Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(121)

He wanted to hear Becca’s voice. He wanted comfort. He yanked out his cell, pulled her up.

Damn. Her f*cking phone was busy. He wanted to throw the worthless piece of junk right out the window.



Becca smiled as she drove off in her rental, thinking of Nick. She was a big girl. She had to learn to act like an alpha female, or he would stomp all over her.

The first stop after the bank machine was her apartment. It felt odd, as if she were visiting a place she remembered from when she was very small. The sights and smells were familiar, but it had shrunk. She was a bigger person now. The ceiling felt lower, the furniture cramped.

She poured some water on her plants, tossed her dirty clothes into the hamper, pulled out fresh clothing, as much as would fit in the suitcase. She tried to think of anything she might conceivably need in the next couple of weeks, and tossed it higgledy-piggledy into the bag.

She hauled it out into the front room, feeling vaguely anxious and twitchy. Goaded by some inner urge to move, move, move.

She stopped in the living room and tried to breathe the jittery feeling down, but as she looked around, her back prickled coldly.

She looked around again. What was it? Something wasn’t the way she’d left it. She never pushed the phone to the exact middle of the table. She never propped the pillows in that particular way.

Someone had been here. Someone had touched her stuff. She felt an ice-cold churning, wonky and unstable in her lower body. She stared around, wondering if this was just stress, psyching her out. Making her nuts. And then her eyes focused on the stuffed animals on the shelf.

Bingo.

She always had Carrie’s threadbare pink bunny with the long arms embracing Josh’s tortoise on one side, and Carrie’s Goldilocks bear on the other. But the bunny was flopped forward, one long pink ear draped across the bear’s lap. Arms out, in dangling supplication.

She reached up, pulled the animals down. Her blood ran cold.

A small, squat black video camera sat there, its gleaming round eye regarding her coldly.

Her mind whirled. Stomach, too. The Spider had found her. He knew where she was, and who. Which meant that he knew about Josh and Carrie, too. She wanted to throw up. She didn’t have time. She was being watched. Right now, as she stared up with horrified eyes.

She swallowed hard. Lifted her hand. Gave the camera the finger.

And with that act of empty defiance, she pulled the camera down and shoved it into the kitchen garbage, with the tinfoil and the coffee grounds. The garbage was ripe and nasty after three days of neglect.





And now? She stepped out onto the porch with her suitcase and ran her eye up and down the street. Would she be shot or abducted? Or simply followed? She tried to memorize every make and color of car in sight as she hauled her suitcase down the stairs. Her legs shook beneath her.

No one appeared to follow once she turned onto the big street, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. It meant she’d been fooled. She’d been fooled before. She tried Josh again, then Carrie. Still nothing.

She was unnerved, shaking, on the verge of tears as she drove. She wanted to call Nick, but he would just go bananas on her, and at this point, there was nothing he could do. She might as well proceed with her day’s agenda. Ditch that damned rental before it bled her dry.

She called a cab as soon as she started in on the paperwork at the rental place, and told it to meet her at a nearby intersection that was a couple of blocks the wrong way down a one-way street. She hoped that was a crafty enough evasion technique to fool seasoned mobsters, as she puffed down the sidewalk, dragging her suitcase behind her.

She finally managed to breathe once she’d slid into the back of the cab and slumped down out of sight in the seat. She dragged out her phone again and pulled up Josh’s number.

Wonder of wonders. It was ringing. “Hello? Becca?”

“Josh! You scared me to death! Where the hell have you been?”

“Oh, well…” His voice trailed off. “I, um, I met someone.”

His evasiveness in the face of her own stark fear made her furious. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Where the hell are you?”

“I’m at my new apartment,” Josh said cheerfully. “I’m moving in with Nadia.”

“Nadia? Who the hell is Nadia?” Her voice cracked.

“Calm down, Becca. Nadia’s wonderful. I met her a couple days ago, and we’ve been together twenty-four-seven ever since, and now she’s invited me to move in with her. Todd can have my room in the HellHole, since he’s been sleeping on the downstairs couch for three months anyhow, and I’ll move in here and help Nadia with the rent on this place. I can work extra shifts at the Electronics Barn to cover—”

“Moving in with her? You just met this girl when?”

She was being a hysterical harpy, which never worked with Josh, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was too freaked out, too scared.

“Night before yesterday. But you’ve got to understand, Becca. She’s amazing. She’s sweet, and smart, and she’s so amazingly beautiful, I just can’t believe that she—hey! Stop that, Nadia. No, it is true! No, really, stop…that tickles…oh, shit…”

The voices on the other end of the line degenerated into a goofy, giggling scuffle, and Becca waited, teeth clenched, for them to sort it out and get themselves under control. “Becca?” Josh’s voice came back, raw with laughter. “You still there?”