Johan's Joy (Heroes for Hire #22) - Dale Mayer Page 0,55
Johan then crouched on one side of the door, with Galen crouched on the other. On the count of three they burst inside.
She watched in disbelief because the door should have been locked, but it wasn’t. Or it popped underneath their efforts. They made it look like opening a child’s toy. They went in, and there was absolute silence.
She stared at Kai and whispered, “Is it good or bad?”
Her face was grim, but she answered, “It’s too early to tell.”
Tyson stepped up, so that he stood in front of both women, and whispered, “They haven’t called out all clear,” he said, “so that’s not a good sign.”
Joy nodded slowly. “Right. In other words, somebody could be in there, and now they’re holding Galen and Johan captive.”
Tyson looked at her, surprised, one eyebrow raised. “Or not.”
She glared at him, understanding that all these macho guys probably had skills well beyond anything she’d ever seen before, but they could still be taken down by guns with silencers or men with better skills and better weapons. She’d just seen the two guys pull handguns from somewhere, which blew her away, since she hadn’t even realized either of them were carrying. But suddenly they had guns in their hands, and they popped through the door. But then, this was Texas, and a lot of people were armed that she wasn’t really aware of. It was something she might even want to look at moving forward. She shook her head at that. “This is unbelievable,” she whispered.
“Now it confirms what we’re afraid of,” Tyson said.
She glared at his back. “I still don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Too late,” Kai said, as she reached over to touch Joy’s fingers with her own. “Trust your team.”
Joy squeezed her friend’s hand. “I do trust them,” she said, “but this is just so far beyond anything I’m used to.”
Just then they heard a shout. “Clear!”
Tyson walked forward with one of the women on either side. At the doorway they stopped. Johan stood just a few feet in, his hands on his hips, surveying her apartment.
She took a step toward the inside, then stopped and cried out in horror. “Oh, my God,” she said. “What did they do?” Every piece of furniture had been upended and trashed. The seat cushions were ripped open, so stuffing was everywhere. On the back of the couch a big gash ran from one side to the other, so there was absolutely no way to fix it beyond reupholstering the whole thing. The carpet had something spread on top of it. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it looked like it could have been eggs.
She started to walk into the living room, but Johan reached out a hand to stop her. And then she saw the rest of the room, on the opposite side of the couch. High on the wall in some red spray paint was the word bitch, and just below that was snitch, and still below that was liar, then below that was dead.
She swallowed hard, her hand going to her mouth as she stared in horror at what somebody had done to her life. She could feel the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Tears she was desperate not to shed, but there was absolutely no holding them back. They leaked slowly down her cheeks, until Johan gave a muffled exclamation and pulled her into his arms. She stood here, shaking in his grasp, as she looked around. “Why?” she whispered.
“You know why,” he said. “This is to scare you. It’s a warning.”
“The last word means it’s a threat,” Kai said, stepping up behind them. “It may have started off as a rampage or as a warning for her to get the hell out of here, but the last line has a much more ominous tone.”
Joy agreed that, if they’d left it at just calling her a liar, she wouldn’t have considered her life so much in danger, but, by adding dead, that upped the ante completely. She didn’t even know how to react, what to say, or what to think. She turned to look in the direction of her bedroom. “Do I even want to go in there?”
Johan shook his head. “You won’t like anything about it,” he said. “It’s like this, only worse.”
She reached up, grabbed his shirt, and squeezed it as hard as she could while he just held her close. “How could it be any worse?”