was standing in front of the door. She tried the handle. There was no give. It appeared to be double bolted.
‘Let’s try around the back,’ Ash suggested, heading for the corner.
Evie followed him, Vero bringing up the rear. They made their way down a stinking, garbage-strewn alley and found the back door also double locked. To the side of it, though, was a window, which looked just big enough for someone to squeeze through, if they contorted themselves enough.
‘Stand back,’ Ash said.
Evie ducked as he slung a brick straight through the glass.
Straight away an alarm started blaring. Evie glared at Ash.
‘Better get a move on,’ Ash said, grinning at her as he cleared the broken glass off the sill with his sleeve.
Evie paused for a fraction of a second, trying to listen for any police sirens, but the noise of the alarm was deafening. Damn it. They would only have this one shot. She placed her hands carefully on the sill and squeezed herself through the narrow frame.
She crunched down onto a carpet of broken glass and blinked through the gloom. It was a sparsely furnished office: a couple of desks were pressed against the wall on one side and opposite the door stood a filing cabinet. She crossed straight to it and yanked the top drawer. It was locked.
‘Have you got your knife?’ she yelled to Ash, who had wriggled through the window behind her.
Ash nodded, slipping it out of its sheath on his waist. Evie took it and slid it around the metal rim of the drawer, jimmying it against the lock. She felt a slight buckle of resistance and smacked down harder on the hilt with the heel of her hand until she felt the lock give.
She tossed the knife to Ash and pulled open the drawer. It was jammed with brown manila folders. Holding her breath, Evie rifled quickly through them, slowing when she got to L.
It was there. Victor’s name, stamped in black ink on the cover. With shaking fingers Evie dragged the folder free and stared at it.
Lassonde, Victor.
She was about to start rifling through it when Ash snatched it out of her hands.
‘Hey,’ Evie yelled, lunging for it, ‘give that back!’
‘Let’s just take it and get out of here,’ Ash said, tilting his head in the direction of the street. Evie opened her mouth to complain and then snapped it quickly shut. Over the noise of the alarm, she could hear a siren screaming.
She nodded and raced Ash to the window.
Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of a house in West Hollywood. Set back from the road, almost completely hidden behind a row of ornamental bushes, and with a trellis of pink roses trailing around the front door, it didn’t look like the kind of place Victor would call home, but then what did she really know about Victor, other than that he liked to wear silk ties and that he was a lying, murdering psychopath?
Ash parked a block down the street and killed the engine.
‘You two can wait here,’ Evie told Ash and Vero, throwing open her door.
‘We’re coming with you,’ Ash answered, climbing out of the car and blocking her path.
Evie glared at him and at Vero, who had come to stand beside him. She didn’t want them being dragged into this. They had no fight with Victor. But more than that, she had to admit, she wanted this revenge all to herself.
‘We’ve got your back, Evie. You’re not walking in there alone,’ Ash told her quietly.
Evie thought about arguing some more, but finally relented. Having backup probably wasn’t such a bad idea.
‘He’s all mine though,’ Evie muttered as she shouldered her way past them.
‘Understood,’ Ash answered, striding past her and around to the trunk. He popped it open and begun rifling through the contents of a duffel bag. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘You can’t go in there unarmed. Here, take this.’ He offered her a semi-automatic pistol, threw Vero a knife and pocketed some nunchuckers for himself.
Evie stared down at the gun, feeling its dull weight in the palm of her hand. Victor had once told her that guns weren’t worth fighting with – that bullets ran out and you couldn’t trust a gun to hit its target or not jam on you. He’d claimed that knives were better, that they became an extension of yourself. He had once told her that if your intention was true it would always strike home.