Hard as It Gets (3 page)

A door rattled and squeaked. “Hey! What the hell you think you’re doing?”

Becca wrenched into a kneeling position, scraping her temple on the brick molding above the window in her haste. She gasped hard and fell back on her butt, gaping up as a man flew out onto the rear stoop above her. Had he been home the whole time? “I’m . . . I . . .” She swallowed, struggling for even a little bit of moisture in her suddenly arid mouth, and shook her head. The freckles covering the old man’s brown cheeks might’ve given him a friendly appearance if he hadn’t been glaring at her. Or wielding a bat. “The guy that lives here is my brother. I haven’t heard from him in days,” she blurted.

He lowered the Louisville, thoughts of slugging apparently fading away, and the tension drained out of his sloped shoulders. He pressed his fingers to his ear and adjusted a hearing aid. Guess that explained the no-answer when she’d knocked. “Charlie’s sister, you say? You got some ID or something?”

The lanyard holding her UMC credentials still hung around her neck. She lifted it and rose to her feet. “Becca Merritt.”

“Hmm,” he said, his light brown eyes flipping from the plastic card to the green scrubs she hadn’t bothered to change at the end of her shift. “You a doctor?”

“Nurse. Have you seen Charlie? He’s not answering his phone or returning any of my messages.”

He swiped his fingers against his temple. “You’re bleeding there.”

The sting had already told her as much. “It’s okay. Have you seen him? Please.”

The man rested the bat against the door and shook his head. “I don’t think he’s been staying here. Ain’t seen him coming and going, ain’t seen no lights, haven’t heard that music he likes to play.”

Becca’s stomach prepped for a three-story drop. “How long has this been going on?”

He gripped the rusted iron railing. “I’d say . . . a week. Maybe two. He’s current, though.”

Hope held her stomach in place. “Are you the landlord? Can you let me in?”

“He’s in some kinda trouble, ain’t he? Boy’s too damn smart on a computer for his own good.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, suspicion curling in her belly.

“Let’s just say my son had a little parking ticket problem, and now he don’t.” His eyebrows arched on his forehead and let her come to a conclusion all on her own.

Typical Charlie. He’d gone from obsessively studying software and web code as a kid to hacking into websites when he was a teenager just because he could. All self-taught. Luckily, he’d parlayed his hacking skills into a legitimate job as a computer security consultant—a fancy way of saying big companies paid him a boatload of money to hack into their security systems as a way of testing and evaluating them. But he still occasionally wandered on the wrong side of the cyber law. Just for fun. “Sounds like him,” she said.

He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and waved her up the steps. “I’ll let you in, Miss Becca. Come on.”

“Thank you,” she said, following him. Uncertainty fluttered through her as she approached the door, but she pushed through it and latched onto the affection she’d heard in the man’s voice when he’d spoken of Charlie.

Inside, the kitchen was like time traveling to the 1970s, with its mix of green and gold appliances. But the room was tidy and smelled of fresh, strong coffee. The assemblage of roosters on one wall gave the space a sort of outdated charm and hinted at the presence, at one time at least, of a woman’s touch. The living room was more of the same.

A cascade of reds and blues fell over the worn hardwood of the foyer, cast by the sun shining through the colored glass of the fan-shaped transom so typical of Baltimore row houses. She followed the man out the front door and down into the cement stairwell where she’d started this little adventure not long before.

His key went right in. He pushed the door open but held himself back, gesturing for her to go first.

“Thank you, Mr.—”

“Call me Walt. Everyone does.”

She smiled and stepped past him. “Thank you, Walt.”

Inside, murky gloom shrouded the apartment, the slice of filtered daylight from the open door the only illumination. “Let me get the lights,” he said.

Becca walked forward, her foot coming down on something—

The overhead light came on.

The place was a disaster. Books and magazines shoved off shelves, the contents of drawers spilled every which way over the floor, clothing strewn about, the remains of cardboard boxes lying caved in here and there.

Her heart flew into her throat, and she charged forward. Charlie!

A hand clamped on her arm. “Wait. Let me check things out,” Walt said, urging her toward the still open door. “Got a cell phone?”

Becca nodded, her mind reeling. He didn’t need to tell her what to do with it. “Maybe we should both wait,” she said. Last thing she wanted was for this old man to get hurt on her account.

“I’ll be all right,” he said, his brows an angry slash over his eyes. “Somebody did this in
my
house.”

She dialed 911 as she watched the old man prowl around. When the dispatcher answered her call, she told him who she was and what had happened.

“Charlie’s not here,” Walt called from the back room, and relief surged through her. “No one is.”

She relayed that information as well. All she could do now was wait for the police to show. Walt returned to her side at the door, shaking his head and making a bewildered sound low in his throat.

A few minutes passed, and she couldn’t stand still anymore.

Careful not to disturb anything, curiosity born of anxiety dragged her through the apartment and into the small bedroom at the rear. Well, it was supposed to be the bedroom. An office was far more important to her brother. He slept on the couch and reserved this dedicated space for his huge L-shaped desk and computer equipment.

The damage was even greater here. Normally, a row of laptops covered one part of the desk, and countless other gizmos she couldn’t begin to name or understand filled the shelves above. Paper, overturned containers of discs, haphazard piles of cable, empty pizza boxes, and other debris covered the desk and floor. The chair was overturned. The file cabinet had been emptied out, and all the desk drawers stood open.

The computers were all gone.

All she could do was shake her head in disbelief. It was surreal. Totally freaking surreal.

And it meant her internal gauges had been reading just right. Ultrasensitive was the perfect frickin’ setting. Because Charlie
was
in trouble. Goose bumps erupted over her whole body.

Somebody had tossed this place upside down and over again. What were they looking for? Had they found it? And was Charlie here when they came looking?

The little choked noise she made was completely involuntary. The hand she pressed against her lips shook.
Don’t go there. Don’t go there until you have to. Oh, God, please not again.

Sirens sounded in the distance and got louder—closer—fast.

“Miss Becca, the police are here,” Walt said, placing the emphasis on the
po
.

Not sure of her voice, she nodded to the empty space and carefully picked her steps back through the overturned piles of her brother’s life.

Walt waited at the door for her with kind, sympathetic eyes. How far they’d come in such a short time. For all she knew, he might’ve been the last person to see Charlie.
Alive,
her brain added, giving silent voice to her worst fears and raising an image of her older brother, Scott, in her mind’s eye. He’d died of a drug overdose a few weeks after his college graduation, and it had shocked the hell out of all of them. They’d gone to different colleges, and she’d had no idea Scott even used. She couldn’t live through the nightmare of burying a brother again. She wouldn’t.

Tears pricked at the backs of her eyes. No. No way she was falling apart. Or assuming the worst. She
would
find Charlie and figure out what the hell was going on—and who was behind it. With both their parents gone, they were each other’s only remaining family. And she refused to let her little brother down. She’d done enough by refusing to listen to him last week.

Becca shifted into crisis management mode, sliding into the cool, dispassionate discipline the most critical cases in her emergency department required—the one that helped make sure lives got saved, not lost.

A pair of light green eyes flashed into her mind’s eye, and the rest of the man’s face—the angled jaw, blade of a nose, and grim set of his lips—filled in around that cold stare. Nick Rixey. If Charlie’s note meant he’d been a member of her father’s Special Forces team, he would’ve had training and skills she really could’ve used right about now. If her meeting with him yesterday had gone differently. If he’d just heard her out.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda
. A blaze of anger flooded through her veins. No use yearning after what wasn’t and would never be.

Car doors slammed out front. Becca stepped out the door, the transition between Charlie’s cave and the late afternoon sun making her eyes squint and water.

Would they take her more seriously than they had when she’d filed the missing persons report?
Please, God, let them actually help me this time
. But if not, she’d damn well figure this thing out.

One way or another.

Charlie’s life might very well depend on it.

Chapter 3

R
ixey’s mind was still standing in the back corner of Becca’s yard, keeping watch and waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Had been all damn day. The distraction was making him sloppy. And sloppy pissed him off.

Sloppy meant mistakes. Like missing the perfect opportunity to intercept the witness in an assault case he’d been tracking all afternoon. It was like his brain needed a frickin’ tune-up, because he sure as hell wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

As he sat at his desk completing the affidavits for the three sets of papers he’d managed to successfully serve, he had no illusions about why that was.

His instincts refused to let go of this thing with the woman. It was like a fucking stone in his shoe, rolling around and jabbing at him. Normally, he was all about paying attention to instinct—sometimes it was all a man had on his side. And, generally, he trusted his instincts. They almost never failed him.

Almost.

The one glaring exception had been a spectacular crash and burn of a failure that had left men dead, injured, and changed forever. Himself included.

And it had involved a Merritt.

Now he didn’t know whether the instinct rubbing his hide raw over Becca should be trusted or if his recent history was mindfucking him.

The forms chugged from the printer and Rixey scrawled his signature in all the appropriate places.

He leaned back and stretched, the reclining desk chair supporting his weight, then scrubbed his hands through his hair. The light in the room dimmed considerably, drawing his gaze to the window. Clouds were rolling in, blotting out the remains of the evening sun.

Too quiet. Too still. Too alone.

Story of his mothereffing life these days.
Goddamnit,
he missed the guys. The ones who’d died and the ones who hadn’t.

Nope. Not gonna go there.

Becca . . .

Rixey was up and out of the chair before he’d even thought to move.

In his bedroom, he suited up just as he had the night before, a whole lotta déjà vu filling the space between his ears.

Only one way to un-fuck his head. He had to put boots on the ground and eyes on the subject. Shit. And he needed more intel, which meant he was gonna have to talk to her this time.

Keys, phone, and jacket in hand, he made for the living room.

His brother walked in the apartment door just as Rixey reached for it. Jeremy’s gaze dropped to the holstered gun under Nick’s left arm, and he frowned. “You’re going out serving tonight?”

“Nah,” Nick said. He usually had sufficient turnaround time on a service to avoid working at night, when things were more likely to get dicey quick. “Got something else.”

“Something that requires your gun?” Jeremy’s pierced eyebrow arched.

Not wanting to open up an inquisition about what he was doing—especially since even he didn’t really know—Nick ignored the question. “All done downstairs?” Rixey asked. Hard Ink didn’t usually close ’til nine.

Jeremy shook his head, longish hair tumbling into his eyes. He swept it back. “Grabbing some food before my next appointment. And that wasn’t subtle at all, Mr. Spook.”

Hand on the metal door latch, Rixey smirked. “Never a spook. That’s CIA.”

“Whatevs.” Jeremy tugged the fridge door open, casting a yellow glow over that corner of the kitchen.

Rixey stepped out into the hall.

“Hey, Nick?” He ducked back in. Jer looked at him over the top of the refrigerator door, an unusually serious expression on his face. “Be careful.”

The civilian version of
Don’t get shot
. Roger that. “Yup,” Nick said and closed the door behind him.

As he turned onto Becca’s street for the second time in as many nights, he was struck by how close she lived to Hard Ink. Between the crosstown jaunt from the wrong Rebecca Merritt’s house and his brain-dead trip home the previous night, the observation hadn’t really sunk in before. Twelve minutes driving time was all that separated them.

Oh, no, it was a helluva lot more than that physical distance.

Lucky for him, the parking space directly across from Becca’s place was open. He eased the Charger into it, not worrying about stealth since he planned to talk to her. Somewhere nearby, a dog unleashed a series of high-pitched barks as Rixey shrugged into his jacket, cut across the street, and climbed onto the little stoop.

He knocked—three solid raps. From the porch, he surveyed the street in both directions. The last gray light of day clung to the sky, casting shadows in front of buildings and under trees. He turned his gaze back to Becca’s house. Flowerless rectangular planters hung from the sills of both front windows. The door was solid wood, black with white trim, and had a Schlage dead bolt, he noted with approval.

Rixey knocked again and looked down. The
Baltimore Sun
sat rolled up in a clear plastic wrapper on the little porch’s edge. Not home yet?

Fine. He’d wait.

Back in the Charger, he pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts. Without any real intention, he swiped the entry for Shane McCallan. Once, one of his closest friends. After they’d all been discharged and sent packing to the real world, his former teammate had called and emailed more times than Rixey wanted to remember. He’d been too buried in his own physical and emotional morass, though, and had ignored every one of them. Shit. Now it felt like too much time had passed. A pansy-ass excuse if he’d ever heard one. Coward.

As the second in command, though, Rixey should’ve known. Should’ve predicted. Should’ve stopped the shit before it had come raining down all over them. If only he’d trusted his instincts. But he hadn’t. He’d trusted Merritt implicitly and dismissed the things that hadn’t made sense. No way Shane and the others didn’t resent the hell out of him for that.

Fucking
coward, more like it.

He didn’t begrudge them whatever resentment they sent his way. It couldn’t possibly be more than he directed at himself.

From across the street, a car door closed with a
thunk
. Rixey thumbed out of his contacts and dropped the phone to his lap as he glanced out the driver’s side window.

A woman made her way up the sidewalk, an overhead streetlamp confirming it was Becca. His gaze tracked back to the car that hadn’t been parked there before. A recent-model silver Prius, which seemed to suit her just fine.

Becca jogged up the front steps, swooping down in a weary-looking movement to retrieve the newspaper. She pulled the mail out of a wall-mounted box and unlocked the door. For a moment, the interior darkness obscured her, pushing blood through Rixey’s veins at a faster clip. But then the front hall light came on and her silhouette moved behind one of the windows.

At the same time a movement darted past the darkened window immediately above her.

Not sure what he’d seen, Rixey went totally still, his gaze fixed hard and steady on the rectangular expanse of glass.

There it was again. A nearly imperceptible shifting of shadows in the dark.

Instinct flooded adrenaline through his system and he shot out of the car.

Because Becca Merritt was not alone in that house.

T
HE POLICE WERE
going to file reports for illegal trespassing and criminal property damage. It was a giant step past the dismissiveness Becca had received when she’d gone down to the station days before to file the missing persons report, but neither was going to attract much in the way of manpower or resources. The cops had pretty much admitted that to her face before they’d left Charlie’s.

Becca passed through the first floor of her row house, turning on lights as she went. She needed food and a shower. And then she could sit down and figure out where to start and what to do. She flipped on the kitchen light and dumped her purse and keys on the counter.

As she turned, her gaze went to the doormat in front of the back door. It was crooked and sat several inches out from the door. It hadn’t been crooked when she’d left this morning, had it? She stepped closer, carefully, as if the hooked fibers might spring up and bite her. With her toe, she nudged it back into place, flush against the frame.

Her scalp prickled, all the hairs rising so high they threatened takeoff.

She blew out a breath. What’d happened to Charlie’s apartment had rattled her. And no wonder. Whoever had tossed his place hadn’t left a single thing untouched. Just the thought of that kind of violation made her skin crawl. A lump of sadness slid into her belly. Charlie was going to flip out. Maybe she could clean it up before he saw it. Only problem was, the boy knew
exactly
where everything was supposed to be. No matter how neat it looked to her eyes, his would see a thousand things wrong. Either way, she couldn’t save him the grief of dealing with it.

Not to mention the fact that until she figured out what kind of trouble Charlie had stumbled into, she probably shouldn’t be hanging out over there. His place clearly wasn’t safe.

Becca stepped to the window covering the top half of the back door and scanned the yard, then she tugged the pale green cotton over the glass, shutting out the night’s black gaze. She shuddered. Tonight wasn’t the first time she’d found something she was initially
sure
wasn’t how she’d left it. But usually she managed to come down on the side of sanity and convince herself she was imagining things.

After all, who really paid attention to the exact position of a throw rug? Or the exact angle of a stack of papers in relation to the corner of the desk on which they sat? Not her, until lately.

Enough. Time for food before her stomach ate itself.

She’d no more than taken a step in the direction of the fridge when she heard a soft thump. Becca froze, listened. The neighbor? Their houses were adjoined, after all. Except the noise had come from the front of the house, not the side wall.

Pull it together, Bec
. She shook her head and reached for the fridge handle. Maybe she’d scramble some eggs. Or throw together a bowl of cold cereal. Low key was all she had energy for.

Squeak.

Goose bumps erupted across her skin, and her heart flew into her throat. She knew that squeak. Staircase to the second floor. Top step just right of center.

Someone was in the house. Coming down her front stairs. And he had to have heard her arrive home a few minutes before. Adrenaline spiked, sharpening her senses and kicking her heart rate into a sprint.

Hide? Flee out the back door? Grab a knife? Confront? Was squeaky-stairs-guy alone? Were there others? Her gun taunted her from its storage box in her bedroom upstairs. It had been a housewarming gift from her overprotective father upon the purchase of the row house—but it might as well have been in Bangkok for all the good it was doing her right now.

Thoughts ricocheted through her brain, the rapid fire momentarily freezing her between the options.

Then she was in motion. Wincing at every little noise she made, she picked up the landline and dialed 911. Afraid to risk even a whisper, she sat the receiver speaker down on the counter to muffle the operator’s voice. When she didn’t respond, they’d dispatch the police and an ambulance to the address associated with the phone number.

With help hopefully on the way, she tiptoed toward the back door. As she passed the butcher block, she eased a thick blade from the wood and prayed to any and every god that might be listening that she didn’t have to use it. Because the only way she could was if she were within arm’s reach of her intruder—which also meant she’d be within reach of
his
arms, too. Though he probably had something better than a knife.

Shit, shit, shit
.
So not helpful, Bec.

But likely true.

Squeeeeak.

Oh, God. That’s the fourth step from the top. Get out now!

Holding her breath, she slipped her cell into her pocket and approached the door. The minute she opened it, the noise would tell the intruder exactly what was going on. In case he pursued, she’d have to move fast and not look back. A plan took shape—out the door, down the steps, run to the sidewalk and then back toward the alley. Then she’d just keep running until she found a place to hide or heard sirens.

It was possible she was going to have a heart attack first, the way the damn thing was booming against her sternum.

She reached for the doorknob.

It started turning on its own.

For a split second, her brain couldn’t process the information.

And then it did. Someone was coming in the back door. She was trapped.

It all happened in a blur.

The door eased open. A man all in black stepped out of the darkness with a gun.

Becca swallowed her scream and lunged with the knife.