Nowhere to Run. Nancy Bush

Liv. “I don’t ask for much, and you’re making this so hard!”

      Liv’s brain ran in a circle. How did she get my number?, she thought first. Does she know where I live? Does the killer know?

      “It’s because of you that he’s not listening to me,” Lorinda went on in a complaining voice. “And Hague. I’ve been his wife for nearly twenty years, but you and Hague . . .” She broke off, sounding like she was about to cry, and the line went dead.

      She doesn’t know about Zuma . . . she hasn’t heard. Maybe no one knows yet.

      With that thought in mind, Liv quickly catalogued what she would need for a long trip away. Money. She had cash in an empty ice cream carton in the freezer. Quickly she retrieved that roll of bills, then found the jacket of her running gear and zipped the money inside a pocket. She needed her gun. Running shoes. An extra shirt and pair of jeans. Undergarments. A raincoat even though the sun was shining like it would never stop. The manila envelope.

      She stuffed everything into the backpack, the gun on top.

      Rummaging through the bathroom drawers, she grabbed her toothbrush and several hair bands, then looked in the mirror at solemn hazel eyes flecked with gold as she snapped her hair into a ponytail and then smashed a baseball cap with a Mariners logo on her head, drawing the ponytail through the back hole above the adjustable strap.

      Erasing the message from Lorinda, she unplugged the phone. She did a fast but thorough search to assure herself she hadn’t left some scrap of paper with information about her family. Let it take whoever was out there as long as possible to learn whom she might contact.

      Unless they already know . . .

      She was running on instinct, and a sense of being the prey. She wasn’t going to sit down and try to think it through. There was time for that later, when she was somewhere safe, wherever the hell that might be.

      Five minutes later, she was out the door. She had the keys to her car in her hand, but she left the Accord in the parking lot, heading for the street. Just another pedestrian. Walking slowly—strolling, really, to avoid drawing attention—she wound along a newly revitalized street in this suburban, hoping to be urban, part of Laurelton, with its new cobblestone crosswalks and lampposts and shops with green awnings and outdoor seating. A place to mingle and maybe sit down and catch her breath.

      Somewhere, if not safe, at least safer.

      With an effort she kept her mind off the images of her friends and coworkers at Zuma sprawled across the floor, blood oozing beneath them, the life force draining away. If she thought about it, she was lost. If she remembered Aaron . . .

      Swallowing hard, she moved into a late afternoon crowd just beginning to gather at their favorite bars and bistros for happy hour, merriment spilling onto the street from open doorways.

      Aaron, she thought, a smothered cry wrenched from her throat.

      Shhh . . . don’t think . . . don’t think . . . don’t draw attention. . .

      Blinking back cold tears, she turned into a sandwich shop with a long line of customers at their counter service and a smattering of tables.

      It had grown hot outside and she was overdressed, but she was shivering like she was consumed with fever as she took the only empty table, situated in the center of the room with a good view of the door and street.

      She collapsed into the seat like she’d just completed a marathon.

      It fell on Phillip Berelli to show September and Gretchen where the security tapes were. The man was fast losing what little control and backbone he’d ever possessed and was sprawled like a limp rag in a chair in Kurt Upjohn’s office, where there was a videotape monitor and a number of tapes. Upjohn had been taken in the ambulance earlier, and Aaron Dirkus in the coroner’s wagon. September and Gretchen were left with blood on the floor and asked by the techs to step around it, which they all did.

      “Mr. Upjohn is cautious,” Phillip said in a thready voice. “Paul . . . Paul de Fore gives him the security tapes . . . I think they look at them. It’s old-school technology but Kurt liked that. No one really thought it was that important. I mean, the door to the upstairs is always locked. That’s where everything is and you have to know the pass code. Kurt . . . Mr. Upjohn was vigilant about it.”

      “What about the main floor?” Gretchen asked.

      “Paul was . . . he cared . . . but it just wasn’t that important. Not really. There’s no reason to care. There’s nothing here. There’s nothing here.” He cut himself off on a hiccup.

      September had called in Ted, one of the techs, and he’d hit the rewind button on the tape currently being recorded. The tape stopped and he then pressed PLAY and they could see only one camera angle, but it encompassed most of the front parking area.

      “You can’t see the side door,” Berelli said on a swallow.

      “It’s all right. He came through the front,” September said.

      “Aaron was lax about the side door. They had a fight about it, Aaron and Kurt. Aaron just didn’t think keeping it locked mattered.”

      “But Mr. Upjohn felt it was worth keeping locked?” Gretchen asked.

      “He didn’t like the side door. I think that’s why . . .” He trailed off.

      “You think that’s why, what?” September asked.

      “I think that’s why Aaron was so lax about it. He just kinda wanted to needle his old man, and it worked.” He rubbed a hand viciously over his face as if to rub the whole tragedy away. “Aaron took the side door key and Kurt was mad.”

      “There he is,” Ted said.

      They all looked at the monitor. There, indeed, he was. The killer was one man. At least it looked like a man, dressed in navy pants, lace-up boots, a navy shirt like the kind security teams sometimes wore. A black vest. A black ski mask and a gun.

      “That’s a Glock,” Gretchen said.

      “He just walked up as boldly as you please,” September said.

      They ran it back again and watched it three more times. There was no sound and as soon as the man entered the building he disappeared.

      “Can’t see what vehicle he came from, but he sure didn’t walk far looking like that,” Gretchen said.

      “Does he seem nervous to you?” September asked.

      Gretchen considered the question. “No. He seems like he came here to kill some people, and that’s what he did.”

      “He sorta has a stutter-step. Right there.” September pointed to the screen where the man did a bit of a shuffle about three paces from the steps. “Like he’s hesitating.”

      “Maybe,” Gretchen conceded. She looked at the puddle that was Phillip Berelli. “We’d like you to come to the station, Mr. Berelli.”

      “Am I under arrest?” he squeaked out.

      “No, sir. We just want to talk to you somewhere—else,” Gretchen said.

      “I need to call my wife,” he said, his gaze sliding around the room.

      “We’ll call her on the way.” To the tech, she said, “See if you can get a close-up on that uniform. I don’t believe for one minute he’d be idiotic enough to wear something that connected him to a job, but maybe it’s a costume? From a costume shop? Or, like Goodwill or something?”

      “I’ll see what I can do,” Ted promised, as he pulled the tape from the recorder.

      “Did J.J. leave?” she asked, looking around.

      “With the Dirkus and de Fore bodies,” September answered her. She’d watched through the front windows as the coroner and an assistant had slammed the back of the wagon closed and pulled away, feeling slightly sick to her stomach.