“Oh, like eHarmony?”
“Precisely.” The main points of compatibility being his requiring someone with a law degree to get him bail and her having a JD from Harvard. “Will you let me in his place now?”
“You‟re in a hurry. You know, my sister tried eHarmony. The guy she met was a frickin‟
jerk.”
It turned out that getting the landlady up the stairs took about as much effort as throwing her over a shoulder and carrying her to the third floor. However, ten minutes of question deflection later, they were finally at the door.
“You know,” the landlady said as she put her keys to work and unlocked things, “you should think about—”
“Thanks so much for all your help,” Grier said as she slipped inside and shut the woman out in the hall.
Leaning against the wood panels, she took a deep breath and listened to the grousing fade on its way downstairs.
And then she turned around…Oh, God.
The barren room was as wilted and lonely as an old man, proving that poverty, like age, was a great equalizer—she could have been in any tenement or drug house or condemned building in any city in any country: The old pine floors had all the gloss of a sheet of sandpaper, and the ceiling had water stains in the corners that were the color of urine. No furniture in sight, not one table or chair or TV. Just a sleeping bag, a pair of combat boots and some clothes in precisely folded piles.
Isaac Rothe‟s pillow was nothing but a sweatshirt.
As she stood just inside the apartment, all she could think of was the last place her brother had stayed. At least her client‟s was clean and there weren‟t hypodermic needles and dirty spoons everywhere: This sparseness did not appear to be the result of an addict‟s slanted priorities.
But good Lord, it was still a shocker to remember where Daniel had ended up. The filth…the cockroaches…the rotting food…
Forcing herself to get a move on, she went into the kitchen and wasn‟t surprised to find all the cupboards and the drawers and the refrigerator empty. Bathroom had a razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, and soap.
In the bedroom, which was totally unoccupied, she went into the closet and used the penlight on her key chain to look around inside. The panel that Isaac had described was over to the left 41
J.R. Ward
and she got it open without a problem.
And yes, there was, in fact, a Star Market plastic bag with twenty-five thousand dollars in cash hidden in the dusty space between the framing boards. Or at least the loose collection of bills looked and weighed like that much money—
Creak.
Grier froze.
Listened hard.
Glancing over her shoulder, she stopped breathing. But all she heard was the thunder of her heart.
When the silence persisted, she shoved the bag back where it had been, replaced the panel and shut the closet again; then she went over to the window across the way. The glass was so damned milky with grime, it wasn‟t as if anyone could see in from the outside, and yet she felt as though she was being watched…
Something flashed and she leaned in closer.
At the top of the window, a pair of tiny metal plates had been stuck to the cracking paint, one on the frame, the other on the sash. There was another set at the bottom and the things appeared to be made of copper that had been coated with a matte finish of some kind. If she hadn‟t come over, she never would have noticed them.
Grier went back through living room, the kitchen and the bathroom, and found the same thing on every single window. Top and bottom, two sets. And the doors were likewise equiped—
all of them, interior and exterior.
She knew exactly what the plates were.
Her multimillion-dollar house on Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill had them on its own sashes and jambs. They were state-of-the-art security alarm contacts.
Standing in the center of the apartment, her mind ran through the math: bowling-alley empty, forty-dollar sleeping bag for a bed, no phone…but the place was wired for sound like it was a bank safe.
Time to dig around.
Using the soft cloth that she cleaned her sunglasses with, she went through her client‟s personal effects without leaving fingerprints behind—and she found the alarm‟s receiver in the folds of the sleeping bag. As well as a pair of forty-caliber handguns that were fitted with silencers and had no serial numbers on them and a hunting knife that was well-worn but viciously sharp.
“Jesus…Christ,” she whispered, putting everything back just as she‟d found it.
Rising up from her crouch by the “bed,” she went into the kitchen. Systematically going from handle to handle, she wiped off her prints and then looked under the sink and behind the refrigerator. Next stop was the bathroom, and her hands were shaky as she got rid of any traces she might have left behind and also flashed her penlight into dark corners.
In her haze of jerky suspicion, she was well aware that she was violating her client‟s privacy, but the bloodhound in her couldn‟t stop—the frantic hunt was like a muscle that hadn‟t been used and needed the exercise. She had done this so many times with Daniel‟s apartments and cars, and by the time she finished going through Isaac Rothe‟s place, she felt sweaty and vaguely nauseous in a very familiar way.
42
Crave
No drugs, though. Anywhere.
Returning to the living room, she measured the windows once again. The twenty-five grand would be worth protecting…but the security system hadn‟t been activated.
Which meant it was used as a notifier when Isaac was sleeping.
In her experience, the only kind of criminal element with access to this caliber of equipment was a drug lord or very high-level Mafia capo. Her client‟s affect and physical appearance matched neither of those profiles—typically, those were older men, not under-thirties who were built like enforcers.
There was one other possible explanation, however.
She got out her cell phone and dialed up a number that she‟d used too many times in the past.
When the call was answered, she took a deep, long one and felt as though she were jumping off a cliff.
“Hi, Louie, how‟s my favorite PI doing?…Aw, that‟s sweet of you…Uh-huh…I‟m good.”
Liar, liar, liar on that one.
While the two of them played catch-up, she headed back to the money stash and wiped the doorknob of the closet with her square of cloth. “As a matter of fact I do need something. If you have some time, I have somebody I‟d like you to check out for me, please?”
After she told Louie all she knew about her client, which wasn‟t more than a name and a birth date and this inconsequential address, she hung up.
The question was, of course, what now?
She hadn‟t believed Isaac Rothe when he‟d told her he had cash.
So she‟d posted his bail herself.
It had been her only choice: The court was willing to let her client off, but the bailsmen wouldn‟t touch the case. Too much of a flight risk.
Which suggested the judge might have had his head wedged when he‟d made his decision.
Oh, wait…that would be her in this situation.
Looking around the empty apartment, she realized that her client was about as substantive as a draft. There was no way he was going to stick around for his hearings.
Hell, he probably wasn‟t going to be here a minute past when he was released. He clearly had resources, and his things were backpack portable.
She glanced at the door.
Good thing she could afford to lose that twenty-five grand of hers. The plan had been to pledge it on faith so that he trusted her and would let her help him.
But it was probably going to end up being a very expensive lesson in not investing in people you didn‟t know and shouldn‟t trust.
43
I
t was six p.m. when Isaac was finally brought out of holding by a guard. In spite of how long it took to come and get him—and he had a feeling the staff had been taking their own sweet time—the process for his release was smooth and quick now that they had decided to let him out: Cuffs to be unlocked—theirs. Signatures to be inked—his. Clothes to change out of—theirs.
Clothes to change into—his. Wallet returned.
All he could think about was his attorney. He couldn‟t believe she‟d gotten him bail.
Or carried money for him.
Man, he owed her. Without Grier Childe, he wouldn‟t be on the verge of the freedom that was going to keep him alive.
He hadn‟t seen her since she‟d come to tell him that she‟d been successful with the judge, but clearly she‟d settled things with his cash or he wouldn‟t be back in his own boxers.
The lockdown part of the courthouse was separated from the public section by a series of gates that took him by the room he‟d met with her in. The last set of don‟t-even-think-about-its was by central processing, where he‟d been checked in and photographed.
God, he could still smell her perfume.
With a clank, the steel lock was sprung and the guard gave him a shove in lieu of a “bon voyage”—
“Do you need a ride?”
Isaac stopped dead just inside the waiting area. Ms. Childe was standing across the linoleum, looking like she belonged at a cocktail party and not the county jail: Her hair was in the same twist, but she wasn‟t in a suit anymore. She was wearing some kind of little-black-dress thing…as well as a pair of sheer black panty hose that made him swallow hard to keep from groaning.
What a woman she was.
“Do you?” she prompted.
Feeling like a Neanderthal for going the goggle route, he shook his head. “No, thank you, ma‟am.”
She walked over to the exit and opened the way out, standing to the side, looking like a million bucks…and as if she had nothing better to do with her time than play doorstop for him.
Isaac stepped out of the waiting room and into a hall that had just a bank of elevators and a fire exit.
“Let me give you a ride,” she told him as she punched the down arrow. “I know where you live, remember? And it‟ll be hard for you to get a cab at rush hour.”
True enough. Plus he only had five dollars in cash on him. “I‟ll take care of it.”
44
Crave
“Exactly. By letting me drive you. It‟s cold and you don‟t even have a coat, for God‟s sake.”
Also true. He‟d lost his sweatshirt in the rush of getting cuffed. But like everything else about him, that was not her problem.
When she turned away, as if the decision had been made, he stared at the complicated swirls of her hair. He couldn‟t see any pins or anything, and yet it didn‟t look shellacked.
Magic, he thought.
Without being aware of it, he reached up with his busted punching hand like he was going to touch the nape of her neck. He caught himself in time, though.
And he was gone a moment later, ducking soundlessly into the stairwell.
Which had an open square layout. Perfect.
He made no noise as he slung his body over the banister and let himself free-fall two stories down, catching himself on a just-in-time grab and then swinging his torso up and over. He landed in a silent crouch and didn‟t wait even a heartbeat before he took the last set of steps in a leap and hit the exit. As he broke free into the cold April wind, he scared the crap out of the smokers by the door before leaving them in the dust.
Falling into a run, his path took him up through a dark maze of buildings and then down past all the jewelry stores, as well as Macy‟s and Filene‟s Basement. Rush hour meant the streets were teeming with professional people disgorged from the Financial District, all of them filing into underground T stops or streaming like ants across the park. Fortunately, there was less foot traffic in Chinatown, although more cars—which improved his time.
As he gunned for his place, the exertion helped with the fact that he had nothing but a muscle shirt on, although the wet chill in the air did keep the bruises and the cut on his forehead from pounding too much. When he got to the block where he stayed, he was almost disappointed to slow down—exercise was good for calming his mind and taking the kinks out.
Approaching the three-story house from the rear, he wound in and out of the shallow yards of the neighbors and stopped about thirty feet from the back door. The lights were on in the landlady‟s crib and the second floor, but everything was off on his level.
When he was reasonably sure he hadn‟t been followed, he bent down and picked up a stone.
Staying in the shadows, he closed in, then hauled back and snapped out a throw, clipping the dangling head of the bald bulb over the stoop and putting the exterior lighting to sleep.
Isaac waited, hanging tight right where he was: Speed was often your friend, but that wasn‟t always the case. Sometimes going slow was the only reason you woke up the next morning.
Downstairs, a shadow got up and passed from window to window, then made a return trip to the flicker of the television. Not good news, but not a surprise. Mrs. Mulcahy never left her roost except to go get food—and she was the kind of pesky landlord who made him consider the benefits of park benches. Tonight, however, she wasn‟t the reason he was sneaking into his own place: Chances were damn good that with his name in the penal system, his address had been popped by XOps, and that meant this location was no longer secure.
He had to get in and out of there fast.
Ten minutes later, it was a case of over to the back steps. Key in the lock. Ghosting up the stairwell.
And on his way to the top floor, he avoided the squeaking steps—which eliminated three out of every four of the bastards.