With gloved hands, ignoring Collin’s nervousness behind him, he immediately began the attempt to jimmy the lock. As soon as he heard the lock pop, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
He quickly realized she wasn’t at home.
“Find a candle,” Cade ordered his brother. “Any candle will work.”
“Sure,” Collin assured him, heading off in the direction of the bedroom.
Cade, on the other hand, headed to the kitchen where he found the tiny laundry room with a compact washer and dryer combination. He wedged himself into the smidgen of space and with the wrench began to unhook the gas connection to the dryer.
The deed took under five minutes. He knew he’d been successful when he smelled the odor of gas.
“Found one,” Collin assured Cade when they met up in the kitchen.
“Good. Set it on that coffee table over there and light it.”
“You gettin’ romantic all of a sudden?” Collin remarked, laughing as he struck a match to the wick. The candle flicked to flame.
“Step on it, you fool. This place will be toast in less than nine minutes. Let’s get out of here.”
With that, Collin moved his ass toward the front door. “If this works, we could do the same thing to get rid of Boston and Kit. They’re living in that big old Victorian on the outskirts of San Madrid. It’s called Crandall House. I looked it up on the Internet. We could be there in under an hour, in and out of that place before anyone knew what hit them.”
“Soon, Collin, but not tonight,” Cade promised his brother, as they scurried down the darkened hallway like a couple of rats and out into the warm summer night.
For weeks, Trevor had kept the Boyd brothers under surveillance, mainly by the GPS tracking devices he’d put under their vehicles. And he’d listened to their plotting from a distance via the bugs he’d planted inside their houses. So when the cops had shown up with a warrant, he’d listened to that byplay as well. Even now they were still in the process of turning the Enclave upside down as they treated the place like a crime scene.
Since they’d found three bodies on the property, the police were busy going over every inch of the place, room by room, grid by grid. So he’d known the minute they had discovered each of the listening devices he’d planted.
Not a single one remained intact.
The cops had also confiscated the brothers’ cars, which meant the GPS tracking devices were now useless.
He was down to tracking their cell phone usage.
It was because of that annoying development he had no idea where Cade and Collin had crawled off tonight since he’d had a previous engagement earlier in the day with their brother, Connor.
Leave it to the local cops to get in his way and screw everything up, he thought, mildly irritated. He shook his head, knowing it couldn’t be helped. It was only a matter of time before the cops finally got around to getting a court order for their cell phones. It had taken months but it seemed the police finally had the Boyd brothers in their sights. He supposed he had to be grateful for that, even if the cops were two steps behind.
For now, though, he knew the brothers had a habit of spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave. They had expensive tastes in everything, frequenting all the upscale places within a fifty-mile radius of Malibu. They fancied quality-cut cocaine. Trevor had even located their supplier.
Because the cops were part of this now, it might take a little more work on his part, might be a little more difficult and time consuming, but he was determined to get to them first. Right now, he could do nothing less than keep up with their cell phone usage and their credit card purchases.
That’s how he had known where Connor was, known he was stalking Baylee, and the rest could be chalked up to being in the right place at the right time. Trevor didn’t particularly care how anyone sized up what had happened to Connor. Baylee’s problem had been eliminated. End of story. Trevor was used to elimination, used to killing people, especially people like Connor. He’d already lived what felt like a lifetime of judging character.
He and Noah never accepted assignments they hadn’t first checked out—in detail. It was a pact they had made and stuck to before they ever started in the business. Getting rid of people like Connor had been second nature to him for so long he didn’t even think twice about it anymore, especially since he’d arrived in L.A.
There had been a time he’d lived a normal life with a wife and child, a life before the stars aligned and it had all been taken away from him in the blink of an eye. During the worst time of his life, Noah Parker had befriended him, befriended an angry, deeply enraged man and set his life on a different course altogether.
Not a better course, he thought now, just different, the elimination kind of different. He’d taken his rage and found a purpose again.
Who knew there were outlets willing to pay top dollar for a pissed-off widower where his fury could be put to good use?
Assassins were wanted the world over, needed by governments and private parties around the globe. Work had always been readily available. But he never took an assignment that he didn’t feel was warranted, a job where elimination, in his view, would make the world a better place.
The philosopher inside him at work again, he mused.
At least that’s what he had told himself. He had no grand illusions of what he was or what he wasn’t. All he knew or cared about right now was ending the evil that had begun so long ago, evil that had put Noah’s life on the same course as his.
In his mind, putting an end to Cade and Collin once and for all was the only thing that made any sense, no matter what price he had to pay.
From the info he’d gathered out of their own mouths and the personal accounts he’d hacked into over the last several months, he had a pretty good idea of the regular choices they made. That had led him to the Terrace Resort and its upscale bar, a favored place they liked to frequent where they could hook up with high class call girls.
If Trevor had any complaints about Los Angeles, it was the fact that available parking spaces were damned near impossible to find. Because of that, he pulled up near the Resort as close as he could get. The distance was far enough away so that no one would suspect he was there to keep an eye on the valet area and the front lobby.
His intent was to catch sight of Cade or Collin or both when they entered the hotel or handed off the keys to the valet. He couldn’t cover all the doors to the hotel, of course, but knowing the brothers as he did, they would need to make an entrance. And that meant they would never use self-parking.
If by some chance they didn’t show up here at the resort, he would be forced to go to Plan B.
On the drive to her condo, Quinn had never felt more alone. In one short afternoon Cade had managed to pull the rug out from everything she’d worked so hard to get. What if this suspension became permanent? What if it prevented her from achieving her goal of becoming a pediatrician and opening up the clinic she’d planned? What if he managed to ruin everything she’d ever wanted?
She tamped down the urge to pick up her cell and call Kit or Baylee, pour out her feelings, get things off her chest. She didn’t doubt for a minute either one of them wouldn’t take the time to talk her down, talk her out of this pity party.
But after what Baylee been through today, the only thing she needed tonight was Dylan. And Kit, she had her own problems dealing with the upcoming hearing. Neither could let down their guards for a minute.
After all, they didn’t even know she’d been suspended. She’d felt no need to add that layer to Baylee’s distress while she was grilled by St. John earlier at the hospital.
Quinn wasn’t stupid. She knew the dynamics had changed for both of her friends. Kit had Jake now. Things had changed for Baylee, too. Dylan wasn’t going anywhere. She could see that tonight at the hospital.
While Quinn could be ecstatic for her friends, she seemed to be teetering on the edge of a precipice, ready to fall off. The suspension had her
feeling as if she’d lost something very, very precious, something she’d wanted since—forever. She wasn’t absolutely certain she could ever get it back, either.
It was that uncertainty that had her wondering what would happen to Mrs. Covington, a breast cancer patient she treated on occasion, or Mr. Sorenson, a man whose stomach cancer was in the final stages, or little Cassidy, a seven-year-old girl suffering from leukemia. The patients she cared about might be gone before she could set foot in the hospital again.
Three weeks for her would surely feel like an eternity.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Could Reese really work some kind of legal magic and get her job back?
She wasn’t used to relying on anyone but herself. She’d never been good at getting her hopes up. Too many of her early years had been mired in disappointment for that. She’d learned long ago promises were simply words strung together, usually made to placate a frightened, whimpering kid.
She had to admit now she’d spent plenty of those early years in fear mode. After all, a five-year-old never knew exactly what one of Ella’s hyped-up, strung-out johns might do when they got fed up listening to a whiny, hungry child.
She’d made damn sure she didn’t complain for long.
When she got to her building, a renovated, three-story rectangular strip of art deco limestone built in the ’40s during the post-World War II era, she glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure Reese was still following her.
Spotting his sporty Lexus 600, a bolt of lust tingled in her belly that had her anticipating getting him out of that tailored suit. She rolled down the window and motioned for him to find a parking space on the street while she made the turn into a narrow drive-up that led to the underground parking garage. She pulled the Miata up to the card-reader and swiped her card. The gate went up.
She was about to press on the gas to pull forward, to go inside the garage a short ten feet away, when an explosion belched out debris onto the front windshield. The blast was so fierce it rocked her car.
This was no earthquake. Frantic, she threw the gear into Reverse and hit the gas.
About that time, she heard another boom that sent more fragments flying through the air. Fire and smoke engulfed the underground parking area and what was left of her beautiful old building.
Still shaking, she parked the car at the curb and threw open the door. Reese came running toward her. They met in the middle of the street and stood there watching orange flames climb into the night sky. At least they did for a stunned minute. Mesmerized by the fiery scene, they stood rooted to the spot as approaching sirens wailed in the distance.
But then, both Reese and Quinn, along with several neighbors who ran up to help, began to approach the inferno for any entrance into the burning apartments. As they got closer, though, another blast knocked them back.
Reluctantly, they had to give ground. Getting inside now would be a death trap.
Reese spotted a few stragglers, a few tenants, coughing and hacking their way through the wall of smoke and rubble. He grabbed Quinn’s arm and pointed.
She let out a whoop of delight. “That’s Mrs. Channing who lives on the first floor. She’s got her three cats in her arms.”
Reese and Quinn got to her about the time Mrs. Channing dropped to the ground, collapsing in a heap.
A fleeting look at her sixty-year-old neighbor had her instincts kicking in. Quinn went into doctor mode. By that time, the first ladder truck roared up. Firemen jumped off, swinging into action, grabbing and unrolling hoses to get water flowing onto the orange blaze. But in a matter of minutes the flames had already reached a staggering sixty feet in height.
Reese heard them radio for more units. And no wonder, he thought as he surveyed the damage. What had been a quiet tree-lined, residential neighborhood just minutes earlier, now looked like a bomb had detonated there.
With borrowed first aid supplies from the EMTs, Reese became Quinn’s field assistant. They waded into the chaos like warriors on a mission. Whenever she said lift, Reese lifted. When she snapped out instructions about slings or compresses, Reese did his best to comply.
If Quinn had thought she’d seen everything in the ER, this was carnage beyond her comprehension. The street, the yard, any level surface became a triage.
Lawyer and first-year resident worked as a team, along with a dozen or so good-hearted bystanders, as they aided the paramedics with diagnoses and sorted out the severely injured and burned from the walking wounded.
For the next several hours, Quinn applied antiseptic cream to burned arms and legs, wrapped them in bandages, applied compresses, even treated head wounds and gaping cuts on arms and legs. She gave comfort to anyone who needed it. It didn’t take long to realize neighbor children she’d watched grow up from toddlers to preschoolers were dealing with a combination of injuries from burns to broken limbs. Some of her neighbors were in shock at realizing they were now homeless.
Hours later, firefighters finally managed to get the fire to die down to a smoldering black searing mass. But the body count had risen: five verified dead so far, and investigators were still digging through the rubble.
Around four-fifteen, Reese took one final look around, surveyed the ruins of the building, the chaos in the street, and realized they had done all they could do.
Most of the seriously injured had long been transported to the hospital hours earlier. Those that remained had been bandaged at the scene and were now off to stay with relatives or friends. For those that didn’t have anyone to stay with, the Red Cross had already shown up and provided them with hotel vouchers.
At the first good break, Reese tugged Quinn toward his car and announced, “You’re done, exhausted. You need sleep. Come with me.”
She didn’t argue as he opened the car door and she all but fell into the passenger seat. “I should probably move my car.”
“Done already.”
She cocked her head his way and declared, “You know, Reese, you aren’t nearly as obnoxious as most attorneys.”
“Well, gosh, thanks. I’m moved.”
She shot him a weary smile. “Do you think I could get sued for treating those people back there after getting suspended? It seemed like days ago Mendenhall gave me the boot.”
“Nah, I think you’re safe.”
“Damn it, I really had my heart on getting you out of your clothes tonight.”
“Now you tell me. Wait, I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m saying. Getting you out of your clothes was supposed to be my mission for the night.”
At this time of morning there wasn’t much traffic and the drive to Westlake Village took no more than twenty minutes. The entire trip, though, Reese kept a vigil eye in the rear view mirror, wondering if Cade might be out there somewhere following them.
Not one to jump to conclusions, he’d already decided the person responsible for all the suffering he’d witnessed firsthand was Cade Boyd. Somehow the man had found a way to blow up that building and take five lives, maybe even more, in the process. And the realization that the woman sitting next to him could have been one of the dead had his gut tightening.
About halfway en route to his house, Quinn nodded off.
When he made the turn onto the street where he lived, he did two passes just in case they’d been followed. Deciding the coast was clear, he finally pulled the car into his garage. She didn’t wake up when he shut off the engine, or when he picked her up and carried her inside to his bedroom. Her hair and clothes smelled like smoke. She had soot and grease and grime on her face and arms. But to him as he stared down at Quinn Tyler, the woman was still stunning.
The minute he put her down on the bed, she stirred a little and tried to sit up.
“You want a shower or sleep? Your choice.”
Barely audible, she replied, “A shower would be great, but I’m so tired, Reese.”
“Sleep it is then. But you need to get out of your clothes. They reek.”
“’Kay.” Witho
ut further prodding, she simply yanked off her shirt, leaving him to stare at the simple white cotton bra and all that smooth, creamy skin beneath. She unzipped her pants and Reese offered, “Let me take your shoes off first.”
“’Kay.”
He knelt down at her feet, slipped off simple, once-white Keds that were now filthy with remnants of ash residue. Without her shoes, she leaned back on the bed and shimmied out of her chinos. He pulled them off and tried not to stare at the stingy band of red silk underwear left, realizing these few articles of clothing might be the only ones she owned at the moment.
They’d have to do something about that, he thought, as he went into the bathroom, grabbed a washcloth out of the linen cabinet, and soaked it in warm water.
When he got back to the bedroom she was sprawled diagonally across the bed on her back, eyes closed. He took the washcloth and began to wipe dirt and grime from her face and arms as best he could.
She put up no resistance whatsoever as he slowly rubbed away the film of dirt from her skin. When he’d finished, he pulled the sheets down invitingly around her. Leaving on the bra and panties, he gently picked up her limp body and slipped it between the bedding, tucking her in.
Without another word between them, in a matter of minutes, she snored softly in slumber. Opening her handbag, Reese pulled out her cell phone, turned the thing off, put it back inside the purse, and backed out of the room, quietly shutting the door.
He headed into the shower in the guest room. He was pretty sure she was down for the count, but he didn’t want to take the chance the running water might disturb her sleep.
By six a.m. Trevor realized the Boyd brothers weren’t coming back to their hotel room. And he desperately needed sleep. Even though he dozed in the car, he needed to get back to his own bed, back to his laptop, and find out where the hell the two brothers had decided to hide out.
He’d heard the news about an explosion over his police scanner. He’d looked up the address on his iPhone.
Ending Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 3) Page 6
