Chapter 29
The pilot lowered the plane onto the runway at LAX and Jane felt the touchdown bump and then the plane hurtling forward, its brakes straining to slow it down, her seat belt keeping her from lurching forward as it rattled toward the end of the pavement.
She watched impatiently as it taxied up to the side of the terminal and the deplaning ritual commenced.
She reached under the seat ahead of her to retrieve her bag and hold it on her lap.
She slipped its strap over her shoulder and then turned on her phone.
There was still no message from Karen Alvarez.
When it was her turn Jane walked down the aisle to the hatch and along the Jetway.
She hurried to the escalator and rode it down to the ground floor.
She picked up her rental car and drove toward Karen Alvarez’s house in West Los Angeles.
She drove past the house, taking advantage of the slow traffic to study the windows, then turned and looked at the rest of the neighborhood, giving special attention to the houses on both sides.
She parked on Robertson in front of a high-end outdoor sport and camping store, and bought a watch cap, an all-steel rip hammer with a wide head for tent stakes, and a pair of long, straight, sharp claws, presumably for pulling them out.
She added a five-inch spring-assist pocketknife that was nearly flat.
She drove back to the street behind Karen’s house and parked.
She hid her hair under the cap and walked two doors up the street to a house with a carport instead of a garage, saw there was no car and no other place to put one, went up the driveway to the back of the property, and looked over the fence.
There was no visible or audible activity in the house behind this one, and none she could see at the back of Karen’s house, so she went to the corner of the fence and climbed over it into Karen’s patio and moved close to her house.
She looked in the kitchen window, moved to the door and looked, then saw an alarm keypad on the wall close to the door.
The keypad’s red light was not on, but neither was the green one.
The keypad had no power. She walked to the circuit box on the back wall of the house and found that inside the door each circuit was neatly labeled.
Someone had found the wire going from the alarm circuit, and cut the connection.
On nearly all the systems Jane had seen, a battery backup should have sent the company a wireless call that the power had been cut.
Karen’s alarm system was basic and outdated, probably as old as the house.
She had been a prosecutor and a defense attorney, but had little fear for her own safety.
Jane went to the back door, opened the pocketknife, inserted the blade into the crack between the door and the jamb, gave the knife handle a gentle tap with the hammer, and tugged the door open.
She took a step into the kitchen and waited.
The room was cool compared to the outside, which was at least ninety degrees.
The air-conditioning system had obviously not been cut.
Jane heard no sound. She walked deeper into the house, toward the living room.
Every space she passed was modern and trendy, remodeled and professionally decorated.
The living room was the culmination, a showpiece made for entertaining guests.
Everything was stone or polished hardwoods, and wherever the eye was drawn there was art—except one place.
On the white couch nearest to the front door was a black Hermès purse, beside it a set of car keys, and a wallet lying open, so Jane could see Karen’s driver’s license.
It looked as though the contents of the purse had been dumped on the couch and the purse tossed beside it. Karen would not have done that.
Jane stepped quietly back to the kitchen.
She took the boning knife from the butcher block, slid it up her left sleeve, and hid the pocketknife in the ankle of her right boot.
She held the hammer in her hand and went to the staircase.
She climbed with each footstep directly in front of the last one on the edge of the stair that was closest to the wall.
Boards gave a bit near their centers, and that movement caused creaks.
The edges were where they were nailed in place.
She got to the first landing, where the stairs turned ninety degrees, and started up again. There was a sound, and she stopped. A voice? She felt hope coming back. Maybe Karen had been spending time with a man. She was an attractive single adult.
Jane heard the voice again. Female. Maybe Karen was on the phone. Jane went up a few steps, listening for the voice. She heard it again. Was someone crying?
The next sound was a loud, horrible shriek, and this time Jane knew the voice—Karen.
Jane took the last two steps in one stride, saw that there was only one door that was closed, and knew that they had closed it to muffle Karen’s cries so the neighbors didn’t hear her.
Jane dashed across the hall, used her left hand to turn the knob, and her left shoulder to make the door fly open.
It hit a man standing to the left and knocked him off balance.
He was reaching for something in his pocket as he steadied himself, but Jane’s right arm swung the hammer downward onto his head and he dropped to the floor.
A second man was standing to her right and lunged toward her, intending to wrap his arms around her to pin her arms down to her sides, but she swung the hammer toward him and struck his arm.
He instantly used the other arm to grip the injured one and shrunk back, but then launched himself toward her again, and managed to grasp the head of the hammer.
Jane tugged hard, then let go, slid the boning knife out of her left sleeve, stuck it under his rib cage, and drove it upward toward his heart.
The third man was in motion and took advantage of the time to get around behind her and threw his arms around her neck. He jerked Jane backward in a choke hold, and her face was aimed at the other side of the room.
She saw that Karen Alvarez was bound by zip ties at her wrists to the brass spokes of her bed’s metal headboard. The Russian woman was standing over her with a knife at her throat.
She said, “Hold tight to her, Dmitri, but don’t kill her. We need to have her last as long as possible.”
The arm around Jane’s neck tightened as though to argue against what the woman had said.
The man who was choking her walked her forward to the bed and forced her to look down at Karen.
She had two blackened eyes, big bruises, and long, straight burns on both of her arms. She had blood that had run from her nose and from a split lip, dried, and then bled again.
Jane saw there was a tray on the night table by the bed, that held a curling iron plugged into the wall.
Karen looked up into Jane’s eyes and her face muscles contracted into a mask of pain and sorrow, and tears welled in her eyes and streaked to the sides of her face. “Not you too. You were supposed to stay far away from here, Jane. I’m so sorry.”
Jane tried to speak, but keeping her neck muscles tensed to prevent the man’s arm across her throat from breaking her neck made her voice strained. “My. Fault.”
The Russian woman looked at the two men on the floor, and said to Jane, “You’re right.
And you’ll remember while you pay.” She walked to the two men and knelt beside the first one, whose head wound had bled into a pool on the floor.
“Daniil is dying. His heart is still pumping blood out, but he’s got a broken skull.
” She looked closely at the one with the boning knife in his torso.
She listened at his mouth for breath, then felt his carotid artery.
“Mikhail is done already.” She stood and came close to Jane and looked at her closely, as though she wanted to bite her.
The woman made a fist and punched Jane in the jaw, and when she was knocked back against the man, punched her again in the stomach.
Jane doubled over in pain and the man released her, letting her collapse to the floor in the pooled blood.
The woman gave Jane a hard kick in the ribs.
She stood over her, looking at her as though to judge whether she was in enough pain.
After a few seconds she said to the man, “Everything’s different now.
We’ve got to get her back to Boston and deliver her to Mr. Obolonsky alive.
We can’t leave Daniil and Mikhail here like this.
We obviously can’t take a plane. We’ve got to drive and we’ve got to get a new rental.
A big van or a truck. We’ll also need to clean this room up enough so they don’t use the blood to know who we are and where we’re going.
” The woman picked up the knife from the tray beside Karen’s bed and held it in her hand as she stood over Jane while the man walked across the room.
Jane had heard Boston, and she had heard a name. She repeated the name to herself silently, then again. Obolonsky. Obolonsky.
Jane lay where she was, drained by the exertion of her attack, stunned by the retaliation, and trying to gasp her wind back.
She assessed her situation. The surviving man was much stronger than she was, but the woman had not hit Jane with as much force as Jane could have produced.
Jane had taken the two men down by surprise and ferocity, and they were dead.
Jane had been lucky that they had obviously come to California by plane, and so they could not bring guns, or she’d have been dead in the first seconds.
Jane had been disarmed, but she still had one thing that was precious, a hope, the pocketknife she’d hidden in her boot. The boots were nearly calf high, and she had stuck it into the top, where the leather had held it.