The Perfect House. Блейк Пирс

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СКАЧАТЬ she hurried through the employee entrance, which was a long hallway with back door entrances to each business.

      She jogged along the curved corridor until she found a stairwell with a sign marked “Maintenance.” Hurrying down the steps as quietly as possible, she used the keycard she’d gotten from the building manager to unlock that door too. She’d negotiated special authorization to this area based on her LAPD connection rather than by trying to explain that her precautions were related to having an on-the-loose serial killer for a father.

      The maintenance door closed and locked behind her as she navigated her way along a narrow passage with exposed pipes jutting out at all angles and metal cages securing equipment she didn’t understand. After several minutes of dodging and weaving among the obstacles, she reached a small alcove near a large boiler.

      Midway down the passage, the recessed area was unlit and easy to miss. She’d had to have it pointed out to her the first time she’d been down here. She stepped into the alcove as she pulled out the old key she’d been given. The lock to this door was an old-school bolt. She turned it, pushed open the heavy door, and quickly closed and locked it behind her.

      Now in the supply room on the basement level of her apartment building, she had officially transitioned from the retail center property to the apartment complex. She hurried through the darkened room, nearly tripping over a tub of bleach lying on the floor. She opened that door, passed through the empty maintenance manager’s office, and walked up the tight stairwell that opened onto the back hallway of the apartment building’s main floor.

      She rounded the corner to the vestibule with the bank of elevators, where she could hear Jimmy the doorman and Fred the security guard amiably chatting with a resident in the front lobby. She didn’t have time to catch up with them now but promised herself she would reconnect later.

      Both were nice guys. Fred was a former highway patrolman who had retired early after a bad on-the-job motorcycle accident. It left him with a limp and a large scar on his left cheek, but that didn’t stop him from constantly joking around. Jimmy, in his mid-twenties, was a sweet, earnest kid using this job to pay his way through college.

      She moved past the vestibule to the service elevator, which wasn’t visible from the lobby, swiped her card, and waited anxiously to see if anyone had followed her. She knew the chances were remote but that didn’t stop her from shifting nervously from one foot to the other until the elevator arrived.

      When it did, she stepped in, pushed the button for the fourth floor, and then the one to close the door. When the doors opened, she scurried down the hall until she got to her apartment. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she studied her door.

      On first glance, it looked as nondescript as all the others on the floor. But she’d had several security upgrades added when she moved in. First, she stepped back so that she was three feet away from the door and directly in line with the peephole. A dull green glow that wasn’t visible from any other angle emanated from the rim around the hole, an indicator that the unit had not been forcibly accessed. Had it been, the rim around the peephole would have been red.

      In addition to the Nest doorbell camera she’d had installed, there were also multiple hidden cameras in the corridor. One had a direct view of her door. Another focused on the hall facing back to the elevator and the adjoining stairwell. A third pointed in the other direction of the second set of stairs. She’d checked them all on the way over in the cab and found no suspicious movement around her place today.

      The next step was entry. She used a traditional key to open one bolt, then swiped her card and heard the other sliding bolt open as well. She stepped inside as the motion sensor alarm warning went off, dropped her backpack on the floor, and ignored the alarm as she rebolted both doors and pulled the sliding security bar across as well. Only then did she punch in the eight-digit code.

      After that she grabbed the nightstick she kept by the door and hurried to the bedroom. She lifted up the removable picture frame beside the light switch to reveal the hidden security panel and punched in the four-digit code for the second, silent alarm—the one that went straight to the police if she didn’t deactivate it in forty seconds.

      Only then did she allow herself to breathe. As she inhaled and exhaled slowly, she walked around the small apartment, nightstick in hand, ready for anything. Searching the whole place, including the closets, shower, and pantry, took under a minute.

      When she was confident that she was alone and secure, she checked the half dozen nanny-cams she had placed throughout the unit. Then she evaluated the locks on the windows. Everything was in working order. That left only one place to review.

      She stepped into the bathroom and opened the narrow closet that held shelves with supplies like extra toilet paper, a plunger, some bars of soap, shower scrubbers, and mirror cleaning fluid. There was a small clasp on the left side of the closet, not visible unless one knew where to look. She flipped it and tugged, feeling the hidden latch click.

      The shelving unit swung open, revealing an extremely narrow shaft behind it, with a rope ladder attached to the brick wall. The tube and ladder extended from her fourth-floor unit down to a crawl space in the basement laundry room. It was designed as her last-ditch emergency exit if all her other security measures fell through. She hoped she’d never need it.

      She replaced the shelf and was about to return to the living room when she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. It was the first time she’d really studied herself at length since she left. She liked what she saw.

      On the surface, she didn’t look that different from before. She’d had a birthday while at the FBI and was now twenty-nine, but she didn’t look older. In fact, she thought she looked better than when she’d left.

      Her hair was still brown, but it seemed somehow bouncier, less limp than it had been when she left L.A. all those weeks ago. Despite the long days at the FBI, her green eyes sparkled with energy and no longer had the dark shadows underneath that had become so familiar to her. She was still a lean five feet ten, but she felt stronger and firmer than before. Her arms were more toned and her core was tight from endless sit-ups and planks. She felt…prepared.

      Moving into the living room, she finally turned on the lights. It took her a second to remember that all the furniture in the space was hers. She’d bought most of it just before she’d left for Quantico. She hadn’t had much choice. She’d sold all the stuff from the house she’d owned with her sociopathic, currently incarcerated ex-husband, Kyle. For a while after that, she crashed at the apartment of her old college friend, Lacy Cartwright. But after it was broken into by someone sending a message to Jessie on behalf of Bolton Crutchfield, Lacy had insisted she leave, pretty much right then.

      So she’d done exactly that, living in a weekly hotel for a while until she found a place—this place—that met her security needs. But it was unfurnished, so she’d burned a chunk of her money from the divorce all at once on furniture and appliances. Since she’d had to leave for the National Academy so soon after buying it all, she hadn’t gotten a chance to appreciate any of it.

      Now she hoped to. She sat down on the love seat and leaned back, settling in. There was a cardboard box marked “stuff to go through” sitting on the floor beside her. She picked it up and began rifling through it. Most of it was paperwork she had no intention of dealing with now. At the very bottom of the box was an 8x10 wedding photo of her and Kyle.

      She stared at it almost uncomprehendingly, amazed that the person who had that life was the one sitting here now. Almost a decade ago, during their sophomore year at USC, she’d started dating Kyle Voss. They’d moved in together soon after graduation and gotten married three years ago.

      For a long time, things seemed great. They lived in a cool apartment not СКАЧАТЬ