Читать книгу House Of Secrets - Tracy Montoya - Страница 9

Twenty-five years ago

When the glass of her basement window shattered late one Sunday night, Daniela Lopez’s face barely registered surprise. Mainly because she didn’t feel any.

Daniela sat in the dark on the unforgiving hardwood staircase inside her Victorian home, only her eyes moving as they scanned the front door. Then the foyer. Then the inky blackness of her front hallway.

Silence.

Her thumb clicked off the safety of her off-duty Smith & Wesson—the only gun she had left after taking an extended leave of absence from work. At least she could be grateful they hadn’t sent a real professional after her. The spectacular crash the intruder had made upon entering her house gave her a small bit of comfort. Maybe she’d actually survive the night. Maybe buy herself enough time to put the last piece of the puzzle in place, to put the ones who’d murdered her husband behind bars forever. To keep the rest of her family safe.

God, she missed them. She wanted to smell the sweet baby softness of Sabrina’s hair. She wanted to scoop up both her twin boys, Patricio and Daniel, and read that ridiculous Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel book to them for the hundredth time. And, despite the fact that ten-year-old José Javier thought he was a man already, she would have held him close and sang him to sleep had he only been there beside her.

But her children were safe at her friend Jasmine’s house. And she was here. Alone in the dark.

Creak.

The unmistakable sound of pressure on the loose board at the foot of the basement stairs told her she didn’t have long to wait. She trained her gun on the doorway to the kitchen.

A few more days. Just give me a few more days. She was so close to finding out who’d ripped her family apart as if they were a chain of paper dolls. She could feel it.

She heard a soft footfall on the kitchen linoleum.

And stay away from my children, she prayed silently.

“Mama?”

She nearly dropped her gun when the tiny, boyish voice called out to her. “José?” Daniela sprang off the staircase and vaulted down the stairs to the hallway. Sure enough, there stood her oldest son, bundled in a Lakers jacket two sizes too large for him. His big, guilty eyes stared up at her under the too-long bangs of his shaggy black hair. Light from the streetlamps filtered through the slats of the window blinds, illuminating the hammer José clenched in his right fist. No doubt it was the same hammer that had smashed through glass moments before.

“Nene, what are you doing here?” she asked gently, switching on the safety of her gun. She pulled up the back of the gray LAPD T-shirt she was wearing and stuffed the Smith & Wesson in the back of her jeans.

“I don’t like you all alone here, Mama.” He crossed his arms, hammer and all, and braced his feet wide apart, his dark brown eyes all defiance. Her little man. “Not after what happened to Papi.”

Daniela’s heart clenched at the mention of her children’s father. “Corazon, I need you to go back to Jasmine’s. It’s not safe for you here.” She tugged him into the living room, where an inexpensive cordless phone lay on the end table near the terrible orange-flowered sofa the boys had picked out for her last birthday. “I’m going to call—”

“No, Mama. I’m staying here with you.”

So like his father, in every good way. Bracing her hands on José’s narrow shoulders, Daniela bent down to look her son in the eye. “Sweetheart, I need you to do something for me,” she said. “I need you to go back to Jasmine’s and watch over Sabrina, Patricio and Daniel.” His stout little form remained rigid. “I don’t like being apart from you, either,” she continued, “but I have to find out what happened to your daddy. And I’ll only be able to do it if I know you’re protecting your brothers and your sister.”

He glared fiercely at her, then his lower lip trembled as he threw his small arms around her waist. “I miss you, Mama.”

She wrapped one arm around him while pulling the gun out of her waistband with the other to keep it away from his clutching fingers. She set the weapon on the table near the phone and bent to hold her son.

And then she heard the faintest noise from the curving staircase in the front foyer. The kind of noise that sounded like something coming from the outside or something you’d imagined.

They hadn’t sent an amateur after all.

She squeezed José by the shoulders, moving him away from her body. With her finger to her lips, she guided him around the awful sofa, over to the far wall, her fingers fumbling for the small level she knew was there. That was the thing about old Victorian houses—lots of drafty alcoves, dark places, secret corners where people could hide. And one of them lay just beneath her scrabbling fingertips.

Just big enough for one small boy.

José opened his mouth to say something to her, but she placed her fingers over his lips, then gestured for him to crawl inside the opening she’d uncovered. He shook his head.

Her cop-sense told her someone had moved into the hallway behind them.

“Please, sweetheart,” she whispered. He must have heard the urgency in her voice, because he quashed his stubborn streak and moved.

“Don’t say a word, my angel,” she whispered as she helped José tuck himself inside. “Not until the police come.”

Another footstep, this one closer.

“Turn your head, baby,” Daniela whispered at the wall behind which her son lay. “Close your eyes.” José could escape when the time came. Now all she needed was a miracle.

The softest exhale came from the doorway.

Daniela turned, stretching her arms out to make herself large enough to protect her boy. Time slowed to a crawl, measured in her own thundering heartbeats. Her head swiveled toward the doorway. A shadow moved into her line of vision. She threw her weight to the side. The man before her raised his arm and pointed at her pounding heart. Her body arced toward the end table. For a few exhilarating seconds, she was flying, her hand nearly closing on the gun that lay on the end table.

She wasn’t fast enough.