Narrow Escape Read online

  “Did you transfer from another city?”

  Joseph smiled. “Los Angeles, actually.”

  Nathan couldn’t suppress his surprise. “Where?”

  “Atwater Village.”

  “I was in Glassell Park.”

  Joseph’s eyebrows rose. “We were near neighbors. I was there for two years, then moved up here to Sonoma.”

  So he was in Atwater during the time Nathan had been recovering in Sonoma. “Why’d you move here?”

  Joseph’s eyes slid away for a moment, then back to him. “Needed a change of pace.” His voice had a more clipped quality than before.

  Was Nathan being paranoid? He shook it off. “How do you like it here?”

  “Less gunshots.” Joseph chuckled.

  Detective Carter and Charlie greeted Nathan’s parents as they approached with Arissa, and he heard the young officer ask, “Where will you be going, Mrs. Fischer?”

  Nathan immediately turned toward them, but his mom caught his eye and said, “Sorry, Charlie, but Nathan said I shouldn’t say.”

  “Oh, I totally understand.” Charlie nodded.

  Detective Carter glanced at Nathan, his expression neutral, not giving away that he already knew their destination. “Officer Granger and Officer Fong will be the ones keeping a watch over the house for you,” he explained to Mr. and Mrs. Fischer.

  “Why do you need to watch the house?” Arissa asked.

  “In case the gang members figure out it was me with you at the rest stop,” Nathan said. “If they come here snooping, I wanted someone on the watch for them.”

  His father nodded. “Wise of you.”

  Nathan turned to the two officers. “I appreciate you doing this for me.”

  Joseph nodded, but the gaze he turned to Arissa seemed a bit speculative. What was the man thinking at that moment?

  Nathan shook off the thought as Charlie said, “The only thing missing will be your corned beef, Mrs. Fischer.”

  She laughed and gave him a playful swat on the arm.

  Detective Carter shook Nathan’s hand again, his gray eyes searching his face. “You’ll be all right?”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “If we see any strangers around your house, I’ll call you right away.” The detective was doing Nathan a huge favor in setting two of his officers to watch the house, but the threat of gang members in Sonoma was enough to put him on alert.

  “It’ll only be for a few days. If they haven’t shown up by then, it’s likely they couldn’t identify me.”

  The officers left, including Charlie, who said he’d be back in plain clothes in a few minutes to keep an eye on the house.

  Nathan kissed his mother on the cheek. “Have fun.”

  “We’ll try.” They were going to stay at a retired detective’s home in Napa, a friend of Detective Carter’s. It was near some hiking trails they would enjoy. They’d used to go as a family until Nathan’s accident—he couldn’t last on the trails anymore with his bum leg.

  Acid rose up to burn Nathan’s throat. He swallowed and said brusquely to Arissa, “Are you ready to go?”

  She seemed taken aback by his tone, but nodded and went to strap Charity into the car seat in the back of his SUV.

  Nathan’s father regarded him with a look that was half stern, half questioning. His mother’s eyebrows rose, but all she said was, “Take care of them.” However, her delivery was the same as if she’d said, Be nice.

  As they all got into their cars, Nathan admitted that a part of him didn’t want to be nice—a part of him wanted to push Arissa away. Because this woman, more than any other, had gotten under his skin, and he couldn’t allow that to happen again.

  His leg had given out at the rest stop. Who knew what else might happen. What if his body kept letting them down? He was only half a man, now, and he couldn’t afford for anyone to get close to him.

  Especially not this woman and child. They needed someone they could count on—not a man who would fail them just when they needed him most.

  * * *

  Arissa’s breath caught as she saw the mangled lock on her parents’ apartment door. The wood of the door had long, jagged cracks and splinters littered the floor.

  Suddenly Nathan shoved her behind him, and his gun appeared in his hands. He approached the door, ajar a crack, and listened.

  Arissa knelt beside Charity, her arms around the girl. “Shh, keep quiet, nene,” she whispered. Charity picked up on her tension and wrapped soft arms around Arissa’s neck, burying her head in her hair.

  Nathan eased open the door silently and slowly entered the apartment. Arissa remained in the landing, gripping Charity with shaking hands.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. Someone had been after her, so naturally they’d search her apartment. More than ever she was grateful she’d thought to make her parents close the grocery store and stay with her discipler from church. The gangs would never find Mrs. Fuchikami—she had never visited Arissa, and the only connection to her would be Arissa’s cell phone. When she’d escaped and returned to her parents’ grocery store, they had told her they’d found her purse and cell phone on the street when she didn’t return with Charity in one hour as expected. Arissa had promptly destroyed the cell phone and the SIM card with the phone numbers on it.

  It seemed like hours but it must have been only minutes before Nathan appeared again in the doorway and motioned them inside. “Hurry. They’re gone.”

  She gathered up Charity and entered the apartment, braced for the worst, but she couldn’t prevent the gasp that escaped her lips.

  The apartment looked like a tornado had attacked. Things weren’t just tossed around and upended. Furniture and appliances had been completely dismantled and destroyed. Indentations in the shattered table legs looked like they were made by a bat or something similar.

  Clothes had been torn apart, stuffing ripped from fiber-filled winter jackets. Papers floated over everything like snow. Couch cushions and pillows had also been gutted and shaken out, the foam pieces covered every square inch of carpet not already littered with broken furniture pieces.

  Charity started to cry, which shook Arissa out of her stunned state so she could softly croon to her niece.

  Nathan surprised her then by kneeling next to them and gently rubbing Charity’s back. “It’s all right,” he said to the little girl, then to Arissa, “I’ll take her while you look around. See if you can tell if anything’s missing.”

  She coaxed Charity into Nathan’s arms, and the little girl seemed to find comfort in his sheltering presence, because her crying dampened to sobs. Arissa wanted to nestle in his strong arms herself, but she managed to stand on shaky legs, grit her teeth and start to pick her way through the chaos.

  How in the world would she know if anything had been taken? Even the freezer had been cleaned out, and melted food made the kitchen floor slick. Luckily the fridge was so small that her parents didn’t keep much food stored, and her mother’s frugal side had caused her to remember to take most of the perishables with them when they’d gone to stay with Mrs. Fuchikami.

  The apartment was small, since the area above the grocery store had been divided into two apartments and Arissa’s family lived in only one of the units. Her parents’ bedroom was as much of a mess as hers, but not as wrecked as the living room and kitchen because there was less stuff in the bedrooms. She stepped over smashed photo frames and some of Charity’s broken toys. The dresser drawers had been pulled out and smashed into jagged wooden pieces. Why so much destruction?

  Because they were sending a message.

  The air in the bedroom seemed thin all of a sudden, and she stepped back out into the living room where Nathan still held a trembling Charity. He looked up at her, and she shook her head, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “I can’t te
ll if...if anything’s missing.”

  “Is there anything you want to take with you?”

  She shook her head again, more violently. “There’s nothing left.”

  He searched her face, then stood with Charity in his arms. “Let’s get you outside. You’re looking pale.”

  She didn’t want to faint in front of Charity, in front of him. She followed him outside to the landing between the two apartment doors. It was a tight squeeze, but the light down below from the window in the door at the base of the stairs made her feel less trapped, less threatened. The door blocked out the sounds of the busy street outside, making the landing a quieter haven than the street, and also set apart from the violence in the apartment.

  “I don’t know what they’d be looking for,” Arissa said in a low voice.

  “Something Mark gave you?”

  “I was trying to think of something during the drive down to Los Angeles, but I just couldn’t think of anything. Christmas or birthday presents were usually gift cards for eating out. Our apartment was so cramped with Mark and me living with Mom and Dad that we didn’t have room for much stuff.”

  “Not even small trinkets?”

  “You saw the place. There’s no space. Mark had the bedroom and it barely has space for a dresser and bedside table. I slept on the foldout couch in the living room, and I shared the dresser in the bedroom with Mark.”

  “He didn’t...leave anything for Charity?” The way Nathan’s voice caught, it almost sounded like he was starting to forgive Mark for his shattered leg.

  “If he did, Charity’s uncle didn’t give it to us when he brought her. All she had was the clothes on her back. No jewelry, no toys. Not even a hairpin.”

  She smoothed the dark curls from Charity’s face. She’d calmed down and now lay with her cheek against Nathan’s shoulder, sucking her thumb, her eyes dark and still wet as they looked at Arissa. She’d always been a quiet girl, maybe because of the way she’d been shuttled from one home to another so quickly, so early in her life. Maybe because of what she might have seen in Johnny Capuno’s parents’ home. While they weren’t actively part of the LSLs, their son being a captain had to affect their lives in some way.

  “They destroyed our apartment to warn us,” Arissa said softly. “To threaten me.”

  “They also covered up whatever they might have taken from Mark’s things,” Nathan said.

  “No, Mark’s things weren’t in the apartment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s too small to store anything. After he died—after Internal Affairs released his things to us—we put them in our family storage unit.”

  He had looked hopeful for a moment, but then he sagged against the wall, his large hand stroking Charity’s back. “Then they’d have found out about it by now and searched that, too.”

  Arissa glanced back at the broken apartment door. “N-no...” she said slowly, “maybe not. The unit isn’t in our name.”

  “Whose name is it in? Mark’s?”

  “No, we share a large unit that’s rented by my aunt Desiree.”

  Nathan pushed himself away from the wall. “Would the gang members know about it?”

  “I don’t think so. The bill goes to her, so there’s no evidence in the apartment that we use it.”

  “How about the storage unit key?”

  She held up her purse, which still included her key ring, and shook it so that the keys jingled. “When they took me, I dropped my purse. My parents found it on the sidewalk. When we escaped and I went to the grocery store to get my parents out of town, I got it back. My parents have a key, too, but it’s with them.”

  “Then let’s go—”

  The sound of locks being undone and the doorknob rattling behind Arissa made Nathan’s face tighten, and his arms also tightened around Charity. Arissa quickly said, “It’s our neighbor.”

  She turned just as Mrs. Galos opened her apartment door, a smoldering cigarette dangling out of the corner of her mouth. “I thought I heard voices.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Galos.” Arissa was about to introduce Nathan when she realized she probably shouldn’t, just in case the gang hadn’t yet figured out it was him with her at the rest stop. “Sorry to bother you. We were just leaving.” She quickly turned to rush down the stairs and heard Nathan’s footsteps following right on her heels.

  But she’d forgotten about the broken apartment door. “What kind of trouble are you in?” Mrs. Galos said sharply, her raspy voice grating off the walls of the narrow stairwell. “It scared me to death to hear all the crashing and banging from your apartment.”

  Arissa glanced back over her shoulder at the older woman. “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  Right after she’d escaped. Had it really been yesterday? Yes, it was, because they’d been attacked at the rest stop late last night.

  “I almost called the police.” Mrs. Galos’s dark gaze shifted away.

  Arissa understood why she hadn’t. Mrs. Galos must have seen the gang tattoos on the men in the apartment. If she’d called the police, the men trashing the apartment might have figured it was her who had called them. Like anyone else in this neighborhood, Mrs. Galos didn’t want any trouble with the gangs.

  Understanding fully, Arissa couldn’t try to convince her the men were just robbers. “Just keep your head down,” she said to the older woman softly. “They’re not interested in you.”

  Mrs. Galos’s lips tightened, then she turned to head back inside her apartment, shaking her head.

  Just before her door closed, Charity suddenly said, “Nathan, I need to go to the bathroom.”

  Arissa tensed at the sound of his name, which she knew Mrs. Galos heard before the door had clicked shut. She looked back up at the closed door, her breath coming faster. Would the gang come back here and question her? Would she tell them that Arissa’s friend’s name was Nathan? It wouldn’t be a huge leap for them to guess that the “Nathan” with her could only be her brother’s former partner.

  She met Nathan’s eyes over Charity’s head, and knew he had made the connection, too. But his face tensed and he gestured with his chin for her to keep descending the stairs. There wasn’t anything they could do now about Mrs. Galos knowing his name. He spoke softly to the little girl. “We’ll stop at a fastfood restaurant so you can go, and we’ll get you a snack, too.”

  The family storage unit wasn’t in the best part of town, but the quiet streets did a little to ease the tautness of the muscles across her shoulders. She directed Nathan toward the back of the facility, where the larger units stood. Each had a large roll-up door so that a car could drive into the unit, but Arissa had Nathan park at the far end of the building where there was a walk-in entrance. Once inside, they headed down the long hallway that ran between the two rows of units. Doors flanked them on the left and right, and Arissa went to the seventh on the right. She unlocked the door and flipped on the light as she entered the unit, which was packed with stuff, but neatly organized, closing the door behind her.

  “Our things are over here.” She walked toward the back right corner, holding Charity’s hand in case she decided to poke around at the items at her eye level. She found the boxes in the corner and tried to remember which ones were Mark’s. “I think the boxes are marked with my brother’s name.” She pointed to one, which was unfortunately at the bottom of six others.

  Nathan glanced at the stacks, the random pieces of furniture. “This is all yours?” He eyed the two dining room tables, one stacked upside down on top of the other one.

  “No, this is—”

  Nathan suddenly moved toward her and clapped a hand over her mouth. He also wrapped his arm around Charity’s shoulders and pressed her close.

  At first all she heard in the silence was the blood pounding in her ears
, but then she caught the scrape of metal against metal, a sharp rattle...and then the creak as the walk-in door to this storage unit swung open.

  Nathan’s fingers against her face twitched. She felt the tendons in his wrist tighten, and she shut her eyes. Then she felt Charity shift against her. She fumbled for her niece and gently covered the girl’s mouth with her fingers. Charity trembled.

  Booted footsteps clunked against the cement floor, no attempt to be stealthy. Whoever it was didn’t know they were there. But for how long? If the intruder walked far enough into the unit, they’d be clearly visible around the legs of the dining room chairs stacked a few feet away.

  Nathan’s hand fell away and he moved silently toward the intruder. Arissa wanted to keep him here, but instead she tightened her arms around Charity and took a few steps back so that they were behind a covered barbecue grill.

  Nathan slid noiselessly behind an empty bookcase and crouched low as the footsteps came closer. Arissa also kneeled, but peeked around the barbecue grill.

  Suddenly a blare of classic rock music echoed on the concrete walls. There was a faint clink, as if from a belt buckle, and a rustle of clothing. Then the music abruptly stopped and a man’s voice said, “Yeah, what?” It sounded like he was on a cell phone. The booted footsteps stopped, but Nathan’s body still radiated tension as he listened.

  The intruder grunted into his cell phone, then the steps slowly drew closer to them.

  Arissa huddled down, her body closing around Charity. The little girl gave a soft whimper. Arissa peeked out around the base of the grill. A black boot came into view at the same moment she heard the man say, “Yeah, yeah, I know, Mom.”

  She knew that voice.

  Nathan sprang forward.

  “Nathan, wait!” She shot to her feet.

  Nathan tackled the intruder and crashed into a small end table on top of which rested a fake potted plant only to then land on the floor.

  Nathan looked fiercely up at her from where he lay next to Arissa’s cousin. Tito’s gaze was dazed and disoriented. “Cuz?” he said.

  “Tito, what are you doing here?”