Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,11

by the time I saw the traffic cam view, whoever shot Kyle had gone. I just — I just looked at the scene. At the smoking ruins of his car. At his torso, half out of the upside-down driver’s seat window. He’d been trying to crawl out when —”

Her voice cracked and she looked away, willing the tears back. Thinking of Kyle, who’d survived a bad car crash only to be shot while trying to crawl away.

And all because of her. Because of something in her past clawing its way into the now.

Emotion welled up, unstoppable. It took her a moment to be able to speak. Luke’s big hand tightened around hers.

She drew in a deep breath, let it go. “Something caught fire. The car didn’t explode like in the movies, but it did start to burn. Then suddenly EMTs showed up and then the police. No sound of sirens, of course.”

Another terrible memory. Kyle half-in, half-out of the vehicle, being pulled all the way out, the bullet wound in the head horribly visible, a black hole. Blood pooling in a black puddle around his head. The police stretching yellow tape — which showed up light gray in the black and white video — around the car. The EMTs loading poor Kyle onto a gurney, then into the ambulance and driving away.

“And then?” Luke asked, after she fell silent, memories like nails driven into her heart.

“Then I followed them on traffic cams. I wanted to follow where they were taking him. I thought I’d go where they took him, to pay my respects to him.” She glanced at him. His jaw had tightened even more. You could cut glass with it. “What?”

“Bad move.”

She sighed. Yeah, it would have been a bad move.

“You’re right, it would have been a terrible move, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I was following the traffic cams when my cellphone pinged.”

“Some alert you’d set up?”

She nodded. “The security system in the building. From the lobby.” He’d immediately understood. It had taken her precious seconds to understand the sequence of events. Kyle talking to her on his cell, then the alert. She’d been slow all along the way in a deadly game where catching up after the fact meant death. Where speed meant life.

“Four men walked into the lobby with ski masks on. My building has a doorman, Geraldo. He doesn’t man the front desk much but he’s pretty good about paying attention from a small room behind the front desk. There are monitors covering the grounds, the lobby and the corridors. He must have pressed an alarm button. I watched him come out from the small room and one of the men just —”

Her voice went hoarse. She closed her eyes and saw the scene inside her eyelids. She’d never forget it, the casual brutal killing, the utter shock and horror of it. She opened her eyes to find Luke watching her, head tilted slightly. Showing no surprise at all at her next words.

“They — they were walking fast, like … marching, almost synchronized. As they walked by the front desk, Geraldo came out from the back room. One of the men just lifted his arm. He was holding a gun and to my shame I only noticed then that they were all armed. He lifted his arm straight out and shot Geraldo in the head. Without even aiming. Just put his arm up, shot Geraldo, put his arm back down and carried on without breaking his stride. Like stepping on an ant. They filed into the elevator and I could see in the cam them punching in the 5th floor. My floor.”

Geraldo had dropped like a stone, the only evidence of him being there a slight pink mist in the air and blood spattering the door behind him.

“They traced the call.” Luke’s voice was pensive. “Came after you right away. Almost simultaneously.”

She nodded.

“Two teams. One for your friend and one for you. That’s a lot of manpower. You’d have to assume they had other teams ready.”

“Oh God.” The breath left her chest in a painfully jagged whoosh. She hadn’t put it all together. She’d just reacted to all the events, but hadn’t analyzed them. She was an analyst but not this kind. Not the real-world real-time killers-on-the-loose kind. “That’s — that’s really scary.”

He dipped his head, face sober. “It is. But you escaped.”

That iron anchor on her chest lifted, just a little. “I did. My apartment is around the corner from where the elevator opens.