lights was creepy as shit. My goal was fairly simple: I needed to get into the locked room I’d noticed on my first visit to the clinic and search the files. The room was at the end of the opposite hall past the patient rooms, made to look more like a janitor’s closet than anything else, but I’d glimpsed the rows of file cabinets during my tour a couple of days before.
I was halfway down the hallway when I heard a horrible moan. My heart stopped and I turned around to run back from the way I’d come when I heard it again. And though it was horrible, it wasn’t a death moan. I’d heard a few of those sounds over the past months. Back when I was having regular sex I’d even moaned like that myself. From the increasing volume I was guessing she was enjoying herself, whoever she was. Either that or she was declawing a cat without anesthesia.
To say my curiosity was piqued was an understatement. I’d never been very good at listening to the part of my mind that told me I shouldn’t stick my nose where it didn’t belong. I made my way closer to the sounds, hurrying my steps because it sounded like she was winding up for the finale, and I noticed the door was open a crack and light flickered from beneath.
I meant to be quiet. I really did. But the sight that greeted me was enough to draw a gasp from my lips. A pair of familiar blue eyes met mine and widened in surprise. My own eyes narrowed and I felt sick to my stomach as I took in the scene. It was worse than I could’ve imagined.
The woman reached a climax shrill enough to break glass and the tension ratcheted up the temperature several degrees. A pregnant silence followed her cataclysmic orgasm, and I realized if I didn’t breathe a little slower I was likely to end up hyperventilating.
“I should’ve known you’d show up here,” Nick Dempsey said, closing his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into turning around and going back home so I can get this straightened out.”
I raised a brow and cut my eyes to the loaded weapon in his hand. “No, I don’t think so.”
He sighed and put his gun away, reaching over to turn the TV off and the X-rated flick that had been playing. The smells of old sex and new death assaulted my senses, and I swallowed back the bile that rose at the sight of the body at Nick’s feet.
“At least you put on gloves when you came in,” he said, nodding at my hands. “I’d hate to think you smudged the prints of whoever broke in.”
“Someone broke in?” I asked, guilt sending a rush of heat to my cheeks.
“You didn’t see the front door shot to shit and standing open when you came inside?”
“Umm…sure I did. How could I have missed that?”