Next of Kin (4 page)

“It’s protocol, and you know it,” Samson said, and stood his ground.

Ike cursed softly, then shook his head as if trying to gain some control. “I had a late meeting. Got home around nine p.m. Then Adam and I had a late dinner together. We watched ESPN until after eleven, when I finally called it a day. Adam was still awake when I went upstairs.”

Adam’s eyes were red-rimmed and still swimming in tears, but his head was up and his shoulders back. When the detective turned to him, he pointed.

“Watch what you say to me,” he said. “Don’t you defile my mother’s name by insinuating that she would raise a child who would be capable of taking her life. She was a saint, you bastards. She was a
saint!
”

Ike continued to play a saddened man supporting his son’s grief at such a tragic time. He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder.

“Take it easy, son. They’re just doing their job.”

Adam was cursing and crying all over again, ignoring his father and still seething at the cops. “I loved my mother. She was everything to me. You don’t come in here and tell me she’s dead, and then tell me I need a fucking alibi for the time of her death! We were home last night! Both of us! All night! Now get the hell out of our house and go find who killed my mother or I’ll do it for you.”

The detectives had barely opened the door to leave when Adam slammed it shut behind them, then turned around. He was so angry he was shaking.

“Who did this? You have to have a suspicion. Who did you piss off who would be stupid enough to put a hit on Mom to get back at you?”

Ike frowned. “I know you’re hurting. I’m sick at heart myself, but everyone knew she was my
ex.
As crass as this will sound, killing her wouldn’t send any kind of a message to me. I have nothing invested in that relationship anymore, remember?”

Adam flinched. “What are you saying?”

“You tell me. Of the two of us, who had the most to lose with her death? Who have
you
pissed off?”

Adam reeled as if he’d been punched. His face paled, but he wasn’t his father’s son for nothing. He jabbed a finger in Ike’s chest, punctuating every word as he spoke.

“I don’t know. But I will find out who did this, and when I do, I will kill him myself.”

Ike shuddered slightly, then gathered himself. “Get dressed. I’ll call Moreno and have him find out when we can claim your mother’s body. There’s family to notify and services to plan.”

At the mention of the family lawyer, Adam spun on his heel and took the stairs two at a time.

Ike’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Adam was proving to be a formidable enemy. That was good. He was going to have to be tough to survive the family business.

As the day progressed, Ike moved with a sense of purpose, confident that the loose ends left behind after his deed had been tied up. But that only lasted until he got a call while he and Adam were at the mortuary picking out a coffin.

The undertaker was pointing out a hand-carved detail on a cherrywood casket when Ike’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, then frowned.

“Sorry, but I need to take this. This casket is a nice choice, but ultimately it’s Adam’s decision.” He nodded at his son, then left the room with the phone at his ear.

“Yes?”

“There’s a problem.”

He recognized Pacheco’s voice. “Is your line secure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Talk to me.”

“There was another woman in the apartment last night. She was at the police station when I arrived. She was the real witness, and the Feds have her in protective custody.”

Ike’s gut knotted.

“Can you find her?”

“It might take a couple of days.”

“Do it as fast as you can and finish the job.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ike cursed silently as he dropped the phone back in his pocket. An unforeseen hitch, and he didn’t like surprises.

Ryal made the furniture delivery but decided to stop off in Mount Sterling before he went home. He needed to go by the lumberyard and pick up some cherrywood to make a pair of end tables for another customer. Once there, he scanned the lumber racks until he found what he wanted, and marked the pieces, and was watching them being loaded into the bed of his pickup truck when his cell phone rang.

Even as he was pulling it out of his pocket he was wondering if this was it—if this would be the call that explained why he was so unsettled.

“Hello?”

“Ryal, it’s me, James. Hey, I stopped by your place and you were gone. By any chance are you in Mount Sterling?”

“Yes, what do you need?”

“A couple of bags of cattle cubes. My milk cow’s fresh, and you know Julie, she wants to milk her.”

Just the mention of his brother’s wife made him smile. She wasn’t the kind to waste anything, even time.

“You got it,” Ryal said.

“Thanks, big brother. I owe you.”

Ryal smiled. “How many times have I heard that? I should be home before four.”

“See you then,” James said, and disconnected.

Ryal pocketed his phone and went inside to pay.

Three days later

Beth was leafing through a magazine without seeing the text. There’d been a big fuss at the first safe house less than twenty-four hours after her arrival. It had prompted a sudden change of address after they’d received a tip that their location had been compromised. It unnerved her deeply and brought home the fact that she might never be safe again.

The enforced inactivity at the second safe house was driving her nuts. She wanted her laptop so she could work, but they’d confiscated both it and her cell phone with an explanation that she might be tempted to talk to friends, which could inadvertently reveal her location if someone were able to hack into her account.

Even though she’d assured them that she would keep her online mouth shut, it didn’t matter. They refused to trust her to keep her word.

The two agents on guard duty today were a man named Dewey and a woman named Andrea. They were playing poker at the kitchen table while waiting for a pizza delivery, and Andrea had just accused Dewey of cheating. Beth was still grieving for Sarah, as well as the life she’d carved out for herself and was in the process of losing, and was not amused by the agents or their squabbles. She glanced out the window, watching people going about their lives, and wondered what they would think if they knew she were here, hiding among them. The neighborhood seemed ordinary, close to shopping centers and schools, with a couple of churches not far away—the kind of place a family would choose to live. Would they be shocked by her presence, knowing it might put them at risk?

She thought about her parents’ sudden decision to move away from Rebel Ridge, how they’d turned away from everything they knew without a satisfactory explanation. Despite everything she said, and all the crying and begging, nothing had changed. They’d come to L.A.—a place as different from rural Kentucky as it could possibly be—and then lived in quiet exile. When Ryal had turned away from her, never making an effort to contact her, she’d turned her grief inward and lived a life of quiet sadness.

Then, four years ago, she and her parents had been broadsided by a drunk driver on their way to church. They had died instantly. She was still fading in and out of consciousness in the hospital when her dad’s brother, Will, came in from Kentucky and dealt with the business of shipping the bodies back home to be buried. She had brief memories of seeing him in her hospital room for days afterward. He was the one who broke the news to her about her parents’ deaths, and when she was finally released, Will was the one who took her home and helped her pack up what she wanted to keep and sell the rest, then move into a smaller apartment of her own.

During all that time, she never asked about family back home other than her grandmother. Lou Venable was the only member of their family her parents had not abandoned.

Lou had sent Christmas and birthday cards and tiny messages of love to Beth throughout the years, but despite the connection Lou refused to give up, her family never went back. And then it had been too late.

Beth saw Will periodically after that, when he was coming through L.A. on a long haul, or when he brought birthday and Christmas gifts to her from Granny Lou. But it had never occurred to her to move back, not when it was her behavior that had driven them away and estranged them from the rest of the family.

Now here she was, holed up in some strange house with people she didn’t know, hiding from a man who wanted to kill her and grieving for a friend she’d loved dearly. In the worst of times, her thoughts were turning more and more to family, to the people to whom she was kin.

As she sat, she noticed a car pulling up to the curb and realized it was the pizza delivery they’d been waiting on for their dinner.

“Pizza’s here,” she called out.

“About time. I’m starving,” Dewey said. He tossed his cards onto the table and headed for the front door, pulling money out of his wallet as he went.

Andrea got up and opened the cabinet to get some glasses for the free Pepsi that would come with the order as Beth headed for the bathroom to wash up.

Halfway there, Beth heard a pop. She turned to look just as Dewey crumpled to the floor. All of a sudden Andrea was screaming at her to get down and running toward the living room with her gun drawn.

Beth took a dive behind the sofa as a barrage of bullets ripped through it just above her head. The gunman was still firing as Andrea entered the living room. He spun toward her, popping off a round that splintered the door facing beside Andrea’s left ear, but she didn’t flinch as she fired three rounds into his chest. The force propelled him backward. He landed faceup across the threshold with his feet on top of Dewey’s lifeless body.

For Beth, the silence afterward was heart-stopping. Who was still alive? Did she dare move? What if the killer was waiting to see if she got up? God, oh, God…what should she do? Then she heard Andrea’s voice.

“Beth! Are you okay?”

Beth breathed a shaky sigh of relief. “Yes, I’m okay.” She crawled to her feet, then saw Dewey’s body and the blood spreading out onto the floor beneath it. “Oh, my God, is he okay?”

“No,” Andrea said and turned away, her cell phone already at her ear.

Three

A
s luck would have it, Special Agent Ames was one of the agents in the car with Beth. The other agents were silent and had been ever since they’d taken her from the crime scene, and she was tired of it. She wanted answers.

“Agent Ames?”

He looked over his shoulder from the front seat.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“This is my third move in less than a week. What the hell is going on?”

He hesitated, as if judging his words. “We’re not sure.”

Beth frowned. “So if you’re not sure, then you can’t assure me it won’t happen again, right?”

It was obvious Ames didn’t like the question. His expression was condescending, as was the tone of his voice. “We’ll make sure, okay? You leave the worrying up to us.”

Beth shuddered, remembering Sarah’s sightless eyes and the vision of Dewey’s body sprawled out on the living room floor.

“That’s easier said than done. It’s my life on the line, and people are dying because of me.”

“We’ve upped security,” Ames said.

She heard him, but she no longer trusted the process. She blinked away tears as she leaned back in the seat. She’d been raised smarter than this. Her people had called the Appalachian Mountains home for over five generations. Life was hard there, but they were not the kind of people who sat back and waited for someone else to solve their problems. Wherever the Feds were taking her was fine, but she needed a backup plan. If something like this happened again and she lived through it, she was gone.

Ike Pappas was having breakfast when his phone rang, informing him of the second failure. He listened without comment and, once the message was delivered, hung up without a goodbye.

He sat for a moment, looking down the table at his son, who was picking at his food without much interest.

As if sensing his father’s scrutiny, Adam looked up.

“Is everything okay?”

Ike nodded.

“Mom’s service is this afternoon. Don’t forget,” Adam said.

“I won’t forget.”

The scent of Ike’s favorite coffee and the omelet he was having suddenly turned his stomach. His beloved son was grieving because of something he’d done.

Ike wasn’t a man who cringed at the sight of blood or ever second-guessed himself about the choices he’d made. Lorena had given him no choice, but he regretted the need. Unfortunately, Adam would never see it that way.

However, the phone call had left him with larger concerns. He wasn’t as disconcerted about the death of Pacheco, one of his most reliable cleaners, as he was about the fact that Beth Venable wasn’t dead, too. That was a real problem. The longer she stayed in the wind, the riskier his position with Adam became. He couldn’t let his son find out what he’d done and be faced with the impossible situation of what happened next. Either the legal system would execute Ike, or Adam would try to do it for them. There were questions he had yet to ask himself, like: Could he let his own son take him down? Or would he be able to do to Adam what he’d done to Lorena? But Ike hadn’t risen to control of the organization by being indecisive. His eyes narrowed as he shoved his plate aside and stood up.

“See you later, son, and don’t worry. I’ll be back before it’s time to go to the church.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to check on a couple of things.”

“Do you need me to go with you?”

Ike shook his head. “You stay here. Do what you have to do.” Then he left the room.

It wasn’t a problem sending someone else to finish the job he wanted done, but it might be a problem to find the target. He began running through a mental list of people as he headed out the door to where his car and driver were waiting.

Beth had no idea where she was, or even what the outside of the third safe house looked like, because they’d whisked her inside so fast she’d barely seen the color. As Ames had promised, they’d upped security considerably, but she wasn’t sleeping well. When she did go to bed, she slept fully dressed.

Now there were three agents instead of two keeping her company at all times. She didn’t remember their names, and they called her Miss Venable. They were as clinically anonymous as they could be and still do their jobs, and unlike the previous location, there were no fast-food deliveries here. Food was cooked on the premises or brought in by agents coming on duty. To keep herself occupied, Beth often did the cooking, even though her appetite was gone. She felt hopeless, even aimless. Until Ike Pappas was brought to trial, she was stuck in limbo. Being proactive, even in these small ways, was what was keeping her sane.

It was a fluke that she had a little over five hundred dollars in her purse from when her own apartment building had been evacuated, not that she had any way to spend it. She didn’t know what her employer had been told, but she’d been assured her absence had been explained to the extent that she would not lose her job. Everyone was in charge of her business but her.

A couple of days ago she’d overheard two of them discussing another case and noticed a sack on the cabinet that held some throwaway phones—phones an undercover agent had requested because they couldn’t be traced. While they weren’t looking, she’d slipped one out and hidden it in the bottom of her purse. She never thought of it as stealing but simply as adding to her own protection—just in case.

During one of the later shift changes an agent had left a map of the city behind. Beth folded it up and put it in her purse, too—another “just in case” addition to her stash.

On the sixth night in the new location Beth made spaghetti with meat sauce and a tossed salad for their dinner. The agents sat down to eat, praising her cooking skills while she picked at the food on her plate and tried not to feel sorry for herself. At least she was still alive. Time to be grateful for small favors.

One of the agents finished up before the others and leaned back in his chair with a groan.

“That was great, Miss Venable. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, while trying to remember his name, then deciding it didn’t matter.

He would be gone by the next shift and someone else would take his place. As soon as she cleaned up the kitchen she was going to go watch some TV in her room. If she were lucky, she would fall asleep and wake up to a better day.

Gunshots!

Beth woke up with a start, her gaze going straight to the television and the old Western movie playing out on the classics channel. It took another moment for her to realize the TV had been muted and what she was hearing was coming from inside the house. She flew out of bed just as a bullet came through the wall and smashed into another wall near where she’d been lying. In a panic, she crawled toward the window that overlooked a back alley, praying the attackers had not surrounded the house. She didn’t see anyone outside, but it was a moonless night, and there was no way to be sure.

Another spray of bullets came through the wall. She stifled a scream as she slung her purse strap over her shoulder and pushed up the window. Her heart was hammering, her hands shaking, as she crawled out into the alley and slipped away into the night.

Beth ran blindly through the neighborhood without looking back, taking dark alleys instead of well-lit roads, running until her legs were shaking and her lungs were burning, crossing streets only after traffic had passed to make sure she wasn’t seen. Once, as she ran past an overflowing Dumpster, an alley cat suddenly darted out from under it with a hiss and a squall, startling her into missing a step. She fell hard in the dirt and debris, catching herself with outstretched arms.

Pain shot through her hands and up to her shoulders as she stifled a scream. Within seconds of hitting the ground, she was back on her feet. The palms of her hands were cut in what looked like a dozen places, and blood was dripping all over the ground and on her clothes. The knee of her jeans was torn and bloody, but she could still move. Ignoring the pain, she glanced over her shoulder and slipped away in the dark.

She had no idea how much time had passed before she came out of an alley near an all-night quick stop. The worst of the bleeding on her hands had stopped, except for the places where the cuts were deeper, but the pain was growing worse the longer her wounds went unattended.

She eyed the flickering fluorescent lights over the pumps, then looked through the windows to the lone clerk inside sitting behind a counter.

Mickey’s One-Stop-Shop was open for business.

After a hasty glance up and down the near-deserted street, she waited for a couple of cars to pass, then crossed and slipped inside.

The clerk looked up as the door opened.

Beth hoped she didn’t look as desperate as she felt.

“Ladies’ room?”

He pointed.

She headed toward a hallway with her head down, then locked herself inside, and quickly used the restroom and washed her hands, wincing as the water hit the open wounds. The blood had dried, which made it harder to get off, and some cuts were deeper than others. In the real world, she would most likely have gotten stitches, but not in this one. Eventually everything would heal—if she lived long enough.

If the worst thing that happened to her tonight was the injury to her hands, she would consider herself lucky. Meanwhile, she was far enough away from the safe house to take a few minutes to gather her thoughts. What she needed now was help from someone she trusted. Someone Ike Pappas could not buy off.

She dug the throwaway cell phone from her purse and dialed a number she knew by heart. It rang four times with no answer. On the verge of panic that her call was going to voice mail, she heard a click, then a whiskey-rough voice with a soft, Southern drawl.

“Will Venable.”

The familiar voice of her uncle was as welcome as rain on dry ground.

“Uncle Will…it’s me, Beth. I need help.” She meant to take a breath, but it turned into a sob, and then exhaustion took over and she started to cry uncontrollably.

Will had a soft spot for his brother’s only child and had been a stand-in father for Beth ever since her parents’ deaths four years earlier. Hearing her distress unnerved him.

“Bethie, honey, what’s wrong?”

She began choking back sobs as she tried to explain.

“I witnessed…there was a murder…and we called…and the police came and… Oh, Uncle Will, it got my best friend killed.”

Will couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What in hell? Sugar? Where are you?”

She took a deep breath and made herself focus. “A quick stop on the south side of L.A. called Mickey’s One-Stop-Shop. The FBI hid me in a safe house, because they said the killer would try to get rid of me like he did Sarah, but then they moved me, because they said the location was compromised, and they took me to a second house. I wasn’t there long before they found me. One agent was killed and I was shot at. Oh, my God, Uncle Will, there were so many shots being fired, I don’t know how he missed me. The killer is some big-time mob guy, but his people keep finding me. They just shot up the third safe house tonight, and I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who’s dead and who’s still alive. When I heard the shooting start I went out a window. I don’t trust them to keep me safe anymore.”