Annabelle squeezed her eyes shut, but tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Why’d you have to do it?” she cried, a torrent of anguish and grief bursting out of her. “Why did you have to
kill
her?”
“I didn’t
mean
to,” Bert snapped. He was breathing heavily through his mouth and the sour smell of his fear saturated the cabin of the SUV.
Brusquely, he ordered Claudia to take the gated entrance to a subterranean parking garage and told her to use the key card to open the gate. Slowing to cross the tire shredders she glanced over at Annabelle, and noticed her complexion had turned a shade of green.
“Annabelle, are you okay?”
The girl hunched over in her seat, holding her stomach and moaning. “I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“Park by the elevator,” Bert ordered, grabbing the back of Claudia’s seat. “Hurry! I don’t want her puking in the car.”
“Damn you, Bert,” she snapped, parking the Escalade where he indicated. “You’ve kept her on nothing but IV for days? After what you’ve put her through, no wonder she’s sick. Deal with it.” Glancing in the rearview mirror she could see that his face was splotched red and damp with sweat. Now she wished he
would
have a heart attack. He deserved it, the murdering bastard.
Claudia told Annabelle to put her head between her knees and asked Bert if he kept any water in the vehicle. He came up with a plastic bottle of Penta and passed it between the seats.
“What are we doing here, Bert?” Claudia asked, as Annabelle twisted off the top and took a drink.
“We’re here to follow through on some travel arrangements I made for this young lady before she left us,” he said. The calculating look in his eyes frightened Claudia all over again.
“What travel arrangements? What are you talking about?”
Ignoring her question, Bert touched the girl’s shoulder. “You feeling better, Anna? Let’s go. Remember, I’ve got my eye on you.”
“She needs something to eat,” said Claudia.
“There’s food in the condo.”
“Too bad you didn’t give her any sooner.”
He threw her a dirty look and shut off the engine, then got out of the vehicle.
The garage was deserted. Claudia’s hopes of getting help from that source went into a free fall. There were security cameras, but by the time all the pieces got put together, she was certain it would be too late for her and Annabelle.
She jumped down from the SUV and went around to the passenger side where Bert was opening the door. Annabelle’s legs wobbled when she got out and Claudia put an arm around her waist, helping her to walk.
Bert also put his arm around Annabelle, who was too weak to protest, and led them to the elevator. There were no buttons to push, just a slot for the key card. Bert took the card from Claudia and slid it into the slot. The doors closed behind them and the elevator ascended rapidly, stopping at the thirty-fifth floor.
When the doors parted they stepped directly into the vestibule of a condo.
Bert walked Annabelle into the great room and parked her on a sofa. “Wait here,” he ordered. He veered off to the right, through the kitchen and along a hallway, calling out, “Henry—hey, Henry!”
It looked as though someone had only half moved in. The great room was partially furnished with a black leather sofa and an Eames lounge chair. On the back wall was a built-in black-and-granite wet bar. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city with a view that reached all the way to the distant mountains. High in the clear Nevada air the sky, empty of clouds, was the blue of eternity.
Claudia left Annabelle lying on the sofa and told her she was going to scrounge up some food. Adrenaline had kept the girl going for the past few hours, but she needed to eat if she was going to be strong enough to make it through whatever was coming next.
She found the kitchen. First things first: Check the drawers and countertops for sharp knives. It didn’t take long for her to conclude that Bert was not stupid enough to leave her unattended if there had been anything she could use as a weapon. Most of the drawers were empty. The cutlery was plastic picnic ware.
Shit!
Feeling beaten down, she checked the refrigerator. It might as well have been empty. It contained a Pizza Hut box with three dried up slices of sausage and mushroom, a couple of Chinese food cartons with contents that looked like something out of a slasher film, and a long out-of-date container of milk.
Claudia sniffed the milk carton and gagged on the sour odor. She emptied the spoiled milk into the sink and dumped the carton into the trash compactor. There was a hanging metal basket with a bunch of overripe bananas, an orange, and a couple of limes, and she resigned herself to the fact that the pickings were slim.
She peeled a banana and the orange and wrapped them in a paper towel, then returned to the great room.
While Annabelle devoured the fruit, Claudia leaned close to her, lowering her voice a whisper. “Don’t let on when you’re feeling better. If he thinks you’re still sick . . .”
“Move away from her, Claudia.” Bert spoke from behind. When she turned around, he had the gun pointed at her. She didn’t know firearms, but to her it looked similar to what Jovanic carried—a nine millimeter. The deadly black hole was pointed directly at her heart. She wondered dismally whether he was a good shot.
Then her mouth dropped open in shock.
“You!”
Shuffling along behind Bert was an old man she had seen before. The neighbor with the hedge trimmers from the house next door to where Paige’s body had lain.
He glowered at her. “Trouble-makin’ bitch. I shoulda taken care o’ you back at the house.” Then he caught sight of Annabelle, and his features screwed into hatred. “And
you
, ya little—”
Annabelle stuck her chin out defiantly as he went for her, his body language promising violence. Bert put out a restraining hand and grabbed the old man.
“Leave it be, Henry. There’s no time.” He stepped in front of him and crossed over to Annabelle, demanding that she return the cell phone she had stolen from Henry.
She took it from her pocket and flung it in the direction of his head.
“Piece of shit doesn’t even work,” she said with contempt.
Bert reached out his hand and caught the phone before it hit him. “You don’t have to use that kind of language,” he said in a stern voice, as he might have had they been at the Sorensen Academy.
“Under the circumstances, I hardly think her language matters,” said Claudia, watching him plug the phone into a charger on the bar. “And you don’t deserve the courtesy.”
“What do you hear from Lainie?” Bert asked Henry.
“You’re all in this together?” Claudia said, figuring Lainie must have been the nurse Annabelle had mentioned.
“She oughtta be hittin’ the state line pretty soon,” Henry said, ignoring her. “You hear anything from her yet?”
“She called earlier,” Bert replied. “But I don’t want anything discussed on a cell phone. You never know who might be listening.”
As if on cue, the 007 James Bond theme sounded. Claudia had assigned it to Jovanic’s phone number as a joke. All eyes turned to the phone clipped to her belt.
“My boyfriend. He knows I’m expecting this call,” she lied, struggling to keep the hope out of her voice. “If I don’t answer it, he’ll know something’s wrong.”
“Okay, answer it,” Bert said. “But you’d better watch what you say.”
I certainly will,
she thought, turning her back on him. She took a deep breath in an effort to quell the fear she was feeling and flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby,” Jovanic said. “I’m at your place. Where are you?”
The sound of his voice made her want to cry. How could she tell him how much she needed him, with Bert’s gun pointed at her back?
“I—I—er, I had to go out of town suddenly.”
“Out of town?”
“I’m with Annabelle. She’s—” She broke off as the jab of the gun stopped her from going down that path. In a flash of memory, she recalled that she had printed a copy of her Southwest Airlines itinerary to Las Vegas. It was on her desk from booking that morning’s flight. “Hey, uh, Joey, I, uh, there’s a . . . er, phone message for you on my desk.”
“
Joey?
What’s going on, Claudia? Who would call me at your number?”
“Uh-huh.”
His detective’s ear, or maybe his lover’s ear, connected with the distress in her voice. “You can’t talk?”
“Boy, is that the truth.”
“Okay, I’m on my way upstairs. Are you in trouble?”
“
Yeah.
I . . .”
“Hang up,” Bert demanded in a loud whisper. “Hang up now.”
“Uh, honey, I have to go now . . .”
Annabelle jumped up and screamed,
“We’re in Las Vegas!”
Henry reached over and slapped her hard across the face. Then he grabbed her by the hair, snapping her head backward. She fell back against the sofa with a cry as blood blossomed from her lip.
At the same instant, Bert snatched the cell phone out of Claudia’s hand and ended the call. In a rush of panic, she watched him hurl it to the floor and grind her only connection to the outside world into a useless piece of trash.
All at once, the smoldering fear and anger that Claudia had been holding in exploded into a solid ball of fury. She didn’t spare a thought for the fact that he was holding a gun, nor that the old man, his ally, was a few feet away. Her hand clenched into a fist and slammed overhand into Bert’s chest with all the force she could muster.
“You goddamn bastard!” she cried, breathless with anger as she struck him over and over. He was a large target and taller than Claudia by several inches. The gun went thudding to the floor while Bert just stood there, looking stunned, doing nothing to stop her blows.
All at once, Henry, Annabelle, and Bert burst into action, the three of them scrambling for the weapon.
Claudia turned away, shaking all over. There was yelling behind her, then something heavy struck the back of her head and she pitched forward, knees sagging. Her vision went dark as she hit the floor.
Chapter 30
The first thing Claudia became aware of as she regained consciousness was the sound of a kitten mewing near her ear. No, that wasn’t it. Someone was crying.
Who . . . ?
“Claudia—Claudia,” Annabelle sobbed, shaking her by the shoulders, patting her face. “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Wake
up
.
Please
, wake up!”
Groaning, Claudia slowly opened her eyes, squinting against the throbbing at the base of her skull. She was facedown on beige carpeting that smelled new. Its fibers tickled her cheek and made it itch. Her head felt too heavy to lift. She put her hand up and tentatively probed the back of her head. Her fingertips met an egg-size lump. It felt as if the moorings of her brain had come loose, but her fingers came away clean; the skin wasn’t broken.
She pushed herself onto her back with effort, flinching as her head made contact with the floor. “I’m not dead . . . yet . . .I think,” she gasped. Staring up at the vaulted ceiling, she noticed that everything seemed fuzzy and slightly off-kilter.
Concussion,
she decided, making an attempt to get her bearings.
It took a few moments before her surroundings began to make more sense. Slowly, it all started to come back:
Bert—Henry—the gun.
She listened to the condo but heard no sounds aside from Annabelle, who was now sniffling quietly beside her.
Slowly, laboriously, fighting a wave of vertigo that nearly felled her, Claudia struggled onto her side, then her knees. “
Shit.
What happened?”
“That old guy slugged you with the gun. If I could have got it first, I would have shot them both.”
“That’s all we need to make a perfect day complete.”
“I was glad when you hit Bert. I wish you’d have hurt him.”
“Yeah, me, too.” Claudia sat back on her heels and looked at her watch through blurred vision. “How long was I unconscious?”
“It felt like forever.” Distress filled the girl’s eyes in her tear-stained face. “I thought he killed you.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Claudia muttered as she dragged herself to the sofa and crawled onto it. Her head still felt heavy and her hands went up to support it. She wasn’t any too sure about standing up. “Where did they go?”
“I think they’re in that bedroom where they kept me locked up.” Annabelle sat down beside her and laid her head against Claudia’s shoulder like the little kid that she really was. “They’re gonna kill us, aren’t they?”
Claudia reached up and held her hand. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’ll think of something. We’re gonna be fine.”
She wished she felt as confident as she sounded. She wondered whether Jovanic would be able to trace her through her broken cell phone. Didn’t most cell phones have GPS these days? If that was so, the longer they stayed in this place, the better.
“What did Bert do with his key card after we got out of the elevator?” she asked.
The girl thought for a moment. “I think he put it in his pocket.”
“Damn.” Moving slowly, Claudia rose to her feet and looked around. “Maybe there’s an emergency exit somewhere. I’m going to look around. Don’t piss him off if he comes back before I do.”
In the foyer, she could hear muffled voices coming from a room down the hall. Moving in the opposite direction, she peeked into the first door on her right. An entryway led to a master bedroom, walk-in wardrobe, and master bath. Locking herself in the bathroom, she quickly began opening the drawers and cabinets under the sink, looking for scissors, razor blades, anything that might be used as a weapon.
All she found was the basics: extra toilet paper, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, and conditioner.
The wall-wide mirror reflected a pale face framed by thick auburn hair that currently looked like she had been pulled through a hedge backward. The normally bright emerald eyes were dull and lined with worry.