She did, leaping from the belt as it came around at the point nearest the glass doors. She landed with a tumble, quickly popping up to her feet and taking off for the doors.
Dade swore, pushing toward her, knowing he was too far away to make it before she bolted into the sunshine.
“Stop! You can’t do that!” the guard shouted at Shelli again, chasing after her. He called ahead to another guard positioned by the doors. The second guard planted his feet square, facing Shelli, and reached for something on his belt. Probably a Taser, though Dade never got to find out for sure since, instead of stopping as suggested, Shelli ducked her head down and rammed forward, shoving her backpack right at the guard. He caught it in the chest, stumbling backward. Shelli plowed forward, past him, and out the glass doors toward the busy pickup curb.
Dade shoved through the crowd of onlookers, who were now more riveted on Shelli than on their circling bags, hitting the glass doors just in time to see Shelli’s navy sweatshirt dive into a yellow cab.
He sprinted toward it, and might have had a fighting chance of at least getting the license plate number of the car, if a dark-haired woman in a white T-shirt hadn’t come barreling out of the baggage claim area at exactly that moment, knocking squarely into him.
“Jesus, watch where you’re going,” he shouted, disappointment sinking in as he watched the cab pull away from the curb, melting into traffic with the fifty other cabs circling the airport.
The woman took an immediate step back as Dade transferred his attention to her. And, getting a good look at her face, he realized why.
It was Anya.
Her eyes registered the same shocked recognition, going round and wide. She turned to run back inside, but he was faster, his hand shooting out to catch her before she had the chance.
“Imagine my luck,” he said.
“Let go of me,” Anya shouted in response.
A pair of passengers getting into a Hilton shuttle turned to stare. One glanced to the glass doors, the security guard who’d caught Shelli’s backpack standing directly on the other side.
Dade pulled Anya in close, wishing he had his weapon on him. “I swear to God,” he whispered, “if you call that security guard over here, I’ll snap your neck before he can waddle to your aid.”
She paused a moment, as if trying to decide how serious he was.
Honestly? It was at least an option.
“Let go of me,” she said, this time her voice low enough that the group heading for the hotel dismissed them.
“Not a chance,” he murmured back.
“Shelli’s getting away.”
Dade looked down the circular roadway. “Honey, she’s long gone.”
“I’m not your honey,” she snapped back, trying to wriggle from his grasp.
“No,” he agreed. “You’re the pain in my ass. What are you doing here?” he asked, steering her down the sidewalk, away from the security guards and other passengers.
“Clearly the same thing you were. Looking for Shelli.”
This surprised him. He’d expected Anya to run as far and as fast as she could. To get the hell out of town in a hurry. Out of the country, even. But instead, she’d run right toward the very person who was after her.
It was a ballsy move. But, if he stopped to think about it, probably exactly the same one he would have made in her position. You could only run so long before someone caught up to you. Confrontation might be a lot messier but it was also a lot more final.
“Well she’s not here now,” he said, stating the obvious.
Anya took one last look down the concourse, eyes scanning the sea of yellow cabs before the slump of her shoulders conceded defeat. “Let’s go,” she said, spinning around.
“Go?” he asked.
“To Shelli’s place. She left in a hurry. Maybe she left something behind. Some clue to where she’d go now.”
He paused. As much as he wanted answers about who was after his target and why, he wasn’t willing to lose Anya again. He’d underestimated her at the pier, and that wasn’t a mistake he was going to make twice.
Anya must have sensed his hesitation as she added, “Someone hired Shelli to watch me and hired those men to kill me this morning. And I damned well want to know who.”
He looked down at her eyes, flashing a deep blue with determination. Finally he nodded. “Okay. We’ll grab a cab to Shelli’s place.”
“No need. Your car’s in short-term parking.”
“Fine.” But instead of moving toward the structure, he paused on the sidewalk, pulling Anya in close to him. “But first thing’s first.” He put both hands at her waist, skimming the sides of her body upward toward her breasts.
“What the hell are you doing?” she ground out, jerking away from him.
But he pulled her back tightly. “Checking for any more perfume.”
She paused, her eyes meeting his. Then she slowly put her arms out to the side, submitting as she let him pat her down.
He did, making a thorough job of it, skimming his hands along her sides, down over her hips, feeling at her pockets both back and front. He had to admit, it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant job.
“Satisfied?” she asked when he finally stepped back.
He nodded. “Where’s my car?”
“Level three, in the back.”
He grabbed her by the arm, steering her across the pedestrian walkway to the domestic terminal’s short-term garage. Forgoing the elevator, he pushed her ahead of himself, up the three flights of stairs, letting her lead him to a slot near the rear. It wasn’t until he was standing outside the driver’s door, keys in hand, that he noticed his missing window.
Perfect.
His gaze whipped on Anya, but she was carefully studying a piece of lint on her shirt.
He wrenched open the door, sending a small spray of shattered glass falling onto the ground from the vacant frame, and slid into his seat.
As if the broken window—and dangling collection of wires he noticed coming from his steering column—weren’t enough to brighten his mood, an ominous scent immediately hit his nostrils, causing a gag reflex in the back of his throat. He spun around. In the center of the backseat was a small, dark log soiling his leather seats. Lenny squatted as far from the offering as he could get, wearing the same evasive look as his owner.
“What the hell is that?” Dade roared.
Anya turned in her seat.
“Looks like shit to me.”
He ground his teeth together, shoved his keys in the ignition, and turned the engine over.
And he could have sworn her heard Anya whisper a “Good dog” to the animal as he backed out of the space.
CHAPTER 9
Anna sat still in the front seat as Dade drove out of the garage. Only instead of angling the car down toward the street level, he followed the garage’s ramp upward, toward the top of the structure. He drove the car into a slot near the elevator on the fifth floor, then hopped out. Anna watched as he lifted the lid top off of a garbage can, reached inside, and pulled something wrapped in newspaper out.
She was about to ask what was in it, when he shed the paper, revealing both her Glock and his M9.
Right. He would never have gotten through the airport with those.
Anna’s hands itched to reload her weapon. The bullets she’d grabbed back at her place were still sitting at the bottom of her duffel bag, just behind her seat.
But Dade quickly stuck both guns in the waistband of his pants, eradicating any fantasies she might have had of being armed. He quickly used the empty newspaper wrapping to extract Lenny’s offering from the backseat, then pulled out of the garage and drove as far as the nearest gas station, pulling up to the pump and cleaning the backseat with paper towels and a windshield wiper squeegee. Anna took the opportunity to hook the leash onto Lenny’s collar again, pulling him from the car.
“What are you doing?” Dade barked, his eyes shooting up to her.
“He needs a walk.”
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br /> She could tell he was about to protest, but she gestured to his seats and asked, “You want a repeat performance?”
He paused, then nodded. “Two minutes. And stay close.”
She gave him a mock salute, then led Lenny to a small square of grass near the bathrooms. She watched him sniff, circle, sniff some more. Finally he picked a spot and squatted, doing his business. By the time she came back to the car, Dade had the seat cleaned, though a slight scent still hung in the air as they pulled away from the station.
“Where does Shelli live?” Dade asked.
She rattled off the address, watching Dade punch it into the GPS system on his dash.
“Thank you,” Anna said as he navigated north.
He turned a questioning look her way.
“For helping me find answers.”
“I’m not doing this for you,” he said quickly.
She shrugged. She knew that. Whatever Dade’s motivation in tracking down the people after her might be, she knew it had nothing to do with her well-being and everything to do with his own. She was keenly aware of the fact that there was not one but two parties out there who wanted her dead.
“You don’t know who hired you, do you?” she asked, watching him closely.
Dade kept his eyes squarely on the road ahead of him.
“And you don’t think it was a coincidence that both your employer and Shelli’s tracked me down at the same time?” she added.
Dade shot her a look. “Do you?”
“No.”
His eyes went back to the road. “Coincidence is just a word people use when they don’t have all the answers. I prefer answers.”
“Me, too.”
He shot a look her way that said he wasn’t entirely comfortable thinking they had anything in common.
“Listen, how about we share some answers,” she said slowly, watching his reaction.
He narrowed his eyes, though they stayed on the road ahead of him. “Such as?”
“You answer a question of mine, and I answer one of yours.”
He paused, seemingly weighing the pros and cons of her proposal for a moment before slowly answering. “Okay. You first.”
Anna cleared her throat. “If you don’t have a name for your employer,” she asked, “how do you know he’s KOS?”
“Your file,” Dade answered quickly. “It was clear that it had to have come from inside the agency. No one else would have that kind of information on you.”
She nodded. That much sounded true. Dade knew more about her than anyone else she’d encountered since leaving Kosovo.
“How did he contact you?”
Dade shook his head. “Sorry, that’s two questions. My turn.”
Anna bit her lip. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Why a dog shelter?”
The personal question surprised her, and she blinked in response. “What do you mean?”
“I imagine you acquired a varied skill set in your line of work. One that could earn you a hell of a lot more money than you make washing dogs. So why a nonprofit shelter?”
She licked her lips, letting the question sink in before formulating an answer. “I like dogs.”
He raised an eyebrow her way. “That’s it?”
She shrugged. “Dogs don’t care who you are or where you’ve come from. Their affection is unconditional, and as long as you feed them, walk them, give them a pat on the head now and then, their loyalty is undying. They’re a hell of a lot less complicated than humans, and a hell of a lot more honest.”
Dade glanced across the console at her, his eyes assessing her as if trying to read something deeper into her words.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Besides,” she quickly covered, “the shelter didn’t ask a lot of questions on their employment application.”
He nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Fair enough.”
“And I don’t have as many skills as you might think,” she added. “That was a long time ago.”
Dade gestured to the wires dangling from his jimmied steering column. “You seem to have remembered a few.”
She bit her lip again. “Sorry about that,” she said, at least halfway meaning it.
He cut his eyes back to the road. “Just don’t touch my car again.” He paused. “Or I will shoot you.”
She nodded in agreement, not entirely sure he wasn’t serious.
They lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive, and twenty minutes later they pulled up to Shelli’s apartment complex.
The building looked the same as she’d left it a couple hours earlier. Three school-aged kids were skateboarding along the sidewalk out front now, but there was no visible sign that Shelli had returned to the apartment. Not that Anna would expect her to. She’d clearly been made by Dade. If Anna were in her shoes, she’d be hiding out in the busiest corner of the City she could find, farthest away from any part of her former life, until things died down enough to slip out of the country unnoticed.
Dade parked two buildings down, and Anna quickly tethered Lenny to the front seat again before following Dade to 2A. He knocked, one hand hovering over his weapon as they waited. As Anna expected, no one answered.
Dade looked over his shoulder at the kids out front.
“Stand behind me. I don’t want to draw attention.”
Anna did, obscuring the kids’, or any other passerby’s, view as Dade pulled his gun from his waist and took the butt of it to the cheap doorknob. It broke off immediately, the wood surround splintering. He pushed his hand through the opening, manually manipulating the lock until the door swung open. One hand on his gun, he moved into the room, gesturing for Anna to do the same.
She did, eyes scanning what was visible of the apartment from behind Dade’s back.
The front room was standard issue rental: low ceilings, brown carpet, little natural light struggling in through the vertical blinds. A small living room had been set up to the right, a narrow galley-style kitchen to the left. Both were painted in off-white, the kitchen floor covered in a cheap laminate, the counter in yellow tiles from the ’80s. The kitchen was tidy, a coffeemaker, toaster, and wooden wine rack sitting out on the counters. The living room held a small sofa and love seat combo pointed at a TV sitting on a modern black chest across the room. A reproduction oil painting hung above the sofa and a potted ficus took up residence in the corner. Black, lacquer shelves covered the far wall, a smattering of framed photos decorating them.
Dade moved to the TV chest, shoving his weapon into the waistband of his cargo pants as he pulled open the top drawer, rummaging inside.
Anna moved into the kitchen. It was neat and clean. Too clean. There wasn’t a single crumb on the floor, no stray coffee rims on the counter, the stovetop burners immaculate. No pot had ever boiled over here, and Anna had an eerie feeling no one had ever eaten here before either. She opened a couple drawers. Silverware lay in a caddy. Glasses were stacked in the cupboard above the sink. A stack of white plates filled the cabinet next to the refrigerator. Everything a normal kitchen should have, but something felt off. As if she expected price tags to still be attached.
Anna opened the refrigerator. A carton of milk and a takeout box were all it contained. Not that that really meant anything. There were days when her refrigerator looked the same.
“Check out these photos,” Dade called, breaking into her thoughts.
She backed out of the underused kitchen to find Dade standing in front of the wall shelves, a photo of Shelli at the Grand Canyon in one hand.
She joined him, looking at the rest of the collection. Frames in various sizes, half a dozen or so, were tastefully arranged. All were of Shelli with friends and family—enjoying a summer picnic, lounging at the beach, out at a nightclub somewhere. On the surface, proof that Shelli lived a normal life.
On the surface.
Anna homed in on what she didn’t see. Variation.
Shelli’s hair was the same in each photo, her age approximately the
same as it was now. They had all been taken within the last year, if Anna had to guess. In the nightclub photo, her coloring was slightly paler than her friend—the hues more yellow than rosy. It was a subtle difference, but it flashed like a neon beacon to Anna. The friend was photographed in different lighting. Shelli had never been in the nightclub. She’d been photoshopped into the scene.
“They’re fake,” Anna said.
Dade nodded. He gestured to the one in his hand. “The shadow’s off on this one. It’s close,” he said, pointing to the dusty ground at Shelli’s feet, “but it’s a few inches to the right of her friends’.”
Anna looked down. He was right. To the casual observer, not enough to notice. Subtle. Done by a professional.
“None of it’s real,” Anna said, trying to shake off an unnerving feeling at being confronted with hard evidence of Shelli’s duplicity.
You should have known. For months she fooled you. You should have seen through her. You’re better than that.
At least she used to be.
“I’m going to check out the bedroom,” Dade said, moving through the narrow doorway to their right.
Anna followed, taking in the similarly uninhabited feel there. A queen-size bed filled the space, a cheap floral-printed comforter covering its surface. A pair of ruffled pillows sat at the head. A chest of drawers in oak leaned up against one wall, and a pair of sliding closet doors took up the other. A small nightstand next to the bed held an alarm clock and a ballpoint pen.
Dade went to the nightstand, pulling open the drawers.
Anna looked on. She should have felt intrusive, invading someone’s personal space like this. But she didn’t. Maybe because the room didn’t feel like anyone’s personal space.
Dade abandoned the nightstand, seemingly not finding anything of interest there, and moved on to the bed. He threw the comforter off, ripped up the sheets.
Anna was tempted to comb the pillowcase for hair samples, but she knew that if Shelli had gone this far, there was no point collecting her DNA. She wouldn’t exist in any databases. She was a ghost, just like Anna.
Anna looked up at her companion.
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