The Kill Wire

by Nichole Christoff

  Stepping into the long shadows thrown by the trash bins, I released the catches that held the first can’s lid on tight. Nothing but fast-food take-out bags clogged the container, greasy with chicken bones and smeared cheese. And this was odd if a family lived here. Most people sacked up their garbage in tall plastic bags before bringing it outside. And most household trash consisted of more than Mickey D’s and take-out.

  Hugging the ranch’s siding, I skirted the antenna tower and made my way to the front of the place. Bypassing the double-wide garage door, I crouched low to avoid the wide, curtained window studding the living room. But I still saw plenty. The junipers along the foundation had grown leggy. And a pile of sales flyers kept company with a rotting garden hose to lay moldering behind the bushes. All in all, this suggested the homeowners hadn’t been here lately to pay much attention to the concept of curb appeal. And that made someone dumping trash in the garbage cans even more suspicious.

  Just like the Prebles’ house across the street, a short portico led to the front door. But unlike the Prebles’, a realtor’s lock box hung from the knob. Complete with a mechanical PIN pad, these things were meant to pop open and allow a real estate agent in the know access to a house key inside. But the small panel protecting the key had been smashed out of this box and wedged into place again. Which made me pretty certain about what was going on here.

  To test my theory, I’d need to take advantage of the sturdy arbor that edged the portico.

  In warmer weather, the arbor may’ve carried heliotrope or clematis to the garage’s roofline. Now, at the end of winter, it was bare. It held up to the sole of my boot, however, making it perfect for what I planned to do next.

  I hit the doorbell several times in rapid succession. Bells pealed inside the house, as loud as the carillon at the National Cathedral. And before their echo died, I’d scampered up the arbor and onto the garage roof.

  Chapter 11

  Dropping flat to the abrasive shingles, and aligning my nose to the edge of the aluminum gutter, I waited to see what could be seen.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  Rapid-fire footfalls—like the thudding of heavy boots on carpeted stairs—reverberated through the house’s exterior wall. On my side of it, I held my breath and kept my eyes peeled. A moment later, a man came slinking around the corner of the garage.

  Moonlight glinted off the man’s smoothly shaven head—and off the brass knuckles he wore over his own. I shrank when I saw them, because one well-placed punch with that hardware could shatter the jaw of a man much bigger than me. Such as the second guy who slipped along the house’s façade from the opposite direction.

  Despite the cold, this second guy wore nothing warmer than boots, jeans, and a white, ribbed undershirt. The shirt reflected the moonlight like a night-blooming jasmine blossom, but judging by the dark stains spilling down his front, I doubted he smelled as sweet. He’d shoved a short-barreled revolver in his pants’ waistband, too, and I hoped he was smart enough to know that the citizens of a quiet Colorado neighborhood like this one would call the cops—and come outside brandishing their own firearms—if they heard gunfire so close to where two of their own had been attacked.

  I didn’t dare depend on this thug’s common sense, however. Or on his moral code. He and his companion each had the muscle necessary to loop wire around Burt Preble’s neck, pull it taut until the man stopped kicking, and nearly sever his head, and I couldn’t be sure one of them hadn’t.

  I couldn’t be sure one of them hadn’t beaten Helena Preble to a bloody pulp, either. Thinking of that poor woman in her hospital bed, I eased a gloved hand into my coat pocket and took cold comfort in wrapping my fingers around my cellphone. I’d report these goons to the authorities as soon as I got the chance.

  For the moment, however, they moved a little too close for comfort. As I gazed directly down on Knuckles’ bald head, he peered behind the cover of the sprawling junipers. At his back, Mr. Undershirt scanned the night.

  He nudged his pal, chucked his chin at the Prebles’ place.

  Instantly, the two men were on the move, splitting up and skulking through shadows thrown down by the next house, a minivan in the neighbor’s driveway, and finally, the ornamental pampas grass across the way. On my rooftop, I willed myself absolutely flat. Because from the far side of the street, I’d stand out like a cherry on a sundae if either man glanced back at the way he’d come.

  But Knuckles drifted along the pampas grass, and Mr. Undershirt took my route to the back of the Prebles’ home. When both men disappeared behind it, I scrambled up and over the peak of the roof, peered across the apex in case one of them should return, and whipped out my cellphone. I called Emergency Services—and I got chatty.

  “Nine-one-one,” the answering operator said. “What’s your emergency?”

  “The two men who murdered Burt Preble are at his house on Alpine Place right now.”

  Of course, pointing the finger at those thugs for murder was a leap based on a bad feeling and circumstantial evidence. But the assertion would light a fire under the dispatcher. And that was the point.

  “Where are you, ma’am? Can you provide an address?”

  No dice. The operator had the Prebles’ address, anyway. Half the sheriff’s department had been dispatched there just that morning.

  “They’ve been hiding across the street,” I said, eyeing the Prebles’ place in case those goons made a return trip sooner than I’d expected. “They’re squatting in the house for sale. And they’re armed to the teeth.”

  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Brass knuckles. Snub-nose revolver. Looks like a thirty-eight. Both men appear to be Caucasian. One is approximately six feet tall, muscular build, shaved head. The second is five ten, wearing a white undershirt—”

  “I’m sending a patrol unit.”

  “You’d better send more than that,” I said—and disconnected.

  Across the street, in front of the Prebles’, Knuckles and Mr. Undershirt still hadn’t put in an appearance. And that was all right with me. I needed to hightail it out of there before they came back—and before the deputies arrived.

  Fighting against the slope of the shingles, I picked my way to the end of the garage and the metalwork tower that no longer held a TV antenna aloft. Below, the ground was in deep shadow. But on the back street, I could see the Santa Fe waiting for me—and safety.

  Sensing no one, and hearing nothing, I swung a leg onto the antenna tower. Hand over hand, I climbed to the ground. But just before my foot could touch the earth, hard hands grabbed me.

  One palmed my face and jerked me backward. The other clutched my torso. I grabbed at the fingers biting into my cheek, tore at the hand fisted in my jacket. I pried them, twisted them, forced fingers and a wrist in directions the joints weren’t meant to go. But before the resulting pain could overtake my assailant, he railroaded me, pile-driving me into the garage’s vinyl siding.

  He kicked my feet apart, drove his knee into the hollow behind mine. The quick hit made my leg go numb just as the man’s forearm became a bar across my shoulder blades. With one of my hands crushed in his, he forced me face first into the wall, and that’s when I realized this guy might be a cop—because these were cop moves, meant to subdue anyone resisting arrest.

  “Hey,” I grunted. “Wait a minute—”

  But my attacker didn’t stop. He slammed an elbow into the back of my head. My knit hat and all my hair piled beneath it did nothing to cushion the blow as my cheekbone bounced into the side of the garage so hard my glasses twisted—and in front of my eyes, stars danced in the darkness.

  “She’s alone,” a second man announced. “Nobody else is across the street.”

  That had to be either Knuckles or Mr. Undershirt.

  Which meant the cop who’d immobilized me was on the wrong side of the law.

  Against my ear, he growled, “You shouldn’t a’ come back here, little girl.”

  Had he wit
nessed my chat with the sheriff earlier in the day?

  Or had he mistaken me for Elena just now?

  “Get your hands off me,” I panted, trying to sound tough despite being out of breath, “and I’ll be glad to go away.”

  The dirty cop snorted. “You know this ain’t gonna end that way.”

  “It will. I already called nine-one-one.”

  But despite my bravado, my head buzzed like a bumblebee and my extremities started to tingle. And that scared me more than anything. Because it signaled the return of altitude sickness—and it meant I wasn’t getting enough oxygen into my system. An all-out fight would make the symptoms worse. My body could shut down on me—or I could black out.

  “You didn’t call no one,” my captor sneered. “You’re lyin’.”

  “Wait and see,” I challenged.

  But whoever he was, he wasn’t willing to do that.

  “Get her into the garage,” he barked.

  Another pair of rough hands seized my wrists as his grip eased. They twisted my arms to my back, hiked them impossibly high. Knuckles or Mr. Undershirt, one or the other, shoved me toward the backyard—and the garage’s back door.

  “Use some of that fishing wire,” the dirty cop ordered. “Truss her up and shove her in the trunk of the car. Do it fast.”

  But I wasn’t going to let any of that happen.

  In cases of abduction, a victim’s chances of survival drop dramatically if her attacker can maneuver her into a secluded location—like the inside of a closed garage. And her odds fall further if her assailant can force her into a vehicle. Because a moving vehicle opens up a world of possibilities for a perpetrator, and it makes the abductee much more difficult to find.

  The heavy scrim of the neighbor’s evergreens was mere yards away, though the chain-link fence was closer. And my SUV waited just beyond them both. So when my minder forced me forward, I made sure I tripped over my own two feet.

  I fell forward. Pain lanced my shoulders as my arms jerked higher. But my captor, afraid my fall would drag him down with me, instinctively eased the angle of my arms—just as I knew he would.

  I planted my left foot in the winter grass, twisted at the waist, and lashed out with my right foot in a side kick that stomped on the inner surface of the chump’s knee. I nailed Knuckles’ medial collateral ligament, forced his knee to fold sideways. His leg buckled under him and he released my wrists as he flailed for balance—and I was off and running.

  For the cover of the evergreens.

  For my SUV.

  For my life.

  “Stop her!” the dirty cop shouted.

  That’s when Mr. Undershirt must’ve whipped out his gun.

  Pop!

  A shot whistled past me in the moonlight.

  And ahead of me, at the home with the chain-link fence and the doghouse, a floodlight flashed on, banishing shadows and bathing the backyard’s crisp edges.

  Heart in my throat, I sucked in deep breaths and pounded across the turf. My dizziness worsened and cramps took hold of my calves. I stumbled for real this time—just as I heard the thud of running feet behind me.

  I’m not going to make it to the tree line!

  I’m not going to make it to the car!

  A Golden Retriever burst from a flap built into in the back door of the house in front of me. He bounded to the limit of the chain-link fence, barked as if he alone was all that stood between good and evil. And maybe he was.

  Gritting my teeth against the cramps in my calves, I veered toward the fence—and the dog. At the barrier, he snapped and snarled. Fear curled through me like smoke, but I didn’t let it stop me.

  I grasped the top rail stretching the chain link taut, tried to vault over it.

  My oxygen-starved muscles wouldn’t quite cooperate and my toe snagged the fencing’s wire loops. The ground flew at me, but the broadside of my forearm broke my fall. My shoulder absorbed the impact as I slammed into the grass and tumbled across it.

  Just beyond arm’s reach, the dog danced in circles around me, barking away. Rolling to my knees, I glanced back the way I’d come. I got my first glimpse of the dirty cop as he skidded to a halt beyond the fence. He had the thick neck and narrow waist of a gym rat, the well-regulated crew cut of a state trooper, and the sneering mouth of man happy to hurt other people for fun and profit. At his side, his companion, Mr. Undershirt, raised his handgun. He pointed the weapon at me.

  The dirty cop knocked the guy’s hand skyward. “Don’t be stupid!”

  Past them, on the Prebles’ street, the blue and white rack lights of a patrol car, running without its siren blaring to warn the bad guys, striped everything in its path as it pitched to a stop in front of the house where these cretins had holed up. Spotting it, the goons bolted. They split up and dashed into the shadows. On all fours, I scuttled toward the doghouse while the retriever tried to psych me out by lunging at me and hopping away. But tangling with the dog was better than running the risk of falling prey to those thugs as they made their getaway.

  Needing cover as much as they did, I dragged myself into the doghouse. It smelled of fresh straw and seasoned lumber. Just outside its arched opening, the retriever’s frantic barking turned to worried yelps as he looked in on me.

  “You’re a good boy,” I told him. “But don’t give me away, okay?”

  He cocked his golden head to the side, astonished the interloper in his home-away-from-home would praise him, I suppose.

  I curled into a ball and tried to catch my breath while my head hammered and the side of my face throbbed. I didn’t want the deputies to find me any more than I wanted to run afoul of those thugs. The deputies would ask too many questions—and I’d be hard pressed not to reveal Marc’s secrets. But in my line of work, protecting the client’s interests was paramount. And after the carnage at the Prebles’, and my run-in with the suspected culprits, I was pretty sure protecting Marc’s interests in this case meant keeping Cody’s mother alive as well.

  The retriever lay down in the sphinx position and watched me with great concern until his master called for him.

  “Barkley? Barkley, come here!”

  The dog darted away. When I dared to stick my nose into the yard, I looked one way and witnessed the animal zipping into the house. In the opposite direction, so many additional patrol units had come to join the first one that the Prebles’ street looked like a cop convention. Outside the house for sale, law enforcement officers swarmed the side yard as if they were ants whose hill had been kicked over.

  In back, a sheriff’s deputy swept the ground with a high-powered flashlight. When his bouncing beam and the deputy himself rounded the far corner of the house, I took to my feet. With aching legs and a stitch in my side, I hustled toward Barkley’s owner’s house and waltzed through the gate alongside his garage. I kept my eyes peeled for Mr. Undershirt, his gun, and his pals. But I suspected Knuckles had limped to that car of theirs stashed in the garage, and had swung around the block to pick up his friends and help them make their getaway.

  Bent on doing the same, I stuck to the house’s wide shadow until it met the neighbor’s evergreens, strolled down the sidewalk when I had to, and hopped into the Santa Fe.

  I fired up the engine and got the hell out of there.

  A series of left turns took me farther from the action on Alpine Place. And that was a good thing. It wouldn’t do to get stopped by an eager officer, since I had no business being anywhere near this neck of the woods.

  When I hit a main road, I headed toward the heart of Colorado Springs. Despite being home free, my head still hurt and the side of my face had settled into a persistent pulsing. But before I took care of myself, I needed to check in on someone else to make sure she was all right.

  Chapter 12

  “Ma’am? Ma’am, you can’t go down there!”

  The night nurse’s shoes squeaked as she raced up the corridor behind me. But I didn’t slow down. I had to reach Mountainview Community Hospital’s intensive care
unit.

  I had to see Helena Preble with my own eyes.

  Reaching the cubicle where the lady had almost lost her battle to live earlier in the day, I whipped the curtain aside. She was slumbering peacefully, but with enough tubes and electrodes tied to her to monitor a race car engine.

  “Ma’am, visiting hours ended a long time ago,” the nurse complained as she caught up with me.

  Wearing a set of no-nonsense pea-green scrubs, the nurse was short and stout and boasted a whole head of iron curls. And guessing by the way she’d gone after me, I doubted anyone ignored her commands. Or if they did, they didn’t do so for long.

  Despite her stern demeanor, I cut across the hall, tried the knob on a door marked STORAGE. It didn’t give. And given the pass-card/PIN combination required by its fancy lock, I was willing to believe guys like the ones I’d just escaped weren’t hiding out inside.

  Between me and Mrs. Preble’s bed, the nurse stamped her tiny foot. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave—”

  “I want to see security,” I said. “I want to see them now.”

  I stuck my nose in the cubicle next door. An old man, yellow with jaundice, muttered in his uneasy sleep. At the far end of the hall, another nurse pushing a cart crammed full of medication drawers paused warily, trying to make out who I was and what I was doing.

  “Security?” the stout nurse asked as she trotted at my heels.

  “Yes. You have some, don’t you?”

  I glared at the glassy-eyed camera positioned in the corner, where it could spy all the way down the corridor. Hospitals these days are pretty serious about keeping tabs on who does what within their walls. And with good reason. In 1998, the abduction of a newborn infant from a Florida maternity ward prompted hospitals everywhere to incorporate electronic surveillance as another tool in taking care of patients. Now, with identity theft a growing industry, rising medical costs, and increased cases of Alzheimer’s and dementia making some patients unable to identify themselves, technology helps those in the medical profession be sure about who’s in their facilities.