Lori cleared her throat. “You were mugged in the parking garage.”
“I was?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in the hospital?” Avery opened her left eye, which seemed to be the less swollen of the two.
“You are.”
“Avery, do you remember why you were in New York?” Reed asked.
Her gaze floated over to them again. “Hi, Reed.” She moaned. “My head hurts.”
Reed shook his head. “You rest and get better.”
They all stood there staring for five minutes. Avery opened her eyes again. “What happened?”
Wade stood when Trina and her friends returned.
Trina had lost a year off her life in the span of ten minutes. She was white as a sheet and holding back the pain that screamed through her eyes.
Wade opened his arms and she fell into them.
“She doesn’t remember anything. I’m not sure she will by morning either,” Reed told him.
“If ever,” Lori said.
“Might be for the best,” Jeb said.
Trina lifted her head from Wade’s shoulder and turned around. “We were keeping a list of contacts on a spreadsheet at the house. She would have written down who she was seeing and where. I should go and get it so we can make calls when everyone opens in the morning.”
Reed nodded. “Good idea, only I’ll go. You stay here for Avery.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Lori told him. “We’ve been up for hours. It’s a long drive.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Lori’s stare said Don’t argue.
“I’ll go with you,” Wade said. He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m drawing a little attention.” He’d noticed the stealth selfie followed by two more people that arrived and didn’t stop staring.
“Okay, but someone needs to stay with the girls.”
“Oh, please,” Lori said.
“Not negotiable, Lori. If this wasn’t random . . .”
Lori stopped smiling.
“I’ll stay,” Jeb offered.
Reed sized Jeb up and down. “Okay.” He turned back to Trina. “Where exactly was this spreadsheet?”
“Do you really think Avery was targeted?” Wade asked once they were alone in the rental car.
“I hope I’m wrong about that.”
Wade watched the lights of the opposing cars as they drove by. “According to Trina, Avery’s the flirty, fun girl. In my experience, the only people that have a hard time with that are other women, and only if a man is involved.”
“Avery probably has many of those enemies, but I doubt a woman did that to her.” Reed concentrated on the road.
“How bad is she?”
“Broken wrist due to a size twelve kicking her. It appears that she tried to block multiple blows to her face. She didn’t do a good job, however, as evidenced by the broken nose that they will operate on later, when she’s stable. Sprained ankle from the fall, maybe. The hit to the head left her out of it for hours, and whether the hits to her face continued after she was out, or before, we won’t know unless she tells us. For Avery’s sake, I hope she never remembers it.”
Wade noticed Reed’s knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. “Who does that to a woman?”
“I don’t know. But I will find out.”
“I’m glad we left Jeb behind.”
“Me too.”
They drove in silence for several miles.
Reed glanced over with a slight smile. The only one Wade had seen on the man since they met. “You’re Wade Thomas.”
“Yes sirree.”
“I saw you in concert in Vegas a couple years ago.”
That surprised him. “At Caesars?”
“Yup. That was a fun night.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Wade had lived with his fame long enough to know how to accept a compliment without getting his ego in his armpits.
“I have a question,” Reed started.
“Shoot.” Wade leaned his head back, thankful he wasn’t driving. The day had wiped him out.
“I’ve always wanted to know if the band makes money on the concessions.”
Wade smiled. “Yeah. We do.”
Reed nodded a couple of times. “Well, then . . . you owe me a beer.”
It felt good to laugh. “You got it.”
Chapter Nineteen
According to the navigation, they were fifteen minutes out from the house Trina had shared with her late husband. The closer they were, the stranger Wade felt about being there. How odd was it for him to be going there at all?
“Did you know Trina’s husband?”
“No. I met the women after his death.”
“The women?”
“Yeah, Lori, Trina, Avery . . . have you met Shannon?”
“Tall, thin, brunette?”
“Yup, that’s her. No. I never met Fedor. I haven’t formally met Fedor’s father either.”
“Why would you?”
Reed stole a glance, then turned back to the road. “Trina hasn’t told you about Ruslan?”
“If that’s the father-in-law, then no. Should she have?”
Reed shrugged. “You guys just started dating, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then no. I guess she didn’t see the need.”
“Is there an issue with Ruslan?”
“Not lately.”
Wade turned in his seat. “Are you trying to be cryptic? If so, you’re really good at it.”
“None of it is for me to tell.” Apparently that was all Reed was going to say on the subject.
He pulled off the main road and into a neighborhood of big yards and even larger houses. Reed drove up to a gate and put in the code.
The two-story house was dark, as any house should be at two in the morning. Even the porch light wasn’t glowing. They both stepped out of the car at the same time and walked up the steps together. Reed used Trina’s key to let them in.
Wade searched for the hallway light switch that every home seemed to have and turned it on.
The foyer looked as if the occupants were moving. Things were taken off the walls and placed in piles, and the two tables that Wade could see were home to unsealed boxes. Wade moved to close the door and Reed stopped him.
“What is it?”
Reed looked as if he were listening to the silence. “The alarm isn’t set.”
He walked to what looked like a home alarm system and looked but didn’t touch it.
“Maybe Avery forgot.”
“No, you heard Trina, they were both concerned about the contents of the house and had been setting the alarm, even when they were home at night.”
Reed reached into his jacket and came out with a handgun.
“Whoa . . . I thought you said you were a retired cop.”
He put a finger to his lips and shut Wade up. “Stay close,” he said in a whisper.
Holy shit. This was far outside of his spectrum. Wade had shot a gun or two in his time, but mainly shotguns on his property. Handguns were home to men like Jeb, not Wade.
Wade followed Reed through the house and kept an eye behind them as they moved room by room. They swept the house and came up empty. Once Reed holstered his gun, Wade took a deep breath.
“Maybe Avery was in a hurry,” Wade suggested.
Reed didn’t look convinced.
Wade looked on the counter in the kitchen, where Trina said he’d find the spreadsheet.
It wasn’t there.
Reed opened drawers until he found the one that held all the crap a junk drawer housed but that didn’t belong in a kitchen. He shuffled through the pens and papers before slamming it shut.
“Should we call Trina?” Wade asked.
“No, Avery might have moved it. Let’s keep searching.”
They did, and nothing.
“Didn’t Trina say something about a back office?”
Reed looked around and started toward the back door of the house. He switched on a light, and they both walked in the late night air to what looked like a smaller version of the house on the other side of the yard.
Reed stopped Wade midstride with a hand to his chest.
The door to the office was open an inch.
Reed crouched down, and Wade followed his behavior. With a lift of his hand, Reed told him to stay back.
Reed took a deep breath, paused, and kicked open the door before hiding back behind the exterior of the office.
Silence.
He started low and swung back into the room.
Nothing.
He turned on a light and Wade risked a look.
“Oh, shit.”
Wade stood there and stared while Reed moved through the room, careful not to touch anything. He kicked open a door, ducked in, came back out. Then he put his gun away.
Everything was completely askew. From the desk to the chairs, the lamps. Papers were everywhere, pictures were off the walls and lying on the floor.
“Don’t touch anything,” Reed said as he reached for his cell phone.
Wade had seen this in a movie but never in real life. To say he was spooked was an understatement.
“Hey, Neil. Yeah, I know what time it is. Someone ransacked Fedor’s office. No, I called you first . . . because nothing in the house was touched, just the office.” Reed walked over to a crooked painting on the wall, and using his jacket instead of his fingertips, he moved it aside. There was a safe behind the picture. Reed tapped on it with the same covered finger. “No. It appears they were looking for something. We’ll have to wait for Trina to get here to see if anything is missing. But the safe hasn’t been opened. Check with the guys and find out if the alarm was ever set this morning, and if it was, when it was disengaged. Got it. Yeah, I’ll call it in now.”