lawyer. Austin Sullivan. He was a partner at Sherman & Associates. I went to a dinner party at his house last month.” He let the sheet fall back over Sullivan’s lifeless face and asked the EMT, “Any idea about the cause of death?”
“You need an autopsy to be sure, but the back of his mouth looks reddened like he might have suffered some airway burns,” the EMT told him. “He’s pretty banged up, but they found him under some rubble in a collapsed doorway, so that might explain it. It’s possible he got knocked out and smoke inhalation killed him, but what he was doing in there in the middle of a Saturday night is anybody’s guess.”
Josiah thought he had a pretty good idea what had happened to Sullivan, but he kept to his role. “What a mess. I’ll be reading the reports on this personally.”
With that, he took his leave. The space where Anson had been parked was empty, so he texted the other man the news, then added, I think we’ve learned everything we can for the night. Looks like we’re going to have a long week. You should get some rest.
You too, if you can.
But Josiah had no intention of resting. Instead, he stopped at a twenty-four-hour grocery store to pick up various items—ready-made deli sandwiches, fruit, cheese, milk, peanut butter, bread, more coffee. A quart of milk. He was in and out in twenty minutes.
Still, it was well past dawn by the time he finally started back to the safe house.
With a little luck, the rest of Molly’s night had been much more uneventful than his had been, and hopefully she would continue to sleep for several more hours. Her body needed to rest in order to recover, and he was feeling the effects of a tense, sleepless night.
And in any case, he wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news to her that she was now a widow.
* * *
Formless black.
Then the woman with the dark, powerful eyes stood in front of her, one eyebrow raised. “Taking your own sweet time, I see.”
“I’ve had a lot to do,” Molly told her. “It’s complicated.”
The woman snorted. “It’s always complicated. Well, I’m too busy to look for you. Either you’ll show up or you won’t. But you should know time is running out.”
Why was time running out? She wanted to ask, but the formless black swept her away again until Austin’s familiar shoes and long, lean, jeans-clad legs came into view.
And she moved as fast as she could, but she wasn’t fast enough. Something hard came down on her head…
Surging awake to total blackness, she jerked to a sitting position. Bruises and contusions screamed in reaction, and a sharp headache spiked behind one eye. Disoriented and panicked, she flung out a hand to grab something to anchor herself. The back of her hand knocked into a cool, hard surface, and a heavy object crashed to the floor.
The air was cold and strange. Memory surged in. She was in the basement of a safe house. At least that was where Josiah had said she was. And she had just knocked the bedside lamp to the floor.
After the first gigantic throb of protest, her body settled into playing a symphony of pain. Maybe enough time had passed that she could take more pain medication. She slid out of bed and grunted at the effort of bending over to grope for the lamp. Her fingers collided with the round, broad base. Picking up the lamp, she felt her way to the switch.
Light blazed, causing more stabbing pain behind her eye. Her body shrieked that it needed to be horizontal again, but she forced herself to move. Screw it, she thought. I’m taking more ibuprofen whether it’s time or not.
After dragging on the sweatpants and thick athletic socks, she limped to the bathroom, shook out more pills, and swallowed them down. Then she drank three more glasses of water until her nagging thirst had eased. Only then did she push her way out of the bathroom to take stock.
Gray light filtered down the basement stairs. Dawn must not be that far away. Like the T-shirt, the sweatpants and socks were too large. She hiked the pants up at the waist and took care not to stumble in the socks.
It was creepy as hell that he’d stuck her in a basement in the middle of the country. Drawing in slow, deep breaths, she counted until the racing panic eased enough for her to