Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(122)

“Yes. I am,” she said grimly.

“It’s weird. I just turned on my phone for one second to call the pastry place to send us some cupcakes, and the same second, boom, you call me. You must be, like, psychic.”

“No, just desperate,” she snapped. “Look, Josh, I’ve been calling all morning. I’ve been out of my mind, because Carrie—”

“Don’t worry,” Josh wheedled. “Everything’s great. I’ve never been so great in my life. Oh, hey. That’s a great idea—hold on a sec—” There was a murmur and Josh came back on. “Nadia says, why don’t you just come over? Come have brunch with us or lunch or whatever! See for yourself how special she is. She really wants to meet you. I told her how you basically raised me and Carrie, and she said that when her mom died, she and her little sister in Moldova were just like—”

“Joshie, I can’t,” she said. “I’m in trouble, and I need to—”

“Sure you can! Tell me all about it here. I’ll text you the address. Come over. I’m turning off my phone. I really want you to come. OK?”

“Josh, please, I—”

Click. The connection broke. Becca stared at the phone in dismay. She tried the number again. Sure enough, he really had turned off his phone. She could have shrieked in frustration.

She already disliked this seductress Nadia. Whoever the hell she was, she had to come out of the woodwork right now, at the worst possible time, and turn Josh’s brain to mush.

Which was kind of unfair, considering her own whirlwind romance, and the distinctly mushlike state of her own silly brain.

Still. God help them all. She tried Carrie’s number. Still off. She wished she’d mentioned that to Josh before he turned his phone off.

Her phone chirped. Message. She checked it.

855 Gavin St. Garden Apt. C u there!

Argh. The only thing to do was just go there and jerk on the lovesick little punk’s ear in person. If she could get him alone without Nadia, the perfect shining angel, in attendance, she’d just lay out the whole damn story for him. The real deal. Uncensored.

Maybe it would scare some sense into him. She could only hope.

She leaned forward to get the cabbie’s attention. “Excuse me. You have to take me to another address. Do you know Gavin Street?”



Nick wasn’t sure why he was driving by Richard Mathes’s house. It didn’t make sense to tip the guy off to being observed, wiping out any chance of following him. But planting a beacon on Mathes’s car without being seen, now that was a risk that could yield big benefits.

He was startled by how rattled he’d been from finding Diana Evans’s body, although stuff like that tended to take him by surprise long after the fact. He’d be thinking he was fine, as cool as a popsicle, and then he found out he couldn’t sleep for a month.

Evans’s murder was definitely Zhoglo’s work, but he was sure this prick Mathes had something to do with it.

He drove by the house. Hell of a place. He guessed that famous heart surgeons had to make a pretty decent buck, but this place looked like more than a pretty decent buck house.

This place looked like a bottomless bank account house.

It was a sprawling white mansion. A three-story, turn-of-the-century Victorian, with lace and frills, a widow’s walk, pointy towers, turrets and beveled bay windows. More like a cake than a house. A big, perfectly landscaped flowering garden. A huge lawn, dotted with majestic, century-old trees.

He circled around the big loop and took another look. The black BMW with the plates that Davy had detailed for him was parked in the driveway, not inside the enclosed garage. Nick took that as a written invitation from fate to go plant a discreet slap-on beacon bug. Five days of battery juice to monitor the good doctor with X-Ray Specs. Yeah.

Anybody stopped him—well, he didn’t think he could pass for a Jehovah’s Witness or a vaccum cleaner salesman, but f*ck it. He’d improvise. He was good at it. In fact, a lot of the time, his seat-of-the-pants solutions to problems were ultimately better than when he slapped his brains around for an advance plan.

He parked his truck a discreet distance away and strolled through the pricey neighborhood. Dappled sun filtered through the moving leaves, making a constant green shadow-show on the ground. The ground was still fragrant and humid from the rainstorm the night before. It was beautiful…birds twittering, wind rustling.

And all he could see was that naked woman on the floor, eyes bugged out, the marks of hands clutching her throat. The image was burned into his retinas.

The long driveway stretched and curved before him. Here went nothing. He peeled the protective film off the powerful rubber cement that backed the beacon as he walked by the car, and bent as if checking his shoe. Slipped that sucker right under the bumper.

He straightened up, hands in pockets, and looked at the house.

Mathes was home. He should beat hell out of here. It made no sense to get closer now that he’d tagged the car. He risked tipping the guy off, losing his link to whatever project Zhoglo had planned.

And yet, he kept drifting closer, as if the place pulled him. He gazed up at the big, ornate porch, Diana’s pale, twisted body still superimposed in his mind over the image of the handsome old house.

He was gathering the presence of mind to turn away and leave when the door opened. Adrenaline jolted through him.