Narrow Escape Page 11

  “I don’t know. The report doesn’t say when he shot the man. It could have been after you hid behind the Taurus.”

  “But the man was behind the Trans Am?”

  “Yes. I don’t know exactly where you were positioned behind the Trans Am—”

  “There was only one spot shielding me from the gang members, and that was behind the rear bumper. The gang members were mostly near the front of the shop.”

  “Mark shot the man near the back left side of the car. The report said he was hit on the dead center of his heart.”

  Nathan’s movements became quicker, more jerky. “I don’t remember seeing anyone. But it could be I just didn’t notice.”

  She wet her lips. “So it’s possible Mark shot in your direction because he was aiming for the gang member behind you.”

  Nathan stopped pacing, and in a voice she could barely hear, he breathed, “He saved my life.”

  The silence between them stretched taut. Nathan stood looking blindly out the living room window. She wished he’d sit down, she wasn’t sure how his leg felt after his pacing.

  He abruptly turned to her, eyes burning again. “We have to find that safe deposit key. We can’t afford to wait three weeks.”

  His shift in emotions startled her, but only briefly. “Internal Affairs didn’t find it,” she stated.

  “So it wouldn’t be in any of his things. But it would have to be somewhere he could access it easily.”

  “The storage unit?”

  “Where in the storage unit?” he asked.

  She cast her mind over all the furniture and boxes. “It could be anywhere.”

  “No, if it’s true that your family shares that unit, he’d have put it somewhere none of your family members would stumble over it.”

  He had a point. “Everything that was his we turned over to IA. There’s nothing in that storage unit that they haven’t seen except that shoe box of mail that came after IA took everything.”

  “Would he have hidden the key in something belonging to your parents?”

  “If he did and Dad or Mom found it, they would have asked him about it.”

  “Mark would have wanted to avoid that.” Nathan went back to rubbing his palm over his broad forehead, deep in thought. “Where would I hide a key?”

  In something IA hadn’t seen...someplace the family wouldn’t accidentally stumble over it... “Maybe it wasn’t hidden,” she said slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it was in plain sight.” Had he really hidden it there? “Two or three Sundays a month, our extended family would gather at Aunt Chichi’s house for potluck dinner. As long as I can remember, she’s had a glass fishbowl on the hallway table filled with orphaned keys that belonged to unknown locks. Not just her family’s keys—the rest of us started throwing our mystery keys in there, too.”

  “I agree it would be a good hiding place, but what makes you think Mark would put his key there?”

  “Once, I had to leave the dinner because I had to get up early for work the next morning, but Mark hid my car key in the bowl. It took me forever to find it because it was buried under the other keys.” She smiled remembering his figure, doubled up with laughter as she tore through the house, upending couch cushions and threatening to kill him. “When I finally found them, he said that the bowl was the perfect place to hide keys.”

  Nathan frowned slightly. “But the bowl of keys is in your aunt’s house, not yours. So he’d have to go to her house to get his safe deposit key.”

  “But we had dinner at her house several times a month because she had room for all of us. It’s a family thing—we’re always gathering to eat.”

  “Would the gang know she’s your aunt? Would they talk to her or—”

  “Aunt Chichi died a year after Mark’s death. All her things, including the key bowl, were stuck in storage.”

  Light dawned in his eyes. “In your aunt Desiree’s storage unit. Since it’s registered under her name, no one but family members know you’re sharing the unit.”

  Arissa shrugged. “One of my ex-boyfriends knew, because he went with me to the storage unit once when I needed to get some filed papers for our taxes, but according to Facebook, he’s in Singapore now.”

  Nathan studied her for a long moment. “How are you feeling?”

  “What?”

  “Are you up for traveling to Los Angeles right now? Would Charity be able to sleep in the car?”

  “Now?” She looked at the clock, which said three in the afternoon. “We’ll be in L.A. around ten o’clock at night.”

  “It’s a twenty-four-hour-access storage facility. I remember seeing that the last time we went.”

  “But where would we stay for the night in L.A.?”

  “We’d drive back here. We can get back before dawn.”

  “Are you really willing to stay up so long and drive?” She didn’t want to mention his leg, but she was also worried about how he was holding up under these extended hours and constant strain.

  He looked at her with a long-suffering expression, as if he knew what she was thinking. “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

  “Why not wait until tomorrow morning?”

  “Because.” He stopped pacing and stood in front of her, his hands on her shoulders. “I think the answer to why the gang is after you is in that safe deposit box.”

  EIGHT

  It had been a long drive, but the urgency sizzling in Nathan’s gut kept him alert. He’d called in sick to work today, and he didn’t need to go in tomorrow, but he still wanted answers sooner than later. And if he had to trek to Los Angeles and back twice in two days, then that’s what he was willing to do.

  Besides, he needed to do something, or his thoughts would overwhelm him. Arissa’s observation about the gang member behind the Trans Am had shaken him badly. He’d seen Mark’s face and the gun pointing at him so often in his nightmares that it felt like the image had imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

  Mark had looked determined. Not angry, not guilty, not reckless. Then he’d fired—and possibly shot a gang member to save Nathan’s life.

  Nathan tried to remember now what Mark had looked like when Nathan pointed his own gun at his partner. Had he been surprised? Accepting? Resentful? Nathan simply couldn’t remember.

  He had always known that not shooting Mark had been the right thing to do. A gang member’s bullet had hit Mark in the leg, severing his femoral artery so that he bled to death while Nathan lay a few yards away, nearly wild with pain from his shattered thigh.

  Somehow knowing that Mark might have saved his life made Nathan’s feelings about that day more complicated. Mark was a mole. Mark was his partner. Mark sold out his fellow cops. Mark protected him.

  His friend’s sister sat a few inches away, her body twisted around as she spoke to Charity in the backseat, but she might as well be miles away from him. He had held her and comforted her not just because she needed someone, but also because he wanted to be the one there for her. Yet he’d been able to maintain control over his feelings—until she’d kissed him.

  Her kiss had surprised him, and he hadn’t been able to resist her, but when he’d felt her cheek wet with that tear, something inside him jolted back to reality.

  She deserved better than a broken man. He’d never be able to carry her over a threshold. He’d never be able to run with Charity. He still woke up shouting from the nightmares.

  He was too wounded physically and emotionally to give her what she would need.

  He maneuvered through the traffic of L.A., busy even this late at night. As he neared the storage facility, he kept his eyes open for any surveillance—cars with men waiting inside, ominous vans parked alongside the street. He didn’t see anything.

  Arissa took out the prepaid c
ell phone he’d given to her. “I know what will help.” She dialed. “Hi, Tito, it’s Arissa...We’re fine. Have you heard anything? No? Good. I’m calling about Aunt Chichi’s key bowl, remember that? You and your mom were the ones who packed Aunty’s house when she died. Do you remember where you stowed it?”

  He couldn’t see her face very clearly in the darkness, except for when a passing streetlamp flickered onto her, but he could see the confused tilt of her head.

  “Say that again?” Arissa nodded slowly, but not very confidently. “Well, maybe I’ll just look through the boxes in that corner and I’ll get lucky.... No, I don’t want you to come to the unit if you’re busy.... Well, if you’re sure...” She said goodbye and disconnected the call. “My cousin Tito said he’d meet us at the storage unit in twenty minutes to help us find the key bowl. He wasn’t entirely sure where his mom put it when they packed up Aunty Chichi’s house.”

  Nathan turned into the driveway for the storage facility. “Maybe we’ll find it before he gets here.”

  The facility was dark despite the floodlights spaced out in intervals along the walls of the units. Nathan parked where he had before and Arissa carried a sleeping Charity toward the building where her aunt’s storage unit was. They crossed under a few floodlights to get to the door, which he opened with her storage unit key. As he fumbled with the door lock, a car engine nearby suddenly came to life.

  Nathan’s body tensed as if an electrical current had zinged through it, but the small Honda Accord immediately drove away from them, heading out of the facility to the sound of a stereo system blasting some hip-hop music with overly loud bass beats.

  Nathan got the door unlocked and they headed inside toward Arissa’s family’s storage unit.

  The building seemed eerier in the darkness, although since there were no windows it shouldn’t look any different from when they had visited during the day. He unlocked the storage unit door and turned on the lights.

  “Tito said that Aunt Chichi’s boxes are near my parents’ in the far corner.” Arissa nodded toward the back of the storage unit. “I wonder if the dolls I took for Charity last time were from her house? They could have belonged to my cousin.”

  She lay Charity on a nearby couch and covered her with Nathan’s jacket. Then the two of them started looking through the designated boxes.

  They sifted briefly through some filled with clothes, but since Arissa knew the key bowl, filled with keys, would take up a large space and be very heavy, they didn’t spend too much time on those boxes. Nathan thought they’d found it when he dragged out an extremely heavy one, but it ended up being full of her aunt’s late husband’s power tools.

  They looked inside a box that appeared to be full of desk accessories, and Arissa shook her head. Nathan was about to move it when he noticed how heavy it was—more than he’d expect for a box with staplers, pens and a broken desk clock. He began pawing through it.

  There. Hidden under a blotter that had been thrown on top was a heavy glass fishbowl. There were other things inside it—tennis balls, paper clips, erasers and random things that had probably fallen inside—but the edges of various keys could be seen underneath.

  “I can’t believe you found it so fast.” Arissa reached in and hefted out the fishbowl. She tossed the extraneous objects and began scooping handfuls of keys.

  Nathan found an empty basket and they threw the rejects in there after selecting any for the distinctive shape of a safe deposit key. “How in the world would Mark have found his key in all this?” Nathan dropped into the plant holder some tiny keys that looked like they belonged to padlocks.

  Arissa stopped and stared hard at the bowl. “You’re right. It’s like when he hid my car keys.” She abandoned the handful of keys she held and instead started sifting through the keys left in the bowl, her hand diving deeper until it seemed to be searching the bottom. “Got it!” She pulled from the sea of keys a keychain with a small circular fob that had the name and logo of Arissa’s airline. “So that’s where that keychain went. But what’s this for?”

  She held up the keychain and separated the two keys on the metal circle. One was obviously a safe deposit key, but the other reminded Nathan of his house key. “It looks like a dead-bolt key or a doorknob key.”

  “Did he have an apartment in Sonoma too?” Arissa frowned at the key. “I’m surprised he was able to keep that from the gang.”

  “They don’t do background checks. Even if he took out an apartment in his name—which I doubt he did, he probably paid cash—the gang wouldn’t have investigated deep enough to find out.”

  “If he paid cash for an apartment, it’s probably been rented out again by now when he didn’t pay rent.” Arissa sighed. “Anything he had in the apartment would have been tossed out.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Nathan suddenly noticed the sound in the distance of a deep, overly loud stereo bass. It sounded familiar to the Honda Accord that had driven out of the facility parking lot, even though it played a different song. But then the sound abruptly stopped.

  He was being paranoid. Still, they should get out of here now. “I’ll put these boxes back. You call your cousin to let him know.” Nathan pocketed the key chain.

  “Aunty Rissa?” Charity said sleepily from the couch. She opened her eyes and blinked in confusion and fear at the strange surroundings. Arissa went to her, soothing her.

  As Nathan slid the last box into place on the stack, they suddenly heard the door to the storage unit open.

  They were expecting her cousin, but now Nathan realized they should have made sure it was locked. Arissa froze, and Nathan strained to listen.

  The door didn’t open with the breezy sound of Tito walking into his family’s storage unit. The careful click of the doorknob, the soft creak of the hinges, made Nathan’s shoulders tense. He waved to Arissa to get Charity away from the couch and behind some stacks of boxes. He eased his gun out of his holster.

  His senses expanded, and he heard the soft swish of a shoe on the concrete floor, trying hard to be silent. If it were Tito, he would have expected the man to call out to them, but this intruder said nothing.

  Nathan crept behind a dresser so he could peek toward the door, but the intruder had slipped down another row of space between furniture and boxes and he couldn’t see him. Where would he reappear? Nathan scanned the storage unit. They were trapped. If bullets started flying, someone was going to be hurt.

  And if there was one intruder, there was guaranteed to be more outside the storage unit and stationed beside Nathan’s car.

  Adrenaline galloped through his body, dulling the ache in his thigh. He couldn’t fail Arissa and Charity. He had to protect them.

  He squinted in the shadows cast by the fluorescent lights above and saw movement through the legs of a chair upended on top of another one.

  Nathan saw the dark eyes of the other man over the top of a file cabinet at the same moment he spotted Nathan. He fired just as Nathan ducked, and the sound of the shot in the enclosed space deafened him so that he almost didn’t hear the bullet thunking into the wooden dresser.

  Charity screamed and began to cry.

  Then a second man’s voice said something angrily in Filipino.

  Nathan’s hand tightened around his gun. Charity’s crying would draw the men right to her—the gang members might shoot in the general direction and possibly hit someone.

  But the man didn’t shoot, maybe because of what the other man said to him. And Nathan remembered that they’d kidnapped Arissa before, meaning they needed her alive. Not riddled with bullet holes.

  He searched but couldn’t find the man who’d fired. He couldn’t see the second man, either, but they would both be heading toward Arissa and Charity. Nathan holstered his gun, then eased himself around the dresser and scooted between two stacks of boxes. Since he
knew where they were heading, he could circle around behind them and tackle at least one of them, hopefully take him out quickly before dealing with the second man.

  He slipped around a ratty recliner and under a dining room table before spotting one man creeping toward the corner of a stack of boxes. Charity continued to cry although he heard Arissa trying to shush the girl. Then he heard a blip, indicating Arissa’s cell phone had gotten a text message.

  The man would be onto Arissa in a moment.

  Nathan sprang at him.

  They both crashed into a bookshelf filled with small boxes. The shelf tilted backward but didn’t hit the floor because of the items behind it. The heavy boxes on the shelves grazed Nathan’s limbs as they slipped sideways and fell, hampering him from getting more than a few punches to the man’s torso.

  The second man called out, but he was some distance away. Nathan had to take this first guy out fast.

  The Filipino man was stocky, a little taller than Mark had been, and a lot faster. His fist came out of nowhere and Nathan rolled with the punch to lessen the impact on his cheek, but pain still exploded in stars in front of his eyes. Nathan swung out blindly and his fist grazed some body part.

  The man grabbed Nathan and rolled so that they were off the tilted bookshelf and on the floor, but he caught sight of Nathan’s face...and then a smirk flashed over his mouth.

  The man let go of Nathan’s shirtfront and landed two hard, swift punches to his injured thigh.

  The blows felt like a ton of bricks slamming into his bone in rapid succession. Nathan cried out, his body already twisted in pain, helpless. He tried to block out the pain, to get up. He had to protect them...

  The man approached Arissa, and she screamed and swung the fishbowl at the man. It was too awkwardly sized for her to aim well and it only glanced across his temple. He shook his head and then slapped her across the face.

  Arissa! Nathan crawled toward them, his leg useless and trembling.

  She had fallen to her knees with the blow, and he heard the clatter of her cell phone dropping to the floor. Charity, standing beside her, screamed in a terrified, high-pitched wail, her tiny arms reaching around her aunt.