Girl Undercover 12: Showdown (4 page)

An evil stranger capable of murder.

This was not the time to get emotional about what had happened to him, however; I needed to instantly proceed with my plan instead. So I quietly cleared my throat, then said in a vulnerable tone, “Hello, Captain, it’s me, Longoria…”

“Hello, Longoria. It’s a crazy day here at work. What can I do for you?”

“I think I’m ready to start treatment.”

“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised, but pleased. “I’m happy to hear that you’ve come to your senses.”

“Yeah, I know…”

“You sound strange. Are you okay?”

“No. I… I don’t think I can move…”

“You can’t move. What do you mean? Did something happen to you?”

“I just found this photo of me and Nick and it made me so sad. It was taken only days before he was killed.” I pictured me and Nick together in my head and tears began to fill my eyes, quicker than I had expected or could have hoped for. They sure served my purpose, though. “We were so happy… Oh, God, we were so happy.” The more I thought about what used to be, the more tears came and soon they were streaming down my cheeks. “I just can’t believe that he’s gone…” I sniffled into the phone, glad I didn’t have to exaggerate to make it sound believable. “I’m sitting here in our living room and I haven’t been able to move since I saw the photo on our coffee table. I’ve been sitting here for hours. Thankfully, I had my phone with me, so I could call you… Oh, God, I feel so bad…” I sniffled some more, then said, “But I know I must do something. I just can’t make myself. I need you to come over here and make me get back on my feet. Physically make me. Can you please help me?”

I closed my eyes as I listened to the silence emanating from the other side of the line. It sounded like Brady was contemplating my words, contemplating what to do about them, whether to help me or not.
Please make the right choice,
I begged silently, squeezing my fist.
Please!

I heard him inhale deeply, then, “Fine. I’ll be there. You’re in your apartment in West L.A., correct?”

Relief spreading within me, I smiled and said, “Yes.”

“Okay. It’ll take a couple of hours before I can get there. Can you wait till then?”

“I’ll wait for however long you want me to wait. As long as you come. You’ve always been my voice of reason, and I so need to be around it to pull myself back out of this horrible depression I’ve entered. Thank you so much!”

Brady told me to hang in there, and that he’d be there as soon as he could.

I disconnected the phone and wiped away the remainder of the tears on my cheeks.

“Wow,” Jose said with admiration, staring at me. “That was great,
nena.
You had
me
convinced I needed to come over to your place to make you snap out of your depression. Did you ever consider goin’ into acting?”

“Shut up,
idiota,”
Dante hissed at Jose, glaring at the smaller man. Unlike Jose, he seemed to have instantly realized that this particular moment had not been one in which I had been forced to use my “excellent” acting skills in order to pull it off.

“It’s okay, Dante,” I said and pulled out a couple of tissues from a box on a nearby counter that I used to blow my nose. “I’m fine. I’m glad I must’ve been so convincing because we really need to get Brady over there.” I handed him the disposable. “Maybe you should tell Donald that it’ll take a while before Brady gets there.”

“Too late. He’s already on his way. But don’t worry. He’ll stay in his car until you’re ready for him. He’ll be driving a 1970 yellow Volkswagen beetle. It’s impossible to miss, he said. You just come out and find him on the street and he’ll come and help you out.”

“Okay, great.” Getting to my feet, I turned to Jose. “Let’s go.”

***

“So you’re absolutely sure that no one will find anything suspicious?” I asked Jose, who sat next to me in my Toyota as we drove to the place I’d shared with Nick. He had just finished telling me all about how he and Albert had cleaned up Sammy’s apartment, as well as gotten rid of Dr. Kelly’s body. Since they didn’t have time to figure out how to get the man out of the building before the LAPD got there, they had put him in a garbage bag and carried him down to the building’s trash room. It might not have been the kindest way to dispose of the poor doctor, but, given the circumstances, I could see why they had chosen that route. Except for the Asian chick with the dog, no one in the building had ever laid eyes on either of the doctors, and it was doubtful that she’d remember him if the body was found. Hopefully, it would be removed together with the rest of the trash once the garbage men came, never to be seen again.

“Yup,” Jose assured me. The box of Haldol was in a paper bag in his lap. His fake prescription had gotten us the medication in less than thirty minutes once we’d entered a pharmacy close to the hospital. “And the apartment has never been cleaner. We had to be careful not to use too much bleach, or that might’ve been suspicious if the cops came by. Which they didn’t. Anyway, I think we got it just right. As soon as Sammy has filled the place with flowers, no one will be able to tell it’s been scrubbed down.”

“And you removed the sheets from the balcony?”

“Nena,
of course. They were gone long before you left the apartment.” He patted my hand that was on the steering wheel. “Seriously.
Calmate.
I know Albert screwed up, but he made up for it later. Everything’s cool.”

I really hoped that Jose was right, because the question wasn’t
if
the LAPD would suspect that foul play had been going on in the building, the question was when. But as long as the apartment was spot-free and no one had gotten a glimpse of the sheets attached to the balcony, Sammy should be fine. I didn’t want him to get in trouble when he’d been so nice and let me use his place to house the doctors.

“Okay, fine,” I said. We had reached my block, so I turned the corner and pulled onto the street where my pastel green two-story apartment building sat in between others of similar style. I swallowed as I drove nearer, got a clearer view of my building despite the palm trees that grew close on the street, partially covering it from my current vantage point.

Jose pointed out a space large enough on the street where we could park. We parked and left the car. As the two of us were heading toward my building, we both scanned the area for the yellow beetle Donald was supposed to be driving. Neither of us could spot it, so we assumed he had yet to arrive.

“You okay?” Jose asked right as we were about to enter the building door that had no lock or doorman to protect it from strangers. I had grown used to these amenities having lived in New York for the last several months and couldn’t help but wonder if things with Nick might have been different had it not been so easy to get inside the building. Then I pushed those thoughts away; as determined as the killers had seemed to do all the horrible things that had been done to my husband, this was unlikely.

I forced a small smile onto my lips and told Jose that I was okay. Taking a deep breath, I pulled open the heavy wooden door. Together, we walked down the long, quiet corridor with the light-gray rug that looked eternally dirty no matter how often building management cleaned it. Nick and my unit was the second to the last out of the eight on either side of us.

My heart had picked up pace, beating twice as fast as normal when we reached the apartment door. It was closed and there was no longer any crime scene tape crisscrossing it; the single time I had returned here to pick up stuff before leaving for New York, there had been so much tape I had barely been able to get through. Steeling myself, I inserted the key into the door and opened it.

As I entered the foyer, I felt like I had just gotten home from a day out in the field and everything was like it used to be—Nick was still alive and no Adler Group with its evil mastermind was about to take over the world. Captain Brady was the same nice, reliable man he’d been for as long as I had known him. There were no super humans created in labs.

But as soon as I reached the bedroom and saw that everything in it looked exactly the way it had when I found Nick lying butchered on the shiny hardwood floor there—with the exception of all the blood and he himself of course—reality returned to me with merciless intensity.

The nightmare was for real. All of it was true, true and irreversible.

Somehow, accepting all the horror that had happened in the last several months and continued to happen gave me the strength to keep functioning. It helped keeping my eyes dry. When Brady came to see me later, I would have to dig deep into myself in order to be able to act like I was a blubbering mess, unable to move from the couch in the living room the way I had claimed over the phone.

I turned to Jose, who was standing beside me in the bedroom. “Let’s head to the living room and get ready for Brady’s arrival.”

It being three o’clock now, it shouldn’t take that much longer before he got here. I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t change his mind at the last minute, realizing I had no intention of ever getting treatment for my supposed derangement but just wanted to get him to come here alone. There was nothing we could do about that but wait and hope for the best. If he hadn’t arrived by six o’clock tonight, we would have to rethink our approach to get to him.

Jose and I walked into the living room and went over how we would take control of Brady once he’d entered the living room. As soon as Brady was facing me, either seated or standing, Jose would appear armed with a gun to threaten him with while I pulled out my own. Together, we would make Brady take a seat on a chair in the kitchen and tie him up there with the zip ties we had gotten as we waited for the pharmacist to prepare the Haldol for us.

“It should all work out fine,” I told Jose in conclusion. I checked the time again. Three ten. “Donald should be here now. You wanna go out and check? If he is, ask him if he wants some refreshments while waiting. Tell him we’re still struggling to contain my father if he wonders why we’re not ready for him yet. By the way, I think you might’ve met him before.”

“Oh, yeah? Why do you say that?”

“Donnie is someone Dante knew while in the gang. Since I know you were in the gang even longer than him, your paths might’ve crossed. Dante told me something about him having saved Donald’s life.”

“I’ll tell you when I get back. See ya in a few.” He disappeared out of the living room and the apartment.

I went to the bathroom to relieve myself, then returned to the living room where I took a seat on the couch. I hoped Jose would hurry getting back as I noticed that, as soon as I was alone in the apartment, it wasn’t as easy keeping the sadness and heartache at bay. Distraction was apparently vital.

Footsteps were approaching in the corridor outside the front door that Jose had left ajar. No more than two minutes could have passed since he left.

Hmm,
I thought, pleased, listening as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
That’s sooner than I expected.

There was a knock on the front door, then a squeak as it was pushed open.

“Gabi?” Brady’s voice. I stiffened in the couch, frantically checking that the shirt I wore sufficiently covered the gun in my hip holster. I had planned on switching into another, bigger shirt, but now it was too late. Footsteps approached the living room where I sat. The footsteps of more than one person, I quickly realized.

Who the hell is with him?
I asked myself, dreading to find out.

No sooner had I finished thinking that thought when Brady and
George
of all people appeared in the large, dome-shaped doorway leading into my living room. George, the computer guy who had been my only link to the force for months and who I thought of as one of the few people I could trust. What was he
doing with Brady here at my house? It took all I had for me to keep my chin in place and not let my mouth drop open I was so shocked. The only explanation I could think of was that, at some point in the last several days, he must have found reason to believe I was as crazy as Brady was telling me I was. Yes, that must be why.

I stared at George, the disappointment at this realization spreading through me like a fast-acting virus, weighing me down.

“Good afternoon, Gabi, how are you feeling?” Brady asked me as he entered through the doorway, George following closely behind.

As distraught as I was at what was happening, there wasn’t much else I could do but to keep playing the part that I had set out to do. I prayed that Jose discovered in time that something was wrong and could help me set this unexpected turn of events straight. Silently, I beat myself up for not having at least anticipated that Brady—this other Brady—might attempt something that would screw up our plan.

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought George along,” Brady continued when I didn’t immediately answer. “I ran into him as I was leaving the office and told him about your phone call. I thought that, since the two of you have always been close, it would be okay. When I explained how incredibly upset you were, he insisted on coming along with me.” Brady’s lips stretched into a smile so warm that I was again momentarily fooled into thinking that he was the same as always. “So we could both cheer you up, get you on the right track again.”

“Oh,” I said and made myself look as miserable as I could, having suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be paralyzed with sorrow. Discreetly glancing at George, I searched his face, his hooded eyes and thin lips, to see if I could determine what was going on here. But the face of the pot-bellied man with the eternally red cheeks and curly, brown hair didn’t reveal a thing it was so free of any emotion. As usual, he wore a drab-colored sweater with a V-shaped neck over a checkered button-down shirt and equally drab-colored corduroy pants. No matter what the weather was like, George’s office outfits stayed the same.

“Hi, Gabi,” George said, attempting a smile but failing miserably. He looked like he was feeling sick instead. What was the matter with him?

“Hi, George,” I replied weakly. “It’s so nice of you to want to come and check on me.”