White Hot

by Elise Noble

  Would this case be the catalyst that finally brought back the old Oliver? I sure hoped so. And while he was here, I could pick his brains about this whole DJ Steel thing.

  “Oliver, can I ask a…” I paused mid-sentence as my phone rang. Unknown caller. “Yeah?” I’d got my monosyllabic greeting from Emmy, she of few words.

  A breathless voice greeted me. “Daniela?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Stefanie. We met yesterday?” she added, as if I might not remember.

  I could barely hear her words. Her voice was a whisper, hindered further by a crackly connection.

  “I remember. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Well, no. I don’t know.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “S-s-somebody just tried to run me over. In the parking lot outside my building.”

  “What do you mean tried to run you over?”

  “A car. They drove a car straight at me.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Yes. No, I mean, I don’t think so. The car accelerated as it came towards me, and when I jumped to the side, it swerved and tried again.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  I heard a sniffle as she choked back tears. “Bleeding. My hands and knees are bleeding from where I dove out the way.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In a coffee shop down the street. In the bathroom. What if the Ghost hired someone to kill me because I knew Christina? What if he thinks I know something?”

  She was dead wrong on Ethan—he wasn’t even allowed a phone call—but she could be right about the motive. Poor girl. She’d been through enough already.

  “Stay there. I’ll come and get you.”

  It looked as if I’d be needing Emmy’s car again after all.

  I abandoned the Corvette in the tow-away zone outside the front door of the coffee place and strode inside, heading straight for the bathrooms and ignoring the shouts of the barista that they were for customers only.

  There were four stalls, and only the furthest one was occupied. I knocked gently on the door.

  “Stefanie?”

  It cracked open, and her tear-streaked face peeped out. The instant she saw me, she started crying again.

  “Hey, hey… It’s okay.”

  I reached past her and grabbed some tissue for her to wipe her eyes.

  “Thanks,” she sniffed, sinking back onto the closed toilet bowl.

  I took in her appearance. Her hands were filthy and covered with dried blood, and she’d scraped the knees out of her pants. Fucking marvellous. Another innocent person caught up in this mess. When I caught the piece of scum behind it, he was getting one in the knackers from me, to borrow another of Emmy’s British phrases.

  Meanwhile, I put an arm around Stefanie’s shoulders. “Can you walk? We really should get those cuts cleaned up.”

  “I-I-I think so.”

  She trembled as I helped her to her feet, her tears still falling. The barista gave us a dirty look as we walked to the door, and I flipped him the bird. Didn’t he know there were more important things in life than coffee? Although coffee ran a close second, I had to give him that.

  Outside, I ripped the parking ticket off the windshield and stuffed it into the glove compartment. Emmy wouldn’t even notice it in the pile she accumulated every month. I swear the officers followed us around, just waiting to see where we left our cars next.

  Once Stefanie was settled in the passenger side, I hopped into the driver’s seat. “Did you see the licence plate on the car?”

  “N-n-no.”

  “Make? Model?”

  “I think it was black. Or maybe dark blue. It all happened so fast.”

  “Never mind. We’ll check for CCTV footage and see if we can find any other witnesses. Where do you want me to take you?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t stay at home. Whoever tried to hit me knows where I live, and I’m not waiting for them to come back and try again. I guess I’ll have to go to a hotel.”

  I sighed. Riverley had plenty of spare rooms. Emmy wouldn’t mind one more guest, right?

  “I know somewhere you can stay.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.” But that also meant I had a little confession to make. We’d see whether she’d still want to be anywhere near me afterwards. “But I wasn’t entirely honest with you before.”

  She blinked a few times, and I thought she was going to break down again, but she pulled herself together. “Why? What weren’t you honest about?”

  “I don’t work for Jay Skinner. I’m on Ethan’s team.”

  She reached for the door handle. “Get away from me! I don’t want anything to do with that monster.”

  “He’s not a monster, and I don’t believe he killed Chrissie. He’s as much a victim in all this as you are.”

  “But the police said—”

  “The police are assholes. They just want to close the case and bask in the publicity. Skinner too. But there are so many things about this that don’t make sense.”

  Stefanie hesitated, hand still on the door.

  “When I started looking at this, I thought Ethan did it as well. But I’ve changed my mind. And whoever tried to run you down this morning is probably the real culprit.”

  Stefanie’s hand fell back into her lap. That was a good sign.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Help us, then as soon as this is over, you can go back home.”

  “You think you can catch the person?”

  “The fact that they came after you this morning means they’re worried. Chances are we’re getting closer.”

  She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Another tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Then I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  CHAPTER 26

  BACK AT RIVERLEY, my phone rang as we walked up the front steps. Leah calling.

  “Dan, we need you in the office. Jorge’s been watching the suspect in the Hawkins case, and the guy’s packing a suitcase. We think he’s gonna run.”

  Talk about bad timing. Who could I palm Stefanie off on? Bradley? Mrs. Fairfax?

  I was just considering the options when Lyle wandered through from the kitchen, and the look in his eyes said, “Cha-Ching!”

  Perfect.

  He stared at Stefanie, shuffling from foot to foot until I introduced them. Then he blushed pink as he shook her hand.

  “Stefanie’s going to be staying with us for a little while. She’s got a small problem that means she can’t go back home.”

  “Oh, me too! My lobby’s full of reporters. Want me to show you around?”

  She smiled shyly. “I’d like that.”

  Aw, sweet. “Play nice, guys. I’ve got to run into the office.”

  Five hours, it took, but the fact that the dude was packing and his one-way ticket to Ecuador gave us the extra evidence we needed to convince the cops to arrest our suspected rapist. Now he was in custody, waiting for us to tie up the loose ends, and Officer Tenlow owed me another favour.

  I was dead tired by the time I got back to Riverley. As the world, his dog, and the dog’s pet hamster seemed to be staying there at the moment, I figured I might as well join them. Good thing Emmy’s husband was overseas, or he’d have been wearing his grumpy face because of all the noise.

  “Lyle has a girlfriend?” Emmy asked me over breakfast the next morning.

  “She’s Christina’s roommate.”

  “He can afford her prices? I didn’t think they paid public defenders that much.”

  “He’s not paying her. Someone tried to run her over yesterday, so I said she could stay here for a while.”

  “At this rate, I’m gonna have to move into my other house.”

  Just a slight exaggeration. Riverley had eighteen bedrooms.

  “At least then I won’t need to look at your ugly mug over breakfast.”

  She glared at me over her new glasses. �
��I take it you don’t need my help with this case?”

  I did. She knew it, I knew it, and she knew I knew it.

  Damn.

  “As it happens, I could use a hand, oh beautiful one. What’s with the glasses, anyway? You look geekier than Mack.”

  They were cute, black plastic frames with thin purple stripes on the arms, but Emmy had twenty-twenty vision.

  She passed them over. “Nate made them. They’ve got a camera built into the bridge. Neat, huh?”

  Yeah, they were. I peered closely, and unless you were looking for the camera, you’d never notice it was there. Oh, I wanted a pair of these.

  I handed them back. Reluctantly.

  “So what do you want help with? You mentioned breaking and entering?” she asked.

  “I want to get into Ethan’s house, but the cops are still sitting out front.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  A shadow passed behind her. Ana, Princess of Darkness, carrying a machine gun. She put it down on the breakfast bar and helped herself to a banana.

  I tried to ignore her eyes on me as I answered Emmy. “There are a few things I want to look for. Some letters from Ethan’s stalker, a set of house keys, a pair of gloves, and a bottle of massage oil.”

  I’d double-checked the reports again, and the massage oil definitely wasn’t mentioned. Ditto for the gloves.

  “I’m not even going to ask. Does he have a security system?”

  “Mack hacked into the monitoring company. It’s disabled at the moment.”

  “Are we having an outing?” Ana wanted to know.

  “Yeah,” Emmy answered for me. “Dan wants us to break into Ethan’s house, only the police are guarding it.”

  I stifled a groan. Ana could make a man keel over and die just by staring at him the wrong way, and having her tag along made me nervous. But I couldn’t argue with her qualifications for the job.

  “How many of them?”

  “Just one, I think,” I answered.

  “Pfffft. One is easy. Are we going tonight?”

  Emmy raised an eyebrow at me, and inwardly, I shrivelled up into something that looked like chewed gum. “Sure, why not?”

  By the time darkness fell, we had a plan, and we also had Mack. She didn’t want to be left out.

  “I feel like I should have a lip piercing,” Emmy said.

  Emmy, Ana, and I had got dressed separately, but we’d all come out in various shades of black and purple, heavy on the mascara and light on morals.

  “If you pass me a pin, I can do it,” Ana offered.

  I wasn’t sure whether she was kidding or not, but Emmy laughed.

  Mack was the sunshine to our gloom. She wore a pale-yellow scoop-neck top, a red spandex miniskirt, and stilettos. Oh, and a hidden earpiece and microphone—we all had those.

  “Ready to go?” she asked. “These shoes are pinching.”

  I nodded. Might as well get this over with.

  Mack borrowed a cherry-red vintage Mustang from Black’s stable of cars, and the rest of us piled into one of the company Explorers. The way Emmy drove, it wasn’t long before we parked in the shadow of an old maple tree a couple of streets away from Ethan’s place.

  Emmy radioed through to Mack. “Where are you?”

  “About ten minutes away.”

  “But we left at the same time.”

  “I wanted to have some rubber left on my tyres.”

  The seconds slowly ticked by as we waited. Emmy tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel while Ana flicked her knife open and closed.

  Snick. Click. Snick. Click. Snick. Click.

  I tried to block out the noise and instead focused on why we were doing this. Ethan would be resting in his cell right now, the lights dimmed down to their nighttime glow. They were never turned off entirely, so the guards could keep a constant watch. Was he getting much sleep? I doubted it. This case kept my mind churning, but his turmoil must be a thousand times worse.

  Mack’s voice broke into my thoughts, loud and clear in my earpiece. She’d gone back to her Southern roots tonight, a proper damsel in distress.

  “Oh, officer, thank goodness you’re here. My car quit on me a block away, and my phone’s dead too. Can you help me?”

  I imagined her fluttering her eyelashes and thrusting out the chicken fillets she’d stuffed in her bra. That picture couldn’t have been far from wrong because the cop replied, “Of course, ma’am, that’s my job. You can borrow my cell.”

  I listened as Mack called her assistant, who we’d briefed earlier, and pretended to order a tow truck.

  “An hour? That’s crazy! I’m all alone, and it’s dark. Can’t you send somebody faster?”

  The answer was obviously no.

  Mack could cry on command—she even practised. And I’d bet a hundred dollars she’d turned on the waterworks.

  “Is this a safe area, officer?”

  “If you’re concerned, ma’am, why don’t you wait right here with me? You can return to your vehicle when the tow truck comes.”

  “Oh, really? You’re too kind.”

  I had to mute Mack as she started with the sort of inane chatter that made my ears bleed. Her assistant would carry on listening and interrupt us if anything important came up.

  As we slipped out of the car, the calmness I worked hard to maintain before a job gave way to the first trickles of adrenaline. My heart began to beat a little harder, and my senses sharpened up. I was alert to the tiniest sound, the slightest movement as we hugged the shadows that led to Ethan’s back wall.

  Emmy went first, running up eight feet of bricks as if it was a single step. Ana followed, and then it was my turn. While the other two had taken to parkour with an easy grace, I looked more like a penguin climbing a tree. But my practice paid off, and I got there.

  We dropped down on the other side, our steady breathing the only sound in the cool evening. Emmy raised three fingers then spread them, signalling us to split up.

  As we’d planned back at Riverley, I got the left side of the house, Emmy took the right, and Ana had the back. I started at the front, cursing silently when the security light came on and hoping that Mack was giving the cop an eyeful of her tits.

  I paused. Nothing nasty came over the radio, so I carried on.

  The windows on my side were all double-glazed and locked—nothing easy to break into. The only possibility was a balcony on the second floor, which had a handily placed tree within jumping distance. I was preparing to shin up and take a look when Ana’s voice sounded in my ear.

  “I don’t think we’re the first to try this.”

  “Elaborate,” Emmy said.

  “There are steps down to the basement, and the window beside them has been forced open.”

  I tiptoed away from the tree and crept around to the back of the house. Emmy materialised a few seconds later, and we stared at what Ana had found. Sure enough, when she slid the blade of her knife under the window frame, it moved easily upwards, completely unsecured.

  I peered through and took a chance with my flashlight, covering most of the beam with my thumb. “The catch is broken.”

  “The question is when and by who?” Emmy mused. “It’s not obvious to look at, only if you push it.”

  “Somebody could already be in there,” I whispered.

  Unlikely, but possible.

  “What do you want to do? Abort or carry on?”

  “If somebody is already in there, it would save us the trouble of looking for him,” Ana pointed out.

  Oh, that made me feel much better. This house had already seen one murder; it didn’t need another.

  I weighed up the risks. If someone was in there, he or she could have a weapon, or worse, a camera. But there were three of us, and I wouldn’t rate anyone’s chances against Emmy or Ana on their own. When the two of them acted together, I actually pitied their enemies.

  “Dan, what’s it to be?” Emmy asked.

  “We carry on.”

 
CHAPTER 27

  THE WINDOW SET high in a basement storage room was big enough for us to climb through easily. Ana went first, moving silently around boxes and a dusty mountain bike to cover the door while Emmy and I slid inside. Rather than stick with our initial plan, which had called for Emmy and Ana to give the house a quick once over while I searched for the keys and letters, we had to waste time clearing each room to start with.

  Guns in hands, we stacked up outside the first door, Emmy taking point, then Ana, then me. Then we were through, and Emmy broke left, Ana right, then me left again. We’d spent hours training for this. Blackwood headquarters had a specially built “kill house” behind the main office building that allowed us to practise every scenario from rescuing a hostage to raiding a meth lab. So our moves were instinctive, a perfect flow as we moved from room to room.

  Fifteen minutes later, we knew we were alone.

  “Time for plan A?” Emmy whispered.

  I nodded, and we split up, searching by the light of the full moon and occasionally clicking on a muted flashlight if the need arose.

  Ethan said the keys would be in the hallway table, which was covered with black powder where the forensics team had dusted for prints. I reached out a gloved hand and pressed on the front as he’d described. Sure enough, a hidden compartment popped out.

  And in it were two sets of keys.

  I picked up the first. Those were the house keys, surely? I tiptoed over to the front door and studied the locks. A deadbolt and a nightlatch. According to the police report, the deadbolt had been open when the cops arrived, with only the nightlatch engaged. I tested it with one gloved hand—it was a standard type, one that could be opened from the inside without a key and would automatically lock when the door was pulled shut. I tested the keys, and they both fitted.

  A blue Ford logo graced the fob of the other set, and the only car Ethan owned was his Mustang. The one he’d been found in. But if his keys were here, what had been in the ignition? A spare? It must have been. But if he was running for his life from a lunatic, why would he have dug out the spare? Why not grab this one as he ran for the front door?

  “Thirty minutes,” Emmy murmured, reminding me we’d used half our time.