Dani scoured the room for a place to hide, tamping down panic and frustration at the lack of cabinets and cubbyholes. She and Fay had insisted on open shelving everywhere. They would joke about all the locked doors in Rasmund and how theirs was a knob-free world. It had been funny and easy, since neither was the filing cabinet type. Now all it meant was the room looked like miles and miles of open ground.
She considered risking a run across the hall, maybe hiding in the wiring cabinets in Audio. Pressing her ear to the outer door, she heard an outburst of radio static. The target had been acquired. That’s what it sounded like at least. Dani heard the words “data” and “drives” and someone said “Say again.”
The radio made it sound tinnier but Dani recognized the low voice of the man on the phone. “We’ve found our rabbit. Repeat. We have found our rabbit. Hiding in the southeast basement of the house. Split the team. Team A, retrieve the package and make a final sweep. Give me a head count. Team B, join the boys downstairs to find our rabbit. Hidden panel behind the furnaces. Once head count is confirmed, we are smoke. Understood?”
“Roger that.” The radio went silent once more, muffled commands given, and Dani heard heavy footsteps running toward the front stairwell, away from her. She had bought herself a few minutes and hopefully a less vigorous search. That didn’t help her much though. The best she could hope for was that the team assigned data retrieval would search the Audio room first before heading to Templeton’s office. Templeton kept her cabinets packed, Dani knew. If she was going to hide anywhere, it had to be here.
Fay’s fainting couch wouldn’t hide her well enough. With so little to search, even a careless seeker would think to look under the only solid piece of furniture in the room and Dani didn’t want to bet on this team being careless. She made a quick circuit of the room, dodging under a partition of hanging corkboards now bare of the Swan Technology materials. A big dented cardboard box lay discarded beside the mostly flat denim beanbag chair with a yellow crocheted afghan in which Dani usually sprawled. While technically she could probably fit into the box, as hiding places went, it was stupid enough to border on suicidal.
But it was big enough. She couldn’t hide in the box but if she could fit in it that meant anything her size would also fit into it. Dropping to her knees, Dani flipped the beanbag chair over, searching for the sturdy zipper that always seemed to find a way to the top of the chair and dig into her back when she lay on it. She refused to listen to the little voice in her head screaming to her about how epically stupid this plan was, choosing instead to listen to the monotonous droning of her inner engineer who had taken to running ratio calculations in her mind. Displacement and area and depth-times-width-times-length—phrases and equations and diagrams flitted through her skull as her fingers worked open the zipper.
She had to get this right. Her odds were bad enough without being careless. Pinching the bag closed, she dumped the opening into the empty box and as carefully as she could with the adrenaline rushing through her, she poured out the foam pellets that filled the bag. A fog of white dust rose up in a burst and Dani fought back a cough. As the chair emptied, getting flatter and flatter, Dani’s faith in her plan flagged. There was no way this was going to work. But as the door to Templeton’s office shattered under heavy boots, Dani knew she was out of options.
Hers was the last room left.
The cardboard box was more than halfway full. It looked like any other shipping box, the crushed pellets like any other shipping protection. The most anyone would do to search it was maybe run a hand through them to see if any objects had been left behind. The voice in the hallway said all data had been retrieved. They weren’t looking for objects; they were looking for people.
Dani dragged the mostly empty beanbag chair, the afghan, and the box closer to the wall. The “there’s no way this will work” chorus grew in volume but fortunately, or unfortunately, so did the sounds of the team next door. She had literally made her bed and now she was going to have to lie in it. She jammed the box into the corner, close enough to distract but not so close anyone would have to move the beanbag to get to it. She threw her purse and the Rasmund pouch into the bag first, not wanting to leave any personal traces behind. It had to look like the room had been vacated.
Cabinet doors in Templeton’s office slammed open and shut. The search continued. Stepping into the beanbag, Dani folded herself down into the dusty fog of pellets. She shook out the afghan over the front of the bag, punching at the denim from within to wrinkle the yellow blanket. There was no way this was going to work. Taking a deep breath, Dani pulled the top of the denim bag over her head and laid down on her side, curling up into what she hoped looked like a lumpy comma. Fay had called her that this morning, a comma. She pulled the neck of her T-shirt up over her nose to keep out the dust, squeezed her eyes tight, and forced herself to be still.
She heard the familiar squeak of the door hinges and footsteps sounded close by. Dani wished she’d thought of a way to place the zipper or her head so that she could peer out, maybe through the holes in the afghan, but she knew it was better this way. If they saw her, if they recognized the shape of a human body underneath all that rumpled denim, they probably wouldn’t give her any warning. They would probably just shoot her again and again, hopefully killing her quickly enough that she wouldn’t have to know how stupid she looked.
She hoped Fay had died quickly, that she hadn’t been too frightened. She hoped she hadn’t seen it coming, that the screams hadn’t been Fay’s. It was selfish, she knew. Who else would she hope had died screaming? Nobody. But not as much as she hoped Fay hadn’t.
Dani almost sighed but caught herself. The urge to scream and kick and pray to just get it over with was stronger than she might have imagined. Not that she had ever imagined herself hiding inside a beanbag chair. But she’d hidden lots of times before in smaller spaces than this. Like in her dad’s rig. Dani thought of the little spot she used to snuggle up in on the floor of her father’s truck, behind his seat, beneath the seat cot he used to sleep on. He used to call it her rabbit hole.
Now she was in another rabbit hole. Now she really was a rabbit. Wasn’t that what the operator had called her? The rabbit? Curled up like a bunny, frightened and hiding, waiting to be shot without ever seeing her killer’s face. She curled her fingers tight against her chest, refusing to give in to the suicidal urge to scream. Water slipped out from beneath her lashes and she didn’t know if she was crying or it was from squeezing her eyes so tightly shut but she felt little foam pellets clinging to the wetness. She breathed through her nose and thought she could smell Ben on her T-shirt.
A doorknob clicked and more hinges complained. The door to the hallway had been opened. A radio crackled and a male voice spoke.
“All clear. Team A has the package and we are on our way down. The only one we’re missing from our head count is our rabbit.”
Dani couldn’t move even as she heard him shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER THREE
She sneezed. Loudly. There was no stopping it. She froze after the spasm, feeling wetness on her T-shirt, but no heavy boots kicked down the door. The only sounds she could hear over her ragged breathing were the footsteps growing fainter. They were gone. She was alive.
They were going downstairs to look for her. She wouldn’t fool them long.
Kicking her way out of the dusty chair, Dani grabbed her bags and hurried into the hallway. She had become so certain she wouldn’t survive her hiding place she hadn’t bothered to think even one step further. Now she had minutes at best before the invaders realized there was no hidden room behind any furnace panels. She felt certain their next sweep would be thorough to a fault. She had to see if anyone else had survived.
She threw herself through the door into Choo-Choo’s Audio room and her feet slid through something wet.
She wouldn’t look down; she couldn’t. Her eyes locked on the wide strip of windows above a rack of equipment, straining only to s
ee the yellowing leaves on the trees beyond, telling herself that the splashes of red she spied on the edges were the fiery red of sugar maples or a flickering glimpse of cardinals.
It couldn’t be what she knew it had to be—blood. Arterial blood spatter. She knew the phrase even as she refused to say it to herself. She’d studied it before on jobs. (Dixon again—how she wished she’d never worked that Dixon case.)
A squat metal equipment rack lay on its side on the floor by the door. That must have been what she heard crashing. A gap in the racks on the far wall showed where it had come from, where someone had grabbed it to throw it, someone hoping to stop the invaders with guns. Her eyes slid down the wall, past jumbles of cables and wires and bits of chrome. A receiver of some sort stayed plugged into the wall, dangling from an unseen hook, its wires and filaments trailing out of it like intestines. Those wires and filaments snaked across the floor, joining up with a dark ribbon that looked like chocolate sauce but Dani knew it wasn’t. She knew what it was and even if she wanted to fool herself into thinking it was anything else, the ribbon spilled under the upturned heel of a canary yellow pump (ladies’ size eleven, she knew) and that told her everything she didn’t want to know.
Fay’s wide eyes stared up at nothing, her beautiful silk blouse torn and blackened by the close-range shooting. Dani was sorry to see that she’d lost two fingernails on her left hand, probably from hauling the rack from the wall. Somehow that seemed to be the worst part of the whole scene. Fay had beautiful hands and had always taken pride in her impeccable manicures. Dani wanted to cover up her hands, to wrap them up in a towel to protect them from further damage. She didn’t want anyone to see Fay with missing nails. She didn’t want anyone to see any of this. She didn’t want to see any of this.
Swallowing hard, Dani fought against the cloud of shock and denial she knew was descending upon her. If Fay was alive, she told herself, she’d smack the crap out of you for just standing here. Get away.
That became her mantra. Get away.
Make someone pay for what they did here. Make sure the world knew about the killers with guns who dared break her friend’s beautiful fingernails and soak blood into her favorite pink scarf. Dani heard the words low in her throat. Get away. Get away. The sound vibrated through her throat, centering her. More important, it kept the scream she knew lurked somewhere below it from erupting.
Dropping her chin to her chest, feeling bile rise in her throat as dizziness washed over her, Dani realized she had stepped on the sleeve of a thin windbreaker. The toe of her boot brushed against a tan hand and her early chant morphed into a low moan.
Look at him, she said to herself. It’s Choo-Choo and you need to look at him. He was your friend. He was killed. The thought that the killer might have been looking over his shoulder as he watched Dani running up the driveway made her stomach flip in pain and rage. “Choo-Choo,” she whispered, crouching down to see below the console, bracing herself to see the damage done to his beautiful face.
She saw black hair. She thought maybe it was blood blackening the tech’s Nordic hair but the surprise of the sight startled her into a weird clarity. Choo-Choo would never wear a windbreaker, not even the high-quality navy blue Lauren one she stood on. Again, unbidden, the fact checker in her brain kicked into gear, recognizing and categorizing the clothes before her by style and price and quality and use. Phelps. Phelps wore Lauren when he golfed. This was Phelps lying at her feet. She didn’t need to roll him over to see his face. Judging from the blood spatters and exit wound, she doubted there would be much to convince her.
Why was Phelps here? He was supposed to be at the Greenbrier golfing with the client. Choo-Choo had said so, had said he wasn’t coming in. Mrs. O’Donnell would have notified Phelps by phone, would have called the job for him while he was out. She probably would have let him enjoy a round of golf at the luxurious resort on the client’s dime.
Dani spun from the console, careful not to step into the ribbons and puddles of blood. Climbing onto one of the console chairs, she balanced herself and rose, trying to see the entire room from a higher vantage point. A high rack of receivers rose like a chimney in the middle of the room and behind it she could see one foot sprawled out from beneath a workstation. One white calf peeked out from beneath a rucked-up leg of pale blue twill pants. Eddie. Eddie, who had been transferred to the Miami office. Why had he come back?
Fay, Phelps, and Eddie. Hickman downstairs. Where was Choo-Choo? She didn’t have long until the killers realized they’d missed her, that their rabbit wasn’t in the hole it had promised to hide in. Grieving would come later. If Choo-Choo lay dead somewhere in this or any other room, she would have to process that at another time. Now she had to get out of the house.
Part of her wanted to hide again, hide someplace brilliant and unfindable, but she knew such a place did not exist. If they were willing to kill a houseful of people, they were probably willing to take the time to dismantle every nook and cranny to be sure the job was done thoroughly. But with the front and back exits of the compound blocked, where could she go?
She had heard radios crackle in the stairwell. She couldn’t go down that way. The back stairs would be watched as well. One peek out the high windows made short work of any farfetched ideas of jumping to safety. She stepped carefully from the wheeled chair onto the console, thinking somehow the higher vantage point would give her an idea.
Plus Phelps’ blood was running across the floor toward her.
She picked her way over headphones and keyboards, careful not to knock over Choo-Choo’s army of Mountain Dew cans. She moved quickly, her small feet finding room on the crowded surface until she got to the second window of the row. Even this close, Dani could barely make out the thin line between the window and the frame. She hoped she’d be able to open it without having to touch any of the blood.
None of the windows in Audio were supposed to open; they’d been painted shut years before. They weren’t wired for security so as not to interfere with the many sensitive surveillance devices and none of the lower gables came close enough to offer any real point of entry from the ground. The only thing close to them was an architectural flourish beneath the windows, just a narrow ledge of brick.
But Choo-Choo was a smoker and hated to walk all the way downstairs to light up. He’d given Dani one of his “poor me” sad-eyes and she’d been helpless to resist. It had taken her three hours, a packet of razor blades (plus a roll of gauze and tape to treat a nasty cut when a blade had slipped), four shades of paint, and a can of WD-40, but finally she had gotten the window open. More important, she’d layered and stained the paint around the edges such that nobody would be able to see the change. Choo-Choo had tears in his eyes when the window had slid open silently that first time.
Dani placed her fingertips carefully to avoid the arc of blood spray against the glass and gave a sharp push. The window slid up with expected ease. She took one last look onto the killing floor of Audio and whispered, “I hope they have cigarettes wherever you are, Choo-Choo.” Then she slung her purse and Rasmund pouch over her shoulder and hoisted herself up through the frame.
A quick peek down to the estate below assured her that nobody was watching the upper levels and she folded herself enough to get one leg, then another, through the frame. It took most of her upper-body strength to lower herself down to the ledge that had looked a lot bigger in her memory. She slid the window back into place as she heard heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway.
She didn’t think it was possible for her body to produce any more adrenaline, but pressed back against the rough brick of the building three stories up, Dani’s throat tightened and a new shower of sweat ran down from her hairline. Only the sound of voices coming closer prompted her to take that first inching step away from the window. She thought she might be short enough to not be seen through the glass, but she had neither the nerve nor the room to turn her head to check. All she could do was slide her left foot and then her right foot, ov
er and over again, until she put distance between herself and the bank of windows.
Perspective really is everything, she thought as she looked down the ledge at the nearest gable of a jutting dormer window. It had looked a lot closer when she’d seen it from the ground. But if she could get atop that, at least she wouldn’t be exposed as she was now. Dani hoped like she’d never hoped before that she would be strong enough to get up there.
Behind her, Dani heard furniture being overturned and shouting voices. She had no time to worry about what they’d discovered in the basement. If she fell from the ledge all the way to the flagstone path beneath her, a bullet to the skull would be a kindness. All the fact checkers and calm talkers in her brain had grown horribly silent and Dani dug her nails into the rough brick to focus her nerves.
She focused on the gable, measured the distance to it. “Five steps,” she rasped, more from the tightness in her throat than from the urge to remain quiet. “One after the other, Dani. Just one after the other.”
A bundle of cables were clamped and bolted into the brick beside the gable and she noticed with a whisper of elation that the closer she got to them the sturdier they appeared.
Finally, with something concrete to focus on, the mechanical part of her brain kicked in, calculating just how she was going to get one foot then the other onto those brackets and hoist herself onto the gable’s roof. She felt that familiar separation in her mind—one part problem solving, one part trying not to scream.
The chattering of sparrows made her jump, slamming her head against the brick and nearly overbalancing herself right off the ledge. She adjusted, leaning to the side and grabbing the bundle of cables. Seconds before she made contact, the thought that they might be electrified flitted through her mind but at that moment it seemed a small risk to take, all things considered. Her fingers raked between the brick and the dirty wires and she cried out when she couldn’t pull the cables free from the brackets. Having something solid, something more reliable than her balance to count on, made her let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Before she could think, she spun on the ledge, gripping the bolted bundle with both hands, resting her forehead against a sun-warmed steel bracket.
The Widow File Page 4
