Now, to find Becca and prove to himself all was well. And then he could say good-bye to the Merritts once and for fucking all.
Chapter 2
Three hours later, Rixey found himself waiting in the dark on a quiet street wondering for the tenth time what the hell he was doing. The first address on his list had taken him into affluent Roland Park in the northwestern part of Baltimore. The woman of the house had had short black hair, so he’d headed crosstown to the second address located in the more middle-class neighborhood of Patterson Park. He’d been sitting there ever since, staring at her dark row house and hoping to get visual confirmation that Becca Merritt was doing just fine without him. Thank you very much.
The later it got, the more he became convinced he was just chasing ghosts. And that took his head to all kinds of places he didn’t want it to go.
Before his ass fell all the way asleep, Rixey pushed out of the car and sucked in a groan at the stabbing spasm the movement unleashed low on his left side. He might’ve been thirty-three, but, courtesy of two bullet wounds, he had the lower back of a seventy-five-year-old. At least, that’s how it felt sometimes.
Gritting his teeth, he crossed the narrow one-way street, his muscles slowly relaxing as he worked them. He’d do his due diligence—walk the property, check things out, and then get the hell out of there. Let the past stay in the fucking past.
Talking to Becca would’ve been the easiest way to gather intel, of course, but the little two-story row house was as dark and quiet as a tomb. Had been all night. So he ignored the front door and made for the cramped covered passageway that cut from the front sidewalk to the backyard. The rectangle of darkness was a mugger’s wet dream and seemed to swallow up any and all light.
Rixey paused at the edge of the pass-through and palmed the grip of the M9. All his senses came on line as he peered around the corner into the impenetrable darkness. Quiet. Still. Empty. He stepped into the shadows and let them swallow him up.
The far end opened onto a sidewalk the adjoined row houses shared. He scanned the visible landscape before stepping out of the passageway, then rescanned the full one-eighty from the back of the neighbor’s house to the back of Becca’s. A car passed by on the street, and Rixey crouched lower, moved quicker. The rear perimeter of the property met an alley, and he stole to the fence there and scanned again.
Clear and quiet. Just as it should be.
Time to bug out.
A dim light became visible toward the front of the house. In quick succession, lights illuminated the interior from front to back. And then Becca—the very same bright ray of sunshine he’d met earlier in the day—stepped into the window of the back door.
Heart suddenly double timing it in his chest, Rixey melded into the shadows of a tree at the corner of the yard.
Silhouetted as she was against the kitchen light, he couldn’t make out her features, just the gold of her hair pulled back from her face. She pressed close enough to the glass to peer right and left, then yanked a pair of curtains across the glass. At the next window, she repeated the maneuver—right, left, closed.
Rixey frowned. What was she looking for? Maybe she was just cautious. Or paranoid. She was the colonel’s daughter, after all. Surely some of the SOB’s traits had been passed down the Merritt family tree. Or, maybe something is making her paranoid. She had asked for help, after all.
She was home now. And, as far as he could tell, everything was fine. He should get the hell out of there. Now. Right. So why couldn’t he pull himself away from watching over her?
For a few moments, her silhouette moved around, then disappeared from sight. Soon after, a low glow fell upon both of the upstairs windows. And then the light came on in the bathroom, judging by the wavy glass blocks that comprised the window and obscured the view. Nothing happened for maybe another fifteen minutes, when lamplight illuminated the room next to the bathroom and Becca stepped into the open space between the window curtains. In a robe. Hair down and wet, if the darker color was any guide.
Tension ripped through Rixey’s body and settled in places it had no goddamned business settling. She repeated the right, left, closed routine one more time, and the heavy, opaque fabric put an end to the show.
Forcing himself to focus, Rixey did another three-sixty sweep of his location, then replanted himself against the bark of the tree and got comfortable with the idea of keeping lookout for a while. Just until she settled in for the night.
It took about an hour. She made a pass through the house, shutting off lights from bottom to top and ending with her bedroom. And then the place was dark again. Becca all tucked in her bed. Was her hair still damp? And was she an ancient-threadbare-T-shirt or sexy-pajamas kinda woman? He thunked his skull against the rough bark of the tree to divert his thoughts from imagining how both answers might look on her tight little body.
Shit on a shingle, what the hell was wrong with him?
Something else he was better off not thinking about right now.
Enough time passed that the moon shifted position in the sky, and Rixey gave the all clear. Nothing troubling going on here. Trying to relieve his screaming back, he rolled his shoulders and twisted at the waist, giving his traps, lats, and obliques a hi-how-are-ya before making his soundless way back to the Charger.
His baby came to life on a metallic purr. As he pulled a U-ey, the LED of his dashboard clock caught his gaze. 12:22 a.m.
Aw, hell, he was gonna hate himself in the morning. Seven-thirty chiropractor appointment—probably fortuitously timed, given how he’d spent his evening—followed by a day of being on call to serve papers to whichever poor bastards found themselves summoned, subpoenaed, ordered, evicted, divorced, or otherwise within the crosshairs of the law. Rixey specialized in what they called difficult services, which might find him doing witness or defendant location investigation—or skip tracing, dodging an angry fist, or chasing a soon-to-be-served asshole down a street. Good times.
At least Eastern Avenue was quiet at this hour of the night. Rixey sped along the strip usually bustling with business for the liquor stores and check-cashing joints located cheek by jowl next to storefront churches and generations-old ethnic restaurants. Hard Ink sat a few blocks off the main drag, between the run-down strip and one of the city’s industrial areas.
The long, low building hunkered down on a corner, two brick arms stretching a half block down each street, with a square gravel lot in the crook of the L shape out back. Jeremy had grand plans to gather tenants for some of the unused space on the ground floor and had slowly but surely worked at rehabbing it. Generously put, except for the shop and their loft, the building was a work in progress. But Hard Ink had a loyal clientele and did a steady business, thanks to Jeremy’s growing reputation. It suited them just fine.
The Charger came to rest where it had started the evening, oh, six hours earlier. Rixey dragged himself out of the car and crossed through the cool night air to the lamp-lit back door. A five-digit code popped the lock on the thick industrial number with a metallic clank, and he secured it behind him before hauling his ass up the steps. Inside the dark, quiet apartment, his brain shifted to autopilot. Weapons. Clothes. Bathroom. Bed.
He pulled the covers over himself, a twinge in his back reminding him to take some meds. Despite the darkness, his hand found the bottle of ibuprofen with no problem, and he downed four with the remains of a bottle of water he kept there for just that purpose.