She answered him in Sicilian. But he roared at her in English.
“Does he always speak in English?”
“Ninety percent of the time,” she said, frowning at the house. “Your daughter just left,” she called out.
“She can stay away too,” he shouted back.
“Why is that?” Petra asked.
“She’s no daughter of mine.” Again more shots were fired.
She brushed the hair off her face. “Dammit,” she said, shaking her head. “When he gets like this, he’s just impossible.”
The man came storming out, and she sighed, as they witnessed a big, tall old man carrying a long shotgun.
Eton and Cain shared a frown.
She smiled up at the old man. “Patina just left. Is this how you treated her?”
“It doesn’t matter how I treated her,” he rambled, then took several steps and stumbled.
He was obviously in a drunken stupor.
She sighed and said quietly to Cain and Eton, “It’s better if we don’t talk to him right now.”
Morgan took several more steps and tripped. He hit his head on the concrete in front of them and laid completely still. She gasped. She wanted to rush to his side, but Cain grabbed her arm. “Wait. He’s still dangerous.”
She looked down at Morgan on the ground and said, “Outside of that gun, which he’s not even holding now, he’s nothing. He’s not dangerous. He’s just a sick old man.” She raced to his side. The two men followed. She studied Morgan. “He’s out cold. While he’s unconscious, go ahead inside through the front doors, bear to the right, and you’ll find a hallway. Take the stairs. The last bedroom on the right is Chico’s.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go now,” she said, “while Morgan won’t know the difference.”
*
Cain, not wasting a moment, dashed inside, Eton with him. Neither wasted time on the drunk, who had stumbled and fallen on the pavement. They followed Petra’s directions to the bedroom at the end of the hall. Cain didn’t even want to know how she knew which bedroom was Chico’s, but, given Petra was friends with the sister, maybe it made sense after all. The door was locked. He stared at it and then faced Eton. “You think it’s rigged?”
“No,” Eton said. “Presumably there’s still some love for the family here.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “Seems to me not a whole lot of love is lost on any of them.”
Eton already had his pick out, quickly popped the lock, and, as they pushed it, found a deadbolt. Eton noted, “You know that this means he had to leave from inside the room.” That deadbolt took a little bit longer.
“I know, maybe out the window or some secret interior staircase,” Cain said, but the minute they opened the door, the smell hit them. Immediately pulling his shirt over his nose, he stopped and stared. “What the hell?”
On the bed was a woman. Or at least what remained of a woman. She’d obviously been dead for quite some time. Cain looked back at Eton. “Let’s hope this isn’t Petra’s sister.”
Eton’s gaze widened at the thought. He nodded with a hard clip and said, “But we need to do something about this.”
“I know.”
They pulled gloves from their pockets—the thin surgical disposable kind that they carried everywhere. Avoiding the body as much as they could, they searched for a very obvious cause of death and found it—a bullet through the forehead. They walked on the carpet, trying to leave as little sign of their presence as possible. The fact that they’d found a body would give them a little bit of an excuse to be here but not too much more. They opened the nearby closet, and Cain whistled. It contained nothing but heavy artillery. “This is a hell of a weapons stash,” he said.
“Kind of makes you wonder how long it’s been here.”
“Probably a hell of a long time,” Cain muttered. Staying out of the way of the window, they made sure nobody else would know they were here. They made a quick check through the closet, closing it up the way they had found it in the first place, noting it was there in case they needed some weapons themselves. Then Cain checked a night table, finding a small black journaling book, which he pulled out and tucked into his pocket. Also he found a stash of cash in a bag, which he left as is. He took one last look at the woman on the bed and motioned for Eton to go ahead of him. As they exited the bedroom, he stopped and looked at the lock. The two turned toward each other. Cain shrugged and said, “We’ll leave it open.” And, with that, they swept down the stairs.
Just as they opened the front door, a bullet slammed into the doorjamb at their heads. Eton grabbed Cain, and they both fell backward. Cain looked through the window to see Petra flat on the ground outside, beside the old man. Cain called out in a low voice, “Petra, did you get hit?”
She shook her head slightly.
He had to get her into the house or at least farther away from here. When he went to swing open the door again, another shot was fired. He pulled out his phone and sent a message back to the team, giving them an update.
We need cops, he typed, and a dead woman’s in the upstairs bedroom. At that, he got back a simple message.
On it.
Looking around at their options, Cain caught sight of a big metal lounge chair off to the side, with a thick padded seat. With the door wide open, he dashed outside, grabbed the lounge chair as a protective covering, and raced to Petra’s side. He pulled her to her feet, and together they inched their way back, holding the chair up as a shield. Several bullets struck the metal and bounced off harmlessly or were embedded in the cushions. Back up on the porch, he pulled her into the house. “What about the old man?” he asked, putting down the lounge chair inside.
“He’s still out cold,” she said, gasping for breath.
He faced her. “Did you see the shooter?”
“No.”
Just then they heard sirens far off in the distance. Nearby, a vehicle suddenly started up, and, as they watched, a big black truck drove from the neighbor’s property, around the stone wall, and took off in front of them. Cain couldn’t see the driver; the truck was too far away. He looked at Eton and said, “We need that tracked.”
Eton was already on his phone, texting off their request.
Cain quietly asked Petra, “What does your sister look like?”
She glanced at him in surprise. “Red hair, about five feet, seven inches, very slim.”
He looked at her, took a deep breath, and said, “I need to show you something, but it’s pretty unpleasant.”
She frowned at him and said, “If it has something to do with my sister, I need to know what you’re talking about.”
He looked at Eton, who gave a one-arm shrug. What else could they say? “A dead woman is upstairs,” Cain said.
She stared at him in shock and shook her head. “No, it can’t be her. She left months ago.”
“Months and months ago, or months ago?”
She frowned. “She left at the same time my father had his accident. So it’s been eighteen months.”
“Any idea when the Chico guy living here would have disappeared?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. He came and went all the time.”