This one…top lock.
Getting it right the first time, she gave a little cry of victory and pushed open the heavy door.
She heard a noise. Not the elevator—someone in the hallway. Footsteps, breathing. She paid no attention, concentrating on moving her bags inside the door.
She started to reach for her tote bag when a man materialized behind her. “Don’t scream, little Wendy. I won’t hurt you.”
He grabbed her wrist, forcing her to drop the backpack, and she looked up, unable to grasp what was happening.
Dark curls, black running shoes. Good-looking.
The man from the diner.
He had on a zip-front jacket and cargo pants. He didn’t look scary, but he was scary, and Wendy got out half a blood-curdling yell before he shoved her into the apartment. The door caught on her backpack as it swung shut, and she went flying, landing on her butt on the hardwood floor, nearly toppling over one of her aunt’s fish tanks.
Gulping for air, she screamed for help as loud as she could.
“Well, well,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you, Wendy.”
She shrank backward toward the fish tank.
Her dad was a state trooper…maybe he’d gotten her message and was so furious with her now that he was on his way to New York, and he’d come to the apartment and save her.
“Wendy. That’s the name of the girl in Peter Pan.” The man who looked like Johnny Depp but wasn’t stepped toward her. “I always thought she was a pain in the ass.”
Wendy tried to scream again, but no sound would come out.
The intruder was slightly red in the face and out of breath. Had he taken the stairs instead of the elevator? How did he get past Juan in the lobby?
A knife…oh, God! He had a knife in his hand. How could she have not noticed? She’d been around cops long enough to recognize it as an assault-type knife.
Something was on the blade.
Her stomach twisted. She heard herself whimper.
Blood.
“Don’t move. Understand?”
Wendy nodded without making a sound.
With a sudden movement, he shot over to the couch and ripped its futon mattress off the frame. “Your fucking aunt. I knew the minute I laid eyes on her she was corrupt. I fucking hate corrupt cops.” He turned around and pointed the knife at Wendy. “She tell you how she found me in that Wal-Mart parking lot, huh?”
Wendy began to piece together the puzzle. This man was the fugitive—the man Juliet had put in prison—and who wanted revenge.
“She thinks I don’t know,” he said. “I know. She cheated. That’s how she found me. She fucking turned my own family against me.”
Wendy didn’t say anything. She saw the cracker tin of Teddy’s ashes on the floor, pictured her beautiful old golden retriever running through freshly fallen leaves on a sunny autumn day at home. But he was gone now. Dead. Those were his ashes in the tin. His spirit was somewhere else.
Dad’s not coming to save me.
No one was.
She’d have to save herself.
Juliet shut the door to Mike Rivera’s office and sat on one of the two plastic chairs in front of his superneat desk. “I need to talk to you.”
“Damn right, you do.” He paused, narrowing his dark eyes on her. “Ethan Brooker—what did he want with you? I had a report he was outside the building yesterday when you went after your niece. I got your message that she’s okay, but what’s Brooker—”
She smiled at him. “You’ve been stewing on that one all night, Chief?”
“Longstreet, that mouth of yours—”
“He brought me a present.”
She dug the envelope Ethan had given her out of her jacket pocket and handed it across Rivera’s desk to him. He opened it, pulled out the picture and sighed. “Not Brooker’s artwork, I take it. He may be a shit magnet, but he’s not a whack job. Besides, I think he kind of likes you.”
“Ethan says he found the picture during a highly classified rescue mission. Apparently it was left behind by an ex-con named Bobby Tatro.” She tried to keep her tone clinical, professional. No emotion. “Tatro was a fugitive I picked up four years ago in Syracuse. He didn’t believe I just happened upon him. I didn’t—I had a source I didn’t want him to know about. He threatened me.”
“Threatened you how?”
“He said my pretty blond ass was his when he got out.”
“When did he get out?”
“Late August.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?”
She shrugged. “I guess I am.”
“You haven’t heard from him—”
“No. I’d have told you.”
“Damn right you’d have told me.” He sighed, staring again at the offensive picture. “This is in front of your apartment building, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.”
“Your niece?”
“On her way back to Vermont.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “Good. All right, fast-forward to Brooker. What’s his role in all of this?”
Juliet told Rivera what she knew, which wasn’t much.