The Warlord Returns novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Curb

On the curb Jo admits the money and the lawyer's script, Wyatt's men break into her apartment, and Jack hands her the sister's phone back.

The loading dock smelled like grease and rain.

I folded my arms over my apron so he couldn't see my hands.

"You've been looking into me," I said.

"Since the day I landed." Jack kept his voice flat. "Three weeks."

"Then you know why I took it."

"I know what the bank says. I want to hear you say it."

I looked at the dumpsters.

I looked at the sky, a dull orange over the harbor.

"My mother has kidney failure," I said.

"Three days a week, four hours a chair. The clinic was going to cut her off."

"And two days after Carrie died, Wyatt's lawyer called you."

"He said the family wanted to help a grieving friend and her sick mother."

My throat hurt.

"He said all I had to do was tell the police what I already knew."

"Which was what?"

"That she'd come home upset. That she'd been drinking."

"Had she?"

I made myself meet his eyes.

"She had two sips of wine. She never finished the glass."

His jaw moved, once.

"And you told the police she was drunk."

"The lawyer wrote it down for me. I signed."

He didn't shout.

That was the worst part.

He just stood there for a long time, and I could see him choosing not to say what he wanted to.

"Where did she go when she left your apartment?" he said finally.

My heart did something hard and fast.

"I don't know."

"Nothing? A cab? A phone call?"

"She went out the door," I said. "I never saw her again."

It was almost true.

It was true enough that my voice didn't shake.

He studied me one second longer than I liked.

Then he stepped back.

"Go home, Miss Pinkett. Lock your door."

"That's it?"

"That's it for tonight."

He turned and walked away down the dock, and I stood there feeling I'd been weighed and found something less than I hoped.

I took the bus home.

My apartment was on the third floor of a brick walk-up in Hampden.

It was the same apartment Carrie and I had shared for two years.

I still hadn't moved her chair.

I climbed the stairs with my keys in my hand and saw that my door was already open.

The frame was split by the lock.

I didn't go in.

A voice came from inside, low and bored.

"Check the couch again."

Another voice, rougher.

"She's not stupid. It won't be in the couch."

I backed toward the stairs.

My heel hit a loose board, and it cracked.

The talking stopped.

Two men came out of my apartment fast.

Both of them were big, in dark jackets.

One had a knife taped to his forearm.

"Miss Pinkett," the bored one said. "We just want to talk."

I ran.

I got two steps down the stairs before a hand caught my braid and yanked me back against the wall.

My head hit plaster.

The world went white.

"Where's the phone?" he said in my ear. "Mr. Ellsworth wants it."

"What phone?"

He shoved my face into the wall.

Then somebody grabbed him from behind.

I heard a crunch, and the weight left my hair.

The bored man slid down the wall holding his nose.

Jack stood in the stairwell with his sleeves pushed up, breathing evenly.

The second man came at him with the taped knife.

Jack stepped inside the swing, caught the wrist, and turned it until the blade rang on the steps.

Then he drove the man's face into the banister, once, and let him drop.

It took maybe six seconds.

I stood against the wall with my hand pressed to my head.

"You followed me home," I said.

"I followed the two men who've been following you since the dock." Jack kicked the knife down the stairs. "They were in a gray sedan."

"You didn't tell me."

"I wanted to see what they'd do."

I stared at him.

"You used me as bait."

"Yes."

He didn't apologize.

He bent over the bored man and went through his jacket, found a phone, and pocketed it.

Then he looked up at me.

"They asked about a phone."

My mouth was dry.

"Carrie's," I said.

"Where is it?"

I had kept it for fourteen months.

I had never told anyone.

I walked into my wrecked apartment, past the slashed cushions on the couch, to the old radiator under the window.

I got on my knees, pried the loose panel off the back, and reached into the dust.

The phone was cold.

The case was a cracked purple one with a sticker of a cartoon dog on it.

I held it out in both hands.

"She left it here that night," I said. "I think she meant for someone to find it."

Jack took it as if it might break.

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