Page 15

C HAPTER 15

T wenty flights of stairs was a truly monstrous task. Going down was at least better than going up, and Anthony had been right. We weren’t the only ones in the stairwell. There was another set of footsteps clamoring down below us, punctuated by intermittent sounds of protest.

I had to imagine Connor was dragging Portia, and the sounds of her struggling only made me want to run faster.

But wanting to run and being able to run were two different things. My legs were trembling and my lungs heaving. I kept one hand on the railing as we spiraled down at a dizzying angle. I quickly fell behind. When I stopped to catch my breath somewhere around the tenth floor, I heard a pitiful yelp, which made me lean over the railing.

At the bottom of the narrow chamber, I saw Portia sprawled on her hands and knees, looking like she’d tripped or perhaps been shoved. Connor came into view and squatted beside her. He spoke in a low tone, but given the shape of the stairwell, his voice carried like he was standing right beside me.

“You think you can run from me? After everything I’ve given you? And not only run, but turn me in ?” He grabbed her ponytail and yanked her head back.

“Connor, please,” she begged. Tears mangled her voice.

“Please what, darling?” he hissed. My skin crawled at the sound. The menace in his voice was sharp as a sword.

“Please. I won’t tell anyone anything! I swear,” she sobbed.

“Well, it’s a little late for that, don’t you think? How am I ever supposed to trust you again?” He stroked her hair and said it with a facetiously loving coo, which turned my stomach. “Turns out I can’t trust anyone to do anything right. That’s why I’m here on my own—to clean up this mess you’ve made.”

He released her with a shove, and then stood from his crouch and kicked her in the stomach.

“Stop!”

I didn’t even realize the word had come from my mouth until Connor whipped his head up to look at me. Anthony appeared over the railing five floors below me to do the same.

I gulped when they both saw me, and I hardly jumped out of the way in time when Connor pulled a gun and shot at me.

The ringing shattered off the walls of the echo chamber. I’d never heard anything so loud before, and I feared I’d never hear anything else again, but a second gunshot assured me I had not lost the sense completely.

“Connor, stop!” I heard Anthony shout in a muffle from below. It sounded as if I had cotton in my ears. The eardrum-splitting ache was unreal.

A door slammed far below. I peered over the railing to see Portia gone, and Connor twisted around to look at a bloody gash on his calf.

Anthony had grazed him with a bullet.

Connor fired off another shot at us before he disappeared from view too.

My ears were still ringing, equaling the worst stereo feedback in history, when I heard the door slam again. Anthony’s hurried steps followed the sound, and we were off once more. He was still out in front of me, several floors below. I tried to catch up, but between shaking in fear and how fast he was moving, I lost him.

The final ten flights passed in a blur, perhaps because of the adrenaline cranking through my system, or perhaps the pure terror at the idea someone was going to die.

When I arrived at the bottom of the well, I found a small pool of blood from Connor’s injury and noticed a line of droplets leading to the door.

Perfect. They were leaving a trail. As I followed it, I wondered if Anthony had grazed his leg on purpose for this exact reason.

“Street smarts,” I muttered to myself. I opened the door, not sure where it would lead me, and found myself facing another hallway. This one was long and concrete, and ending in a heavy set of double doors.

The blood told me that’s where they went, so I followed.

It took me outside, and I suddenly found myself gazing up at the famed Las Vegas Strip. The lights were just now beginning to come to life. They dazzled, as if taking the baton from the sun sinking in the dusty sky. Billboards flashed and hotel towers glittered. An enormous volcano erupted flames into the sky. Another night in Sin City geared up for the midweek crowd.

Except the blood did not lead toward the showstopping glamour. It turned to the right, away from the lights and into a quieter end of town. I followed it along the dirty sidewalk, gummed up with spilled drinks and cigarette butts, fully aware I was outside in public with a gun in my pants, chasing after two men with guns and a woman running for her life. I didn’t know what I would do if I caught up to them, but I couldn’t lose track of them now.

Maybe Portia was running to a bus, or a hospital, or a police station. Maybe she was simply running because she didn’t know what else to do. When the trail led me down a street to a construction site, I decided she was either very smart or very desperate, since the place was dark, abandoned, and dangerous. The perfect place to hide. Or to be killed without anyone knowing.

The blood trail got harder to see, the closer I got to the dark skeleton of a building. I reflexively reached for my phone to use the flashlight, but remembered I’d been without it since Tuesday night.

I went inside despite the dark.

The small, in-progress building was boxy, and so far, there was only concrete with exposed rebar sticking out like spindly ribs. The exterior walls were yet to be closed off, but the air inside still hung thick with the earthy smell of sawdust and cement. Piles of lumber and steel rods were stacked against walls. A few sheets of plastic hung as partitions. The night air moved freely through its gaps and open spaces.

I strained my ears for signs of Anthony, Portia, and Connor, but with not much to echo off in the unfinished space, sound seeped out into the surrounding streets.

My heart pounded in my ears, but my legs had finally stopped shaking. I took slow, steady breaths in an effort to keep calm as I ventured deeper into the dark, all the while aware of the gun in my waistband. I was definitely playing the worst game of hide-and-seek ever. When I spun around, heart in my throat, at the sound of something behind me, which turned out to be a sheet of plastic fluttering in the breeze, I realized it was entirely possible Connor would find me in this maze before I found him.

I swallowed in fear at what that might mean.

I started taking lighter footsteps to stop my feet from scraping the bald floor as I continued following the blood drops. Somewhere in the building’s deep belly, I lost track of the trail. Another stain had cropped up, which looked nearly the same in the dark, perhaps grease from a power tool. Going right would take me deeper into the building, and going left would take me closer to its edge, back toward the streetlight.

I opted for left, in hope I could find the blood trail again.

After the length of an unfinished room, I came to an abrupt stop when I heard voices. They came from in front of me, toward the light. I took three quick steps in that direction and paused again.

“Please, Connor,” I heard Portia beg.

He’d caught up to her, and I froze with fear.

But a relieved breath snuck out of me that at least she was still alive. I wouldn’t fully exhale until I heard Anthony too. I hoped he was hiding around a corner at a strategic angle to step in and save the day.

I crept closer as silently as I could and came to a partial wall I could peek around. I held my breath as I stole a look in the direction of Portia’s voice and had to stifle a gasp. Connor had her at gunpoint, which was not unexpected, but to my equal-parts relief and horror, Anthony was standing right next to her.

He was still alive too, but not for long if Connor fired the gun aimed at him.

Anthony and Portia both stood with their hands up. Anthony’s gun was on the ground in front of them. Connor had his back to me, and Portia never took her eyes off him, but Anthony flicked his gaze in my direction. When he saw me, I noticed his jaw tighten at the same time relief blinked across his face.

It dawned on me with a sick sense of irony that I was the one hiding around the corner at a strategic angle and primed to step in and save the day.

Of course I was.

I turned away and pressed my back into the cold concrete wall. The gun in my waistband pulsed like a living thing, reminding me of its presence. I closed my eyes and took a tight breath, unable to believe it had come to this. I should have been at home in my sweatpants working on a research paper. I shouldn’t have been anywhere near a gunpoint standoff in the middle of Vegas, wondering if I had the courage to intervene.

But I was.

“It doesn’t have to end this way, Connor,” I heard Anthony say.

The sound of his voice sent a soothing warmth spilling into my blood; at the same time I noticed the fear in it.

“Oh, but it does,” Connor said. “I clearly can’t trust my wife, and you’ve gone and made a mess of everything with your little plan to make her disappear. Did you really think that was going to work? You know I have eyes everywhere. I knew as soon as her bodyguard tried to pretend she wasn’t up to something. He should have known better than to try to lie to me.”

I heard Portia gasp, and I imagined the look on Anthony’s face at confirmation she’d been right. Tyler had stayed loyal to her and refused to talk. My heart ached for him.

“Do you know how easy it was to get Agent Ives in my pocket?” Connor went on. “I only have to wave a little money at someone and they do whatever I say. Except you, Portia. You’re the only one who’s never done what I say. At first, I liked it. There was a thrill in someone saying no to me. But now you’ve grown tiresome. And problematic.” His voice took on an even more sinister edge. He sounded nothing like the man I’d seen in TED Talks and prime-time interviews.

Every hair on my body was standing on end and my nerves on high alert. I dared to peek back around the corner.

“Connor, I said I’m sorry,” Portia begged. Tears streaked her face. She was hideously frightened yet still beautiful. “I know I messed up.”

He laughed a cruel, dark sound. “ Messed up? Baby, what you did is so far beyond messed up. Mistakes can be fixed, but there’s no coming back from betrayal. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve sealed your own fate. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.” He shook his head in disgust. “I should have left you in the trash where I found you. You’re both trash. And so was that piece of shit uncle of yours.” He swung the gun back to Anthony, and I flinched on his behalf.

The hurt on his face was almost too much. He tried to hide it, but I saw right through the facade. I thought back to our conversation at the safe house and how his eyes had lit up when he told me stories about Lou. He loved his uncle. And he loved Portia. None of them deserved to die at the hands of this monster, who thought he ruled the world.

Something snapped loose inside me and I made a decision.

I swallowed the fiery, terrified lump that had shoved up into my throat and tried to maintain consciousness as I reached for my gun. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the same one from my shooting lesson. I flipped off the safety, like Gio had shown me, and nodded at Anthony so he knew what I was going to do.

He couldn’t nod back without giving me away, but I saw the acknowledgment on his face. I couldn’t miss the absolute terror there too.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I sucked in the most frightened breath of my life and ran through Gio’s list at warp speed, forgetting half the details and skipping the other half, because this was nothing like the backyard and beer cans. I braced my shoulder against the wall, silently muttered badass once more, aimed for Connor, and pulled the trigger.

My eyes snapped shut. The shot jolted through my body. I stumbled back and tripped. My wrists throbbed in pain when I caught myself. An ache shot up my spine. I scrambled back behind the wall just as another gunshot split the air.

The silence that followed thundered with ringing and my pounding heart. Terror screamed through me as I waited for what would come next.

Who had the second shot hit? What was happening on the other side of the wall?

I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and look.

I was still on the ground, numb, with tears streaming down my face, when Anthony suddenly appeared. He was on his knees in front of me before I blinked twice.

“Penny! Penny, you’re okay. Look at me. You’re fine. We’re all fine.” He kissed my temple and squeezed me in his arms, tighter than I had ever been squeezed before. I could hardly breathe from his grip and my own tears.

“Is he—” I choked on the words I didn’t want to say. “Is he . . . dead?”

Anthony cupped my face in his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs. “Yes, but you didn’t kill him. You missed.”

“I m-missed?” I gasped as he hugged me again. Relief shook his body in waves.

“Yes. But you distracted him, and that’s all we needed.”

I wiped my eyes and looked over his shoulder to see Portia standing over her husband’s body with Anthony’s smoking gun in her hand, looking like the freest woman alive.

If I’d been asked a week ago what being a fixer entailed, burying a body would have been high on the list. I’d learned there was much more to the job, but it felt fitting our journey was culminating with such a token activity.

“You know, the busted ribs are a sorry excuse for not helping,” Gio said from where he stood waist deep in the hole he’d been digging. Sweat poured off his brow and stained his shirt. The desert night was thick with heat and pitch-black other than our headlights.

We’d driven deep into the empty wilderness outside Las Vegas, where the blistering sun baked the dry earth all day and wind swept away tire tracks. We were nowhere near a road, out where the unforgiving land was all too ready to swallow secrets.

After the scene in the construction site, I went back to the hotel to find Gio while Portia and Anthony stayed behind to wrap Connor’s body in one of the conveniently available plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling.

I’d found Gio alone, and when I’d asked what happened to Agent Ives, I feared the worst when he said he’d taken care of it. But then at the look on my face, he told me to relax, and he only meant he’d sent him to a hospital in a cab and warned him that if he didn’t want Internal Affairs to find out about tonight, he’d never speak of it again.

In the time it took us to procure a shovel and transport Connor’s body to the Camaro’s trunk, night had completely fallen. We packed up and left, figuring it was best to flee Vegas before anyone caught on to what had happened.

Somewhere between the Strip and California, we pulled off the road into the dirt and drove by moonlight far enough to worry we were lost. We parked the cars facing each other so the headlights intersected on a patch of dirt that would be Connor Slate’s final resting place and began to dig.

“Hey, I did my part transporting the body,” Anthony said. He leaned on the Camaro’s hood between the headlights with his arm slung over my shoulders.

Gio stopped digging and stood up straight to wipe his brow. “Fair. But you could at least take a short shift.”

“Sorry, G. Doctor’s orders,” he said with a shrug and motioned to me.

I gently elbowed him—on his right side, of course. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“True, but you still told me to take it easy, so.”

“Convenient interpretation, but okay.” In truth, I was happier, the less he was involved. He wouldn’t let me take any part in helping dispose of Connor’s body. I was basically a kidnap victim again, along for the ride. I would have preferred if he wasn’t involved either, but someone had to fix the latest problem.

“I’ll finish it,” Portia said. She stood at the edge of the hole, dust gently stirring around her feet in the headlights, and reached for the shovel. “It should be me.”

Gio looked up at her with a tilt of his head, possibly prepared to protest, and then held out a hand to help her into the hole. Gio climbed out with a grunt and wiped his hands on his shirt. “Got any water?”

“Backseat,” Anthony and I said at the same time.

Given the trunk was occupied with a dead billionaire’s body, all our travel necessities had been relocated to the Camaro’s backseat.

“You sure this is going to work?” I asked for the tenth time.

Anthony nodded for the tenth time. “Yes. With Portia still missing, people will think Connor had something to do with it and skipped town to avoid arrest. He’s a billionaire; everyone will assume he’s got the resources to disappear. No one is going to look for him here.”

Despite my nerves over the whole situation, it was a fair argument. Portia couldn’t exactly come out of hiding, because then she’d have to explain where she’d been, which would inevitably lead to questions about what had happened to her husband. Seeing that she’d killed him, it was best she stay hidden. The original plan to make her disappear was back on, only now, she wasn’t running for her life.

“And if they ever do come looking for him,” Gio said after draining half a water bottle and then pouring the rest on his head, “they’re never going to find him.” He held his arms out to gesture at the empty expanse around us. We were miles from anything. I knew for certain I’d never be able to find this location again if I tried.

“And you were right, Penny,” Portia said from the hole. “My husband’s ego was his downfall after all. He showed up here alone, thinking he could handle things by himself.” She blew a loose strand of hair out of her face and half smiled. “Little did he know what he was up against.”

I smiled wanly back and felt Anthony tighten his arm around me. Their reassurance smoothed over me like a balm in the dry desert air. “I have to tell you something,” I said to Anthony. It seemed like as good a time as any to confess.

He leaned sideways to look at me with a grin. “What, you’ve been an undercover FBI agent this whole time and are going to arrest us all when we get home?”

I laughed. “No. But it does have to do with the police and going home.”

He raised his brows in question.

“So remember how you said you convinced my sister not to call the police when I was kidnapped? Well, you weren’t as convincing as you thought. When I called her from the motel room the other morning, she told me she’d called Warner that day. As soon as she told me, I called him to explain I wasn’t missing, because I didn’t want him to think you had anything to do with it. I ended up telling him about being kidnapped though, and that the tweed man confessed to killing your uncle and Portia’s bodyguard. I told him to go look for the Cadillac and our phones at the Slates’ house as evidence. I’m sorry if that complicates anything, but telling him the truth felt like the right thing to do.” I scrunched up my nose in apology, worried he might be about to scold me.

But he didn’t. He let out a long breath and tilted his head in consideration. “That . . . actually might help matters.”

“Really?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes. Because if word gets out Connor Slate’s personal employee was involved in two murders and a kidnapping, Connor disappearing will make all the more sense. With all these crimes piling up around him, people will really think he skipped town.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I guess you’re right.”

“Yeah. Things have a funny way of working out sometimes.”

I leaned my head against his shoulder and let out a long breath. Sure, we’d have some explaining and maybe a little more fixing to do when we got home, but the loose ends seemed to have tied themselves up for the most part.

“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” I lowered my voice and nodded toward Portia. Only the top of her head poked out from the hole where she was bent over digging. A shovelful of dirt came flying out every few seconds.

“Yes, I think she will be okay. She’s going to have to get on a plane for real now, but since none of Connor’s people will be looking for her with him gone, she’ll easily be able to disappear.”

I watched her continue to dig and thought about how she’d saved herself in the end. The journey had been long and winding, and she could have shot her husband at any time in the past, but doing it under the current circumstances left her off anyone’s radar as being responsible for the crime. I wondered fleetingly if killing her husband had been her long game the whole time.

“Good.” I pulled in a deep breath of the warm desert air and let it settle in my lungs. “And what about you?” I asked, nudging him. “Are you going to be okay?”

He turned to look at me. The moonlight bleached him out like a black-and-white portrait. My glue job was still holding up on his brow. He blinked his long lashes and gave me a soft smile. “That depends. Are you still on for that date when we get home?”

A mirroring smile bent my mouth upward. “I think that can be arranged. But does that mean you’re sticking around? Not selling the house?” The nerves that suddenly hollowed out my belly made me realize how much I cared about his answer.

He pursed his lips, considering. “It’s probably going to be a tough sell, what with the body in the closet and all.”

“This is true.”

“And, I mean, I don’t really need to sell it for financial purposes.”

“Oh?” I said, completely aware he was swimming in money, given the suitcase in the backseat and what I’d seen in Lou’s bankbook.

“Yeah. I’ve got a rich uncle, haven’t you heard? He died and left me everything.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb and gave me a cheeky grin.

“Well, that was generous of him.”

“Sure was. Only thing is, I think he left me his business too, and I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with his clients.” The jovial tone dropped from his voice.

“Oh yeah. That.”

He may have had my heart cartwheeling, but there was the fact his job entailed illegal activity. I tried to picture him with a desk job—a real one—and all I could see was him showing up in all black to rescue himself from the banality. He would hate it, but I wasn’t sure I could stomach knowing he was up to things like what we were doing right now—if there was any future for us.

I reached for his hand and laced my fingers through his. “Maybe the econ degree can come back into play. You can move to the suburbs and become an accountant. Take up golf.”

He huffed a laugh. “Perhaps. At least I don’t have to make any major career decisions tonight.” He kissed my hand and squeezed it.

The sound of the shovel landing with a hard plink on the dirt pulled us out of our conversation. Portia had tossed it up out of the hole and was climbing out, streaked with sweat and dirt. Of course she was still beautiful, even rising like a murderous zombie from the grave.

“It’s deep enough,” she declared as Gio walked over to help her out. “Put him in.”

Anthony took his cue to retrieve the body from the trunk. He and Gio wrestled the plastic sheet out of the Camaro and carried it over to the hole. Anthony winced in pain with each step, but carrying a body ten yards was at least easier than digging a grave.

They dumped him in with no ceremony, and when Gio reached for the shovel to begin the process of burying him, Portia held out her hands.

“Wait!” Her voice cracked in the dark night. I couldn’t make out the emotion, but it sounded like a mix of complex feelings. “One last thing,” she said. She reached for the rings on her left hand and pulled them off. My stomach bottomed out that she was going to drop the five-carat monstrosity into the grave, but she replaced it on her finger. Then with a breath so big, I felt it in my soul, she only dumped the wedding band.

“Goodbye, Connor.” She nodded at Gio, signaling him to replace all the dirt, and turned back for the car.

Anthony and I watched as Gio filled the hole. The process was much quicker than making the hole, but it still took a while. When he finished and patted the dirt flat with the shovel, Anthony slung his arm over my shoulders and kissed my temple.

It was the end of one journey and the start of another. I couldn’t say what would have happened if I hadn’t tried to buy the candlesticks, or what was going to happen now. But I knew the person beside me had sharply divided my life in two. I’d always have a before and after Anthony Pierce. And under that sweeping midnight sky with endless possibility rippling around us, I knew I wanted to find out what came next.

“Let’s go home,” he said to me with a tired breath.

I smiled at him, knowing he could see it in the dark. “It’s about time.”