Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
GABE
“Meroow!” Keith complained, meeting Gabe at the front door. The cat twined around his ankles twice before racing off toward the kitchen with her tail pointing straight up in the air. The tragically empty food bowl needed to be taken care of immediately.
“I’m coming, sheesh.”
Gabe dropped his keys into the dish in the front hall, toed off his shoes, and ambled through to the kitchen, wondering where Casey was.
His Jeep wasn’t in the driveway, and it was unusual for him to stay at work this far into the evening.
In fact, as long as they’d been together, Casey had been home by six or seven at the latest. And he usually called to see if they needed anything from Norskland’s when he did leave.
“The summer season is pretty much here,” Gabe reminded himself. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t listened to Casey increasingly grouse about people as Memorial Day drew closer, like Doomsday was upon them, while at the same time admitting that he loved his job and he never wanted to do anything else.
With the feline emergency taken care of, Gabe wandered back into the living room, turned the TV on, and flopped onto the couch. He scrolled for a minute before stopping on a UK mystery series he’d started a while ago but hadn’t gotten back to.
“What a fucking day.”
Gabe was tired, but his brain was churning, and if his half sibling had anything to say about it, he probably had an interview tomorrow with an FBI agent to look forward to.
He grimaced; not his idea of fun. It was the basic principle of never willingly inviting law enforcement into his life.
The cardinal Karne family rules: Never talk to cops and never show your hand. And yet Gabe had folded. Dropped.
“Fuck me.” It really wasn’t difficult for Gabe to imagine his mother thrashing around in her grave—even if she had been cremated—then rising from said grave in spectral form, adorned in her favorite Chanel suit, the one that she’d insisted always drew the mark, and lecturing him for several hours.
“Sorry, Mom.”
Settling back against the cushions, he sent a quick text to Casey.
Hungry?
Then Gabe snagged the fleece throw from the back of the couch and covered his legs, settling in to find out just who had murdered the nice little old lady in cold blood.
Keith padded out from the kitchen to leap up and make herself comfortable on top of the throw.
Despite his churning brain, his eyes drifted shut as the soothing British accents washed over him.
There really was nothing like the sound of small-town murder.
Gabe blinked his eyes open and stared around the pitch-dark living room. Something had disturbed him. When you lived in a very quiet neighborhood, out-of-place sounds were jarring.
Straining to hear it again, he realized he didn’t remember Casey and Bowie coming in. Bowie was Casey’s dog, but he usually had a cold nose saved for Gabe. What time was it anyway? Had Casey come home and just let him sleep? Was he upstairs getting ready for bed, was that what the sound had been?
The show he’d been streaming had turned off, leaving the TV screen dark.
No, he was certain that Casey sneaking into the house was not what had woken him.
Keith, who’d been curled up behind his knees, suddenly darted off the couch and slunk up the stairs. A sure sign something was rotten. Then he heard a thump and scrape from outside, nothing to do with the cat who was hiding somewhere overhead.
“What the hell?” he whispered, slowly rising to his feet.
Wishing he’d thought to close the living room shades, Gabe tiptoed to a spot where he could see out but, hopefully, no weird creeper could see in. The solar lights that lined the driveway were still glowing, and Casey’s car still wasn’t parked there. Only the Honda was in sight.
“What the actual fuck?” Maybe he’d missed a call from Casey or Greta. Sometimes she “borrowed” Bowie for a sleepover, the same way Elton did.
He was still staring out the window like an idiot when footsteps sounded on the front porch. From where Gabe was standing, he could see the microwave clock in the kitchen. The red numbers glowed 11:47 p.m.
He patted his pockets. “Where’s my fucking phone?”
Whatever this was, it wasn’t a social call.
You are your mother’s son, Chance.
What did that even mean? That he was naturally suspicious?
Seeing as he wasn’t on the Ten Most Wanted list, Gabe doubted even the FBI would arrive this late without notice.
If Niall had talked to them already. Gabe doubted that, as well; his half brother had said he’d call them “in the morning,” and Niall wasn’t one to use the word morning unless he meant it.
Gabe snuck upstairs and into the study, where the windows looked down at the front of the house and lawn.
Two dark figures, one behind the other, were on the front porch.
They stood a way and had a look about them that Gabe’s gut immediately didn’t trust, and the guy at the back had a side bulge that screamed shoulder holster.
He moved, and the porch light caught his face.
The guy seemed familiar. Gabe glowered at him, willing his brain to get on board.
A shock of recognition had his heart thumping hard. It was Foxy, from the diner. “And I bet the other guy is his pal, Mr. Friendly.”
He had two choices, slim and none, and slim was in the ether.
Obviously, the Honda was in the drive, but as far as these yahoos knew, he was fast asleep.
Gabe moved as close to the window as he dared and watched the two men.
Mr. Friendly seemed to have his attention on the driveway, where only Gabe’s car was parked.
“…the back.” Gabe heard Foxy tell his buddy. They probably thought they were being quiet, but sound carried far at this part of the island and the window was open just a crack. Then Foxy stepped onto the grass and started around toward the back of the house.
Motherfucker. He was trapped inside his own house.
Had he locked the kitchen slider? Gabe didn’t think he’d opened it when he got home, too wiped out from the day to do more than watch TV with the cat. And he’d missed the ending. What a fucking night.
“What do these bargain-basement wise guys want with me?” Gabe muttered as he kept an eye on the one on his porch and tried to figure out what to do.
The answer was probably nothing good, and he wasn’t hanging around to find out if they were possessed by Ed McMahon’s ghost and delivering an oversize check.
His survival instincts were screaming for him to get out of the house.
After the revelation about Wilson’s mother, Gabe figured these two were probably associated with the Petyr family as well.
Alive, Gabe could get to the bottom of whatever was going on; dead, he was useless. And he had Keith to think of.
He sighed quietly.
Since the business with Althea Mortine, his life had been pleasantly devoid of those types. The word killers had been bandied about, a word Gabriel really didn’t like. Somehow, these two had clocked him and gotten his address. Maybe from Spurring? Or Wilson? Gabe figured it was Spurring.
Run. Trust your gut, Chance.
It would be funny if it turned out that these were just two guys out selling nocturnal pest control services or lawn care.
Maybe Foxy was just checking the size of their lot.
Gabe took another peek at the man lurking by the front stairs.
Nope. There was only one kind of extermination these guys had in mind.
His initial reaction maybe shouldn’t have been to flee, but Gabe preferred being a lover to being a fighter unless someone vulnerable was being bullied.
Then all bets were off. Back downstairs, he slipped his feet into the grubby Vans he kept for trips to the trashcan and grabbed one of Casey’s thick Forest Service sweatshirts from the rack.
Dropping to his knees on the hardwood, he commando-crawled down the front hall and retrieved his cell phone, glad for once that Casey had won the argument about not replacing their door with one that had a window like Gabe had wanted.
Then Gabe slipped back to the stairway. There was no staying in the house, and he couldn’t risk asking Elton to come pick him up.
The new-to-Gabe-and-Casey residence sat on a hill that gently sloped down to the Salish Sea.
The front of the house was two stories, but the back was just one, and underneath that level was the basement.
The basement door opened to a slim strip of property paved with red cobbles and just wide enough for a person to walk without having to turn sideways.
Were there spidery things and weeds because no one ever used this path? Yes. Taking a breath, Gabe pulled the door open quietly and slipped outside.
As quickly and quietly as he could manage with dried leaves crunching and some of the bricks shifting under his weight, Gabe sidled to the corner.
He took a chance and edged out beyond the house.
From there, of course, he couldn’t see the two men, but he could hear the murmur of two distinct voices.
Foxy must have returned from his walk around the perimeter.
At least he hadn’t broken in yet. Keith was safe for now.
Heart hammering against his ribs, he flattened himself against the siding and listened. One of them clearly said, “Look, we have our instructions. Spammet’s taken care of, one more to go.”
Spammet? Spurring? As in Emmett Spurring?
Gabe had to hand it to the guy for an excellent nickname, but there went any hope that they would leave and go take care of other bad-guy errands if he didn’t answer the door.
Which meant he had to get out of there because it definitely sounded like these two had been the ones who ambushed Spurring.
And Niall and Knute both had made it very clear that the Petyrs were Very Bad People.