Deadly Fall (2 page)

“I plan on leaving the heroics up to you.”

“Maybe you should leave the shooting up to me, as well. I don’t want to explain to Torie why you’re missing body parts.”

Ethan shot his partner a disgruntled look but remained silent. Nick shook his head.

When twenty-four lit up, Nick’s fingers reflexively tightened around the grip of his Glock. The ding announcing arrival at the top floor finally came, and the doors began to part. Each man took a side, weapons ready. Nick stopped breathing even as the adrenaline pumped furiously through his veins and his heart threatened to burst through his chest.

The elevator doors opened fully and no gunfire greeted them. In fact, no one was standing around anxiously awaiting the elevator’s arrival.

Cautiously, Nick and Ethan stepped off the elevator. Two sets of eyes took in the double doors to 27A. They were ajar, and no sound was coming from behind the heavy slabs of wood. The corridor was empty, a fire door on the far left side. Nick’s eyes narrowed on the dark stain on the wall beside the doorframe. It was a palm print—and Nick would bet anything that it was in blood.

“The stairs,” Nick said softly, as he hurried to the fire door and listened. Nothing. He grabbed the doorknob, the back of his mind registering the slick wetness on the steel, twisted and pulled, opening the door a fraction. The heavy sounds of feet falling rapidly on the steps came from below him. Two sets of feet. The suspects were in a hurry and were already at least three floors down. Nick cursed.

He heard Ethan come up behind him and said, “You have the penthouse.” With his current blood-alcohol level, his partner would probably slip on the stairs and break more than just his face. “I’ll go after the suspects.”

The heavy, steel fire door was closing behind Nick before his partner could protest.

As the door closed with a decisive click, Nick dismissed a niggling thought in the back of his head and nearly threw himself down the carpeted stairs, taking the steps three at a time.

“Stop! Police!” When did that ever work? Still, he had—

Pfft! Pfft!

“Fuck!” Nick hit the stairs as the bullets whistled by him and plaster exploded above his head. In that one instant, he would swear he could hear the blood rushing through the atria and ventricles of his heart.

On his back with the carpet-covered edges of the steps digging into him, Nick extended his arm, pointed his gun down over the side of the stairs and squeezed the trigger.

Without a suppressor, the report of his Glock was deafening in the enclosed space, seeming to reverberate through the stairwell.

Then the footfalls below him started up again, faster than before.

Nick got to his feet and began taking each set of stairs in two bounds. The rapid, heavy footfalls just ahead of him rang in his ears, accompanied by his own rhythmic thumps.

After leaving the eighteenth floor behind—heart jack hammering, adrenaline pumping, the air in his lungs burning—indecipherable voices drifted up to him. Instincts he’d learned never to question had him hitting the stairs again just before several more soft
pfft
s sounded and more plaster exploded around him.

Nick heard a door slamming back against the wall.
Shit.
They were going for the elevator.

He inched forward—and flinched when another bullet dug into the wall high above him.

Correction: only one of them was going for the elevator. The other was keeping him pinned down until it arrived.

Another two bullets, and Nick heard the maddening sound of the fire door hitting the wall again. He shot to his feet, jumped two more landings and wrenched the fire door on the fifteenth floor open, running for the elevators in the middle of the floor.

The steel doors were closed.

Nick could see the floor indicator on the second elevator descending. Frustration beat at his chest and he cursed, loudly and colorfully. He pounded his fist against the wall and kicked the baseboard. In an ideal world, the cavalry would be ready and waiting to greet the suspects on the ground, but Nick had never been one for idealism. He glared at the first set of elevator doors and cursed his own damned foresight. Then he glanced at the fire doors at the end of the corridor. He had no chance of making it to the ground before the elevator, but he had to try.

Jumping the stairs in one leap from landing to landing, he soon burst from the fire door on the main floor and into the lobby. It was empty. He ran for the entrance, but by the time his shoes slapped the concrete, the wrenching frustration constricting his lungs told him he’d lost. He whipped his head back and forth. Central Park, ominous in the dark, stretched out in front of him. No movement. Nothing. Only a handful of curious passersby stood at a cautious distance from his SUV. A few looked at him, but none offered any assistance. Jaw and fists clenched, Nick stalked up to the battered vehicle and banged the fist clutching the gun on the roof. Hard. Another dent wouldn’t matter now.

Fuck.

* * * * *

Nick found Charlie sprawled behind his desk, where he had fallen after receiving a vicious blow to the head that had knocked him unconscious. He hadn’t even seen it coming, he’d told Nick after he came to. After making sure the boy was not suffering anything more serious than a bump the size of a chicken egg, Nick left him at his post to wait for the cavalry. He then went up to the penthouse to join his partner.

Ethan met him at the door. Bright light spilled from the foyer behind him. Nick gave him a recap in short, succinct sentences.

“I called it in,” Ethan said when Nick was done. “We have less than ten minutes before it becomes official.”

“Did you find anything?” Nick asked as he followed Ethan into the foyer, pushing the front doors nearly shut with his foot so as to not mess up any prints.

“No signs of forced entry. He either knew his visitors or didn’t bother to check the peephole. I did a quick walkthrough. Langan was worked over in his office before he went through the French doors leading to the terrace,” Ethan said. “But I haven’t checked out the rooms upstairs, yet. It’s a damned big penthouse.”

Andrew Langan’s penthouse was a two-story apartment that only took up half of the entire floor. Nick got the impression of thick walls, high ceilings, airy rooms, hardwood floors, sleek furnishings and money. Mountains of it. No less was to be expected of the CEO and Executive Chairman of the Board of Langan Shipping Incorporated.

What wasn’t to be expected was that he just took a twenty-seven-story plunge to his death.

“Andrew Langan,” Ethan said softly, a trace of disbelief in his tone. “Poor guy. All that money and his wife still left him, and now this.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ. Torie’s not going to believe this.”

“Yeah, especially with her sleeping only eight floors below.”

Ethan moved his shoulders in a circular motion in his jacket. “It’s chilly in here.”

“How many entrances are there into this building from the ground floor?” Nick asked, moving into the formal living room.

“Two. The front entrance and the service entrance. The service entrance door is locked at all times and the tenants don’t have the keys for it. Or rather, they shouldn’t.”

“Charlie said he didn’t recall two men coming in together since he started his shift.”

“You think they got in through the back?”

Nick shrugged. “Can they get in through the basement parking?”

“Possibly.” Ethan drew out the word as he considered it. “They could’ve tailgated someone in.”

“The security cameras in this building aren’t just for show, right?”

“I sure as hell hope not.”

“Good. You go search the upstairs. I’m going to check the office.”

Nick followed the draft to the home office that was nearly as big as his entire condo unit. Ethan had left the overhead lights on, flooding the room with an institutional white glow. Nick zeroed in on the source of the cold air. There was a big, gaping hole in one of the French doors that led to the terrace he had seen from the ground. Broken glass and splintered wood carpeted the hardwood in the room and the concrete terrace floor. A black leather executive chair stood a few feet away from the French doors, looking battered. Nick spotted dark stains on the floor around the chair. The muscles across his shoulders bunched. Not all of the blood was dry.

He scanned the rest of the room. Only the desk was clean. The floor was littered with papers, folders, books and a wide assortment of office accessories. The file cabinet had been nearly ripped apart, with each drawer in varying degrees of openness. They were mostly empty. The built-in bookshelves had been equally violated, with most of their contents piled on the floor in front of them.

Another scan of the room, but he didn’t spot a computer. Nick’s gut tightened and the back of his neck tensed.

“The bedrooms don’t even look lived in,” Ethan said, coming into office. “All the closets are empty except for the master bedroom. And that walk-in’s only half full. It’s like a freakin’ museum.”

“There’re bloodstains all over the floor by the chair over there,” Nick said, nodding in the direction of the chair across the room. “Computer’s missing. Someone like Langan would have one at home or bring his work one home.”

“Bloodstains on the walls, too,” Ethan said. “Or at least on the light switches. I see a lot of smudges and no prints.”

“Gloves.”

“You didn’t get close enough to see their faces?”

Nick’s jaw clenched. “No.”

“You need a paramedic?” Ethan asked, his glance dropping to the dark smears on Nick’s hand.

Nick shook his head. “Got the blood from the doorknob.” He returned his attention to the scene. “I see duct tape on the arms of the chair.”

Ethan propped his hands on his hips. “Langan had information they wanted. Could be safe location, combination…whatever.”

“Maybe. Did they get what they wanted?”

“They wouldn’t have sent Langan to meet his maker otherwise.”

“Maybe,” Nick said again, and did a slow three-sixty. “But there are better, more subtle ways of killing someone than throwing him over a terrace.”

Ethan fixed his gaze on Nick. Quietly, he said, “We can’t rule out suicide just yet. Langan might’ve decided it was the lesser of two evils. If he was tortured, a quick death might be tempting. You chased two people down the stairs but that doesn’t make them killers.”

“They took seven shots at me.”

“Attempted murder. You didn’t actually witness them throw Langan off the terrace. And as for Langan, they can plead assault and unlawful confinement.” At Nick’s irate expression, Ethan threw up his hands. “Hey, I’m just thinking like a good defense scum-sucker.”

Nick made a sound of derision and went to the bookshelves. The rich ones always thought having secret hiding places behind bookshelves and paintings was ingenious. “Roll up your sleeves, Ethan, and make like a good detective. We’re down to five minutes.”

The banging on her front door pulled her from sleep into semi-wakefulness. Augusta Langan could hear it despite being buried beneath two blankets in her bed in the third-story bedroom. From the heavy pounding on her door, she knew her visitor wasn’t going away and rubbed at her gritty eyes. They felt puffy, the aftermath of a day and night of crying. She managed a shuddering breath that couldn’t quite fill her lungs.

The musical ring of the doorbell drew her attention. Whoever was at her front door was trying for tact. She rolled to her side and glanced at the clock radio. It was well past noon. Normally by this time, she would have finished her first two lectures and would be reviewing her notes for the afternoon session. But normal went out the door after a visit from an NYPD officer yesterday morning.

Augusta drew in a deep breath and blinked rapidly, trying to moisten her eyes to relieve the sudden sting. Pushing back the covers, she swung her bare feet to the floor and shoved her hair back from her face. She groped for the eyeglasses on the night table, put them on and, unmindful of her attire, hurried downstairs. The ringing continued incessantly until she fumbled with the locks. When she pulled open the front door, she found herself face to chest.

“Dr. Augusta Langan?”

She looked up at the man filling her doorway. She didn’t step back to let him inside. She couldn’t. She could barely breathe.
Oh, God.
It was a replay of her nightmare. Except it wasn’t simply a bad dream. It was yesterday morning all over again.

The man before her reached inside his jacket and withdrew a black leather wallet. She blinked once and glimpsed a gold badge. After yesterday morning, however, she didn’t require more than that.

“This is about my hus— Drew.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m afraid it is. I’m Detective Ethan Murtagh and this is Detective Nick Markov,” he said as he removed his dark sunglasses and motioned to the man behind him, “of the NYPD. May we come in?”