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

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СКАЧАТЬ got the key and unlocked it, and Kurt found out and they had words.”

      “Why did Aaron unlock the door, do you know?”

      “Like I said, he just likes messing with his dad. His mother and Kurt don’t get along. She uses Aaron to get to Kurt, and Kurt doesn’t really know what to do with him. Aaron’s kind of a slacker and . . .” He cut himself off, his eyes filling with tears.

      “Can you tell me a little more about Olivia Dugan?” she asked as Gretchen returned, her mouth a grim line.

      “Liv is quiet. Keeps to herself. I think Aaron likes her, but she’s careful.”

      “Careful, how? With his feelings?” September sipped from her own cup of coffee, hoping Berelli would drink up as well. He needed something to keep him going.

      “Careful in every way,” he said, looking into his coffee cup. “Afraid to say too much.”

      “Afraid?” Gretchen jumped on the word.

      “Not . . . like that . . .” he said. “She’s just . . . quiet.”

      Gretchen frowned. “Was there anything different in the last few days? Something you can think of that might have precipitated this event?”

      Berelli turned to September. “Can I go home now? I can’t think of anything else. I’m just . . . tired.”

      Gretchen looked irked, but she gestured to September and said, “Detective Rafferty will give you a ride home.”

      “My car’s still at Zuma,” he said.

      September said, “I’ll take you to it.”

      Berelli tossed a look toward Guy Urlacher as he and September passed by the front desk and pushed their way through the two sets of glass doors that led outside. “Liv isn’t involved in this,” he said. “I know she took off, but she was just scared, y’know.”

      “Uh huh.”

      “She’s just lucky she wasn’t there. Really lucky.” When September didn’t respond, he added, “I mean it. I’m right about Liv. She’s just one of the meek ones, y’know?”

      September nodded.

      Liv stared at her gun, which rested on the table beside her left hand. She was still seated across the table from Auggie. Each of them was working through their own thoughts, but it had been quiet a long time and Liv finally could stand it no longer.

      “What do you do down here?” she asked him.

      “Down here?” he repeated, as if he weren’t really listening.

      “In the States.”

      “A fishing guide. Same as Canada.”

      “Where’s your boat?” she asked.

      “At a marina on the Columbia River,” he said, frowning. “You think I’m lying to you?”

      “I don’t even care if you are,” she said. “Unless there’s someone else coming to this house.”

      “Look in the other bedroom. I live alone,” he stated flatly.

      “I need to figure this out,” she said.

      What had precipitated the attack on Zuma? Maybe Auggie was right and it had something to do with Kurt Upjohn and his war games, or his finances, or maybe even his personal life. Or, maybe it was somebody else at Zuma? One of the geeks upstairs? But the upstairs hadn’t been compromised. At least she didn’t think so. She hadn’t gone up there herself, but the door at the top of the stairs wasn’t easy to breach. It was everyone downstairs who’d been gunned down.

      Maybe Jessica or Paul or even Aaron had some desperate enemy willing to kill innocent people to get to them.

      But why now? She was the one who’d gotten the package from her long-dead mother.

      But what would the package have to do with anything? It was benign, really. A few photographs, a message from her mother, her birth certificate. Yet . . . yet . . . there was something there.

      The pictures . . . the zombie stalker . . . it felt like there was a door cracking open inside her mind. Dr. Yancy had told her she’d buried her memories.

      Who knew about the package? Hague. Della. Her father. Lorinda . . . the lawyers at Crenshaw and Crenshaw . . .

      Was it about the package? Was it? How could it be?

      How could it not be?

      Last night she’d told her father and Lorinda and Della that she was going to look into the past. She’d declared and/or intimated that she was going to learn more about the serial strangler who’d been killing women in their area about the time her mother committed suicide. That she wanted to know who the people were in the photographs. That she might follow up with her birth parents.

      Hague had called the man in the picture the zombie, the man who was always there, just out of the corner of his eye. But then Hague had mentally disappeared. He knew something. Something that had sent him away from reality.

      Kill you.

      And then today the gunman had come to Zuma.

      “What?” Auggie asked when Liv suddenly jumped to her feet.

      “I’ve got to go talk to someone.”

      “Now?”

      “Yes.”

      “You’re not going to leave me tied here,” he warned her.

      She pulled the keys from her pocket. “I’m going to have to.” She looked around, yanked out a drawer, then another, until she found a small knife, then cut off a hank of twine from the roll while he tried to reason with her as she lashed his legs together and to the chair. “There’s no need for this. Take me with you. I want to help you. Do you hear me?”

      She wasn’t listening. It was all just noise in the background as her mind moved ahead. She tested the ropes and ignored his darkening expression as she grabbed her backpack from where she’d left it by the kitchen table, stuffed the knife inside, and, more gingerly, her gun, then gave a last look around the kitchen. The oven was freestanding with a bar for the handle. Following her gaze, he said, “No.”

      With all her strength Liv dragged a struggling Auggie in his chair to the oven and then tied the chair to the handle of the opened oven door.

      “This is dangerous,” he said through his teeth.

      “Yes, it is.” She went through his pockets. Nothing. His cell phone was on the counter. “You don’t have a wallet,” she said, wondering where that was.

      “Yes, I do. I—” He cut himself off, thinking hard. Swearing beneath his breath, he said, “If it’s not in my back pocket, I must have left it at the coffee shop. Damn.” He threw her a fulminating look. “Maybe you can get it for me?”

      She СКАЧАТЬ