Breaking the Rules (57 page)

Shit-fuck. “Tell Danny to call Mark Jenkins,” Izzy said as he blew through a second red light, then slipped the weapon and several magazines of ammo into the pockets of his shorts. “His wife, Lindsey, has a contact in the FBI, but shit, whoever we call is going to take time to get to you, too, and … Listen, sweetheart, do you know any of your neighbors? Is there anyone you can call, maybe have everyone open their doors and go into the courtyard and just scream and yell and wake up as many people in the complex as you can? I’m thinking there’s safety in numbers.”

“I don’t know anyone here,” she told him. “I don’t have anyone’s phone number.” And then she gasped words that made his heart damn near stop: “Izzy! Danny! Oh, my God, they’re coming!”

Eden came out of the bedroom, still on the phone with Zanella. “Danny,” she said again.

“I heard you the first time,” Dan told his sister as he put the cushions back on the sofa, with Neesha hidden safely inside.

“Dan,” Jenni said. “Please. Just go out the living-room window. I
know
you can make it up onto the roof without them seeing you …”

“I can’t do that.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her, briefly, on his way over to the door. His plan was to throw his weight against the refrigerator, try to keep them out as long as he possibly could, while hoping one of them would be foolish enough to stick a hand with a weapon inside, to fire it indiscriminately.

At which point Danny would gain possession of said weapon and kill the bastards. Provided he was still alive …

“Please,” Jenni said again. “If Neesha’s right, they’re just going to kill you. No questions, no warning.”

“I can’t just desert you,” he told her, told Eden, too.

“What do you think you’ll be doing when they kill you and you’re
dead
?” Jenn asked.

He had no good answer for that. “Just get in the bathroom and lock the door,” he ordered them. “Now.”

“Izzy says that if
he
was the bald guy from the mall, and he suspected that you were military—forget about SpecOps,” Eden said. “He’d kill you straight off, too.”

“Thanks so much, Zanella,” Dan said loudly enough for Eden’s phone to pick up his voice.

“Uh-huh,” Eden said, into her phone, still talking to Zanella as she went into the kitchen. “Okay, I got it, yeah …”

“Danny, please,” Jenni begged him, moving away from Eden and not toward the bathroom, where they’d be safest should the attack come through the bedroom window. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he told her, right before—what the
hell?—
someone—Eden, damn it—hit him hard over the head with something heavy. The room spun and he fought it as he hit the floor with his knees, but she hit him again, almost gently this time, and he lost the battle and the world went black.

Eden picked up the cell phone that she’d dropped, in order to drop her brother with the heaviest thing in the apartment—a metal statue of
Buddha that had been sitting on the kitchen counter when she’d moved in.

“Oh, my God,” Jenn said. “I can’t believe you did that. Is he okay?” She searched for his pulse, fingers at his very unconscious throat. “Okay. All right. His pulse is strong and steady. But now what? Do we hide him?”

“I hit him where you told me to,” Eden told Izzy as she shook her head no at Jenn. “But I had to hit him twice.”

Izzy exhaled hard on the other end of the phone. “Damn, he’s going to kill me,” he said, his voice rich and warm in her ear. “Okay, get his cell phone, Eden. Get it now, hang up, put your phone—this one that you’re talking on right now—in your pocket, and call me back on
his
phone.”

“What?” she said as she found Danny’s phone. “Why?”

“Do it,” he said. “He’s got a better phone, it’s got GPS—it’ll be easier to track you, but please, sweetheart, don’t question everything—we don’t have that much time.”

“You better pick up,” she said as she cut the connection and quickly found Izzy’s number in Danny’s phone book, in the Zs.

“Eden,” Jenn said, from her place on the floor next to Dan, his head in her lap, “please don’t make me regret trusting you …”

“You’re not trusting me,” Eden said. “You’re trusting Izzy.”

He answered almost before it rang. “Good,” he said. “Now
run
and find a shirt with long sleeves, something with cuffs that’ll be tight around your wrists.”

Eden ran to her bedroom and grabbed a shirt from her closet and pulled it on as Izzy said, “Put
this
phone with the signal open and on, put it up your sleeve, close to your wrist. They’re going to search you, but they’ll probably start at your forearms and work down, so they’re more likely to miss it. Please, sweet Jesus …”

“Eden?” Jenn called from the living room.

“I’ll be right there,” she called back.

“Eden,” Izzy said. “This may get far worse before it gets better. I
need you to brace yourself, because if they’ve come back to grab you, it could mean that something bad has happened to Ben.”

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just … I need you to be strong. Even if Ben is—”

“Don’t!” Ben wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead.

“You
have
to be strong,” Izzy said. “For Danny and for Jenn, too. I know you can do that, sweetheart. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she managed.

“Eden, someone with a key is unlocking the door,” Jenn called from the living room.

“I’m going to find you, okay?” Izzy told her. “Whatever happens. Even if this cell-phone thing doesn’t work? I am. Going. To find you. Believe that, Eden. I need you to believe me.”

She nodded, but realized he couldn’t see her. So instead of saying yes, she whispered, “I love you.”

“Eden!”
Jenn called from the living room.

“I love you, too,” Izzy told her, his voice rough. “Come on, do it, sweetheart. Now. And remember what you’re going to say, before they even get inside …?”

“I remember,” Eden said, and put Dan’s cell phone, signal on, up her sleeve.

Please, sweet Jesus
, indeed.

“My brother is unconscious—don’t kill him—he’s the only one who knows where Neesha is,” Eden said, loudly, to the men outside, right before they broke through the chain on the door. “He’s the only one of us she trusted. And if you kill
us
? You’ll have nothing to trade him for the girl.”

Whoever was out there was big, and just by pushing the door, the refrigerator moved across the floor with a scraping sound.

Jenn put her hands up over her head, the way Eden had done. Eden—who’d moved protectively in front of Dan, and who’d
shown Jenn in a quick flash as she’d rushed out of the bedroom that she’d hidden his cell phone up her sleeve—kept talking, repeating the same information over and over. “Don’t kill him—he can’t hurt you—he’s the only one—”

The first man in was carrying the biggest gun that Jenn had ever seen, and he waved it almost wildly, pointing it from Dan to Eden to Jenn. “Down on the floor, hands on your head, move away from him! Move
away
from him.”

Jenn didn’t want to move. Dan’s head was in her lap, and she didn’t want to leave him there, with his head against the worn carpeting.

“Jenn!” Eden said sharply. “Do what they—”

Jenn didn’t hear the rest because another man, a man who was wearing a hat despite the heat, hit her. It was only a backhanded blow, but it caught her by surprise and it pushed her, hard, away from Dan, whose head hit the floor and bounced.

His eyes didn’t open—he was out cold. And fear slid through Jenn, because people died of head injuries, even seemingly mild ones.

But Izzy was coming. Izzy was on his way. And Izzy had saved Dan’s life once before. He’d do it again. She held on to that thought as she lay on the floor.

“Don’t you hit her!” Eden was saying as third man searched the apartment, looking for Izzy, or maybe Neesha.

“There’s no one else here,” that man reported, coming out of Eden’s bedroom. “No sign of the bigger guy.”

“The bigger guy,” Eden said, “is my bastard of a husband, and he left me. For good. Okay? He went back to the Navy base in San Diego this morning.”

“Good to know. Shoot the fuck out of this other sailor if he so much as moves,” the bald man ordered, and now Jenn was praying that Dan would
not
wake up. Not too soon. “Either one of you tries anything funny”—he was talking to them now—“he’s dead. You understand?”

Jenn nodded, and rough hands touched her, searching her—it was
the man with the hat. He went through her pockets, pulling out her cell phone and the set of keys to their rental car—it was all she had on her. That didn’t stop him from searching for more, his hand lingering on her breasts and between her legs.

But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered more than helping Eden keep Dan’s cell phone hidden from them. As Jenn watched, Eden was searched by the bald man, who’d kept his gun securely in his right hand—as if he didn’t trust her enough to tuck it in the top of his pants, the way the man with the hat had done when he’d searched Jenn.

It meant that the bald man’s search of Eden was less thorough, although he was heavy with the inappropriate touching, too. Not that she’d expected anything less from men who worked for a crime boss who ran a child prostitution ring.

Eden tried to distract him further by talking. “My brother Ben is missing. Do you have him? Is he safe?”

“The kid’s a junkie,” the bald man told Eden as he pulled her phone—not Dan’s—out of the top pocket of her jeans. “Going into withdrawal … He goddamn puked on my new boots.”

“He’s a diabetic,” Eden said sharply. “He needs insulin. Where is he? I want to see him!”

The bald man flipped her over onto her back, holding her by her right arm—the arm that had the cell phone—and she squeaked in alarm. He shoved his gun up under her chin.

“You have a lot of questions and demands for someone who doesn’t appear to have the power here,” he said.

“He’s just a kid,” Eden said. “A sick kid. He doesn’t know where Neesha is. He
doesn’t.
”

“And you don’t, either,” the man said, clearly not believing her. “Only this one knows.” He gestured with his head toward Dan. “Mr. Conveniently Unconscious.”

“I knocked him out,” Eden said, “because I knew you’d come in shooting, and he
is
the only one who knows where Neesha is. If you killed him, I’d never get Ben back—and I
want
my little brother
back.
”

“Heartwarming,” the bald man said. “But someone’s a liar. When I
told Ben that unless he talked, I was going to come and kill
you? He
told
me
that
you
knew where the girl was, and that I better not kill you or I’d never find her. Now
you’re
telling me that your
other
brother knows where she is. What would you think if you were me?” He moved his gun from beneath her chin, but turned and aimed it now at Dan’s head. “I’m thinking you
do
know, and you’re going to tell me where the girl is, in about three seconds. Three …”

“No,” Jenn said. “Please. No—” even as Eden said, “I
don’t
know! I don’t!”

“Two …”

“Please,
please
, I honestly don’t know,” Eden said, her voice shaking. “But Danny does. He
does
. And if I were you? What I’d do is I
wouldn’t
kill him, because what if I’m right, and he’s the only one who knows?”

“Shit, Jake,” the man with that hat said, holding out Jenn’s cell phone. “This bitch put in a call to 9-1-1.”

“Shh,” the third man said. “Listen …”

Sirens. Way in the distance.

“The police are coming,” the man with the hat said, shifting his weight toward the door. “Let’s just kill them and go.”

“No,” Izzy said. “No,” as he led the police car, siren wailing, on a crazy chase toward Eden’s apartment.

“No, don’t—please, don’t!” he heard Jenn say through that still-open cell-phone connection. “I called them, but I never got through.”

Izzy was still a good five minutes away, and he gunned the little car faster, straining to hear the conversation that was going on in Eden’s living room, more frightened than he’d ever been in his life that the next sounds he might hear would be gunshots. Three of them.

But now Eden was talking again. Her voice came through more clearly than the others, probably because she was talking toward the phone in her sleeve, because she knew he was listening.

“If you kill us, you’ll never find Neesha,” she said. “But if you leave
us alive? We’ll get Danny to tell us where she is, and we’ll make a trade. Her for Ben.”

It was unbelievable. Eden was trying to talk them into leaving, to just walk away and let all three of them go free. Izzy held his breath as he blew past the turnoff that would have taken him to the apartment complex. The last thing he needed to do was lead the police and their siren over there now.

There was a brief silence in the apartment, but then the man the other had called Jake, the one who seemed to be in charge, said, “No.” He laughed. “No, we’ll play your little game, but by our rules. You’re coming with us. Both of you. You’re worth more to us alive than dead, anyway. Nathan, get the big girl.”

Thank God, thank
God
 …

But then there was a shuffling, bumping sound, and Izzy held his breath again, well aware that if Eden dropped Dan’s cell phone out of her sleeve, they were back to being dead again.

Instead she said sharply, “Don’t touch me there.”

Jake laughed. “I’ll touch you wherever I want, bitch.”

“What about Danny?” Jenn asked.

“Todd’s gonna keep an eye on him,” Jake said. “He’s going to watch the place, make sure
Danny
doesn’t do anything besides answer his phone when we call him, and then go get the girl so we can make the trade. So let’s hope you were telling the truth about your
bastard of a husband
, I believe is how you referred to him.” He must’ve been talking to Eden now. “He shows up? Todd’ll be watching your front door, and he’ll shoot them both dead, and then he’ll call me, and I’ll kill you, too.”

“I told you the truth,” Eden lied. “He left. He was so mad at me when I wrecked his car—trying to ram you and Todd?”