2 Sisters Detective Agency(76)

Then he slipped.

There must have been something on the floor. Coffee, it smelled like. His leg slid out, and Vera’s feet touched the floor for the first time in seconds—long, terrifying seconds. She felt her adversary falling, and she went with it. They crashed into the glass barrier of the mezzanine, shattering a pane of it. Vera dug her heels into the floor, pushing Jacob out over the edge as he gripped the floor with his bloody hands, glass grinding under his palms.

Vera pulled herself to her feet, stood above him. He’d been so frightening. So powerful. And now he was just an old man hanging from a ledge by his gnarled, bloody fingers. She lifted her boot and placed it gently on top of his knuckles as Jacob’s wide eyes looked up at her.





Chapter 108



Ashton and Baby hit the ground hard, the duffel bag buffering them from the nasty thorns of the bougainvillea, but there was a moment of blackness as Ashton struggled to maintain consciousness after his head smacked the ground. Ringing, white lights, muffled voices. A few seconds passed before the flaming, tearing, screaming pain. Then Baby dragged him up, Ashton’s feet pounding the pavement crookedly as they sprinted for the front of the house.

He was wide-awake now, hearing the hum of the garage door opening remotely—Baby’s doing. He sucked air into his lungs as he ducked under the rising door and then jumped into the Maserati beside her. She squeezed her eyes shut as she turned the key in the engine, then when the car started, she paused to blow out a terrified breath and threw the car into reverse.

The still-moving garage door scraped along the length of the roof as they backed out and turned into the street. The tires screeched, and the back window collapsed in a shower of glass shards as bullets zinged off the frame of the car.

“Hold on,” Baby said as she slammed her foot down on the accelerator.





Chapter 109



“Wait!” I cried.

Vera looked at me. Beneath her, Jacob Kanular gripped wildly at the edge of the mezzanine with his free hand, broken glass making a good handhold on the floor impossible. Vera’s bright blond curls were red and black in parts, matted with blood. Unknown emotions crossed her face as she took in the sight of me and Dave Summerly standing at the edge of the huge dining area.

Officers began spreading out around the room with guns drawn, aiming where the other shooter hung, one hand now wrapped roughly around a barrier pole with the other wedged beneath Vera’s boot. A female officer was slowly climbing the open stairs leading to the mezzanine, on Vera’s right, her pistol drawn, blocking the girl’s exit on that side. But there was no one yet at Vera’s back, still leaving her an escape through the hallway doors behind her. I had to delay the girl until she was completely surrounded.

Vera stood watching me, stunned, but in mere seconds the shock dissolved, and I saw her calculating how to manage the new situation unfolding around her. My presence and what it meant. I put my hands up and stepped forward cautiously.

“Vera,” I said. “I—”

“Don’t even start.” Vera held up a finger. I saw a flash of something in her. Confident and cutting and sure of herself. A woman who could see the next ten moves I planned to make and didn’t have time for any of them. “Don’t say my name like you know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

“I don’t have to know you to know what this is,” I said, gesturing to her, the man beneath her, the cops falling into position around her.

“Oh, yeah? What is this?”

“This is a terrible situation that’s going to get an awful lot worse if we’re not careful. You’ve got time to think this through. Plenty of time.”

“No, I don’t.” Vera smiled, letting her eyes dart to Detective Summerly behind me. “And I’m not going to fall for your delaying tactics. We both know the door is closing. This is good-bye.”

“Vera,” I said, “I care about what happens here.”

She laughed hard, shuffling her feet, making Jacob grind his teeth as he instinctively kept clinging to the very edge of the mezzanine.

I felt Summerly’s hand on my shoulder, pushing me forward a little. “Keep at it,” he murmured. “You’re doing great.”

“I care about you, Vera,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?” She snorted. “You met me once!”

“Nope,” I said. I shook my head, and I meant it. “I’ve met you a thousand times before. You’re every kid I’ve ever walked into a courtroom with. You’re every boy and girl I’ve sat with in interview rooms, in bedrooms, in prison cells. I’ve met so many kids like you, Vera. Kids who found themselves in the kind of mess that can’t be gotten out of. This is a pretty good mess you’ve made—don’t get me wrong. Spectacular. But you can get out of it. All you have to do is take the help I’m offering you right now.”

Vera looked down at the man hanging from the mezzanine. I saw her weight shift so that she crushed his fingers harder. Jacob yowled, grabbed at the mezzanine’s barrier pole again with his other hand, slipped in the blood, and swung gently. Vera seemed to be considering her options.

The female cop to her right was five feet closer now, her gun leveled at Vera’s head. Vera had made her decision.

I didn’t expect what happened next.