A visitor?
That was unlikely. Except for her, Don rarely had houseguests and his nurse came in the evenings, unless of course there was a….
She swallowed. An emergency. But no, even in that worst case scenario, someone would have called her mobile number. Standing there, framed by the doorway, she shuffled a few more possibilities, all of which brought her back to that original observation.
Something wasn’t right here. Something was very wrong.
She curled the sheaf of documents into a half-roll and stuffed it into her purse. Six inches of it stuck out awkwardly, but she ignored this and shifted the bag so that it hung behind her, out of the way. Then she opened the shoebox and took out one of the ersatz designer shoes, gripping it around the instep, holding it up so that the three-inch heel looked almost like a fisherman’s gaff hook. With a final deep breath to steel her courage, she started inside.
She immediately noticed a sulfurous smell, faint but unmistakable, and knew that her worst fears must certainly be true. Still, she had to know.
The front room was exactly as she had left it, with not so much as a couch throw pillow out of place. She cast a glance toward the kitchen, similarly in perfect order, and kept moving.
Her heart was pounding and despite everything she’d ever learned about dealing with a situation like this, she found herself breathless, almost giddy, as she turned into the hallway that led to Don’s office and bedroom.
The office door stood half-open, affording her a mostly unobstructed view of what lay beyond. It was not at all as she had left it, but was somehow exactly what she expected.
Papers were strewn about like confetti after a New Year’s party, and her first absurd thought was that she would have to clean the mess up. Thousands of sheets of paper — faxes, photocopies of old letters and pictures, manuscript drafts — covered the carpet like an early season snowfall. And in the midst of that white chaos sat her employer, Don Riddell.
He was in his wheel chair, as he always was when she saw him, and she half-expected him to look up and bark at her for being tardy, but even a casual glance told her that would never happen.
A tiny dark spot, dribbling red, marked the spot where something about the diameter of a pencil had bored straight through Don’s forehead.
That was how his life had ended. The uncountable cuts and abrasions on his face and arms told the story of what had happened in the preceding minutes.
Strangely, she felt dissociated from the horror she now beheld. She felt an urge to rush forward, check for a pulse, find some way to save him, but she knew that was merely the human instinct for denial.
Don was dead.
Tortured, she thought. Murdered.
“Damn it.”
There was a soft rustle of movement behind her, and she whirled to confront the source.
In that instant, she saw only the gun. The man who held it was an indistinct shape — dark clothes and blurry features — but the pistol, equipped with a six-inch long suppressor, absorbed her awareness the way a black hole consumes light. As if in slow motion, she saw the weapon come up, swinging toward her like a compass needle seeking magnetic north.
She overcame the spell, raised her eyes to meet the gunman, and struck before he could pull the trigger. She raked the high-heel shoe across the back of his gun hand. The sturdy molded tip bit deep, gouging a bloody furrow in his skin. The man jerked away, involuntarily triggering a round. The suppressor did its job well; Alex barely even heard the report over the sound of blood thundering in her ears. She felt a spray of hot vapor on her face, and felt a rush of something moving rapidly past her ear.
The man retreated down the hall a few steps — removing himself from the reach of her high-heels — and raised his left hand to steady his aim for a second shot, but Alex had also moved, hurling herself into Don’s office, removing herself from the gunman’s line of sight. She ducked behind the motionless form of her stricken employer, and as the killer appeared in the doorway, she gripped the rubber coated push handles of his wheelchair and using it like a battering ram, charged headlong.
The gunman tried to backpedal, but he was too slow by a heartbeat. With her head down, Alex did not see the collision, but she certainly felt it. The wheelchair came to a very abrupt halt, nosing forward and pitching her headlong over the resulting jumble of chair and human bodies. Her foot caught something as she tumbled past, but she recovered quickly, got her feet under her again, and charged through the house. She expected at any moment to feel the burning impact of a bullet, but if the killer managed to get a shot off it came nowhere near her.
She burst through the front door and never looked back.
CHAPTER 2
It was a typically quiet Tuesday night in the county lockup and sheriff’s deputy Aaron Conway was looking forward to getting caught up on his homework. Since the department was paying the tuition for his criminal justice courses, he figured they wouldn’t object to him catching up on his assigned reading while on the clock. It wasn’t like there was actually anything to do, aside from glancing at the camera feed every once in a while to make sure that the drunks in the tank weren’t hurting themselves or choking on their own vomit.
He hated it when they did that.
Actually, he hated almost everything about lock-up duty. As a very young boy, he’d dreamed of being a cop, but he could not have imagined his career in law enforcement would be like this. He had to keep telling himself that this was only temporary; everyone had to pay their dues. That’s all this was.
A buzzer warned him that someone had just come in through the visitor’s entrance. It wasn’t unusual for someone to show up, even at this late hour, to bail out one of the “guests.” He set his book aside, straightening in his chair to look more official. He was surprised to see that the newcomer was in uniform — a naval uniform with a pair of silver bars on the collar.
Aaron Conway, who prior to joining the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had served three years active duty in the United States Marine Corps and was still a reservist, immediately stood up and assumed the position of attention. He felt foolish at the automatic response, and told himself to relax; inside these walls, he was the superior officer.
Easier said than done.
The naval officer advanced to the desk and deftly removed his cap to reveal close-cropped blond hair. Conway did not fail to notice a distinctive badge perched above a rack of ribbons on the man’s chest, an eagle with wings spread above an old-fashioned pistol and a trident.
The man was a Navy SEAL.
Sometimes the Shore Patrol would send a petty officer to round up sailors who’d tied-on one too many while on liberty and wound up in the lockup, but this was an altogether new experience for Conway.
“Can I help you, Lieutenant…” He shifted his gaze to the name plate over the man’s right shirt pocket. “Maxwell?”
The officer didn’t waste time with pleasantries or even courtesy. “You arrested a man earlier this evening. Big guy… tall. Dark hair, dark complexion.”
“Uh…” Conway glanced down at the roster even though he knew immediately who the lieutenant was referring to. “You mean the Indian?”
A faint head shake. “He’s Pakistani. That’s a common mistake. So he is here?”
Conway’s eyebrows drew together. He thought maybe the SEAL officer had misunderstood him, but he wasn’t about to argue with the man. “We have someone who matches that description. No ID and he refused to give his name. Had a few too many and started breaking chairs at one of those beachside bars.” He didn’t add that the chairs had been broken over the heads of a few other drunken rowdies, all of whom were repeat offenders and probably deserved their lumps.