Читать книгу Broken - Rebecca Zanetti - Страница 15

Chapter Seven

The house was on the outskirts of D.C., in an area of town that Wolfe had never been. Lawns were small and burned, porches sagged, and paint peeled. A drug deal went down at the far corner, and feral cats fought near an overturned garbage can across the pothole-riddled concrete.

Clouds hung low and dark as if the sun didn’t dare to enter the neighborhood.

He drove by the address Brigid had given him, peering for a good alleyway to hide his truck. “I’m not comfortable leaving my truck around here.” The tires and wheels would be gone in seconds.

Malcolm nodded from the passenger seat, sliding a clip into his gun. “We could just park at the street and make a run for the door in a shock and awe, but that’d give them time to grab weapons.” He angled his head and studied the dismal street. “Plus, how good is your intel? I’d rather not burst in on an elderly couple having a late breakfast.”

“No kidding,” Wolfe returned, still not sure about having Mal along for backup. Not that he’d invited Malcolm. The guy had seen Wolfe leaving and had jumped in the truck, somehow knowing Wolfe was going hunting. “The intel is from Brigid.”

“Then it’s good,” Mal said. “Though I’d still like to peek into the garage to see if it holds the truck you saw the other night.”

Yeah, double-checking was never a bad thing when guns were involved. He drove a mile out of the neighborhood and parked in the front of a gas station/mini mart, running inside to pay the kid behind the counter to watch his truck. Then he jogged back out as a slight rain began to fall.

Mal stood near the truck. “How much did you give him?”

“Fifty now and a hundred if my truck is in one piece when I get back.” Wolfe zipped up his sweatshirt to hide his gun and then pulled the hood over his head. “Ready?”

“Sure.” Mal looked dangerous in his dark hoodie with unnecessary sunglasses hiding his eyes, but he’d fit right in as they jogged back to the house.

Wolfe took off at a fast pace. “You didn’t have to come—I can handle this.”

“Right. These solo missions you’ve been doing are stupid.” Mal kept pace, his tone more thoughtful than sharp.

“Yeah, I know.” Wolfe had been trained well, and backup was always a necessary precaution. It felt good to have Mal along.

Mal hunched his shoulders and slid his hands into his pockets. “The other day you mentioned a job dealing with sex clubs.”

“No, the job is tracking down a guy who went to sex clubs. Now that he’s dead, I have to figure out who he was, who killed him, and why.” The club was just coincidental, and he certainly didn’t want to see Mal in leather pants, backing him up at a club party.

Malcolm’s gait slowed. “Did you really go to a sex club?”

Wolfe grinned. “Yeah. A BDSM one.”

“Huh.” They moved silently for a while as the rain increased in force.

“You ever been to one?” Wolfe asked, keeping the conversation going.

“Nope. I make no judgments, but I’m more of a private type of guy when it comes to romance.” Mal’s boots splashed water up from holes in the sidewalk.

Wolfe stepped over a pile of fast food wrappers. “Ditto.”

“Was Dana really there?” Mal chuckled.

“Yeah, and she was barely dressed. I stopped breathing for almost two seconds.” Which was a long time for Wolfe to forget to watch his six.

“So the two of you—”

“No.” Wolfe increased his pace. “Just friends.” Why was it when a guy found love, he assumed everyone else would, too? Some guys, like Mal, found that happiness. Guys like Wolfe did not.

Mal stiffened as the sound of yelling came from one of the homes. A woman screaming at a lazy, no-good bum. “Sometimes romance sneaks up on you.”

“Nothing sneaks up on me.” Wolfe slowed his pace near the correct house, keeping out of sight of the narrow front window that was caked with mud and bird poop. He moved to the side of the garage, barely squeezing in between the worn siding and a rough chain-link fence, and then cautiously approaching an oval-shaped window. Weeds made his boots and jeans wet. After wiping grime off the glass, a lot of it, he peered inside. Satisfaction ran through him faster than a good latte. “It’s the truck,” he whispered.

Mal slid his sunglasses up on his thick hair, his intelligent eyes piercing the haze. “You want front or back?”

“Front.” Wolfe slid out of the way to the front of the garage. “On ten?”

“Ten.” Mal sucked in air and inched by the fence to the backyard, his chest barely making it through the narrow path.

The neighborhood was quiet, and if anybody was watching through a window, they probably wouldn’t call the cops. Wolfe started counting in his head, keeping his back to the garage door and pulling his gun free of his jeans. He arrived at eight, ducked his head, and ran full bore at the front door, breaking it wide open with his right shoulder.

A half-dressed man jumped up from a torn sofa and Wolfe shoved him back down with one hand, his gun sweeping the room.

From the kitchen, Mal prodded another man in front of him toward the sofa. “Sit.” He then turned back and made quick work of the rest of the small house. “Clear,” he called out.

Wolfe smiled at the two staring defiantly up at him. The first guy was around thirty with dirty blond hair, bloodshot eyes, and open sores along his neck. The second was maybe around twenty-five years old, and was a tall guy with darker skin and a bruise on his cheekbone who had the shakes. Definitely needed a fix. “I’m going to ask this once. Why did you shoot at me?” Wolfe kept his gun pointed low, not wanting to freak them out too badly. Yet.

The blond sniffed and then shrugged. “No clue who you are.”

The other guy shook harder, his dreadlocks moving over his bony shoulders.

Mal returned to the room. “Drugs and guns in the back room. I put everything in this duffel.” He tossed a dirty duffel on the floor and decided to point his gun at the guys.

The shaky guy sat up, his gaze planted on the duffel. “You can’t take that.”

Wolfe sighed. “We can do pretty much anything we want.” These guys were pathetic. “Just tell me who hired you and who you meant to follow or shoot, and we’ll leave you and your drugs alone.” He was taking their guns, though. Anybody who shot at him deserved to lose their weapons. That seemed fair.

The blond guy looked over at his buddy.

Mal stepped forward, his expression pissed. “Listen. I have no patience for this shit. Talk now, or I’m going to start hitting people.”

Okay. Wolfe didn’t usually play good cop, but what the hell. “You guys want out of this? Believe me—talk and we’ll leave.”

Mal growled. “Let’s just kill them. They don’t know anything, and I’m hungry.”

“I saw an IHOP a couple of blocks over,” Wolfe offered. “I guess we could just shoot them and go, but that’d probably make a bunch of noise.”

Mal pursed his lips. “We could go for blunt-force trauma. There’s probably a baseball bat around here somewhere.”

“Knives would be better,” Wolfe said thoughtfully. “Did you see any when you came in through the kitchen?”

Mal winced. “That’s so messy, and this is a new sweatshirt. Strangulation?”

The blond drooled and sucked in air. “Wait a minute. Just wait a minute.”

“One chance,” Wolfe said, letting the predator in him show.

“There isn’t much to tell.” The shaky guy exhaled, his thin body shuddering with the movement. “Some guy hired us to follow the pretty blond chick. Gave us her address. We’ve been watching her for about a week. Got the text to take her out after the party in the mansion.”

Heat rolled through Wolfe. It had been Dana in danger? He’d known it was a possibility, but he’d truly thought the guys were after him. The tweakers pressed back on the sofa as if somehow sensing his mood had changed.

“You’ve been watching her for a week?” Wolfe asked.

The shaky guy nodded, the movement a painful-looking jerk. “Yeah, kind of. We’ve staked out her apartment building and followed her a few times, but we’ve lost her a lot.”

Probably when they stopped to shoot up drugs.

“But you caught her scent when she went to the party last night?” Malcolm prodded him.

The blond guy’s face brightened. “Yeah. We followed her cab to the car rental place and then to the mansion, and man, that outfit she was wearing was something else. Thought about—” He caught himself and made a strangled noise, heeding too late his sense of self-preservation.

“Thought about what?” Wolfe asked, his tone dropping to deadly and his hands starting to twitch with the need to punch through the asshole’s face to the sofa.

The blond gulped and shook his head, his breath turning shallow. If he passed out, he’d stop talking, darn it.

“Somebody texted you to kill her?” Wolfe asked, enunciating each word and trying to keep his calm in place.

The blond winced. “Yeah.”

“When did you get the text?” Wolfe snapped.

“Right before she ran out of that mansion with you. I’m sorry,” the blond whined.

“Why her?” Mal asked, his gun remaining trained on the duo.

The shaky guy bit his lip and a little blood welled. “Nobody said.”

This was getting worse. Whoever wanted Dana dead might have nothing to do with the death of her friend, considering some of the stories she’d pursued through the years. Wolfe tamped down on his anger and tried to concentrate.

“Who hired you?” Mal snarled.

The shaky guy shrugged, his dreadlocks sliding over his shoulders. “Dunno. It’s common knowledge we’re available for odd jobs. Cash, instructions, and a phone came in an envelope. Right to the door. More money was supposed to come after, but it never did.”

What morons.

“There’s nothing more here,” Mal said quietly. “Where’s the phone?”

The blond pulled a phone off the filthy carpet. “It’s a burner, and I’m sure he used one, too.”

Wolfe grabbed up the duffel. “I’m taking it all—even the drugs.” He’d pour them down the toilet. Wait. Wasn’t that causing animals drinking from rivers to get high? Hmm. He’d have to figure out a way to dispose of the drugs later. When the blond started crying, he felt marginally better. Not much. Who was after Dana?

He led the way outside, his mind on the pretty journalist and not his surroundings. When the first bullet pierced his flesh, he was more surprised than hurt.

The second bullet whizzed by his ear.

He dove into some dead bushes as a volley of shots splattered against the house and splintered the front window into deadly projectiles. Quiet descended, and then the sound of screeching tires echoed from a street over. He peered over the bushes to the other side of the door, clamping a hand on his bleeding arm. “Malcolm?”

His friend didn’t answer.