Extreme Danger (50 page)

The long driveway stretched and curved before him. Here went nothing. He peeled the protective film off the powerful rubber cement that backed the beacon as he walked by the car, and bent as if checking his shoe. Slipped that sucker right under the bumper.

He straightened up, hands in pockets, and looked at the house.

Mathes was home. He should beat hell out of here. It made no sense to get closer now that he’d tagged the car. He risked tipping the guy off, losing his link to whatever project Zhoglo had planned.

And yet, he kept drifting closer, as if the place pulled him. He gazed up at the big, ornate porch, Diana’s pale, twisted body still superimposed in his mind over the image of the handsome old house.

He was gathering the presence of mind to turn away and leave when the door opened. Adrenaline jolted through him.

An elegant, slender blond woman in her forties stepped out onto the porch. “Hello?” she asked suspiciously. “Can I help you?”

He did what he always did in these seat-of-the-pants situations. He opened his big mouth and let ’er rip.

“I’d like to speak to Dr. Mathes,” he said. “I’m a colleague of his.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She was very beautiful, in a chilly, stretched sort of way. She might have had help from the knife to keep the line of her jaw so sharp, and her eyes and brow so unlined. Hard to tell.

“He’s asleep,” she said. “He was at the hospital all night, doing an emergency transplant. I’m afraid I can’t wake him for you.”

“Too bad, then,” he said. “Another time. You’re Mrs. Mathes?”

“I am.” She took a step forward, gripping one of the porch columns. “May I tell him your name, Dr…?”

“Warbitsky,” he said. His birth name was buried in obscurity, not on any of his records, so it was fine as a throwaway alias.

Her eyes narrowed to pale blue slits. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before. What’s your specialty, Doctor?”

“Pathology,” he said. Close enough as far as it went.

But Mathes’s wife wasn’t buying it. She came down the stairs towards him, a strange, almost avid look on her face. She stopped about two yards away from him. “You’re no doctor.” Her voice quivered with strain. “You’re lying.”

He kept silent. Quietly waited to see where she was going with it.

“What are you here for?” she demanded, voice rising. “What is my husband mixed up in?”

Now that she was closer, he saw the lines of strain on her face. The shadows under her eyes, cleverly concealed with makeup. Her excessive thinness. She wasn’t a stupid woman. She was catching a strong whiff of rot, and she didn’t like it.

Well, she shouldn’t. He slowly shook his head.

“Tell me!” She was almost yelling at him. “What is he involved in?”

He blew out a breath to buy him a second to decide whether or not this was a mistake. Too late now. He saw Diana’s bugged-out eyes.

“Nothing good, ma’am,” he said quietly.

She crossed the distance between them with a lunge and grabbed his arm. “I have two children,” she said sharply. “Two young girls.”

He looked down at the manicured white and pink claw that shook with strain as it dug into his arm. “I’ve got a piece of advice for you, then,” he said. “Take your girls, put them on a plane, and get them the hell away from here.”

She stumbled back, and put her hand to her throat.

“I say this as a friend,” he added.

“You’re not his friend,” she hissed. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“Not his,” he admitted. “But I’ve got nothing against your girls.”

Her throat worked. She looked older when her mouth was pursed up. “I am not involved with it, whatever it is,” she said stiffly.

He looked around and a mean laugh jerked his chest. “Get real, lady,” he said. “You’re living in it. You’re driving it.” He gestured at the double-strand pearl necklace held together with diamond baguettes that gleamed in the vee of her silk blouse. “You’re wearing it.”

She jerked back as if she’d been burned. “Get out,” she said. “Get off my property, before I call the police.”

Typical. Concerned for her girls’ safety, sure, but don’t fuck with the diamonds. He turned, and got the hell out of there. He could feel the unfriendly pressure of that woman’s eyes against his back.

Well, shit. Chances were good that she would tell her husband what she had seen, and the guy would make whatever he liked of it. But even so, Richard Mathes didn’t seem to care about letting the women who were close to him die at Zhoglo’s hands.

He guessed that was the real reason he’d come here. Fuckup or no fuckup, after seeing Diana Evans’s body lying on the floor, he was glad he’d given that woman a heads-up. He hoped she was smart enough to take it and run with it. Before Zhoglo ate her kids for lunch.

He got into his truck and took off with a roar of the engine, but when he turned the first corner, he had a weird, déjà vu zing to his brain. He’d noticed it before when driving around that particular block.

He swung around the loop again to see if he could pin it down.

This time he saw it with his conscious mind. That car. He’d noticed it out of the corner of his eye before, but he hadn’t put it together. A shiny black PT Cruiser. Becca said that Diana drove one of those. He pulled in ahead of it, and checked the plates, just in case.

Holy shit. It really was the woman’s car. Parked right there.

He got out and went to take a look. It was a mess inside. A long beige raincoat was crumpled in the back seat, as though she’d slept on it. The passenger seat was littered with junk. Too many people driving by on the busy avenue for him to be comfortable with jimmying the lock, but he remembered Becca’s experience, and tried the door handle. Just for the hell of it.

It opened. He got into the driver’s side, and was hit with the heady stench of whiskey. A short search revealed an uncapped flask of what smelled like scotch. The liquor had drained out onto the floor.

The glove box had nothing but the registration and a fistful of maps. He went through all the garbage on the seats; crumpled tissues stained with makeup, receipts, paper coffee cups with bright red lipstick marks, medical journals, a silk scarf, breath mints and chewing gum to hide her alcohol breath, not that it ever worked. The package for the digital voice recorder Becca had noticed. A couple of mismatched earrings. They looked expensive.

The center console yielded a handful of CD’s, more garbage, more mints, and a stash of quarters for tolls.

He checked out the back seat and hit pay dirt with the beige raincoat. There was a small, hard object in the depths of one of her coat pockets. Just what he’d been hoping for, ever since Becca’s tale of blood and urine samples.

He fished out the voice recorder rod and stared at it, then pushed its on button. Nothing happened. Nothing lit up.

The phone rang. He pulled it out, hoping it was Becca, but the display informed him that it was Davy. He pocketed the recorder, let out a flat sigh of disappointment, and hit talk. “Yeah?”

“Nick. Get your ass over here right now.” Davy’s voice was hard and clipped. As grim as death.

His gut clenched. “What happened? Did Zhoglo—”

“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Hang up, and move.”

Chapter
26

“A w, Becca, come on,” Josh wheedled, scratching tufts of hairon his naked chest. “I wish you’d get this bug out of your ass and chill.”

“Joshie, you had an appointment with Carrie on Friday night!” Becca’s voice was getting shriller. “You blew her off, and then you were incommunicado all weekend! And now we can’t get in touch with her at all! Don’t you think she would have at least left us a text message?”

“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Josh grumbled. He leaned over the big dining room table, which was covered with the remains of a bacchanalian breakfast; a bowl of fruit, a towering heap of breakfast pastries, ziplock plastic bags of sliced deli meats and cheeses. He snagged a glazed lemon cupcake. “Have a muffin and relax. What’s the big deal? So we’ll drive down to the college today and roust her out. Give her a hard time for scaring us.”

“You don’t look overly scared,” Becca observed sourly.

In fact, Josh looked like he was having the time of his life. He looked like a prince wallowing in the lap of sensual luxury, naked but for baggy silk paisley boxer shorts. He pinched a slice of honey-roasted ham out of one of the bags, and dangled it over his mouth.

“I will go with you,” Nadia volunteered. “I wish to meet this little sister.” Her cool glance in Becca’s direction clearly implied that she hoped that the little sister would be an improvement on the big one.

Becca clenched her teeth, and reminded herself to be polite. Something about this over-the-top sexpot blonde put her teeth on edge. She had already told herself that maybe it was just Kaia fallout, and the girl could hardly be blamed for that—but even so.

Becca would never have chosen to meet her new boyfriend’s sister in a pink ostrich-feather-trimmed silk robe that gaped over her breasts and barely covered her butt cheeks.

Besides. There was something strange about the whole thing. That girl was too perfect to be real. Granted, Joshie was a cute guy in his own right, with a nice body, if a bit skinny, and bright green eyes that made lots of girls swoon. But there was something so polished and gleaming and smooth about Nadia. She would look more believable on the arm of a much older man. Or, rather, a much richer one.

Or maybe Becca was just feeling jealous and insecure about a beautiful younger girl, in which case, she should be smacked. Becca sipped her coffee and fought for a more adult perspective.

It was hard to come by. Now Nadia was amusing herself by squirting whipped cream out of a tube can onto a ripe, red strawberry, thoroughly licking it all off, and then slowly inserting the pointed red end of the strawberry between her shiny lips.

Josh watched, rapt, and grabbed a berry. “Can I have one?”

Nadia licked bits of berry juice off her lips. “Of course, Josh,” she cooed. “You can have anything you wish of me.”

He held out his berry. Nadia anointed it, both of them giggling.

Oh, for the love of God. Becca couldn’t take any more of this crap.

“Nadia,” she said. “Please don’t be offended, but would you mind letting me speak to my brother in private for just a few minutes?”

Nadia froze, her pink mouth dangling open, her blue eyes wide. She stuck Josh’s berry into his open mouth, and wiped her fingers daintily with a deli napkin, looking hurt. She got up with a fluttery swirl of pink silk and feathers that revealed a whole lot more than Becca had ever wanted to see of her anatomy. She was clearly not a believer in underwear. Or even pubic hair, for that matter.

“Very well,” she said. “I go to the bedroom now. Please let me know when I am welcome again to come into my own kitchen, no?”

“Nadia!” Josh leaped up, alarmed. “Wait! She didn’t mean—”

Slam. The door to the living room rattled in its frame.

“Nice going, Becca. That was just swell,” Josh said stonily.

“Joshie, please. I need you to listen to me. You don’t have time to be fooling around like an idiot while Carrie—”

“You’ve been fooling around like an idiot with your boy toy thug, right?” Josh shot back. “Works for you, so why not me?”

That barb hit the mark. Becca tried to rally and think of some way to express her misgivings about Nadia in a way that would not alienate him.

It was a useless exercise. “Joshie, something’s off about this—”

“Don’t start with me,” he snarled. “Just shut up, OK?”

“No, really. Look at this place.” She indicated the huge, beautiful kitchen. “Tuscan tile? Marble countertops? State-of-the-art appliances? This furniture?” She swept her hand at the antique dining table, the mellow blond parquet, the restored molding of the townhouse. “This isn’t housing for a foreign student, Joshie. This kitchen alone is bigger than my entire apartment. You can’t pay rent on this place with extra shifts at Eric’s Electronics Barn. There’s something else going on here. Can’t you feel it?”

“What I feel is that you’re doing your best to fuck this up for me,” Josh snarled. “And I’m not going to let you do it.”

“No. Joshie, I swear—”

“Life will kick you in the teeth every fucking chance it gets. You know that. So when something great comes along, you should grab it! Appreciate it! Not just spit on it because it’s too good to be true!”

Josh’s impassioned words did have a ring of truth to them, even if they were inspired by horndog lust. But he had to listen. “That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. Look, Joshie. Never mind this thing with Nadia. I’ve got big problems. I’ve got to tell you why I’m so scared. For my life.”

That got his attention. “Huh? What do you mean, your life?”

“Sit down,” Becca said wearily. “I’ll be quick. For Nadia’s sake.”

Zhoglo was enjoying the spectacle of Rebecca pouring out her woes to her brother, with no idea that they were all in the jaws of the tiger. Her reaction to Nadia had been wonderfully amusing.

The door opened and Nadia entered. Zhoglo shot her a critical look. He was unimpressed with the floating pink confection she wore. She was impersonating a poor student. It should be obvious to the humblest intelligence that she should avoid dressing like a costly whore.