Authors: Kaylin Bowen
She could hear the sirens in the distance. She kept her fingers on his wrist and her other hand on his wound. Her eyes searched the alley for an escape route. She couldn’t be questioned by police and she couldn’t be seen by the ambulance crew. She knew in the light, her disguise was no good. She could pull off the young adult male act in the dark. However, in the light, she couldn’t fool anyone. Her face was one hundred percent feminine and her eyes seemed to draw a lot of attention.
Alex had been placed here three days ago. Pedro was her only contact. She trusted him. She loved him. He was a good man, and her husband’s best friend. He set her up with everything she needed-well, except sanity and chocolate. One had an awful lot to do with the other in her world. She had a prepaid cell phone. Her groceries were delivered weekly to her back door. She didn’t have a car. At least she could use her first name, but her last name was changed to Smith.
Pedro was old enough to be her dad. He had thick dark hair that was quickly turning grey just over his ears. He would come by once a week to check on her the first month. Then, he would show up on occasion. He didn’t want to come to Atlanta too much. He ran the risk of someone following him. He told Alex to call him for anything. Although, he sounded a little pissed at her for calling him tonight, Alex knew he would understand.
Hopefully.
She should probably just tell him she found the guy unconscious. She should tell him he didn’t get a good look at her. Too bad she really sucked at lying. She was however, very good at omission. If he didn’t ask, well, that was his problem.
Alex could see the swirling red and blue lights, now. She knew the ambulance had turned the corner. The police couldn’t be far behind.
Time to go.
Alex heard the big guy mumble something. That was a good sign. She turned back to look at him. Again, he was looking right into her eyes. He had the eyes of a predator. Funny, that didn’t bother her. She knew what he was trying to say so she nodded and mouthed “You’re welcome”. Then she put her finger to her lips while she walked backward and disappeared around the corner. And then she stopped. She shouldn’t have, but she needed to make sure he was going to be okay. She watched the ambulance crew approach him. He turned his head from her direction to look at them. Yep, he was going to be fine. There would be so much noise in the alley; they would never hear her footsteps. She knew the cops would be here shortly. She started running.
Pedro is not going to like this
.
Chapter Two
(Three days earlier)
Alexandra Monroe was asleep upstairs. Her husband, Thomas Monroe, was downstairs working on a case. He could tell her nothing about it. Not that he could ever tell her anything about any of his cases, and really she didn’t ask. He was a good lawyer and a good man, but lately he had been way too preoccupied. There was something wrong, and it had everything to do with one of his current cases. She figured it had to do with a visit from the Senator a few weeks ago. He had actually showed up at their house, instead of Tom’s office. She watched the news enough to know that the Senator was having some trouble.
She knew a very decent man had been murdered. He was a correctional officer at the Bastrop Minimum Security Prison. They only housed white collar criminals. She knew the media believed there was some conspiracy that involved the good senator. Two days after the murders, Senator Robert Lange, Democrat, Alabama, showed up at Tom’s office with an entourage of security.
The senator’s right hand man, Eric Wright, was sent to prison for embezzlement eighteen months ago. Then, last month, the correctional officer, Mark Randall, and Eric Wright were both murdered at the prison. The media thought Wright was going to turn State’s evidence on Senator Lange. According to news reports, Senator Lange had Wright murdered and Randall just got in the way.
Alex knew Tom didn’t usually do murder trials, but she guessed when the Senator showed up on their doorstep, he didn’t feel like he had much of a choice. She still wondered why he chose Tom.
Alex kissed his forehead and told him goodnight while he sat in his study. He said goodnight, but never looked up from whatever he was working on. She could see he was deep in thought and went upstairs to take a shower and go to bed.
She was awakened by a door closing. She looked over at the bedside clock that was showing one am. Holding her breath, she listened for any sign that somebody was inside the house. Everything was silent.
Alex reached over to the nightstand and took the old revolver from the top drawer and left the room. Tom had given her the gun and taught her how to use it right after they got married. She always kept the gun loaded and with her except when she was going to work. Although there were times at work she really wished she had it.
She made her way through the dark, down the stairs and to the guest room. The door was closed. She glanced over her shoulder-hand on the door knob-to the office just to make sure Tom wasn’t sitting in there. He wasn’t. She held her breath, turned the knob and pushed the door open. Tom looked like he was asleep, but there was something dark by his head. She knew instinctively he was dead. She turned to go to the phone in his study. It was right next to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Everything felt strange. The next five minutes seemed like hours. She must have called the police because they were here. She must have called Tom’s PI, Pedro, because he was here. There were so many people in her house, but she couldn’t hear anything. She looked around and everything was moving in slow motion with no sound.
What’s going on?
The next thing she remembered was a pressure over her mouth. She started fighting, but there was a very soothing voice saying it was okay. When she was finally able to make her eyes open, there were two familiar brown eyes looking down at her. The eyes looked worried.
Everything started to make sense. Joey was above her. She knew him from work. He was one of the best paramedics she had ever met. He was always kind and compassionate, but one of the things she appreciated most was his ability to calm people down. His voice, no matter what he was saying was almost hypnotic. Hysterical women-the category she fell into right now-were no match for that voice.
She focused on his voice as he explained where she was. Everything was starting to sound normal again. She was starting to understand what was going on. She must have fainted. The pressure on her face, she now realized, was an oxygen mask, and she was in the back of an ambulance with Joey and another EMT that she didn’t recognize.
Alex could hear Pedro yelling at someone. Then the back door to the ambulance swung open. She forced herself to sit up, knowing that she needed to move. She looked at the monitor she was attached to. Everything looked okay. Her pulse was a little higher than normal, but that was to be expected she supposed. Somebody had just killed her husband.
Alex turned to Joey, the brown-eyed EMT, and said, “I’m okay. I need to go.” She sounded calm, even though her body felt anything but. She smiled and tried to look okay, but the look in Joey’s eyes told her she wasn’t pulling it off. She pulled the IV Joey had started and took the gauze pad he offered her to stop the blood flow, yanked the cords from her body and took Pedro’s hand.
She hopped down from the ambulance on surprisingly steady legs and asked Pedro “What do I need to do? Do I need to go talk to the police? I didn’t see anything. I heard the door slam and went downstairs. I don’t know which door it was. Where’s my gun? Did I call you? Why would someone kill Tom?”
Pedro held up his hand to silence her. She stopped talking, realizing she was rambling. Pedro was about six foot tall; broad shouldered, and looked like hell. He answered her questions in quick order. “You need to get in my car. I will tell the police anything they need to know. Your gun is in my pocket. And, no you did not call me. You called the police and I recognized the address they sent out. I only live a few blocks away and I have no idea why someone would shoot Tom.”
Alex felt very confused. Pedro shrugged his shoulders and said “I listen to the police scanner when I’m bored, or when I can’t sleep. Tonight I couldn’t sleep.” He rubbed one large hand over his face. He looked at his feet for a few seconds then gently took her elbow, walked her to the passenger side of his car and buckled her inside.
Pedro was around fifty-five or sixty, Alex was guessing. Pedro worked with Tom back when Tom was still an assistant district attorney. He was a PI and did consultant work for the DA’s office. He would look into things when the police didn’t have time to. Tom told Alex once that he thought Pedro was ex CIA or FBI. Some of the things he could find were amazing. When Tom decided to open his own firm, Pedro offered his expertise. Tom was no fool. They put some really bad people away with the things Pedro found. As soon as Tom’s law firm started making money, he asked Pedro to come on board full-time. Pedro accepted, but still did a lot of consulting work on the side.
Pedro and Tom had been friends for a long time. Alex wasn’t sure of the exact story, but she knew Pedro saved Tom from a bullet not long after Tom started at the DA’s office. Apparently, Tom was the secondary prosecutor on a murder trial. The primary, Jarred Haskell, asked Tom and Pedro to go to the victim’s house and do one last walk through. Jarred thought something didn’t add up. There was an extra print at the crime scene. It was just a partial one, but he knew the defense attorney was going to try to use it against the otherwise strong case the prosecution had prepared. Jarred thought Pedro might see something the police missed. Turned out Jarred was right. There was a third person in the house.
Pedro and Tom entered the house with the key they picked up from the landlord. It was in a relatively rough neighborhood, but it was well kept. It was no longer marked a crime scene, but nobody was living there at the time. The landlord was trying to sell the house. Said he didn’t feel comfortable renting it to someone after what happened and was honest with potential buyers about the murder. Pedro had the landlord checked out. He was a good guy, and a good landlord. He didn’t have any complaints against him and he owned several houses in lower income areas, none of which appeared run down.
When they pushed the front door open, Pedro pulled his gun and pushed Tom behind him. Tom said that everything happened so fast. Some guy came out of the hallway, fired twice as Pedro pushed Tom to the floor and fired once. Tom, while he was still lying on the ground, raised his head to see a guy with a bullet hole in his forehead starring across the living room at him.
Pedro helped Tom to his feet. When Tom looked around there were two bullet holes in the wall where he had been standing. Pedro very calmly put his gun back in his holster, declared the place safe and called it in.
The dead guy in the living room was the murderer. His print matched the unknown one at the crime scene. The guy they had been trying for the murder of his girlfriend was actually innocent, but was terrified of the other guy in the house and would rather go to prison than rat out the other one. The DA’s office dropped the charges.
Tom asked Pedro how he knew someone was there. Pedro just smiled and told Tom that he smelled him. Tom had not smelled anything. As far as Tom was concerned, Pedro was psychic. Tom never asked him how he found answers or how he knew things after that. They were pretty much inseparable afterwards. Tom tagged along with Pedro whenever possible.
Alex met Tom in the ER one night. She had been living in Alabama for about seven years. She moved here just after her parents died and she loved it.
Tom had been there with one of his clients, Lucy. She had called him after her husband had beaten her up,
again
. Tom was her divorce attorney. He was so soft-spoken and kind to Lucy. Alex liked him immediately. Most of the people that dealt with Lucy that night, including the doctor, knew her. They knew she was a victim of spousal abuse, and they all assumed she would go back. Nobody really seemed to care one way or the other, except for Tom.
Tom had asked for Alex’s phone number. She had given it to him, figuring he would want to call her to testify. Instead, he called and asked her out the same night. She said yes. Then she said yes again six months later when he asked her to marry him. Pedro had been his best man.
“Alex? Hello. Honey, are you okay?” Alex turned in the passenger seat to see Pedro looking at her. He looked very worried. She must look like hell. She was barefoot and still in her pajamas. “I’m okay, Pedro. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand anything.” Alex felt her body start shaking, she felt the tears start. Pedro drove in silence for a while.
When the tears finally stopped, Alex realized they had been driving for a long time. Trying to answer the question Alex asked earlier, Pedro said “I am not entirely sure what is going on either, but somebody wanted or, more likely, needed Tom dead. I think it would be best if you disappear for a while. I think this has something to do with one of the cases Tom was working on.”
“Tom had me look into the Senator’s business; he said something wasn’t adding up. He was right. Lange’s past is not pretty. The good Senator has more shady dealings than the mob. Associates have been known to wind up dead. All accidents, though, from what I can tell. I will have to do some more in depth research, but I think it’s safe to say that Tom was not a randomly chosen victim.”