Deep Dark (15 page)

CHAPTER 15

Laney pulled up to the curb and double-checked the address. It wasn't what she'd expected. She glanced up and down the block, noting the empty parking lots, the gang graffiti, the burglar bars on the windows across the street. She'd heard this part of town was making a comeback, but from the looks of things, it still had a long way to go.

Laney grabbed a tube of pepper spray from her console and tucked it into her pocket. Then she gathered up her stuff and got out, looking over her shoulder as she locked her car.

Scream lived in a vintage four-story walkup in the middle of the block. Laney couldn't afford to pay him, so instead she'd brought food.

She approached the building, shifting her bags to free her hands. The downstairs was dark, but lights glowed on the second and third levels. She stepped through the unlocked front door and found herself inside a musty hallway with a stairwell. Using her phone as a flashlight, she checked the row of mailboxes. Most of the names had been scratched out or taped over multiple times. Scream's real name, Edward Gantz, was nowhere to be found.

The whine of a table saw echoed down the stairwell. Laney followed the noise up and came to a dimly
lit landing. Hammering sounded above her head, and dust rained down as she glanced at the ceiling. It seemed late for construction work, but maybe it was an off-the-books job.

She checked her text message again before knocking on the door labeled 2C. She waited. And waited. She knocked again.

The door swung open, and Scream stood there, shirtless and scowling.

“You're early,” he said. “I'm not done yet.”

“I brought dinner. I remembered you like Hut's.”

He took the bag and retreated into the apartment.

“You're welcome,” she said, stepping inside.

She followed him, gaping at everything. She'd expected a choppy turn-of-the-century floor plan, but it was a large open space with high ceilings. Lumber was stacked at the far end of the room beside a pair of sawhorses. The furniture consisted of an overturned milk crate and a lone metal folding chair near the window.

“You have the whole floor?” she asked.

“The whole building.”

She looked at him. “You
own
it?”

“My latest project,” he said, stepping into a half-­finished kitchen. There was a row of cabinets without doors. Hookups for appliances but no appliances yet. He set the food down beside a stainless-steel sink and peeked into the bag.

“Bacon cheeseburger?” he asked.

“And onion rings.” She glanced around. “How many square feet is this?”

“All four floors, about twelve thousand. The bottom two levels are for business. I plan to live upstairs.”

“Then why the kitchen?”

“Break room.” He chomped into an onion ring. “You want to see the rest?”

“Sure.”

“My office is down here.” He led her down a corridor with freshly installed drywall. “We'll have a couple of conference rooms, server storage, the whole deal.”

They entered a spacious room where he'd set up a desk with three workstations. On the wall behind the computers hung a large black pirate flag, an allusion to his black-hat roots. The two windows in the room had been sealed off with butcher paper and masking tape. Laney noticed the cot in the corner with a sleeping bag bunched at the end.

“You're living here?”

“Haven't moved in yet, but I've been putting in some late nights getting our systems set up.” He sank into a rolling leather chair. “I'm just finishing your download.”

“What did you get?”

“Not a lot—”

The whine of a saw directly above them drowned out his words. Laney glanced at the ceiling. “How do you work with that?” she asked when it was quiet again.

“You get used to it.” He popped a thumb drive into the middle computer. “I couldn't find any zeros in the marketplace that work against Mix's system. And they have surprisingly tight security. Whoever designed it knew what they were doing.”

“Thanks.”

“It's yours?”

“I overhauled everything after they had some security breaches. So you didn't find anything off the shelf?”

“No.”

“What did you find on ViCAP?” she asked.

“Give me a sec.”

“You got something?” Hope welled in her chest. He had to have found a back door, or he wouldn't have bothered calling her.

He glanced up at her with a sly grin. “You're going to like it.” He ejected the thumb drive and handed it to her, then popped in a new one.

“What's on this?”

“I'll show you.”

There was a knock at the front door, and he pushed back his chair. “That's my workmen. Don't touch anything.” He went to the doorway, and she took the vacated chair. “I mean it, Laney. Paws off.”

“All right, all right.” She held up her hands.

When he disappeared, she returned her attention to his computer. Whatever file he was downloading was twenty percent finished. She shifted her attention to the neighboring computer and tapped the mouse. The screen came to life, showing a Facebook page for Bella Marshall.

A chill crept down Laney's spine as she studied the picture. Why had Scream been looking at this? Did he know Bella? She glanced at the door, then scooted her chair closer. Maybe he'd heard about her murder and made the connection to Laney's investigation.

Thud.

She glanced over her shoulder. The noise had come from the front room, and it sounded like someone falling to the floor. She strained to listen and heard a low-pitched sucking sound.

Laney's blood turned icy. Was that . . . a gunshot?

She jumped to her feet. A gun with a silencer. She'd
only heard the sound in movies, but it was unmistakable. She rushed for the door, then halted beside it, heart pounding as she tried to decide what to do. Had Scream been
shot
?

Voices. Low, monotone. She didn't know them. Did they know she was here? She glanced around frantically, but there was no place to hide.

The shrill noise of the saw was back, and she darted a look at the ceiling. She couldn't go into the hallway—they might see her. Her gaze landed on the window, and she dashed across the room to peel back the paper. It was two floors up, but there was a fire escape where she could hide. She ripped the paper away, praying the construction noise would cover the sound. She flipped the latch and pushed on the window frame.

Stuck.

The whine of the saw abruptly stopped. She heard a voice, closer now. She grabbed a pen from the desk and managed to wedge it under the window frame. It started to move, just barely, but she kept working the lever, darting glances at the door. Her heart was racing. Her hands shook.

Footsteps in the hallway. A distant door creaking open.

She managed to get her fingers under the window frame. She cast a look at the door and gave a mighty pull just as the wail of the saw started up again.

Laney stuck her head out the window. It was an old-fashioned fire escape, brown and rusty, and she wasn't sure it was attached securely to the building. But she scrambled onto it anyway, keeping an eye on the door to Scream's office as she rolled onto her side on the metal slats. She could see the alley below, dark
and empty. There wasn't a ladder, not even one of those drop-down ones. Maybe there had been one at some point, but now it was gone.

The saw noise ceased. The butcher paper flapped in the wind, and she worried the sound would attract attention, but then the breeze died down. Panting from fear and exertion, she glanced up at the glowing windows of the third floor, where the workmen were. Hadn't they heard anything?

A gun. It had definitely been a gun.

Her heart thudded wildly as she crouched on the metal slats and tried to get her bearings. She had to stay hidden. Or get out of here before the person in the hallway noticed the open window. The construction noise had covered her escape, but—

A soft scraping sound. Laney's nerves skittered as she looked at the windowpane. It was sliding shut. She lunged to catch it, but she wasn't quick enough, and it crashed down with a bang.

CHAPTER 16

The noise reverberated through the alley—louder than a rifle shot, she thought, although it probably wasn't. Her terrified brain had probably amplified it. She sprang into action, scrambling up the metal stairs, desperate to get away from the man with the gun.

Footsteps in the office as Laney reached the next level. The third-story window was dark, but she pounded her fists against the glass. Could the workmen hear her? She eyed the light spilling from windows several rooms over and pounded again, but the whine of the saw drowned her out.

Noise below her. The fire escape shifted. Laney rolled back on the platform and bucked forward with a powerful kick. Glass shattered around her legs.

A soft sucking noise as something whizzed by her head.

He's shooting.

She pulled her hoodie over her face and dived through the broken window, landing with a graceless flop on the dusty floor, shocked and gasping.

Noise on the fire escape.

Laney rolled to her feet and looked around. Everything was dark. She could hear the workmen nearby, but they seemed to be separated from her by a thick wall. Her eyes adjusted, and she rushed through the
doorway, only to find herself in an even darker hallway. Was it a mirror of Scream's floor plan? She rushed toward the door and smacked into something hard. Reeling with pain, she stood stunned for a moment. Then she groped her way along the wall until she found a doorknob.

The sound of crunching glass in the darkness. Laney fumbled with the door and yanked it open.

Hallway.

She raced down the stairs, toward the light. She whipped around the landing, taking the steps two at a time. She hit Scream's floor and kept going. He must still be in there, either dead or injured.

Footsteps thundered above her. She rounded the next landing, digging for her phone in her pocket as she flew down the steps. Something clattered to the floor—her pepper spray! She couldn't go back for it. She yanked her phone out and pressed the emergency button as the footsteps pounded closer and closer—

Wfffftt.

Sheetrock exploded beside her head. She dropped to her knees, then grabbed the handrail to haul herself up and took the last four stairs in one leap. It wasn't the same stairwell she'd used the first time. There were two? She spotted a door at the end of the corridor and made a sprint for it, still jabbing at the buttons on her phone. She heard the operator's distant voice in her hand:
Nine-one-one, please state your emergency.

Wfffftt.

She tripped and crashed to her knees. She couldn't look back, couldn't do anything except stumble to her feet and bolt for the door. She reached it, jerked it open, and rushed into the muggy night air.

The alley behind the building was dark and narrow. Laney looked in both directions, then raced for the light. She ran and ran, spurred by the knowledge that someone was right behind her and he had a
gun
.

She reached the corner and ducked around the building. It wasn't the street she'd parked on, but this was better. It had cars and people.

Footsteps in the alley, coming closer.

Laney sprinted down the street waving her arms and yelling, hoping to flag down a cop or a cab, anything. She spotted a neon sign ahead. A liquor store. A quick look over her shoulder told her he wasn't there, but still she kept running, pushing and pushing until she thought her lungs would burst. Reaching the neon sign, she slid to a stop, yanked open the door, and raced inside.

CHAPTER 17

Laney sat in the police car with her feet firmly planted on the asphalt. The big detective, Jay, rested his arm on the top of the door and gazed down at her.

“Sure you don't want to get that cut looked at?” he asked.

“I'm sure.”

He returned his attention to his phone, where he'd been checking messages for the past twenty minutes. Or maybe he was playing
Angry Birds
. She didn't know. Whatever he was doing, his real purpose was to guard her.

As if she might be planning to run away.

Laney rested her arms on her knees and stared at the ground. She felt dizzy. Nauseated. And she was shivering despite the ninety-degree heat. Blood had trickled from the gash on her ankle and made a sticky puddle under her heel. Laney stared at her shoe, wanting to take it off but not wanting to attract anyone's attention, least of all Reed's.

Her gaze settled on him. The liquor store parking lot had become a makeshift command center, and Reed was on the far side of it now, talking to some uniforms beside the crime-scene van. Twice he'd started to walk toward her, and twice he'd been waylaid by people in suits. There was a grand total of nine cops on the
scene now—five uniforms and four in street clothes—and every last one of them was armed with something better than pepper spray.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that they'd been arriving steadily for the past hour and showed no signs of either wrapping things up or allowing Laney to leave.

She checked her watch. “How much longer is this going to take?”

Reed's partner looked amused. “You got someplace else to be?”

“Yes.”

He sighed heavily and glanced at the crowd of officers, then looked at her. “Lemme check.”

He left his post, and Laney returned her attention to her feet. Little shards of glass clung to her shoelaces from when she'd kicked through the third-floor window. She plucked them out one by one, making a shimmery mound on the asphalt beside her foot. Her hands trembled as she did it, and she thought about Scream.

At the liquor store, she'd talked to the emergency dispatcher while the manager locked and barricaded the door, even though the gunman seemed to have fled. The police had shown up quickly and found Scream on the floor of his apartment bleeding from two gunshot wounds. He'd barely had a pulse when the EMTs loaded him onto a gurney and rushed him to Brackenridge Hospital.

And that was all Laney had been able to get from the cop who'd taken her statement. She rubbed her forehead and replayed the events, wishing she'd done more, reacted faster. She desperately wanted to get to the hospital now and find out what was happening.

Footsteps on the asphalt. A pair of black wing tips appeared in her field of vision.

“Hi.”

She didn't look up. His hand rested on her shoulder, and she felt the burn of tears.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine.”

He took his hand away, and she lifted her gaze. His blue eyes were filled with concern . . . and something else she couldn't quite read.

“I need you to tell me what you know about Edward Gantz.”

She sat up straight and cleared her throat. “Like what?”

“Is he a friend? Boyfriend?”

“Friend.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Why are you here tonight?”

She tipped her head back. “Reed, please. I've been through this already with that cop over there. Didn't he tell you?”

“I want you to tell me.”

She sighed. “He asked me to drop by.”

“What time?”

“He texted me around seven. I was leaving work. I told him I'd come about nine, but I got here early.”

“Why?”

“I blew off my kickboxing class and decided to get carryout. Look, you have all this already. How many times do I have to go through it?”

He eased closer and rested his arm on the door, and
she could see the gun at his hip as he towered over her. It was a very intimidating stance, and she didn't like it at all, so she stood up.

“Why'd he want you to drop by?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know.”

“No, okay? I'd just gotten there. We hadn't even eaten dinner yet. He was just showing me around when . . . everything happened.”

“Take me through that part.”

She huffed out a sigh. “He was showing me his office. Someone came to the front door, and he thought it was one of his workmen from upstairs. He told me he'd be right back. Then I heard this sound in the front room—a thud. And then this weird noise.”

“The gunshot.”

“Yes, but it was muffled, like with a silencer.”

“A suppressor.”

“Yes.” Laney's throat tightened. She glanced at the building. All the windows were lit up now as CSIs combed the place for evidence. The two workmen from the third floor were on the sidewalk being interviewed separately by detectives. Reed's boss was here, too. Since pulling up in an unmarked police car, he'd been tromping around giving people orders.

“Did he say why he wanted you to drop by?” Reed asked.

“No. Did you listen to what I said?”

“Okay, what else do you know about him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you know he had a sheet, for instance?” His voice had an edge now. “It's not short, either. Wire fraud, online theft, identity theft.”

“What's your point?”

“I need to know what you were doing here, Laney. And don't give me some bullshit about dropping by with hamburgers.”

“That's what I was doing!”

He watched her for a few long seconds. Laney's palms felt clammy, but she resisted the urge to rub them on her jeans.

“Did you get a look at the person who chased you?” he asked.

“No.”

“But you said it was a man.”

“It was a man's voice that I heard in the hallway. I assumed it was a man.” She glanced at the building. “And his footsteps sounded heavy.”

“You heard one voice or two?”

“One. At first I thought it was two, but looking back, I think it was just one. Like he was talking on his phone.”

“But you didn't get a look at him,” Reed stated.

“No.”

“You didn't notice his clothes? His build? His race?”

“I told you I didn't
see
him.”

He shook his head and glanced away, clearly annoyed with her answers.

“What?”

He looked at her. “Why are you acting like a hostile witness?”

“Why are you acting like a jerk?”

“Laney, I know you're lying to me.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I can see it in your face. And if you think I'm being a jerk, just wait until those FBI agents start taking apart your bullshit story.”

She glared up at him.

“I'm trying to help you get ahead of this thing. Your
friend
has a record as long as my arm. And an FBI file. And he was shot twice while you happened to be at his apartment.” He eased closer, and the intensity in his look sent a chill through her. “I need you to tell me what the hell you're doing here, because I'm ninety-nine percent sure whatever it is has to do with my murder case. The case you're
no longer working on
. The case I specifically pulled you off of for your own safety!”

She didn't say anything. She was trembling now, head to toe. She hugged her arms against her ribs and stared up at him. She'd never seen him so upset, and she was upset, too. It was on the tip of her tongue to spill everything she knew, here and now, in front of all these cops. But she held back.

She
would
tell him. She'd decided to tell him everything, but she needed to do it when they were alone.

Footsteps approached, and she turned to see a pair of men walking over. They wore full suits, with ties and everything. These would be the FBI agents who wanted to pick apart her story. The taller of the two flashed his badge as he stopped in front of her.

“Ms. Knox?”

“That's me.”

“We have a few questions.”

•   •   •

Reed juggled his phone as he stripped off his holster and dumped it on the kitchen counter alongside his keys.

“There's something screwy about this case,” Jay told him. He was calling from the station, and Reed could hear the bullpen noise in the background.

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Gantz doesn't have a cell phone.”

Reed opened his fridge and remembered he hadn't been to the store in weeks. He had nothing, not even a beer.

“Everyone has a cell phone.” He took out a glass and filled it with tap water. As he looked out the window, he noticed all his neighbors' trash cans and recycle bins parked along the curb. “Shit,” he muttered.

“What?”

“He has a phone, trust me,” Reed said. “I'll ask Laney about it.”

“Want to try her tonight?”

“No.”

Reed went to the garage and jabbed the button for the automatic door. As it lifted, a pair of headlights turned into his driveway.

“You sure?” Jay asked. “I bet she's up.”

“I'm sure.”

The lights switched off, and Reed recognized the silhouette of the car. And then the silhouette of the woman getting out of it.

“First thing tomorrow, then,” Jay was saying. “We need to get hold of those phone records.”

Laney walked through his garage and straight up to him. When he'd last seen her at the crime scene, she'd looked pale and shell-shocked, but she didn't look that way now. She looked like she was on a mission. She strode past him into his house.

“I'll see what I can get,” Reed told Jay. To hell with
the trash cans. He closed his garage and returned to the kitchen, where Laney was leaning against the counter eavesdropping.

“And that's not the only thing,” Jay said. “I just came from the hospital.”

“Which one?”

“Brackenridge. Guy's still in surgery, but I caught one of the nurses. Get this—
two
GSWs, and they're saying he might pull through.”

Laney reached up and opened a cabinet.

“I mean, can you believe that?” Jay asked. “Is that fucked up or what?”

Everything about this case was fucked up, as far as Reed was concerned, starting with the fact that one of the key witnesses was in his kitchen rooting through his liquor cabinet. She took out a bottle of Jack and poured two shots. She left one on the counter and went into Reed's darkened living room, where she stood beside the sliding glass door and stared outside.

“This Gantz has got to be the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet,” Jay said.

“Maybe it's not luck.”

“How do you mean?”

“Maybe the shooter's an amateur.”

Laney glanced over her shoulder.

“With a suppressor?” Jay asked.

“It's possible.”

“I'm not seeing it.”

Laney slid open the door and stepped out onto the deck.

She shouldn't be here. She was neck-deep in his case. She'd lied to him and to the FBI, and he didn't know why. He didn't know what she was hiding or if
she was protecting someone. What he
did
know was that she was twenty-four, and beautiful, and the dead last woman he should get involved with.

“Reed?”

“Who's there now?”

“Where?”

“At the hospital with Gantz.”

“The feds hung around at first, hoping he'd wake up. But sounds like he's going to be out a while with the surgery and everything. And that's
if
he pulls through.”

“So he's alone?”

“The lieutenant posted a uniform there overnight. I told her to call me if there's any news.”

“Okay, keep me informed.”

“Will do.”

Reed ended the call and tossed his phone onto the counter beside his holster. He grabbed the drink and went to the door. It was dark out except for the moonlight. Laney, lit only by the full moon, stood against the rail of the deck and stared out at the wooded area where there had been a creek before the drought.

She looked solitary. And vulnerable. And she'd come here for something. He thought he knew what it was, but he didn't know if he could give it to her.

Reed stepped outside. She wore the same form­fitting black tank top she'd had on before. Same jeans, too, but she'd traded her bloody sneakers for sandals, and he noticed the glittery silver paint on her toenails.

“Nice deck,” she said. “What is it, pine?”

“Cedar.” He approached her.

“You build it yourself?”

“Yeah.”

She turned to face him, leaning her hip against the railing. “Where do you keep your boat?”

“Don't have one.”

She tipped her head to the side. “Then why do you have a boat trailer in your garage?”