Dirty Kiss (37 page)

I knew it was a lie. There was nothing a medical team would be able to do. My hand brushed on an exit wound on her chest. It gaped, and her right breast was gone, leaving nothing behind but a flat, wet mess. There were at least four more holes on her back, and if the others were like the one I was trying to put pressure on, her insides were an organ smoothie.

I didn’t know how she was still alive, much less conscious, but she was going to tell me something… even if it killed her to do it.

“Will….” She grabbed at my leg, pulling at my jeans. Too guttered to get a proper voice, Victoria stuttered around the word.

“Will I what?” I was torn between telling her to save her energy and letting her speak. Victoria’s breathing hitched, and her chest shuddered in my hands. “Victoria, stop talking. It’s not good….”

“Upstairs.” Her face grew rigid as she strained to look up. The herculean effort to lift her chin strained Victoria’s chest muscles, and the wound I held pressure on gushed blood around my fingers. “Will….”

Shit, her son was Will. Hyun-Shik’s son. Will, soon to be the only one left alive in his family, was upstairs.

“Don’t move, okay?” Victoria was getting anxious, her limbs shifting and flopping. Gasping, she tried turning over, and I held her in place. “Hold on, I’m going to get a pillow to hold you up, and then I’ll go upstairs. Okay? Don’t talk. Really, don’t.”

Victoria
’s nod was small, but her body relaxed in my arms. Reaching over the loveseat, I grabbed a small pillow from the couch and placed it carefully under Victoria’s sternum. I wiped my bloody hands on my jeans and picked up my gun. I wasn’t sure if she would still be alive by the time I came back downstairs, but right now, all that mattered to her was finding her son.

With Victoria probably dying in the parlor, that left me with no one else to blame for the murders.

“Gun down, walk softly,” I murmured to myself. “Don’t know who’s going to be up there.”

I stepped around the dead woman in the foyer, careful not to track through the blood. I’d already compromised the scene by going to Victoria, but only an asshole would have left her to die there, even if I did think she’d had a hand in killing her husband.

“Who the hell else is there left?” I paused at the foot of the stairs.

The staircase was a stream of black-speckled white marble, trimmed in an elaborate black, wrought-iron banister. A carpet runner cut the curve in half, a golden ribbon stretching across the center of each step. Small drops of blood marred the pile. They were evenly spaced, and tiny. Victoria probably had gotten a hit in with something, but the shooter wasn’t worried or panicked.

Worst of all, he’d known Will was upstairs and had headed straight for the kid. He’d either come to take the kid or kill him. Either choice would be disastrous for the Kim family.

The house was big, and the upper level split off into two directions at the top of the marble staircase. I took a chance that the smaller jog in the hallway would lead to the master suite. Lady Luck was either with me or against me because the bullet aimed for my head missed me but hit the mirror hanging on the wall behind me. I flinched and ducked as the glass exploded, cutting through my T-shirt and digging into my already torn skin.

Rolling, I tried to find cover, but there was nothing to hide behind. The hallway was clear of anything useful except for a portable kiddie gate the shooter must have moved from the top of the stairs. Grabbing the plastic gate, I flung it out in front of me, hoping to at least drive the shooter back into the room so I could get to the corner and to some cover. The gate flung wide and hit an open door, rattling as it split in two, falling onto the floor.

Grace Kim emerged from the end of the hallway, holding a crying Will in one arm. She shakily held a Browning in her hand, the muzzle pointing at me in a vague, uncertain tremble. Her face was white and set into a firm grimace. She was in shock, but determined, and her eyes were wild as she stared me down.

“Does Daddy know you’ve got his gun?” I stood slowly, keeping the Glock to the side. I took a step forward, and the muzzle of her gun steadied, aiming for my chest.

“Don’t m-m-move,” Grace stuttered, and the gun trembled again. I held my hands up, letting the Glock dangle off my index finger. “And this isn’t Daddy’s gun. It’s mine. I bought… it.”

“Okay, good.” I kept my voice steady. There wasn’t any way to know how much ammo she had left, if any, and the kid was starting to wail. Grace shushed the toddler, bouncing him against her leg. She could have reloaded after she did Victoria and the other woman. I had absolutely no way of knowing.

“Shhh, it’s okay. We’ll get you to Grandma’s. She’ll take care of you, baby boy,” Grace murmured and kissed the side of Will’s head. For a moment her face was lost against the boy’s sweat-dampened hair, but she pulled back too quickly for me to make a grab at her. The gun was still on me as she stalked forward. “I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t. I know you were just doing your job. I know that.”

“That woman lying by the front door was just doing her job, and you killed her,” I pointed out, then winced. My common sense had once again deserted me.

“She tried to stop me.” Her shriek echoed in the open space above the foyer. “I had to kill her. I didn’t have a choice. No one ever gave me a choice.”

“Park? Did he give you a choice?”

“He was going to tell Daddy I’d killed Hyun-Shik. I couldn’t have that. I wasn’t done yet. We weren’t done yet.” She paced back a step, trying to comfort her nephew and hold a bead on me. I took a step toward her when her back was turned, edging closer. “If he’d kept his mouth shut just a few more days, it would have been over.”

“And Jae? Your cousin?” I pressed in. The gun waved erratically, falling off me more than staying on. I edged another step, hoping she’d be rattled enough to drop either the gun or the kid. Either way, I’d make a grab for her.

“Jae-Min doesn’t matter. He’s… disgusting. A pervert. Look what he did to Hyun-Shik! My brother would have been normal if it weren’t for him coming on to him, making Hyun-Shik want him.” Grace hiccupped, and she quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her gun hand. “I told Brian he should have made sure Jae-Min was dead when he killed that whore, but he didn’t. See? I couldn’t trust him! He never did what he was supposed to do!”

“Why’d you kill your brother?” I had too many questions, and keeping Grace talking seemed to be working. Will was calming down, although he didn’t look comfortable dangling from his aunt’s arm.

“He was going to take Will away from my mother, and he was sick. He caught his perversion from Jae-Min, and it made him sick in the head. What kind of man wants other men?” She explained slowly as if I were a child. “After he was dead, that bitch downstairs was supposed to stay, but she changed her mind. Everything would have been okay if she just left things alone and stayed.”

“Maybe she wanted—”

“Our family is all she has. We give her everything, but it wasn’t good enough. She wanted to take away the only thing… the only person Umma loves.”

“Your brother didn’t need to die because you thought he was… sick,” I said quietly. “He just….”

“No! You don’t know how it is! Hyun-Shik was…. What he was doing was wrong. He shamed us… fucking men. How can we look anyone in the face knowing that he did that? With Will, everything is different. Umma can have another son… a good son this time.” She held Will close, and I took another half step, hoping her attention was focused more on the kid than me.

I must have moved in too close because she fired rapidly. The booms of the gun going off scared Will, and he howled, shrieking at the top of his lungs. I hit the floor, tasting the carpet in my mouth. I rolled over onto my back, tucking against the wall, and aimed for Grace’s thigh.

A quick pop of the Glock and she went down, yowling in pain. Will fell forward, pitched from his aunt’s arms, and I made a grab for him as Grace’s scream peaked. The Browning skipped and bounced on the carpet, and I kicked out, hoping to keep it out of her reach. It flew further, hitting the marble at the top of the stairs, and its weight carried it over the edge. The gun hit stone a few times. Then I lost the sound under the kid’s crying.

Cradling Will against my chest, I inhaled hard and gasped when a stinging pain radiated out from my collarbone. Looking down, I stared in slight amazement at the hole in my shoulder. It bled in a trickle, running down my shirt and arm. Will’s hand touched a wet spot, and I soon had toddler prints on my face as he flailed to get free.

I heard noises coming from the street outside. They grew louder, and the ringing in my ears from the gunshots was soon battling with the high-pitched whoo-whoop sound of police sirens. Hard footsteps hit the foyer, and the shouting began, announcing the arrival of the local law enforcement. Drawn by the screaming and crying, several armed uniforms arrived on the landing with their guns drawn, and I dropped the Glock to the floor.

A cop grabbed Will while another crossed over to Grace, and I whimpered when a pair of plainclothes dragged me to my feet and slammed me into the wall. This time, Lady Luck was there to save me from making any cocky, smart-ass remarks to the cops.

I passed out before they could get their cuffs on me.

After
three days, Mike took me home from the hospital. I’d been tormented and poked at by a cute but sadistic doctor who didn’t look old enough to date, much less treat a gunshot wound. One look at the bruises on my body from the bombing and he’d pegged me for someone with a brain injury and kept me hostage.

My brother helped me into the house, lecturing me to rest and eat. I told him to go home to his wife and collapsed on the couch. I didn’t want to see the emptiness in my house. It was early afternoon, and the neighborhood was alive with activity, but my place was dead silent.

Jae was gone.

And he’d taken the damned cat with him.

I knew before I came home that he’d found a place about a mile away. A friend of a friend called him about a large open space with lots of light and didn’t care if there was a cat. Jae was gone from my home before the hospital served me my first plate of watery green Jell-O.

When I’d come home, there was a large arrangement of Mylar balloons floating in my living room, colorful and hopeful messages for my recovery, and an envelope with my name on it. It held a Kwikset key, identical to the one I’d cut for Jae so he’d have a key for my front door. Very identical.

I passed on taking the painkillers the cute sadist had sent home with me and instead took care of my pain with an ice-cold beer. I made it through half of the bottle and passed out.

The living room was pitch black when I woke up and smelled like green curry.

Really good curry.

“Mike called.” Jae walked into my living room. He held a bowl of steaming food, and I almost cried with relief. “I told him you were asleep.”

Reaching for him, I pulled Jae down, grabbing the bowl and putting it on the coffee table, burning my fingers in the process. His weight on my legs hurt, but the pain felt good. More than good, because it meant he was real.