you need this by?”
“Last month.”
“On it.” She replied then hung up.
“You think something is wrong?” Tianna asked, looking around as if she was afraid to touch anything.
“Don’t you?” I stepped around her and began looking. “That guard knew who you were without you having been here. The only way I’m thinking he knows is if he was really good friends with Joseph to have seen your picture or the card told him that you were Tianna Sharp. Either way, I need to know so I can figure out how that’ll affect us.”
Leaving fingerprints was at the forefront of my mind. I tried not touching much of anything. I didn’t have to touch things to be able to read if something was hinky. The exterior of the unit was immaculate. Joseph’s bedroom—not so much.
It was as if someone had been looking for something. “Tianna?”
She darted in and gasped. “Joseph was a lot of things—but messy wasn’t one of them.”
“Someone was in here.” I used the back of a knuckle to flip over a frame. “Whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it.”
“How do you know?”
“If they’d found it, they wouldn’t have come for you.” I used the foot of my boot to ease a box out of the way on the floor then hunched down to inspect the powder that spilled from it. “Criminals are not only stupid, they’re lazy. They tackle the easiest things first, then they branch out. This would have been the first place they would have looked.”
“Shit.”
I spared her a glance and returned my gaze to the box. Hex called me back then and I frowned. “Talk to me, beautiful.”
“I have bad news, worse news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is, Tianna Sharp is on the ownership for the condo. I couldn’t find a Joseph.” She reported.
“And the worse news?”
“The security at the front desk is most likely dead and you have in coming.”
“Most likely?” I questioned.
“Um—he’s slumped over his keyboard—on his face.”
Before I could react, someone knocked at the door.
“I’ll get it.” Tianna told me.
I grabbed her arm. “Don’t get that.”
“Why not? They could know Joseph.”
“And do you really want to talk to anyone who knew your brother right now?” I snapped. “No one knew we were coming here. That means, anyone knocking on that door, is trouble.”
Whoever was outside had become rather insistent. The knocking growing louder with each thud.
“Open the door.” I told her, following her toward it.
I took up my position on the other side of the door. Once she opened it, two men barged in.
As I suspected, they were too preoccupied with her to notice me. When the second man closed the door, I grabbed him, spun him around and slammed his face as hard as my two hundred pounds of muscle could manage.
When I released him, he slumped to the floor, half his face caved in and bloody.
The other man turned at the commotion and Tianna got him against the back of the head with a bronze statute that had been sitting on a small table against the wall.
He hit the floor and the statue slipped from her fingers, landing on the man’s chest.
“Um.” She squeaked as I rummaged through the men’s pockets to see if I could find anything.
Aside from the guns and phones, they had nothing—no identification, no wallets, nothing.
They did however have tattoos—and when I pushed up their sleeves, I wanted to be sick.
“Now is not the time to pick their pockets!” Tianna cried.
I ignored her outburst. But spared her a look up. She was shaking and I knew if we didn’t get out of there immediately, I’d have to carry her.
“It’s okay.” I rose and took her hand, tugging her toward me.
Before easing into the hallway, I checked both ways then lead her out into the hall and toward the stairs while holding down the number nine on my phone. It did its little song before Hex’s voice filled my ear.
“What’s up?”
“We have trouble.” I told her.
“Don’t worry,” She said. “I took care of the cameras except one. I needed eyes in the lobby. “You’re clear as of right now. Go down one more floor. I’ve activated an elevator for you.”
“You’re a doll.”
We scrambled down the stairs to the floor Hex told us and the elevator was sitting there waiting. We stumbled in and the door immediately closed. The lift carried us downward to the lobby and we darted out to find my truck.
“I have some more clean up to do, then you can send me