Chapter 6
I hadn’t had a chance to turn on the lights and my eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, which meant my assailant – no, wait, assailants; there were two of them – had an advantage.
I struck out with fists and feet, aiming wildly and trying not to yell out in pain when another punch landed in my stomach.
By pure luck, one of them managed to side-sweep my legs, and suddenly I found myself on my knees.
Then the kicks were aimed at my face, and I felt my nose crunch and a gush of blood run straight into my mouth, making me cough.
Then Alice screamed, and that seemed to shock them. They clearly hadn’t been expecting me, let alone someone else with me.
At that, one of the guys decided to run out both of the open doors before either I, or the girl screaming her lungs out, had a chance to call for help. Fucking coward.
With the light from outside spilling into the apartment and my eyes finally adjusting to the dark, I kicked out, aiming for the knees of the second guy, who crumpled at the impact.
That gave me a chance to pounce, and I moved quickly, springing to my feet and backing him up against the wall with my forearm braced against his throat.
He hadn’t expected that.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ I snarled.
He was young enough to still have acne scars on his face and his dark-brown eyes widened with shock.
Who the hell was he? A younger brother of one of Wilson’s cronies, maybe even a son?
I didn’t recognize him, that was for sure.
He glared at me, and I pushed my arm harder against his throat.
He made a sick gurgling sort of noise as he fought for breath.
Just when I thought he might give in and talk, Alice grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back.
‘Kendra! He’s got a knife, he’s got a knife!’ she shrieked as we stumbled backward.
The half-second of confusion gave the guy enough time to shove Alice aside and run out the door, still clutching his throat.
‘I don’t give a shit if he’s got a knife. I’ve got a fucking gun!’ I yelled.
It was at the bottom of my backpack, but still. I was more annoyed that they had run off before I’d had time to find out who the hell they were.
Alice managed to find the lights and slapped them on, revealing an absolute shit-show.
The two guys had trashed the place. Of course they had.
All the cushions had been pulled off the couch and split open, spilling stuffing over the carpet.
The books on our long bookcase wall had been dragged off and thrown across the room.
I was pretty sure the rest of the apartment had been thoroughly turned over too, presumably to look for the same thing we were: a case of jewelry that contained a million-dollar brooch. Bastards.
‘Oh my God, you’re bleeding!’ Alice exclaimed.
All of the fight drained out of me.
‘Yep, good observation.’ I touched my face, and my fingertips came back bloody.
‘I’ll call 911.’
‘Under no circumstances –’ I stopped to cough blood out of my throat – ‘should you call 911.’
I checked my ribs to see if I’d broken anything, but I generally felt all right. Bruised, definitely. Pissed off? Absolutely. I’d survive.
Alice stared at me with wide eyes. ‘He really did have a knife, you know,’ she said.
‘I know.’ I sighed, making my ribs ache. I’d seen it too, half a second after Alice had screamed. I wasn’t really mad at her, more at myself for not noticing there was something amiss before I walked into the apartment. ‘But they’re gone now.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No. My friends are generally … friendlier,’ I muttered and then stumbled toward the kitchen. ‘I need ice.’
I grabbed a Ziploc bag from a drawer, filled it with ice and resealed it, then wrapped it in a dish towel so I could slap it on my nose.
Alice lingered in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me move, her expression stricken.
‘Kendra, you can’t stay here,’ Alice said softly.
‘I know,’ I muttered, my words muffled from the dish towel. ‘I’ll get you home safe and then work out what to do.’
The thought of going back to the safehouse apartment where I’d been hiding for the past couple of months made me sick to my stomach, but it was safe, which was the most important thing right now.
‘You should come and stay with me,’ Alice said immediately.
‘What?’
‘Stay with me,’ she repeated. ‘You need somewhere to sleep that’s safe. Unless you’ve got a huge pot of money to spend on staying in hotels –’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then you need to accept help,’ she said gently.
I clenched my back teeth. I wasn’t good at accepting help. But between staying with Alice or going back to the place where I had spiraled into an absolute pit of grief and depression, the former was definitely the preferred option, even though I knew it probably wasn’t a good idea.
‘Don’t overthink it,’ Alice said.
‘Okay,’ I said. Then I realized I was probably massively imposing on her. ‘Thank you. Let me grab some stuff.’
‘Be quick, though, yeah?’ she said nervously. ‘They might come back.’
‘I can be quick.’
As I thought, the whole apartment had been ransacked, not just the living room. In my bedroom I found the mattress thrown off the bed, drawers pulled out of the dresser, and the closet emptied.
I grabbed my backpack and started stuffing basic clothes into it – jeans, cycle shorts, T-shirts, underwear, socks and a handful of makeup items and toiletries from my dresser. I pulled a hoodie on so I had an extra layer and decided that would do.
Going over to my bookcase I grabbed my old copy of The Codebreaker’s Handbook.
Over the years I’d read this version so many times that the spine had cracked and the pages were threatening to fall out, so my mom had bought me a new copy.
I’d kept the first one as a memento, with all the notes younger me had scrawled in the margins, because I was sentimental.
I shoved it into my backpack, along with my iPad.
When I strode back into the kitchen, everything aching and spitting mad at the world, Alice was hovering, turning her phone over and over in her hands.
Her expression stopped me short. She was clearly super shaken up, and I mentally berated myself for not making sure she was okay.
Just because she didn’t get punched in the face, didn’t mean she was fine.
‘Everything’s all right, Alice,’ I said, attempting some kind of compassionate human connection. I was rusty. Out of practice.
‘It’s really not,’ she whispered.
If I was a better person I would have given her a hug. But I wasn’t a hugger.
I dumped my bloody towel and the bag full of ice in the sink. That was a problem for future Kendra to clean up, along with the rest of the apartment. I glanced down at the cupboards underneath the sink. They hadn’t been disturbed, so at least one of my secret hiding places was still secure.
‘Honestly, I’m fine. Let’s just get out of here.’ I grabbed my backpack and swung it on, wincing as pain shot through my body.
‘Do you think they’ll try to get back in while you’re gone?’ Alice asked as I went to the panel on the wall to set the alarms.
‘Well, I’m assuming because they couldn’t find what they were looking for, they won’t bother returning, but you never know,’ I muttered.
I made a point to set the internal as well as the external alarms – a precaution I only usually bothered with when I was leaving for more than a day. People generally didn’t try to break into homes during daytime hours.
It took a minute for me to get down to the sidewalk, my body twinging with pain at even the slightest movement. Alice hailed a cab and waited for me to lever myself inside before climbing in behind me.
‘Do you need to go to the hospital?’ Alice asked seriously.
‘No, I don’t think anything is broken.’
‘I really think you should get a doctor to confirm that. You might have concussion.’
‘I told you, I’m fine,’ I growled.
‘Okay, if you say so,’ she said, still looking concerned. Then she reached out to squeeze my shoulder. It was such a sweet, comforting gesture that it made me want to cry.
Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up in front of an elegant red-brick building with black iron details. I shoved some crumpled notes through the gap in the partition before Alice had a chance to.
‘By the way, this isn’t my place; it’s my aunt’s,’ Alice said as we got out of the cab.
‘Is she at home?’ I asked, suddenly worried.
‘No, no. I’ll explain when we get inside,’ she said.
We climbed the steps to the front door, and Alice let us in to a cool, tiled hallway.
‘It used to be one house,’ she said as we walked further in. ‘Now it’s two apartments.’
We went up a flight of stairs and Alice opened the front door to the apartment and let me step in first.
My eyebrows shot up.
This apartment was … a lot.
The entryway was painted dark green, with stained wooden floors and leaf-print wallpaper on the ceiling. Huge paintings were presented in gold frames, and the lights hanging from the ceiling had elegant, enormous gold leaves surrounding the bulbs.
‘Come in,’ Alice said, and I followed her through to a living room that was even more maximalist, with pink wallpaper covered in jungle animals surrounding a candy-pink velvet couch and two navy wingback chairs.
‘Wow,’ I murmured.
Everywhere I looked there was another color, pattern or texture to assault my eyeballs, and huge plants hung from macrame holders or stood in gold pots.
‘I’m currently housesitting,’ Alice explained.
‘Your aunt has … eclectic taste. How does she live here? I’d have a permanent migraine.’
‘You get used to it. I’m usually here for a few weeks every summer.’
‘So where is she?’
‘In the hospital. She’s having a few, erm, elective procedures.’
That was a nice euphemism.
‘Boob job?’ I asked.