Night of the Living Deb (31 page)

It had to be.

I stood again, steadying myself, before I turned and peered down the depths of that last aisle, between the towering shelves filled with glorified grape juice . . . which is when I did a double take.

Was that a body, curled against the far wall, wrapped in a tan blanket, nearly blending into the pale oak of the floor?

“Malone?” I called tentatively.

In response, I heard a faint but distinctive,
“Uuuuuhhh.”

Dear God.

My brain buzzed, and a wave of adrenaline propelled me forward.
I’ve found him,
I told myself, hardly believing, and I rushed as fast as I could on trembling legs toward the source of the pathetic sounds.

As I strode nearer, I could see a wrist shackled to a pipe along the base of the wall, a crown of tousled mousy hair, but little else except a lump undercover.

“Malone!”

His name flew from my lips as I dropped beside the immobile form swathed in tan wool and fumbled to see the familiar face.

The blanket dropped away, as I gently touched a soft cheek and turned the head toward me.

“Aaaack!”
escaped my lips as dilated brown eyes blinked and looked at me blankly, as if drugged. The tiny nose and thin mouth with the parched lips didn’t belong to Malone . . . didn’t belong to any man.

This prisoner of Petrenko’s was a
woman
.

One I didn’t know from Eve.

I jerked my hand away, fell back on my heels.

“Who are you?” I asked, wondering if the resident mobster collected humans as well as wine, further creeping myself out.

Would I find Jimmy Hoffa next?

Geez, Louise!

“Lana,” the woman breathed, a weary-sounding whisper.

“Lana Petrenko.”

“What?”
Had I heard her right?

She wet cracked lips and said, “Oleksiy’s wife.”

I stared at her, dumbly, as more of Lu’s words came back:
Trayla mentioned one time that he had a cellar . . . said he kept his wife down there for a week after he found out she’d been shagging his brother.

Allie had thought Mrs. Petrenko had skipped town.

Who can blame her for seeking refuge once the shit hit the fan? We’re gonna have to work like hell to get him off as it is, so it’s better for our side if Mrs. Petrenko doesn’t come back to testify.

But Oleksiy’s wife hadn’t gone anywhere.

He’d had her all along, bound to a pipe in his basement.

And I’d wager he didn’t plan to let her go, at least not until after the trial was over. Maybe not even then.

My fear resurfaced, though it had never been fully submerged, as I wondered,
Where in the hell was Malone?

Lana squinted at me, tried to lift her head.

I saw a bottle of water nearby and reached for it, but she grimaced as I held it to her lips. I noticed then how murky it appeared, and I figured my guess about her being drugged was correct. Which likely meant Petrenko had Malone doped up, too. If my boyfriend was behind that locked door, it was no wonder he couldn’t answer. He was probably dead to the world . . . figuratively speaking, I meant. I hoped.

“Please”—tears fluttered from her lashes, splattering on dirty cheeks—“help me.”

I checked the chain at her left wrist, binding her to the slim black pipe running the brief length of wall between the racks, and I saw the padlock caught between two links, holding her fast.

“Have you seen anyone else brought here, a young man with brown hair and glasses?” I started babbling, and Lana Petrenko wrinkled her forehead, eyes falling closed, so I hoped she was listening. “His name is Brian Malone, and he’s been missing for several days. He’s one of your

husband’s lawyers, but we think he might’ve seen something . . . might have witnessed the murder of a girl named Trayla Trash . . . um, Betsy Wren.”

Her eyes fluttered open, pupils so dark and wide they nearly hid the brown of her iris. “He’s here,” she whispered,

“in the vault.”

“The padlocked door?” I asked.

She nodded weakly. “There was a fight . . . he hit them. . . .”

“With bottles of wine?”

She gave another slow jerk of her chin.

So Brian had tried to macho his way out by grabbing some fancy cabernet and swinging.

That explained the red stains on the floor.

“Who has the keys to the padlocks?”

“Bernard,” Lana told me and tried to sit up. The blanket fell from her shoulders, and I saw bruising on her arms, besides the raw red circle from the chain around her wrist.

“By any chance, is Bernard the goon with the shiny shoes and creased pants?” I asked, all I saw of the dude who’d trapped me in the kitchen, not five minutes before.

“Yes.” She shivered, and I helped cover her again, wondering how she’d endured being trapped in a basement for weeks and weeks.

Wasn’t anyone looking for her? Wondering where she was? Or was Oleksiy all she had, and any curiosity about his wife’s absence had been explained away with the excuse that she took off to avoid the heat of her affair and his court appearance?

I wondered if my mother had called the police yet, because I’d had a change of heart already, figuring the sooner the better.

Finding Petrenko’s wife chained in the cellar was plenty of reason for them to search the premises, wasn’t it? And they could get keys to the padlocks and pinpoint where Oleksiy had stashed Malone.

I no longer felt sure that my makeshift posse and I were up to this.

“Stay here,” I told Lana, and, though she looked panicked, she nodded. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll get you out of here fast, I promise.”

I left her there, much as I hated to do it, snatching my cell from my pocket and hitting speed dial to call Mother.

Only I couldn’t even get a bar, not until I’d reached the stairs and started climbing.

Halfway up, I got two bars and tried again, hearing a muted ring.

“Hello? Andy?”

My mother spoke, but it sounded like she was in a tunnel.

It was the same patchy connection I’d had with Malone when he’d phoned to tell me he needed space.

“Call the cops,” I told her. “I found a woman chained to a pipe. I think Malone’s locked in a vault. We have to get the keys.”

“You dropped . . . your pipe . . . chains in a vault . . . what does that mean? It’s been . . . ten minutes . . . should I wait a few minutes . . . need more time?”

Aw, hell.

She was only catching every other word, if that, and I was getting about the same back.

I had to get out of the basement, or she’d never understand.

So I shut off the light, felt for the knob of the door with my fingers, slowly turned and warily let myself into the still-dark kitchen.

“Andrea?” Mother was squawking. “Are you there?”

I could hear her now, clear as crystal.

“Yes, I’m here,” I said, keeping my voice low, letting

my eyes adjust to the dim again, closing the basement

door and listening to the thud of my heartbeat as I told her, “You have to call—”

The police.

That’s what I would’ve said, anyway, if I’d been allowed to finish.

Instead, something hard hit my wrist, knocked my cell from my hand, and I felt the sudden pressure of cool metal at my temple and the voice of a man, telling me, “Nobody’s calling nobody, girlie.”

My gaze fell on his shoes—so shiny they glowed in the dark—and moved up the sharp line of his pants, creased to perfection.

His face, too, was creased and hard as flint.

Bernard, I presumed, and my head felt suddenly woozy.

Maybe the gun pointed at my brain had something to do with that.

All the while I kept thinking that I wouldn’t be much help to either Lana or Brian if Bernard turned me into mince meat.

Chapter 23

“Move,” Bernard ordered, nudging me with the butt of his gun, and I inched my way over toward

the table, where he indicated I should sit down in a chair. “Don’t even twitch,” he told me in a voice that brooked no argument—as if his weapon wasn’t threat enough—and then he went to the light switch and flipped the fixture on.

I squished my eyes shut against the brilliance, heard Oleksiy’s goon roll open a drawer and rummage around.

“I thought I heard somebody in here before, and it was you, wasn’t it? I should turn you over to the cops,” he said, “for breaking and entering.”

“Do that,” I said, not wanting to make Bernard mad so much as kill some time with conversation. I glanced at my cell, lying dead on the floor, and I hoped like hell that Mother had dialed the Dallas P.D. once I’d been cut off. I tried to peer beyond the window glass into the backyard; but all I could pick out was my own reflection, sitting at Petrenko’s dinner table like a cooked goose.

Was Stephen out there still? Could he see me? Did he know I was in trouble?

Mr. Shoe Shine returned, brandishing his weapon and a roll of duct tape. “So you want to be tossed in jail for trespassing?”

I met his near-black eyes and fought the urge to pee in my pants. “What would be even more fun would be hearing you explain to the nice policemen why Mr. Petrenko has his wife drugged and chained to a wall in his cellar.”

Something in his face shifted, turned even meaner, if that were possible. “What are you? A reporter? You sniffing around for a story, huh? Well, girlie, you came to the wrong place.”

“I’m not a reporter.”

He laughed, and it was a most unpleasant sound.

“Yeah? That’s what they all say. We even had one try to get into the house by pretending to be a meter reader. How dumb is that?”

“Not as dumb as kidnapping a lawyer from a strip club and stashing a dead hooker in his trunk,” I got out.

Mr. Shoe Shine stopped smirking. “What’d you say?”

“You know what I said.” I was trying to channel my mother, psychically urging her to speed-dial the Dallas P.D. before things got any dicier than they already were.

“I’ve had about enough yakking out of you, girlie. Now put your arms behind your back and sit still.” He shoved his gun inside his waistband and pulled out a generous stretch of duct tape from the roll.

I didn’t exactly cooperate, keeping my hands clasped tightly in my lap. “You sure you want to do this, Bernard?

I mean, what would your mother think about you tying up innocent girls?”

“That’s it. You asked for it, remember that,” he said and ripped off a piece of tape big enough to cover my mouth.

Crap.

I felt the adhesive stick to my lips and cheeks as Bernard patted it down. It pulled at my skin like an unwanted face-lift. I railed against it, desperate to bite or scream, but only producing ineffectual noises of protest as he situated my wrists, preparing to bind them.

Just wait until Starsky and Hutch show up.

I tried to comfort myself with the thought, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that they might never come; that Mother’s ruse of disturbed neighbor might fall flat; that Oleksiy might end up tossing me in a trunk without a pulse, as he had Trayla Trash.

Where was Superman when you needed him, huh?

My head jerked up at the sound of rending, and I watched helplessly as Petrenko’s goon tore off another length of duct tape, eager to seal me up like a package bound for UPS. “Keep your hands behind your back, right where I put ’em,” Shoe Shine growled, and this time I did as I was told.

As he bent down to tape my wrists, the French doors flew open, and a black figure hurled itself directly at the squatting Bernard.

Stephen?

The chair I sat in nearly tipped over as Petrenko’s goon grabbed at it, fighting the weight of Mother’s beau on his back. Only one of my wrists had any tape on it, so I broke free easily and scooted away from the two men, who rolled around, duking it out on the kitchen floor.

“Run, Andy!” Stephen managed to shout at me, his slender form fighting hard to keep the far stockier Bernard pinned down.

But I wasn’t about to leave a member of my posse in an obviously untenable position. There had to be something I could do, some way I could help; besides, I needed the keys to the padlocks, and according to Lana, Bernard was the one who had them.

The tape still on my mouth, I ran around to the wellstocked counters, thinking I’d grab a knife—but not exactly wanting to use one—when I spotted the George Foreman Grill.

Stephen had lost hold of Oleksiy’s goon, and Bernard was scrabbling to pull his gun from his waistband, when I came up behind him and swung the grill as hard as I could. It landed with a resounding clunk against Shoe Shine’s head.

He tottered for a moment, then shook it off, muttering, “Dumb move, girlie,” before he turned to me and raised his weapon, and I closed my eyes, prepared for the bullet that would surely sink into my chest and take me out for real.

Instead, I heard a groan followed by a thud that made the earth move under my feet, and Stephen said breathlessly, “Good going, Andrea.”

I opened my eyes and realized I was alive, and Bernard lay on the floor, a large egg-shaped welt turning purple at his left temple.

I stared at the grill in my hands for a moment and did what any girl in my situation would do: I whispered thanks to the Big Guy.

George Foreman, I mean.

“You okay?” Mother’s ex-Navy dude asked while he got to work, using the duct tape to bind Bernard’s hands and feet. I saw Goon Boy’s gun, now stuck in Stephen’s belt, a much safer place than where it used to be.

I nodded, unable to speak until I’d peeled off the strip of adhesive Bernard had used to shut me up. “I’m fine,” I said when I finally could. “Thanks for saving my tush.”

Stephen didn’t glance up from binding Bernard’s ankles,

merely replied with a perfunctory, “Any time.”

As if stuff like this happened every day.

I reluctantly put the grill away, half expecting Petrenko himself to surge into the kitchen upon hearing the commotion. Then I reminded myself that his mansion covered ten thousand square feet. He’d need bat ears to have caught wind of this. Besides, he was a heterosexual male who’d murdered his mistress and chained his wife to a pipe, so he was doubtless ripe for female company.