Page 63 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Bruno

Bruno had seen enough.

It was three in the morning.

He’d been round the block a few times in his van. Walked the street twice. Up and down.

There were three ways in.

The front door that led to the small lobby for the apartments.

The pizza place.

And the dressmaker’s.

Both of those businesses would have back doors leading to the alley at the side of the building.

Had to, by law. The apartments would have the same access to the alley.

That meant there was a hallway that connected the whole building.

There was no alarm system on the dressmaker’s.

They probably didn’t carry that much cash; they wouldn’t keep it in the building overnight and their stock was largely worthless.

No point in paying for an expensive security system.

Bruno checked the street.

It was empty.

He slipped a crowbar from under his long coat, stepped up to the dressmaker’s door and jammed the head deep between the door and the frame, right above the lock.

He was a large man, and very strong. Anyone else would struggle, but Bruno leaned back, yanked the bar toward his chest. He could easily lift a full stack, maybe four hundred pounds, on a lat pull-down machine.

One pull tore the locking mechanism from the frame in a cloud of dust and splinters. And he was inside. Smooth. Easy as opening the door with a key.

Bruno stood in the dark store. No motion sensors. No alarms.

He pushed the door closed behind him, knowing it wouldn’t fully shut.

Looking around, he saw a small table by the register.

He lifted it and jammed it against the door to keep it shut and then moved through the store.

There was something eerie about the place, cluttered with dressmaker’s mannequins, headless torsos on sticks that appeared animate in the dark.

Moving through to the back of the store, he found the hallway that dog-legged left to the alleyway.

He turned right, went through another door and found the small lobby for the apartments upstairs, a staircase and a single elevator.

He strode up the stairs to the second floor. Took a moment to readjust his geography.

The information he’d gotten said the middle apartment on the south side.

The hallway was lit tastefully with four lamps, evenly spread out on the walls.

There was an apartment door behind him, one at the end of the hallway, before it turned left, and a single door in the middle. This was where Bloch and Lake were hiding out, protecting a witness.

He stopped and listened. Heard nothing. Either the apartments were unusually well soundproofed, the tenants were all asleep at this time of night or the apartments were unoccupied.

He had expected at least someone to be up watching TV. It was likely at least one of the PIs was awake. If they were smart, they would take watch in shifts. So he could expect either Lake or Bloch to be awake when he went through the door.

Bruno reached under the glass shade of the first light in the hallway and unscrewed the bulb.

It was hot and he found the glass sticking to his leather gloves.

There was thick padding beneath the leather, so it didn’t burn him, but he had to shake the bulb loose to get it out of his grip.

It fell to the floor but hit the carpet from just a few feet of a drop and didn’t break.

He did the same with the next bulb.

And the next.

As he moved along the hallway, he heard nothing.

The entire floor was now in darkness.

Bruno drew his pistol, a Sig Sauer, and put his back to the wall beside the door to the apartment where Bloch and Lake were supposed to be. He listened.

There was no sound.

He could knock on the door, lure one of them into the dark hallway. Take them out, then get inside and deal with the next target.

This had its own difficulties.

He would need to breach the apartment when there was at least one live target inside who would be alert and expecting him.

Better option was to go in hard and fast right now. Keep the element of surprise.

The hallway was in darkness to disguise his escape. Anyone else on this floor stupid enough to open their door to see what was going on would hopefully only see a large shadowy figure disappear down the stairs.

He checked the load in the Sig.

Thought about how to get through the door.

There might be security chains or deadbolts on the door, operated only from the inside. No real way to tell.

If he shot out the lock, or shot out the hinges, that would require multiple shots and he may as well call the police himself.

Better he used the crowbar. If he jammed it in between the door and the frame just right, it didn’t matter what kind of security they had on the other side. The door itself was not very sturdy. It would give or break with enough pressure.

Bruno tucked the pistol into the front of his pants, and took the crowbar from the sleeve inside his long coat.

He stepped out from the wall, levelled the head of the bar and faced the door now.

Unless someone had their eye right at the peephole, that didn’t matter.

He placed his right hand near the bend just before the head, his left round the crook.

His eyes fixed on the exact place to stab the bar into the tiny space between the door and the frame.

He didn’t know if he heard something or felt it.

But he froze.

Then he definitely heard something.

‘Don’t move,’ said the voice to his left. A woman’s voice.

A voice he’d heard before.

Bloch.