Irrefutable Evidence (21 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Sasha stepped out of the steamy shower still singing the refrain from “Winter Wonderland.” As she wrapped her hair in a thick towel, she frowned at the vanity. No coffee mug awaited her.

“Hey, promising a desperate woman caffeine and not delivering is cruel and unusual!” she shouted toward the hallway.

Connelly didn’t respond to her teasing. Or if he did, she couldn’t hear him. The bedroom was two flights up from the kitchen, she reasoned. She towel dried her hair and tied it back in a loose ponytail then hurriedly pulled on a pair of leggings and a hooded sweater.

As she ran down the spiral staircase, she began to feel slightly more human—although a mug of espresso and one of Connelly’s rib-sticking dinners would go a long way to completing her transformation into a functional human being.

She passed the elevator, noting the excess represented by installing an
elevator
in a beach house, and stepped out into the spacious kitchen. Soft music played, a bottle of red wine had been decanted, a heavy stock pot of something delicious bubbled on the stove, and an oversized mug of steaming coffee sat at the edge of the expanse of granite. The only thing missing was the smoking hot househusband.

“Connelly?” she called.

No response. A shiver of worry ran along her spine.

She switched off the sound system and turned the burner to low so whatever he was cooking wouldn’t burn. Then she padded barefoot through the massive hallway and down the stairs in search of her husband.

She started on the ground floor. He wasn’t in the laundry room, the home theater, the game room, or the half-bath near the patio that housed the hot tub. As she walked through each silent, shadowy, room she flipped on the overhead lights in an effort to chase away the fear that was dogging her footsteps.

Finding no Connelly on the ground floor, she raced back up the stairs and canvassed four bedrooms and their attached bathrooms, the living room, the dining room, the walk-in pantry, and a small office/library where Noah had probably once toiled away his vacations revising briefs, returning phone calls, and rejecting settlement offers. For that reason, the room creeped her out more than any of the others, so she hurried through it back into the still-empty kitchen before the ghost of a lawyer who’d wasted his life could materialize like a scene out of a Dickens story.

“Leo?” she called, louder and more insistent than she’d been. She even used his first name.

Maybe he’s upstairs. He could have decided to go sit out on the balcony,
she told herself.
In the rain?
Doubtful.
But there was only one way to find out, and it wasn’t by standing in the kitchen talking to herself.

She turned to head back up the staircase. Then she sensed, more than saw, movement on the periphery of her visual field. Out on the deck. She froze and stared hard at the sliding door. Waited. After a long moment, no one came bursting through the glass.

She exhaled and started up the stairs, only to whip her head around. There it was again. Just a flutter of movement on the deck.

“Babe?” she tried to shout, but her voice failed her. A croaky whisper was all she managed. She cleared her throat and forced herself to cross the living room.

She stood for a moment looking out into the inky darkness then flipped on the outdoor overheads, bathing the deck in yellow light.

No one knows you’re here. Remember?
She pressed her forehead against the glass and saw a figure race across the deck.
Was Connelly out there trying to entice her into the hot tub?
He was mistaken if he thought she had any intention of a soak during a rainstorm.

She unlatched the door and leaned out, shivering in the wind.

“Connelly? What are you doing? Come inside,” she yelled. She strained to see down to the lower level of the deck. If he’d been out there, he was gone now. She leaned further out the door, stepping onto the wet deck on the tips of her bare toes. She walked toward the railing and peered over it.

Suddenly, she felt movement behind her. Before she could turn to see what it was, strong gloved fingers closed around her neck and squeezed. She coughed and tried to twist her head to see her attacker, but he was too strong.

She fought to clear her mind as fear and adrenaline took hold.

The rear-choke is one of the most common assaults.
She could almost hear her instructor’s voice intoning the words.

Fingers could be plucked away, she told herself. She raised her hands. And as if he sensed her next move, the man’s arm began to snake around her neck.

She panicked and started to kick because she knew what would come within seconds. He would wrap a bicep around one side of her neck, press a forearm on the other, and squeeze. The pressure would stop her carotid arteries from carrying oxygenated blood to her brain. And if she was unlucky, it would also prevent her jugular from carrying the depleted blood back down to her heart. She was going to lose consciousness. And unconscious victims don’t win.

No.

No.

She needed leverage. And fast.

As he reached his arm around her neck, she ducked her chin and dug it deep in the crook of her attacker’s elbow. With her throat cradled below his elbow, her panic lessened. In this position, her arteries were down low enough that the vise-like pressure he exerted met with bone instead of crushing her throat.

She opened her mouth and bit down hard on the vein running along his forearm. He yelped but neither flinched nor loosened his grip.
A pro,
she realized as her hopes of overpowering him or taking him by surprise faded and died.

She raised her hands and pressed them, one on top of the other, on his elbow joint. Instinct would have been to push down. But it also would have been futile, so she didn’t. She pressed inward, forcing his right elbow straight in toward her body, and swung herself forward and toward his arm.

Pressure. And pivot.

She swung her left leg all the way to her right side, maintaining constant pressure on his elbow joint as she turned so that her entire body was pressed against his elbow joint, trapping it. She swung his arm like a hinge and freed herself of the chokehold.

Now, run and live to fight another day.

She pulled back and drove a hammer fist into his exposed right side, aiming for the kidney, then took off running across the slick deck. She risked a look over her shoulder. He was a half a step behind, at most, despite the kidney punch. He made up the distance and caught her by her hair as she reached the stairs to the lower level and snatched her back.

She turned and let his force wheel her around, smashing her elbow up and into the cartilage in his nose.

He released her hair. She lunged forward and drove her knee into his groin. He grunted and doubled over, blood pouring from his crushed nose. She raised her leg intending to kick him once more for good measure before fleeing down the stairs. As her foot came toward his ribs, he shot out his left arm and grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her toward him.

She went down hard, the small of her back banging against the deck. She grabbed the bottom of the railing and held on tight. His grip tightened on her ankle as she tried to shake him off, while kicking out at him with her free foot.

Get up. No ground fighting.
Ground fighting in the real world was dangerous and to be avoided at all costs. It was such a central tenet of Krav Maga that all the techniques she knew focused only on getting back on her feet.

She released her grip on the railing and pushed herself to a seated position. But he was fast as well as strong. He climbed on top of her and came at her, both hands going for her throat again.

Buck.

As soon as he settled his weight on her, she bucked her hips explosively and wildly. His hands shot out and he dropped them to the deck on either side of her to plant himself.

And trap.

She trapped his right leg and arm against the deck, pinning them under her left arm and leg. She used her dominant side to restrain what statistics suggested would be his dominant side.

Buck.

She bucked again, hard, and the force shifted him up so that his head nearly touched the deck above hers.

And roll.
She rolled toward her left, letting the momentum from her bucking carry her, and flipped herself so that now she was astride him.

She pressed his arms down, pinning them with her right forearm, and punched him with her left fist. One quick hammer fist to his busted nose and then a knee to his groin as she released his hands and scrabbled backward—away from him—and turned to run back into the safety of the house. Her pounding heart seemed to drum out a question:
Where’s Leo? Where’s Leo?

There was no time to look for Connelly now. She could hear footsteps cracking against the deck. The man was already back on his feet, pursuing her. Relentless. Committed.

He grabbed her by her right arm, just above her elbow, and spun her around to face him. She leaned into the spin, letting his strength pull her forward, and lead with her left elbow, up and out, connecting squarely with his cheek.

He stumbled a half-step to the side but kept his grip on her arm with his left hand. He cocked his right hand into a fist and aimed it at her nose.

“End of the line, counselor,” he said in a low, raspy voice as he pulled back.

She ducked, and the swing connected with the glass slider. The glass held, but the contact slowed him as pain radiated up his arm.

She used that small opening to whip a low kick toward his shin. He bobbled but stayed on his feet. She rotated from her hips and aimed a second low kick but he raised his knee and blocked it. He was well trained.

She unleashed a flurry of punches—jab/cross combinations—aiming at his face and neck. He raised his hands to block. She saw her chance and launched a powerful roundhouse kick, smashing into his knees. He staggered backward, tripping over his feet.

In that moment, fear and self-preservation gave way to rage at the way scumbags like this guy seemed to come out of the woodwork intent on ruining her life. She stepped forward and fired a kick that caught him high in the chest. His backward momentum continued and he kept going. The railing cracked and split, then gave way as the man crashed through it. He flailed and seemed to flip, and then he was gone in the darkness.

She heard one sharp thud. Another. Then nothing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sasha stared down at the body sprawled half on the deck, half on the beach. She didn’t recognize him. He had thick dark hair, a little on the long side. His sightless brown eyes were open and pointed toward the gray sky. He wore a black leather jacket, black gloves, faded jeans, and a dark green shirt. Even through the water that was streaming off her hair and running down her face she could tell he was unmistakably dead. His head hung off his broken neck at pronounced angle.

Connelly, who had materialized from inside the house, stepped off the deck, crouched in the wet sand, and put two fingers on the side of the man’s throat. Sasha held her breath, but she knew what Connelly would say. He looked up at her through the driving rain and shook his head. “No pulse.”

Without warning, Sasha’s stomach gurgled. She hurried off the deck and heaved. Her eyes watered and her knees shook but she stayed on her feet. When she turned back, Connelly was going through the dead man’s pockets. “No ID.”

He rose to his feet and came to stand beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to his chest. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She was sore and battered and her throat ached. She was doing a far sight better than the dead guy. “I’ll live. Where’ve you been?”

“I ran out to the store. Guess you didn’t hear me yell up the stairs? I came back a minute ago and found the sliding door from the living room open. So I came out here. What happened?”

“I was looking for you, and I thought I saw someone on the deck. I did, but it wasn’t you. It was this guy. Who do you think he is?” She had to raise her voice to be heard. The wind had picked up and was lashing seawater and rain at them—it came at them hard, nearly sideways.

“I have no idea. But what are we going to do with him? We can’t leave him out here in this mess,” he shouted over the storm.

Sasha wheeled her head around looking for shelter. They certainly weren’t bringing the dead guy into the beach house. She spotted an outdoor shower in the shadows underneath the deck and pointed toward it.

“Okay, you grab his arms,” Connelly yelled as he bent and picked up the dead man’s feet, holding them at the ankles.

Sasha really didn’t want to touch the man but she lowered her head against the squall and walked around the man’s body and prepared to grab his wrists. She slipped on the edge of the dune and slid down several feet. As she was dusting herself off, she saw a couple approaching from the house next door. She pointed and Connelly turned to look.

The man and woman were jogging toward them, guns drawn, badges flashing. They wore matching navy blue windbreakers.