Katie Morgon. That she and Janeal had both survived his inferno amused Sanso to no end. What remarkable women to have bested him in his younger, more devilish years. Killing her would be all the more rewarding now, because her death would secure Janeal Mikkado as his. Forever.
A promise of new life shot into his old veins. Janeal might keep him going another decade at least. Based on what details Sanso had gathered about Jane Johnson, she had nearly arrived at his level. He was so eager to welcome her fully. She alone had a mind to match his. A spirit as diabolical as his, willing at every opportunity to sacrifice someone else to save her own skin.
That was, truly, Sanso’s primary interest in Robert. He was the Jesus to Janeal’s Judas. Her treatment of Robert would be the indicator of how far Janeal had sunk since the day she first abandoned the Morgon girl.
Sanso dropped into the darkness of Katie Morgon’s room from the unlocked window. Janeal closed it behind him and stayed outside. He didn’t have to hide if he didn’t want to. He could do this with the lights on if it suited him.
He left the lights off and chose to stand in the closet behind one of two sliding panels that she had left open. When she closed her bedroom door, it would be easy enough for him to step out and draw the nylon ligature across her throat. There would be no need for the mess or noise of the gun he carried in a holster at his waist.
So few things in his life were this easy.
Janeal raced back toward the open window of her own room. Better to be there than anywhere else when this sheltered little house exploded. She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. Her nerves rattled with the uncertainty of what she had asked Sanso to do.
If Katie dies, will I?
Of course I won’t. We are separate. Even if we are . . . the same.
She had foolishly allowed her overstressed mind to lose sight of the end goal. She could come back to earth now that Sanso was here. With Katie out of Janeal’s life, it would become simple again: no fear of exposure, no fear of betrayal, no competition for Robert. As the minutes passed, she calmed. Sanso was obsessed with her, which would make it easier for her to control him—an important detail, because Sanso had discovered her identity as Jane Johnson, a wrinkle she had hoped to prevent. But such a small wrinkle.
So small, compared to this unfathomable encounter with Katie. Temporary encounter. Janeal could not hold her hands steady. She fumbled with the window screen. It must be temporary. If it was temporary, then it would never matter if it was real.
The death of Katie Morgon wouldn’t be too much for him, she hoped. She had never meant to hurt Robert, and that would be her main regret of this unfortunate dilemma.
She certainly didn’t want him dead. Yet Sanso would see to it that Robert died as soon as possible, and his twisted love for her would almost certainly correlate with the amount of pain he’d inflict on her until he took Robert’s life too.
She stepped out of the mesquite trees and had her right leg slung over the sill of her open window when it occurred to her that she could kill Sanso. He would take Katie’s life and escape the same way he entered, expecting Janeal to be in her room or in his car.
Not standing there waiting for him in the dark.
What would she use as a weapon?
She was running through a mental list of options—a knife from the kitchen, a rock from the hillside, a gun from Robert’s truck (he would travel armed, wouldn’t he?)—when the door to her room opened.
Katie’s wing was on the south side of the house, isolated from the main living areas and the other residents on the north side. Robert touched the numbers on her apartment, 21, which stood at the top of the hall. Beyond it, three rooms flanked each side of the carpet runner, which led to a seventh room at the end. Number 28. A light shone out from under the door.
He approached silently and put his hand on the knob and his ear to the hollow-core panel. No sound. He eased the door open, gun up and ready, expecting Janice to scream or to bolt free of Sanso’s threatening—
The room was empty. Robert swept it anyway, starting with the closet. One pair of pants on a hanger. One T-shirt on the bed. A flat denim tote bag on the floor. He lifted the blankets off the mattress, then the mattress off the cot. Nothing. He dropped the mattress back onto the springs and it bounced once.
Something hit the ground and rolled, rattling. Robert picked it up. A translucent brown pill bottle prescribed to Jane Johnson. Fioricet. Prescription painkiller. He pocketed it to show Katie.
Who are you, Jane Johnson? What do you have to hide?
He stepped back out into the hall and closed the door, eyeing the other rooms. Light spilled out from under five of them, casting narrow bands of gold onto the carpet runner. Two were black: one on the left, and Katie’s room.
If he were looking for a place to hide, it wouldn’t be in the light with strangers.
He pushed open the unoccupied room and flipped on the overhead bulb. The room was so spare that a spider couldn’t have hidden in it. He checked the closet. Four wire hangers shifted and chimed together in the vacuum created by the opening door. He checked the window. Locked.
At the sound of feet running and then a doorknob turning, Robert shot out into the hall, head turned toward Janice’s door. It was closed. He snapped his head and gun in the other direction.
Katie was opening the door to her room.
“What on earth are you doing?” Robert said past a clenched jaw. In two steps he was next to her, pulling her away.
“I wanted to be able to contact you,” she whispered, yanking her arm out of his and reaching for her knob again. “My cell phone—”
Robert blocked her and used his body to direct Katie into the unoccupied room. “Do what I say this time and don’t come out until I come get you myself.”
“I’m fully aware—”
“Have you forgotten what Sanso did the last time we met him?” He was angry that she had risked coming down here. No, furious. “Don’t be an idiot, Katie. Don’t go where I can’t find you, like last time.”
She confronted him with her confident face, and Robert was pricked with some guilt for having spoken so cruelly of the night they lost their families.
“I’m not the idiot in this situation, Robert.”
He flipped off the light and pulled the door closed with as little noise as possible, shutting her in the room.
A hard-soled shoe connected with Robert’s armpit, sending currents of pain across his rib cage and down into his elbow. He spun to face the direction of the attack while he reeled. The gun he held flew upward and hit hard, raining down a shower of curd-shaped ceiling texture into his hair.
His head cracked into the doorframe, splitting the wood at the same time he heard the gun land. Katie cried out from inside.
“Don’t open the door!” he shouted.
He lunged in the direction of the gun but misjudged, kicking it with his toe. It skittered down the hall between the carpet runner and baseboard.
Another kick landed in Robert’s stomach before his defensive training found its footing. He successfully blocked a blow aimed for his face, then lashed out with his fists, having no clear idea what he was aiming at, hoping speed if not accuracy would count for something.
It did. His knuckles hit teeth, which broke open the skin on the back of his hand.
Robert was familiar with the streak of Spanish curses that ensued. He’d found Salazar Sanso.
The man’s ankles swept Robert’s out from under him and he fell sideways. He lifted his arms instinctively and landed sprawled out. He scrabbled out of Sanso’s reach to get up, leaving Katie’s door exposed.
Doors were opening on the hall. A woman screamed.
“Stay inside!” Robert’s thundering voice was chased by the sound of panels slamming into their frames.
He registered Sanso’s form coming down on him, knees first. They caught him in the ribs and knocked his wind out. Robert shuddered.
Sanso leveled a gun between his eyes and Robert would have resigned himself to an immediate death if not for Sanso’s fantastic hubris: the criminal could never resist an opportunity to boast.
Robert dragged air into his lungs.
“You’re not . . . the one I was looking for,” said Sanso between breaths.
“Who then?” Robert’s arms were pinned under Sanso’s knees. His head was pointed toward Janice’s door, but his gun was closer to Katie’s. There was no way he could get to it. He saw blood on Sanso’s shirt. From the gunshot wound Robert had given him back in Arizona? It could prove to be a weakness.
Sanso used his free arm to wipe sweat off his forehead. “You’ll do.” The hall had fallen silent except for their voices.
“You’re here with Janice.”
“Who?”
“Jane Johnson.”
Sanso laughed. “Yes. Jane Johnson. She’s why I came.”
“Who is she?”
“An old flame.” He sniffed. “Of yours.”
Robert measured his strength by squeezing his hands into fists. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll be sur—” A gunshot obliterated Sanso’s answer, and a spatter of blood hit Robert’s cheek at the same time the Sheetrock next to his head exploded. The concussion of the shot lifted Robert’s hair off the side of his skull. The drug lord’s face changed from smug to pained, and he dropped his weapon. He shouted and rolled off Robert, clutching his right shoulder, finding his feet and staggering toward room 28. Another shot rang out. Robert covered his head.
The sound of cracking wood was followed by a tumble of toppling furniture.
Robert’s strength surged and he bolted upright. The gun Sanso dropped lay at his side. He seized it and raised it in the direction of the shots and found himself looking down the barrel at Katie, who held Robert’s lost firearm level and steady.
Katie. He pushed himself off the floor and she trained the gun on the sound of his movements. “Robert? Robert?”
“It’s me. Put that down!” He kept an eye on her gun.
“Did he hit you?”
“No.” He grabbed her at the wrist and disarmed her. She could have killed him. He didn’t try to hide his accusation. “But you might have. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking he was about to kill you,” she said, matching his frustration. “I aimed for his voice. I couldn’t have missed that voice.”