Shattered by Death (A Jo Oliver Thriller Book 2)

by Catherine Finger

  “Not all things are under your control, Jo.” He hung up before I could tell him not to do it. Not to take that kind of bullet for me.

  I took a deep breath and put my phone back in my pocket with trembling hands. Why do I always say the wrong thing? What about “Don’t even think about stepping over the line for me”? Why hadn’t I said that?

  Nick would be freaked out if he read any of my regrets about having chosen Del over him—and my darkest fears about whether or not I was worthy of a man like Nick. He was my gold standard. Would I ever be good enough for him? So I’d chosen Del instead. Nick wasn’t the most flexible thinker when it came to man-woman stuff in general. He wasn’t a big fan of hearing about hard feelings that he couldn’t fix, let alone those of the distorted nature I’d risked sharing more than once with Kira before I knew about her history with him.

  What would happen when he read my files? How much of my warped thinking and ruminations about him and our complicated friendship, about my secret fears and longings, had Kira written down?

  “These sessions of yours, they are the key to this maldita, aren’t they?” Gino appraised me through narrow eyes. “She plays a game with you. You are the mouse—she is the cat. She has been batting you about for how long now?” He kept his arms folded, casual.

  “I don’t know, G. Four, five years? How many sessions is that? How long has she been up to this? Who else has she killed? How did she stay so far under the radar?” How can she be that much smarter than the rest of us? “Hiding in plain sight. But for that long? And why target me? Why now?” All the stories she must’ve heard over the years. Why had mine been the ones to trigger her murderous spree?

  “But there is much about you that is unique.” Gino hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Like what? This crap job full of angry people and unsolved murders that keep piling up? Take a look around my life—personally or professionally. I ain’t exactly living the dream over here. What do I have that she could possibly want? What have I ever done that could drive her to this?” I dragged a hand through my hair, pulling on the ends.

  My pulse beat as if I were a frantic lion in the middle of a kill-or-be-killed spree. I clenched the edge of the desk to keep from running as fast as I could, gathering my mother in my arms and leading as many of these gentle elders as I could out of this place. The building itself loomed, oppressive and unsafe. Had Gino felt it too?

  “Enough of this crooked thinking, m’hija. You have done nothing to fall into the sights of this matadora. Whoa!” Gino erupted. “Did you feel that?” He looked puzzled. The lights flickered off and on in rapid succession.

  “What just happened?”

  Nurse’s aides popped into the hallway from the cafeteria thirty feet down the hall. Ceci made her way toward us. I met her in the middle of the corridor and put my hand on her arm. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine. Just a friendly little bump in the road of the wonderful world of construction. We get a little brown-out action every coupla days. It’s nothing.” Her words were measured.

  “It was definitely something.” And the timing was awfully convenient.

  “We don’t worry around here until we get the five and ten minute stretches. Our generators are excellent, but with as many special-needs residents and electricity-sucking machines as we have on this wing, like in your mother’s room, we don’t want to push our luck.”

  My mother’s room? Was that a coincidence—or a threat?

  Ceci turned and walked toward the cafeteria, and I returned to Gino.

  Gino uncrossed his arms and hunched over the monitor. “You have that I-don’t-believe-it look on your face, yet I tell you, it makes sense. All of this construction—this sort of thing happens with great frequency.”

  “So let’s get back to Kira. Coming here. We need to get a tech crew on that car. Check out that still-shot again. Didn’t she have gloves on when she got out of the car? I’m thinking she did. A la Audrey Hepburn.”

  “It was the director’s car. That much is certain.” Gino picked a picture up off of the desk featuring all the staff members posing in or around the car, parked in front of the “Director Parking” sign. Underneath the photo was the inscription, “We heart driving you crazy.”

  “If Kira did take Angela, why go to all the trouble of bringing it back here?” My head was spinning. There had to be psychopathological reasons for all of these careful steps of the dance. But what were they?

  “It is part of the chase for her. The cat playing with her prey.”

  “So that makes us the prey. And the victims are just bait. She’s using them to get to us.”

  “Not us, m’hija. You.” He opened up a drawer in the nurse’s station, started rifling through it.

  “But why?”

  “I am telling you, again—you have something the big cat wants. Badly.” He pulled out a small flash drive, held it up, shook his head and replaced it.

  “Badly enough to kill for.” Something had to shake loose in my muddled brain.

  “So it seems. You have the greatest meal of all in a heap at your feet for all the world to see, yet you refuse to eat.” Gino’s eyes hardened. “As is only right and just, but that is not how Kira would see it. She would see you as having the greatest quarry at your fingertips, and ignoring him.”

  “Nick…” A light ringing flitted through my left ear.

  “Indeed.”

  “She’s after Nick? But she had him.” Icy shields wrapped themselves around my face.

  “Thought she had him. Wanted to have him. But she lost out. To a far more beautiful hunter.” Gino studied me. “And the most dangerous beauty of all…” His eyes squinted, released. “One that draws prey without intending, without even being aware of her powers of attraction. The kind a man like Nick cannot turn away from.”

  I stared at him. Stunned. “But, G, I… I never wanted—”

  “Yes, as she so well knew. And your ambivalence, your woundedness, drew Nick to you like a moth to the flame. While she watched. And listened to excruciating details revealed during your sessions, no?” He shifted his weight, leaned a hip against the counter.

  “Dear God, what have I set in motion?” Goose bumps rippled my flesh. A tremor shook my pocket. What was that? Then it happened a second time. Nick was calling me. He’d also left a text message:

  PICK UP. STAT.

  “Nick.” My answer was a whisper. A harsh whisper.

  “Are you still at Riverside?” Worry infused his voice.

  “Yes. With G.” Even though it wasn’t 100% fair, I was playing the part of Madame Butterfly, discovering her one true love’s betrayal. And the sharp knife conveniently placed on her nightstand. What happened between Kira and Nick? Who is he when he isn’t with me? Should I have trusted him? Can I trust him moving forward?

  “I found something.” His voice was flat.

  “Me too.” I was in junior high again. Come on, Nick, go first. But we didn’t have that kind of time. We needed—I needed—to snap out of it. And catch a killer.

  “I’m already on my way.” He hung up before I could tell him what we’d found.

  Why? Did he already know? “That was Nick. He’s on his way over here.”

  “So I gathered. He has found something in the files. Something you may wish to tell me first, no? Something you might be feeling embarrassed by?” Gino turned to face me, leaning in. “What could be in those files to turn la mala against our Nick? If it is true that what you shared with her during your sessions became the roadmap to her victims, perhaps you will tell me what it is that you are so afraid of? What else might you have suggested about our good Saint Nicholas that may have incited her evil attention further?” Gino was all investigator now.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember everything. I just know I was a jumbled mess on more than one occasion. I mean, how many casual and professional conversations have I had with her over the past five years?” My chest tightened. Pain shot through my collarbone, down my
right arm.

  Is this what a heart attack feels like? What did I say about Nick?

  My heart squeezed, hard. What happened between Nick and Kira, and how could I have missed it? Was Nick on Kira’s side or mine? I glanced into a small round mirror tacked onto the wall. My ashen face stared back. A stranger to me.

  Gino stepped forward and took me by the shoulders. “M’hija, there is no way our Nick is involved in any of this. Me entiendes? You must banish those lies and come back to the truth.” He shook me ever so gently.

  A single tear escaped my eye. Was he reading my mind? Or am I that transparent? Sludge filled my veins. “You don’t know that, G. You can’t know that. Who is anybody, really? How far can any of us ever really see into the heart of another?”

  Nick. I was talking about Nick. But was he my Nick anymore?

  “Our Nick will be here in under five minutes. Let us invest our time in talking to the staff about the habits of the director.” Gino picked up a legal pad and started writing.

  I scrolled through my phone for messages. Mitch had left me three. God bless her. At least she was solid to the core. Wasn’t she?

  The first text contained all names and background information for every Riverside employee. I scrolled down the screen three times. The list kept going. I moved on to her second message. It contained a picture. I enlarged it as much as I could with my finger and thumb. Nick. On Kira’s sofa. Time stamped and dated three days earlier. If that was even legit. The angle of the shot suggested Kira had taken it from her infamous captain’s chair. Unless it’d been taken from a camera mounted over her desk. A hidden camera? Why?

  I turned a steely gaze on Gino. “Did you know about this? Can I trust anybody anymore?”

  Was everyone in my life a pseudo enemy?

  His face walked from shock, to grief, to rage. He seemed to wrestle with the rage for a minute before putting it down. “You do not know what you are saying. I will forgive it. I forgive you these thoughts. It is all because of la mala. Her evil is all the more complete as she has worked among you, has gained your trust, the trust of the entire department, for years. And I tell you her betrayal—”

  A loud blast thundered through the air. The wall behind Gino buckled and fell inward, plaster wallboard folding in half. Gino scrambled to his feet and rushed me, taking me down onto the hallway floor. My head smacked the thinly-padded concrete. A second blast erupted, and the trembling walls around us starting falling in.

  My ears rang. Chalky dust filled the hallway. Ceiling tiles floated down around us. Beeps, hums, and alarms blared. Gino rose to his knees, shook his head. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Then he offered me his hand, pulled me up to a seated position. My head was light. I swallowed back vomit. I breathed in deep, filling my lungs with the hot, dirty air. Coughs savaged my throat.

  A red and white calendar hung from one corner of what was left of the wall in front of me. The words were blurry, but I could make out a smiley face and the words “Happy B-Day Marian O.” on one of the squares. Mom? It has to be Marian Oliver!

  “Mom!” I shook my head and pushed to my hands and knees. I must hurry to my mother, to the twenty-seven other helpless men and women on the floor. “Call it in, G. I gotta go find my mother!”

  As I fought to get to my feet, low moans from every direction broke through the smoke, like a giant hand turning up the volume on a low-rent sound system.

  I pushed myself over to the edge of the hallway, eyeing the steel bars that used to hide behind sheetrock. I wrapped my hands around one and pulled myself to my feet. Dust rushed through the corridor on the back of a ferocious wind. To my right, the entire bank of windows behind the nurses’ station had blown out. What had happened in my mother’s room?

  My right leg dragged behind as I limped down the debris-laden hallway toward room 1200. Tiny pieces of green glass crunched under my feet, the remains of a vase—its plastic tulips scattered. Shreds of paper unmoored from bulletin boards flew around like angry birds. The wind was distinct, layered over a hundred other noises.

  I stopped for a moment. Low wattage lights lined the hallway floors and remaining exit signs—the blasts must’ve taken out the electricity. Every single resident on this wing depended on at least one device to keep them alive—how long could the generators keep my mother’s oxygen machine operating?

  I sniffed. Fire? Or is this just how it smells when a bomb goes off?

  In the gloom of the hallway, only two rooms lay between me and the next exit sign. I tried to sprint, but pain shot through my right knee and climbed up my thigh. I reached up to wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. It came away sticky and red. A paneled door appeared through the dust on the right. Room 1202. Was someone trapped inside? I pushed through the door and glanced around the tiny studio. Empty. Thank You, God.

  I lurched down the hallway to Mom’s room. The door hung sideways, the top two sets of hinges dangling. I squeezed past it and tried to call out her name, but my mouth was a dry canyon. Thick waves of nausea rolled through me.

  Cold wind ravaged the air in her little space like a dusty tomb. Broken windows? Her oxygen machine lay on its side, red line stuck at the fourth level, no telltale whooshing sound, no humming, dead. Could she breathe through the dust and pull in enough of the cool air winding its way through her apartment? Bedroom—she’d been in her bedroom. I pulled down on the claw handle and opened the door. My mother was on her side, trying to sit herself up in bed, wide eyed. I clung to the doorframe, bracing against a curtain of dizziness. Her forehead twinkled with glass. Tiny dots of blood formed a crown on her head. Her face was ashen. Our eyes met—she pushed her birdlike frame into a seated position and pointed a thin finger my way.

  I made it to her side, tears dulling my eyes as I brushed the glass off of her pajamas and into my hand. I leaned in and reached my arms around her meager frame. Time to move her to safety. My right arm encircled another arm, strong and rough with rocky muscle. What? Nick was behind me, circling my mother and me with his arms. Nick! Here? How could I have doubted this glorious man?

  He pressed his lips against my ear. “Can you stand up, beautiful?”

  Was he whispering? Screaming? My ears were still buzzing. I nodded my head. “Take her out of here.” My throat burned from the smoke. “Get her out now!”

  He took off his leather jacket, wrapped it around her, and then folded her into his arms like a china doll. He held her in both arms, jutting an elbow out to me. I grabbed onto him with both hands and pulled myself to my feet. Waves of dizziness and nausea swept over me.

  “Go! Through the windows!” I squawked at him, my throat raw.

  I jabbed a thumb at what was left of the three floor-to-ceiling windows flanking my mother’s bed. He picked through the broken glass like a panther, pausing in front of the window. Large hunks of glass hung low, quivering. We couldn’t go through it without risking it falling on us.

  Tension rifled up the arm I clung to. No way, Nick. There’s no turning back now. Breaking away from him, I grabbed the comforter off my mother’s bed, threw it over my shoulder, and hoisted myself toward the craggy window. The sprinkler system kicked on, spitting streams of tepid water over us.

  I pushed my shoulder into the remaining shards of glass hanging like stadium pennants from the top of the window frame, breaking them off, clearing a path to safety. I motioned for him to take my mother through, but he stood stock still behind me.

  I waited a few more seconds, but he still didn’t move. I turned to match his gaze. The opening I just cleared is too small for both of them. I yanked the comforter up to cover my head and shoulders. Then I stretched out both arms, bunched my hands into fists, pulled them into my shirt sleeves as best I could, and barreled head-first through the glass, toward the fresh air of freedom. Just as another explosion threw me forward.

  I awoke amidst a thick field of swamp grass sticking into my belly. My left boot was being pulled away from my body. My right foot was bare, cold, a
nd pulsating with stabs from hot pokers. Orange and yellow starbursts painted the night sky. The air was ripe with fuel and blood and death. Nick. I turned my head toward a bloody body next to mine.

  Nick!

  “Josie!”

  A spark of pain jolted my eyes open, pushing away the dark images.

  “There you are, beautiful!” Nick loomed over me, handsome and very much alive. “Now that you’re awake, I’m moving aside to let the paramedics have their way with you again.” Nick’s eyes reflected love and warmth and life.

  I sat up, slapping at gloved hands as they tried to hold me down. Water was shooting onto the building from all directions. Flames licked out of second story windows. Mom! Where was my mom?

  A cold blast of wind battered my face. I put my hands on the shoulders of the man in front of me and pushed myself to my feet. Nick must’ve paved the way. The paramedic didn’t try to stop me. An ambulance idled behind me. Two men bent over a stretcher, speaking in low tones to my mother. They’d already dabbed away the bloody crown. She was nodding feebly—in good hands. What about the others?

  “Gino—where’s Gino?” I willed one uncooperative foot in front of the other. But neither one obeyed.

  Nick wrapped his arms around me, murmuring into my ear. “He’s alright—he made it out the cafeteria doors, with two residents the first trip. Then he made it back in and out for more residents twice before the first engine arrived. He’s fine.”

  My breath struggled past the tightness in my chest. “We gotta get back in there.” What about Arnie’s wistful face as he lay prostrate on the thinning carpet? “Arnie! Did he get out? Did you see him?”

  “He’s out. They’re all out. By the grace of God, none of the residents were injured in the fire.” He rattled this out authoritatively.