The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (36 page)

After finding a rare parking space along Fifth, she grabbed the roses off the seat beside her and raced up the five flights of stairs to her apartment—stopping abruptly when she saw the man waiting outside her apartment door.

He turned to her.

“Leana Redman?” he said.

Leana took a step back down the stairs, ready to bolt if he tried something.
 
She did not give her name.
 
“How did you get up here?” she asked.

The man was short, wiry and had blond spiky hair.
 
He nodded past her, motioning down the stairs. “The door was open.”

“What do you want?”

“If you’re Leana Redman, I got a package for you—but you need to sign first.”

He thrust out a clipboard with some papers on it and Leana noticed for the first time the gift-wrapped package that was at his feet.
 
Still wary, she signed where she was told and took the package when he handed it to her.

The man didn’t move.
 
Instead, he just looked at her and waited with his hands on his hips.
 
He attempted what she supposed was a smile.

Leana got the hint and moved past him.
 
“Sorry,” she said.
 
“My purse is inside.
 
Could you give me a minute?”

She unlocked her apartment door and closed it when she went inside.
 
She dropped the roses and the package onto a counter top, and reached for her purse on a side table. She removed a twenty, went back to the door and handed it to the man.
 
“Thanks,” she said, and shut the door in his face.
 
She locked it twice and dead bolted it once.
 
He gave her the creeps.

The box was heavy for its size.

As she crossed the room to her bed, she shook it.
 
Something heavy inside shifted.
 
She couldn’t imagine what it was or who it was from.
 
Not Louis again….

She sat at the foot of her bed, curled her legs around her and began removing the pink wrapping paper.
 
When she opened the box, a scent of her favorite perfume drifted to her—the perfume Michael gave her yesterday as a gift.
 
Smiling, she removed sheet upon sheet of red tissue paper, not stopping until she had gripped the object that was at the bottom of the box.
 

For a moment, she froze.
 
The object was a gun.

Leana released it, the coolness of the metal lingering like a poison on her palm and fingertips.

Inside was a note.

Miss Redman:

I’ve been asked to watch you for some time now and I must say that it’s going to be a shame to kill you.
 
Never have I seen such a remarkably beautiful young woman.
 
This morning, while you were sitting in your new car, I had to still an urge to press against your back the very gun that’s inside this box and take you home with me.
 
I can only imagine how exquisite your legs would feel around my back, can only dream how sweet our love-making would be.

But that won’t be.
 
My job is to kill you.
 
Allow me to apologize now.
 
When I take your life, it won’t be with pleasure.

And that is why I’m giving you an opportunity—take the gun, press it against your temple and pull the trigger.
 
It will weigh much less heavily on my mind knowing you had the good sense to take your own life and I can guarantee you that it will be far less painful, especially since I’ve been paid to make certain it’s painful.
 
Sometimes, when people don’t take my advice, I can become quite….brutal.

It really is a perfect day for a suicide, wouldn’t you say? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the gun is loaded.
 
Please make the right decision, Miss Redman.
 
Someone as pretty as you should be spared as much pain as possible.

I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision.
 
Any time after that and you’re fair game.
 
Oh, and please don’t do anything foolish like telling someone about this.
 
If you do, I’ll know—and neither of us wants that.

Leana crumpled the note and dropped it in the box.

Her breathing was uneven.

Perspiration shimmered on her forehead.

Eric was behind this.
 
She was sure of it.

She looked at the phone.
 
She should call Mario and tell him everything.
 
But she couldn’t.
 
If she did, there was no doubt that somehow this man would find out.

She felt suddenly and entirely alone.
 
There was fear, but it was a different kind of fear from the fear she felt when Eric beat her.
 
She knew then that he wouldn’t kill her.
 
She knew now that he wanted her dead.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late.
 
She wondered where Michael was.
 
She wondered if he had already come by and found her gone.

Her head was spinning.

I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision.
 
Any time after that and you’re fair game.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

From the Mercedes’ cool interior, the three men watched Michael Archer walk down the busy sidewalk, watched him shift a bag of groceries from one arm to the other, and watched him stop to say hello to an elderly woman pushing a rusty shopping cart.

Only after he entered the brick tenement on Avenue B did they make their move.

One by one, they stepped out of the car.
 
Doors opened, clicked shut.
 
Two men were tall and muscular, their dark hair slicked back into shiny ponytails.
 
The other man was slightly older, wiser-looking, with short graying hair and pale skin—the glass of his silver spectacles flashed white in the hazy, early-morning sun.

His name was Ethan Cain, he was an international assassin and he had been hired yesterday morning by Stephano Santiago.
 
While he hadn’t met Santiago in person, the $125,000 Santiago deposited into Cain’s Swiss bank account was perhaps the only introduction he would ever need.

His instructions were simple—remind Michael Archer that in one week a certain gambling debt was due.
 
Use whatever force is necessary.

Cain had his own ideas about that.

Although he was American, he had lived the better part of his life in Paris and spoke in French to the two men beside him.
 
“Archer’s apartment is on the sixth floor.
 
Try not to kill him.”

They crossed the street and entered the building.
 
Inside it was dark and musty.
 
The air smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke.
 
Cain glanced down both ends of a long corridor, saw peeling wallpaper, a cat urinating in a shadowy corner, a woman stepping half-naked into her apartment.
 
He also saw two stairwells and a service elevator.
 
He gave his men their instructions.

When they separated, it was Cain who took the elevator.
 
As he rose in the rattling iron cage to Michael Archer’s apartment, he reached inside his black leather jacket and felt the gun he concealed there earlier.
 
Its steely coolness sent a rush of anticipation up his spine and he wondered if Archer would give him an excuse to use it.

He hoped so.
 
It had been a week since he’d taken a life.

They met on the sixth floor.
 
In one of the apartments, someone was playing a stereo so loudly that the walls and floor literally vibrated with the sounds of heavy metal music. This pleased Cain.
 
It was a sign to let him know that Archer was in his apartment. Earlier, he had given the man playing the music five hundred dollars to be a lookout.

They started down the hall.
 
Cain’s senses were acute.
 
He was aware of sights and sounds and smells he normally would have ignored.
 
Later, as always, he’d be able to describe—in detail—exactly how the job went down.

They stopped at the door at the end of the hall.
 
Cain withdrew his gun, took a step back.
 
There was a silence while he and his men stood looking at one another.
 
Then Cain nodded at the taller of the two men and winced as the door was kicked open.

They rushed inside, ready for anything.
 

But the room was empty.

Incredulous, Cain stood in the middle of the small living space.
 
As the driving beat of the hard rock music enveloped him, he saw on a side table the sack of groceries Archer had with him on the street and knew that he’d been here.

He looked around the room.
 
How did Archer leave when all three exits were covered?
 
Was he still in here, hiding?

Cain threw open a closet door, shoved aside a rack of clothes.
 
Nothing.
 
His gaze swept the room.
 
Boxes filled with Archer’s belongings cluttered a floor that was scarred with a million heel marks.
 
Sunlight from an open window played across a bed that had been slept in.
 
A pair of torn, faded curtains moved in the breeze.

And then Cain knew.
 
Knew.

He went to the window and looked out.
 
Archer was hurrying down the fire escape, rapidly approaching street-level, his footsteps deadened by the music thundering from the hallway.

Somehow, he had seen them.
 
Cain raised his gun, had an impulse to shoot, but stilled it.
 
There were too many people on the street.
 
He would have to take Archer another way.

He fled the apartment with his men.

*
  
*
  
*

The streets were thronged with people.
 
Michael pushed his way through them, shot through traffic, got nudged in the hip by a moving car and kept running.
 
Not once did he look behind him until he reached the corner of East Houston.
 
And there they were, closing in, hands in outsized pockets, unseen weapons gripped—just as he had feared.

He ran faster.

Since his dog’s death, he had taken precautions.
 
He knew his father was correct.
 
No matter what Santiago promised, the man couldn’t be trusted.
 
And so, whether leaving his apartment—or returning to it—Michael always found an excuse to stop and glance around.