Stolen Fury (40 page)

Papers rustled in his earpiece. “Bedroom, bedroom, closet…shit,” Billy said in a tense voice. “I don’t know.”

Rafe peeked out in the hall. “Calm down and focus. I’m relying on you, here. Don’t let me down.”

Silence filled the channel, followed by papers rustling again. “Okay, let’s see. Third floor…nothing. There’s a large closet on the second floor. End of the hall.”

Rafe timed the camera at the top of the steps and headed for the second level.

“Wait.” Billy’s voice stopped him as he moved out of the way of the second floor camera. “No. Basement. There’s a bonus room, then an exercise room, then it looks like there’s another room, but it’s unmarked. Blueprints show a heavy sliding door, almost like a safe room.”

Rafe’s blood pulsed. That had to be it. “Tell me how to get there.”

Billy relayed instructions in his ear. He timed the cameras and within minutes dropped three floors to the basement, where he stood in an exercise room staring at a wall of mirrors.

He turned a slow circle. “Talk to me, Billy. All I see is my ugly mug staring back at me.”

“It’s there, I’m telling you. There’s got to be a hidden switch, a release lever, something.”

Rafe ran his gloved fingers along the smooth glass. The three-panel mirror stopped roughly two feet from the ceiling. He stepped back and let his eyes sweep over the wall from top to bottom.

It had to be here. He hadn’t come all this way to walk away empty-handed.

Then he saw it. The smallest imperfection in the glass along the right edge of the third panel. It looked like a shadow, but Rafe guessed there was a sensor hidden behind the mirror.

He held his hand over the space and pressed his finger gently against the outside edge of the glass. A small button depressed. The middle panel popped open, swinging outward like a door. Rafe stepped back, grabbed his light and shined it into the small room.

The blood drained from his face. “Holy mother of God.”

“You’re in?” Billy asked.

“I’m in.” Rafe stepped inside the space and glanced around. Hundreds of pictures of Lisa covered the walls,
plastered against the bare concrete like a collage. Snapshots of her and Stone together, news clippings of her research over the years, digs she’d been on, projects she’d undertaken for her university. Personal photos of her with Shane and her sisters, of her alone in what Rafe guessed was her San Francisco apartment, of the two of them together in Chicago and here in Miami.

His stomach rolled. Swanson had been following her for years, waiting for the right moment to strike.

His gaze dropped to the table in the center of the room, a virtual altar to the Furies and Stone’s research. On one side, Tisiphone sat perched against a drape of red velvet. On the other, an urn was surrounded by a wreath of dying flowers. And in the center, photos of Lisa over the last day stared up at him—her tired and worn out as she stepped off his boat at Lauren’s dock, her somber face as she stood at the kitchen windows gazing out at the water, her asleep on the window seat in the living room while he planned to go after Tisiphone.

Dread swept over Rafe and a tickle lurched in his throat. Swanson knew Lisa was still alive. She’d been watching Lauren’s house, which meant she knew Maria and Billy had been there. She hadn’t left here to night headed for Odyssey and the other two Furies. She was going after Lisa.

“Mierda.”
Frantic, Rafe reached for his mike and whipped around. “Billy. Goddammit, it’s a setup!”

Lisa swallowed a scream. The bottle slipped from her fingers and bounced off the tile floor. Cold water splashed across her feet as she took a cautious step back.

Christy Swanson narrowed her eyes and lifted the gun at her side. “Surprised to see me?”

Lisa’s heart thumped erratically against her ribs, but she refused to let her fear show. “I shouldn’t be, should I?”

Christy shook her head slowly. “You’re resourceful. I’ll give you that much. Doug always said you were the smartest
woman he knew. Used to gnaw on every one of my goddamn nerves.”

The venom in Christy’s voice made Lisa’s adrenaline spike. She darted a look over Christy’s shoulder to the doorway leading to the living room.

Glancing back at the woman holding a gun in front of her, she spoke louder, hoping Shane would hear their voices. “Not as smart as you, Christy. You tricked everyone.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I was never good enough for Doug. He was the only family I had left. I would have done anything for him. But in his eyes I was never smart enough, never tough enough, never what he
really
wanted. He wanted the Furies, and I couldn’t get them. He wanted you to be the one taking care of him, not me, even after the way you betrayed him.”

Christy’s voice hardened. She moved forward. The gun wobbled in her hand. “Do you have any idea how that made me feel? I gave up my whole life to help him. The least he could have done was pay me an ounce of fucking respect. But no, he had the nerve to compare me to you.”

She laughed, an evil sound that echoed through the kitchen and sent a shiver down Lisa’s spine. “You! A lying, conniving whore with absolutely no sense of loyalty! When he learned you’d found Alecto, he was stupid enough to think it was going to bring you back to him. Can you believe that? He wanted Alan to help him find you. I couldn’t stand back and let that happen.”

Lisa’s stomach tightened with understanding, and she eased back another step until she bumped into the counter. “You killed him.”

Christy’s eyes blazed with both hurt and fury. “Mercy. That’s what I gave him. He should
thank
me for what I did for him. He would have died within the year anyway. I eased his suffering.”

Lisa glanced over Christy’s shoulder again. Where the hell was Shane?

“He’s not coming, you know,” Christy said in a mocking tone. “No one’s coming for you this time.”

Lisa’s eyes shifted back to Christy’s menacing glare.

“He’ll have a massive headache when he wakes up, but he’ll live. I want him to know you died because of your obsession with the Furies. I want someone else to feel an inkling of what I felt all these years.”

Panic squeezed Lisa’s chest.

Christy grabbed her by the hair and thrust her toward the patio door. “We have one stop to make first, though. Before this is over, you’re going to get me the Furies. I deserve that much at least.”

Rafe drove ninety on U.S. 1 north toward the Rickenbacker Causeway. He swerved in and out of traffic, swore at an old man out for a Sunday drive in the middle of the friggin’ night.

Billy hung onto the safety handle above his head with one hand and kept the cell phone pressed against his ear with the other. “Still no answer at the house. They’re not answering their cells either.”

“Hijo de puta.”
Rafe ran a hand over his face and tried like hell not to panic. He should have listened to his gut. Goddammit. He should have listened to Lisa and brought her with him.

“Try Pete again.”

Sweat beaded his forehead. He slammed on the brakes at the tollbooth, dug change out of his pocket and tossed it into the coin basket, then punched the gas before the light turned green and tore off across the West Bridge.

Billy lowered the phone and dialed again. He darted a worried look Rafe’s direction. “Signal keeps dying.”

Carajo.

Muscles rigid, Rafe drove the six miles in silence and turned into the Village of Key Biscayne. His hands clenched into fists against the wheel as they cut through town and finally pulled to a stop in front of Lauren’s house. He punched
in the code, waited impatiently for the gate to slide open and eased into the drive.

The house was dark but for the blue-green flicker of a TV downstairs. He parked in the shadows and killed the engine. When they climbed from the vehicle, Rafe pointed at Billy then signaled for him to go around back. Billy nodded, crept along the side of the building and disappeared into the darkness.

Rafe held his breath and listened at the front door. The only sound was the gentle lap of water against the shore behind the house, a seagull screaming from far off, muffled voices from the television.

If he was too late, if something had already happened to Lisa…

He tried the knob and found the door unlocked. Panic welled in his chest. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. The living room was dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he noticed that the large wooden candlesticks from the coffee table lay broken in two in the middle of the living room floor. Beneath it, droplets of blood stained the white carpet and disappeared in a trail toward the kitchen.

No, no, no…

“Lisa!”

He tore around the corner just as Billy swept in from the patio. Shane was on his knees in the kitchen, hands cuffed behind his back. Blood dripped onto the tiles from a gash in his forehead and spread across the white cotton shirt from the wound in his shoulder.

“What happened?” Rafe grabbed a rag from the counter and pressed it against Shane’s forehead. “Where’s Lisa?”

“Swanson. Was here. Surprised me.”

“When?”

“Not sure. Think I blacked out. Went to get some pain pills from my bag while Lisa was in the kitchen.” He gave his head a swift shake. “When I stepped out of the hall she cold-cocked me and jammed her foot into my bad shoulder.”

“Where are the keys to the cuffs?” Billy asked.

“My bag. Bedroom down the hall.”

“Where’s Lisa?” Rafe asked again, impatience and worry squeezing the air from his lungs.

Shane looked up. Guilt and fear plagued his features. “I don’t know.”

Rafe raked a hand through his hair and pulled so hard his scalp burned. Where would Swanson take her?

Think, dammit.

What did the woman want? She wanted Lisa to suffer. She wanted the Furies.

Odyssey.

His head darted up. “Call Pete at the gallery. Tell him what happened. Warn him Swanson’s on her way. Then call your cops in.”

“Swanson wouldn’t be stupid enough to go after the Furies if she’s onto us,” Billy said quickly from the archway, holding Shane’s leather duffle.

“She would if she’s got Lisa as a hostage.” Rafe headed for the patio door. He’d never make it in time by car. He just hoped Lauren’s fancy powerboat moored at the dock was full of fuel.

“Rafe.”

Shane’s worried voice stopped him. He glanced over his shoulder and felt his chest tighten with the same fear he saw on Shane’s face.

“There’s an extra gun in my bag. Take it.”

Billy dug through the bag and pulled out the Glock.

Rafe caught the firearm and magazine when Billy tossed them, then checked the chamber. He’d never taken a weapon on a job. In his line of work it was how people ended up dead, but this wasn’t a job anymore. This was personal. He swallowed around the lump wedged in his throat and looked at Shane. “You’re not the only one who loves her, Maxwell. I’ll get her back.”

“You’d better,” Shane said. “I’m counting on you.”

* * *

Lisa’s hands tightened on the wheel of Swanson’s Mercedes. Beside her, Christy sat rigid with the barrel of the gun pointed at Lisa’s chest.

The woman had been silent since she’d pushed Lisa into the car and barked directions. Lisa wasn’t sure which was better, the eerie silence or the irrational rants the woman seemed to go off on when the mood hit. Neither were high on her list at the moment.

The lights of Miami twinkled across the water. Lisa’s mind spun as she made the slow turn from Virginia Key onto the Bay Bridge on the Rickenbacker Causeway. Darkness pressed in from both sides, the water big black pools to the right and left.

If she made it to Odyssey, she knew Swanson wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Pete and Hailey to get the Furies. How many more people had to die because of this woman’s sick sense of revenge? If Lisa did something now, she could stop her before anyone else got hurt. She already knew Swanson planned to kill her as soon as she got what she wanted. It was only a matter of time for her at this point.

Lisa’s adrenaline surged. Traffic was sparse this time of night. They’d only seen a handful of cars since they’d left Key Biscayne. Her best chance for surprise was now, not after they got into the city.

Before she could change her mind, she wrenched the wheel hard into the right-hand lane and rammed the vehicle against the security barrier. The Mercedes skidded against concrete, shooting sparks into the darkness. Swanson’s body jerked to the side and bounced off the car door. She screamed. The gun slipped from her fingers and landed on the floorboards. Cursing, she tried to push herself upright.

Lisa slammed on the brakes. Swanson fell forward then back. Lisa thrust her elbow into Swanson’s face, and the woman screeched. Arm aching, Lisa jerked the driver’s door open and bent for the gun that had fallen and slipped under her feet.

“You bitch!” Swanson lunged across the center console, ramming her body into Lisa. They tumbled out of the car. Lisa’s back and shoulders took the brunt of the fall as she hit unforgiving pavement. A car whizzed by on the left, the blare of its horn jolting through her whole body.

Swanson grabbed Lisa by the T-shirt, lifting her an inch off the ground. She jerked one hand back and landed a right hook across Lisa’s cheek. Pain exploded in Lisa’s face. Her head smacked the pavement with a loud crack.

Stars crept into the edge of her vision, but she fought back with everything she had. She was smaller than Swanson by several inches, but stronger.

She jabbed her fingers into Swanson’s eyes. When the woman howled and pulled back, Lisa wriggled out from under her weight.

Frantic, Lisa glanced around for the gun. It had fallen out when they’d tumbled from the car, been kicked across the pavement in their struggle. She spotted it by the front tire.

She moved quickly around Swanson, who was still kneeling on the ground, moaning in pain. Chest heaving, Lisa leaned down and lifted the gun.

Swanson plowed into her from behind. The weapon flew from her fingers and disappeared over the side of the bridge. The air whooshed out of Lisa’s lungs. For a frightening moment, her body sailed over the security barricade into the darkness below.