Shades of Gray (KGI #6)(75)

“Basically yeah. I changed hotels every few days. I was always worried Brumley would find me, especially after I made the first kill and left my signature so to speak. He’s not dumb. He had to have known it was me. Especially when his right-hand man showed up the night he raped me with a knife wound to his back, reporting that I’d escaped.”

Cole let out a string of curses. “I don’t know what pisses me off more. That you got involved in this at all or that you didn’t trust me or your team enough to let us in on what was going down.”

“Would you drag the team into a personal vendetta, Cole? Really? If you were planning to murder someone, would you really ask the team to back you up? Because no matter how you color it, I’m killing these men in cold blood. It’s not self-defense anymore. I hunted them down and I cut them to ribbons before killing them.”

He went silent, and she knew she’d made her point.

“I hate that you’re even involved now. I hate that Steele and the others got involved. It tarnishes KGI as a whole. What happens when Resnick gets wind of this shit? And you can’t tell me he won’t. The man knows goddamn everything. I bet the president is even afraid of pissing that man off because he knows so much.”

He put a finger to her lips. “Shut up. It doesn’t matter what you want or don’t want at this point, because we’re involved. There’s no going back now. And we aren’t leaving you to do this alone, so just shut the f**k up and deal with it.”

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him when her laptop beeped, signaling an incoming email.

She scrambled off the bed and hurried to the desk. Her breath caught when she saw Katia’s response sitting in her inbox.

Must meet with you right away. Important. Come alone.

“This is it,” she said to Cole. “She wants to meet right away. Says it’s important and to come alone.”

“Fuck that,” Cole snarled.

P.J. held up her hand. “Of course I’m not going alone. If I was, I wouldn’t have bothered to bring you along, so keep your underwear on.”

He looked slightly mollified, but he rolled out of bed, stuffed the larger handgun in his shoulder holster, slid the smaller pistol in his ankle holster and then loaded a magazine into the assault rifle.

P.J. armed herself but placed her rifle into a duffel bag and then reached for Cole’s so they could get out of the hotel without their weapons being seen.

“You drive,” she directed as she threw the bag into the backseat. “I want you to park a block away from Katia’s apartment. I’ll go in, see what she has to say and then be right back out. I’ll need you to watch the building.”

His lips tightened but he didn’t argue.

They drove across town, gradually getting into an area that had deteriorated over the years. Many of the buildings were in disrepair and most of the businesses had moved closer to the city center.

Katia’s apartment was actually a nice place. On the inside. The outside was a crumbling building with graffiti on the walls and iron bars covering each of the windows.

She had told P.J. that the rent was next to nothing, and with the money she pulled in from servicing her wealthy clients, she could afford to make the inside a palace.

After instructing Cole where to park, P.J. armed herself and opened the passenger door.

“Give me half an hour. I don’t know what all she has to say, but if I’m not out by then, come in after me.”

“I’ll give you twenty,” Cole said bluntly. “She can’t have that much to say. I don’t like this place. I don’t like this whole situation. My gut is screaming like a motherf*cker.”

“Okay, twenty,” P.J. agreed.

She wouldn’t admit it, but her gut was doing its own bit of bitching. She was uneasy about this whole thing.

She got out, closed the door and hurried toward the entrance to the building. She wasted five minutes waiting for the service elevator to grind to a halt on the ground floor. She rode it to the sixth floor and got off, making a beeline for the end of the hall where Katia’s apartment was.

She knocked softly, and the door squeaked open an inch the minute P.J. knocked.

P.J. made a grab for her handgun and carefully pushed the door open so she could see inside.

“Katia?” she called softly. “It’s P.J. You here?”

She stepped inside, gun up and pointed as she swept the living room. The television was on. Some European soap opera. She entered the kitchen and found nothing out of order so she headed for the bedroom.

The door was ajar and P.J. nudged it open with her toe, staying back before swinging around, gun aimed inside.

Katia was lying on the bed in a pool of blood.

Son of a bitch!

P.J. raced over, reaching for Katia’s neck to try to find a pulse, but drew up when she saw the macabre sight before her.

The woman was naked, with slashes to the insides of her thighs, under her br**sts and one down her midline.

Her throat was so horribly slashed that but for a small piece of flesh at her nape, she’d been all but beheaded.

P.J. bent over, nausea so overwhelming that she had to suck in breath after breath through her nose to keep from emptying her stomach.

On the desk, her laptop was open to P.J.’s last email.

P.J. touched a finger to Katia’s arm to find it cold and stiff. She’d been dead for a lot longer than when P.J. had received that last email.