The SUV skidded to a halt in front of Arlene Hampton’s building, René’s truck a few yards behind. The streets were empty. The unease sat in Andy’s stomach like a swarm of restless, trapped butterflies.
“Stay here,” she told Isabelle. “Keep in touch with Jam. I’ll call you if we run into trouble. You can listen in on your earpiece.”
“Like last time?”
Andy blanched. “Hopefully, that’s been fixed by now.”
“Why can’t I help? What’s the use of just sitting here?”
Andy gave her a grim look. “You’re not trained yet, and I’m not going to get you killed.”
“I don’t like this,” Isabelle said, an unhappy frown on her face.
“You don’t have to like it, but you’re still staying.” Andy grabbed her phone, popped in her earpiece, and jumped out. She collected her bulletproof vest from the back and slipped it on.
“Be careful,” Isabelle called after her.
René followed Andy across the road. The snow was heavy, falling at a pace that promised to bury the roads within the hour.
Everything was wrong. All wrong. Weather was fucked up. Being back in New York was fucked up. Andy shrugged up the collar of her coat, then felt under the leather jacket for the array of seven throwing knives hiding to the right in a special leather sheath tied around her stomach, and the Sig P226 in the small of her back. She’d always favored the P226. Fifteen rounds made a difference.
She could shoot right, throw left. A multitalented killing machine by age seventeen thanks to Kate Bouchard.
Isabelle had to outrun. She had to outgun.
“Big girl pants, my ass,” she murmured as she remembered Jam’s words. “That’s all I’ve damn well got in my closet.”
“Going bonkers already, Bouchard?” René mocked her as she fell into step with her. “Mother Superior up your ass?”
“Like a borrowed swimsuit.”
They stepped up on the pavement. Andy swiped one of Gerri’s security tags and heard the soft beep as the thick glass door slid open. The security guard behind the desk looked up and froze. He didn’t know them and chances where he knew everyone who lived here.
At least it was a different guard from the one on duty this afternoon.
Andy unzipped her jacket, relaxing her shoulders and softening the hasty tread of her boots. She put a sway in her hips as she swept the hair from her face and mock shivered from the cold.
“Hi there,” she said, smiling broadly. She leaned with her arms on the guard’s high desk hiding an array of screens from the surveillance system keeping an eye on the building, making sure not to touch anything.
René remained at the door to keep an eye on the street.
“We’re looking for Ms. Arlene Hampton. Number forty-five?” Andy said. “We’re part of her security detail and we haven’t heard from her in quite a while. We’re worried something may have happened to her.”
The guard, a gray, tall man with bad teeth and fingernails bitten to the quick, frowned.
“Don’t know about any security detail.”
“It’s a new thing. She got a couple of fresh death threats last week.”
“Oh.” The guard stood up from his chair and clipped a radio onto his belt. He was close to sixty-five and still in pretty good shape. “It’s one in the morning. What do you want me to do?”
“Could you buzz her, please? Just to see if she’s okay.”
“Why not use your keys? Or phone her?”
“She’s not answering and we don’t have keys. We can only get to her front door.” Andy held the security tags aloft. She thought about Hampton’s private phone which Jam had not yet been able to track—if it even existed in the first place. “You know she has serious issues about her privacy.”
“Which is exactly why I’m not going to buzz her.”
“Okay. Then we’ll have to go upstairs and knock on her door. And hope we don’t disturb her.”
The guard remained unmoved. He pointed to the screens in front of him. “I’ll keep an eye on you to make sure you’re okay.” He scowled at them as if he didn’t trust them.
René walked to the elevator, calling it with the sleeve of her bomber jacket tucked over her fingers. No one wanted to leave any fingerprints.
Andy followed, then turned back to the guard. “Did she have any visitors tonight?”
“Shouldn’t you know that?” The guard stood up, suspicion oozing from his voice.
“New shift,” she said and tapped on her chest. “And I’m new. Left the Twenty-third last week to take this job. Much better pay even though the hours aren’t great.”
“Twenty-third?” His voice eased into something like grudging respect. “Rough neighborhood to be a cop.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Used to be an EMT in Queens.”
She counted on him being retired from a job related to law-enforcement. Emergency services was close enough.
He weighed her and finally said, “There were two guys here, about ten minutes ago. Nicely dressed.”
The unease in Andy ratcheted up to bare-knuckle tension. She thought of this afternoon in the alley. “One of them look like a bouncer?”
“Black suit and gym muscles? Yeah. But that’s not strange for Ms. Hampton. Lots of people like you around all hours of the day and night.”
“Have the men left already?”
“Don’t know. Can’t even tell you if she’s still in the building.”
Andy thought about what Jam had said earlier about Hampton’s work phone being in her apartment. “But her car is still here,” she guessed.
“Yes, but sometimes the residents leave through the basement. And they often take their guests with them. The exit pops out on the east side. Saves you five minutes’ walk to the subway. Ms. Hampton often leaves that way. Didn’t your people tell you that?”
“Nope. Sorry. Ms. Hampton is not exactly cooperating. Her business partner suggested she get a security detail. Mr. Lautrec. Real asshole.”
His distrust seeped away some more.
She considered her options. “Are there no cameras in the basement?”
“Been on the blink since yesterday.”
“Just my luck.” She shrugged, smiling wanly.
The guard looked at her, weighing his options. “I’ll buzz her if you want.”
“Nah. Don’t worry. We’ll go check. Probably a good idea anyway. But thanks. Appreciate it.”
Andy walked to the elevator and stepped in. She swiped the security tag to the elevator and pushed the number four, her hand also tucked in her sleeve, out of sight from the security guard.
As the doors closed, her breath escaped in a puff of frustration. “That took forever.”
“I know,” René said. “Come on, come on,” she urged the elevator to the fourth floor.
She looked at Andy, at the camera staring at them in the elevator. They couldn’t pull their guns, not with the guard downstairs keeping an eye on them.
“Jam?” Andy said.
“Yeah?”
“The building’s surveillance system. Crash it as quickly as you can. We’ve got problems.”
“Doing that will erase info we might need.”
“That’s not important right now.”
“Okay. Will do.”
Andy heard a sharp intake of breath on the line and guessed it was Isabelle. She couldn’t worry about that now.
The elevator announced their arrival on the fourth floor. The doors opened and they stepped out.
The hallway was quiet. Andy looked at the numbers on the nearest door and pointed to the right. They moved down the hallway, Andy keeping to the left-hand side of the carpeted space and René sticking to the right.
They stopped in front of number forty-five. They waited. Listened.
“Done,” Jam spoke in her ear. “Building is yours.”
Andy pulled the Sig, the cold metal providing her with some much-needed comfort. How long had it been since she’d found herself in a situation like this? Had the peace and quiet in London really only lasted three years? She hoped Jimmy was taking good care of the Black Sheep. She wanted her life back when this was done. All of it. Even the hooligan football supporters.
She steadied her breathing and looked to her right where René stood against the other wall.
Andy nodded, then knocked on the door, making sure to stay out of the firing line. “Ms. Hampton? Maintenance. There’s a gas leak on your floor.”
René pointed to her ear with her left hand, the Walther PPQ M2 she favored in her other. Andy heard the sound as well. Footsteps. Scrambling footsteps.
She reached out again and knocked. “Ms. Hamp—”
Wood splintered as a volley of gunshots rang through the door. Andy ducked, hurrying back down the hallway as Hampton’s front door flew open. Someone next door screamed.
More shots. Heavy feet running at them.
Andy fired at the black suit coming her way, hitting his arm. It didn’t stop his momentum, though. She felt herself lifted off her feet and slammed into the wall, gun falling from her hand in a sharp exhalation of breath.
She hit the man in his face as he again slammed her into the wall.
Fucker was huge, heavy, and muscled. And familiar. It was Marat Sharapov’s buddy. The one from the alley.
He dropped her and ran to the fire escape, gripping his arm in his left hand. She looked for her gun. Too far. Her attacker would be gone before she could reach it.
She pulled a knife from her back and threw it at the disappearing figure. She hit his side. She threw another one.
Missed.
He opened the door with a tag.
Fucker got a security tag?
Her third knife flew to the left as a boot connected with her head.
She fought the sudden darkness, reaching for the shoe as it stomped past her. She felt a crush as it came down on her fingers. She shot forward, on hands and knees, tackling the passing figure, crawling on top of him.
He squirmed under her and groaned as her fists connected with the back of his head, his neck.
He turned slightly, a gunbarrel pointing out from under his torso. He fired. Andy dodged left, but still the bullet hit, the air escaping her lungs in a sharp, short sound.