Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe. Nancy Bush

to be shipped to the county coroner’s office. He glanced at September, who was watching from the sidelines. “Helluva day, huh?” he said.

      “Helluva day,” she answered. This was the second time today they’d been at a homicide together, and it was looking like the crimes were related. Her cell phone buzzed and she answered it to learn that they had the warrant to enter 20B, Olivia Dugan’s apartment, and 21B, Trask Martin’s. Hanging up, she signaled Waters, who then kicked in the door to 20B.

      She and Waters did a quick run-through of Dugan’s premises. The place had that unlived-in feel of someone who had few personal possessions. The closet looked as if Olivia had been home and ransacked it, and one of the drawers was half-open. September plugged in the answering machine on the way out, but any messages had been wiped off. She and Waters then headed back outside where J.J. and his crew were covering the body they’d lifted onto a gurney. September was getting ready to go to 21B when a woman pushed herself past the group at the bottom of the stairs, to their shouts of dismay, then barreled past one of the techs climbing the stairs, who yelled, “Hey!” at her as she practically threw him aside in her headlong rush.

      September stepped in her way before she got to the gurney. The frantic young woman clawed at her as she tried to get to the body, screaming, “Trask! Trask! Oh, God. Trask!”

      “This is a crime scene!” September clipped out, grabbing hold of her flailing arms. “Who are you?”

      “Is that . . . is that . . . please, God, tell me it’s not Trask!”

      “He’s not been identified yet,” September declared, though it was a pretty good guess it was indeed Trask Martin who lived at the end of the balcony.

      “My . . . my apartment,” she murmured, looking past September toward the door to the end unit. “I’m Jo.” Then she slumped as if her bones had suddenly turned to liquid.

      September caught her, then pulled her aside as Journey and his team wheeled the gurney toward the stairs. Jo suddenly jumped forward and pulled at the cover, exposing one male, bare foot. Seeing it, she started crying and ripping at her hair. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” She jerked around, her eyes wild. “I’ve got to go with him. I’ve got to be with him!”

      “You live in apartment 21 on this level?” September asked her.

      “Yes. With Trask!”

      “May we go inside?”

      “No.” She was stumbling after the body, crying, but now she turned toward the door to her unit. “He needs shoes,” she said, staggering past September and through the door to 21B.

      September followed her to the entry and looked inside. She could smell the leftover scent of marijuana.

      “You can’t come in!” Jo declared.

      “I have a warrant. I’m just being polite.” Jo was crying and hiccuping, and September added, “I don’t care about the dope smoking. But I need to find who did this.”

      “Okay,” Jo said, gulping. “I—I—is he okay? He’s gonna be okay, all right, yeah?” Her eyes were pleading.

      September’s silence was enough of an answer. Jo stifled another scream and fled into the bedroom, ripping through the shoes in the closet and pulling out a pair of men’s worn leather boots. “He never wears shoes. He needs to wear shoes. I always tell him, ‘Trask. Put on some shoes. You never know when you might need them.’” Tears puddled in her eyes. “He needs them. . . .” Then she ducked her head and sank to the ground and the tears started dropping onto her chest.

      “Would you like me to take you to the coroner’s office?” September asked gently.

      She flinched at the word.

      “His name’s Trask?”

      “Trask Burcher Martin.” She gulped and looked at September. “Who are you?”

      “I’m Detective Rafferty.”

      “Who did this? What happened?”

      “There was a shooting. That’s all we know, so far.”

      “Why? Why . . . was he in front of Liv’s door? Is she there?”

      “No.”

      “Did she do it?” she asked in a horror-filled whisper.

      “When we get something, we’ll let you know.” September’s heart clutched. Here, she’d been upset with D’Annibal and her brother for keeping her in the dark, but what if something had happened to Auggie?

      “Do you think these boots will work?” she asked September seriously.

      September fought back her own rising anxiety, “They’ll be fine,” she assured her, then held out a hand to help Jo to her feet.

      Liv tried to surface from a deep sleep. Uncomfortable sleep. Sleep surrounded by nightmare fragments that swept in and out of her consciousness. Fingers of dream fog that beckoned her reluctantly forward.

      Through the mist she saw Aaron . . . his quirk of a smile . . . his joking mouth. He opened that mouth to speak but it grew into a dark hole where black blood started spilling toward her. And there was Paul de Fore, with only half a head, leering and jolting forward on stiff robot legs.

      She wanted to scream but couldn’t. There were rags in her mouth. Pieces of something that kept her mute. A gag. But then the gag was over a man’s mouth. Her hostage. Auggie. But his eyes burned with an angry blue flame. Liv turned away, sobbing.

      A cat strolled through her legs. A very fat cat with yellow tiger stripes and a long, curving tail that switched and twitched. She reached for it, but it too disappeared into the sneaking fog.

      Cat, she called. Cat!

      She was screaming. Screaming at the top of her lungs but the cat was gone and couldn’t hear her. CAT!

      “HEY!!!” a voice yelled loudly.

      She jerked as if pulled by strings, her eyes flying open. She could hear the echo of her own voice fading away.

      “HEY! WAKE UP!”

      Auggie. Auggie was yelling at her.

      “Stop,” she told him, struggling to her feet. “Stop yelling. I’m awake.”

      “You were dreaming. Whimpering,” he called out.

      She struggled to get her bearings, then finally drew a breath and walked to the open doorway of his bedroom. She could just make out his form in the dim light.

      “You said ‘cat,’” he told her.

      “I know.”

      “What does that mean?”

      “I was dreaming about a cat.”

      “Do you have one?”

      “No. It was just something I said to Aaron.”

      “What did you say?”

      “I told him I had a cat. A very fat cat. It was a joke, of sorts.”

      “A joke?”

      Liv turned away. Sadness and fear vied for control of her senses and she felt tears form in her eyes. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Making a worse mess of things.

      “Hey,” he said, but she walked quickly away, to the kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of water and drank half of it down in two gulps. It stemmed the tide of tears. For now, at least.

      “I could use a drink!” his voice found her from the other room. She poured another glass and took it back to him. A part of her just wanted to untie him and have him drink it himself, and she was debating that, when he said, “And another trip to the bathroom.”

      That did it. She just didn’t care anymore. She set down the water on the TV stand, untied him, then gestured for him