saw there was a bolt on the door, but someone had forgotten to throw it. The door had been left unlocked, unbolted. Big mistake.
She eased the door closed after herself, smiled when she saw Amy Eisenhower’s VW and Dr. Eisenhower’s Dodge Raider. Jackpot. She turned her eyes to a red Beemer sports car. Those weren’t cheap. She wondered what the person who owned it did for a living. She also wondered if he or she had just moved in, because there was a ton of stuff stored in new looking cardboard boxes.
Taking her eyes away from the cars and boxes, she saw the door to the house, was afraid for a second it might be locked and bolted, but it wasn’t. The door led into a well appointed kitchen and Lila gasped. Whoever lived here had her stove. The Grand Palais made by La Cornue. Two ovens, one gas, one electric, both with airtight seamless doors. The ovens cooked with radiant heat, Lila knew, because she was a gourmet chef when she wasn’t out killing people. The stove cost over forty thousand dollars. Only a true gourmet would have one. A gourmet with plenty of discretionary cash. This stove was yellow, which matched the kitchen, Lila’s was, of course, black.
Lila decided she had to know whoever owned this stove, man or woman. Like Lila, this person had taste. She hoped Mansfield Wayne wasn’t going to harm this woman. She had to be a woman, Lila decided and she wondered if she had brown eyes, if she was the brown-eyed version of Amy Eisenhower, Manny was so interested in.
With her eyes still on the yellow stove, Lila set her backpack on the kitchen counter by the sink. The sinks were granite and they looked like they were molded into the counter. This lady had class, easily as much as Lila herself, much more than the Waynes, Mansfield and Tucker.
With the backpack open, Lila took out the dart gun, almost regretting what she was about to do. That wasn’t like her. She had no feelings; that’s what made her so good at what she did.
But before she sought out the bedrooms, Lila wanted to learn a little more about this woman. She opened the kitchen cabinets, found Japanese style dishes. In the silverware drawer she found expensive, but tasteful, flatware and several sets of chopsticks. Pots and pans were All-Clad, about the best you could get. Lila was impressed. This was an ideal kitchen.
She was stalling and she knew it. Time to go to work. She went up the stairs. The first bedroom turned out to be a home office, the second was made into a gym with a pretty impressive treadmill. How they’d fit in the room, Lila didn’t know, unless they’d taken it apart and reassembled it. The treadmill faced a wall mounted flat screen. Lila imagined a runner who didn’t like running in the cold, so she ran inside during the winter.
In the third bedroom, she found an unmade bed and that made no sense, because the woman who lived here didn’t seem the type to leave it that way. So why was the bed unmade? She got her answer when she checked the fourth and last bedroom. Two women were asleep in the same bed. Apparently the lady of the unmade bed got a little lonely during the night.
Cousins, that didn’t seem right, but it wasn’t Lila’s job to judge. She was here for a reason. She pulled back the covers without waking the women, found they were both wearing flannel pajamas. She stepped back and shot one of them in the ass. The girl moaned, jerked then lay still. The gun was virtually silent, making not much more noise than popping the top of a Coke can.
Lila reloaded the dart gun, moved around to the other side of the bed, shot the other woman in the rump. She jerked too, but this one stayed silent, didn’t moan.
With the girls drugged, Lila went downstairs. She needed one of the cars in the garage out and hers in. In the kitchen she found a key hook under a cork board. There were two sets of keys on them. One of the sets had an old VW key on it.
In the garage, she found the switch for the electric door and she moved Amy Eisenhower’s Volkswagen to the street. The spot remaining looked a little tight for her Crown Vic, because of all the boxes. The other set of keys were for the Beemer and she parked it on the street as well.
She got out of the Beemer, thinking how modern it was, even though it seemed to be trying to look like a classic. Give her the real deal any day. She pocketed the keys, studied the neighborhood. It was quiet, quieter than she would have expected, considering the fact that mostly students lived in it.
Good for her though. She didn’t want any prying eyes.
She backed the Crown Vic into the garage, then closed the door. She smiled to herself as she opened the trunk. Considering her line of work, one might have expected that she’d had a body or two in it in the past, but she hadn’t. This was going to be a first. Well, not bodies, not really; they weren’t dead.
And that gave Lila pause. She was being paid a bundle not to think, but she couldn’t help it. Manny wanted these girls alive. But why drugged? Then it hit her like a hammer upside the head. He didn’t want them talking to her. He was afraid of what they might say, of what she might learn. He didn’t trust her.
She slitted her eyes, fought fisting her hands as she felt the anger bubbling up. What could those girls possibly know that Mansfield didn’t trust her with? She’d pulled Tucker’s fat ass out of the fire more times than she cared to count. She’d killed for Mansfield, killed for Tucker, too. If Manny couldn’t trust her, who could he trust?
Stupid question.
There was nobody he could trust, except maybe Tucker and until right now, her. He was paying a small fortune to keep whatever these girls knew from Lila. Why?
It had to be more than money, because she’d handled more money for the Waynes than most people make in a lifetime, in a dozen lifetimes. So what could it be? Lila wanted to know, but unfortunately she’d already tranked the girls.
That was too bad.
Nothing for it now, but to load them up and deliver them to Manny. But she’d keep her ears open, because there was something weird going on.
Upstairs, she grabbed Amy Eisenhower in a fireman’s carry, took her downstairs and gently laid her in the trunk. Just a few minutes ago, she’d’ve tossed the girl in like a sack of meat, not caring how many bones got broken. But now, now she wanted to know what was going on.
She had a place in Virginia City the Waynes didn’t know about, maybe she’d take the girls there, find out what the big secret is. Manny could wait a day or two. Who knows, if it was big enough, maybe she’d do the girls and bury them out in the desert. She could always tell Manny she’d couldn’t find them, that they’d blown town, disappeared.
Back up in the bedroom, she pulled the other woman to her, then stopped. This woman was supposed to be Amy Eisenhower’s double, except for the eyes, but she didn’t look a bit like Eisenhower, so who was she?
And where was the brown-eyed double?
“ The other bed,” she said aloud. The double had been sleeping in the other bed, but she was gone now. Where?
Izzy ran past the black and white, with Hunter leading the way. He turned right at the corner and made for the park. She was on his flank. He was taking it easy, so she could keep up. Izzy knew this to be true, because he could’ve easily left her behind.
He turned away from the lit ranger station, led her to a copse of trees, then stopped. She was panting to beat the band. He was quiet, hardly breathing at all.
“ Good job, Hunter,” she said and the dog wagged his tail. He had saved her life, but Shaffer had died in the process. Still, Hunter hadn’t killed him. But if he were ever identified as the animal that brought Shaffer down, they’d probably put him to sleep. Heck, who was she kidding? If they caught her, they’d probably put her to sleep as well.
She heard more sirens off in the distance. Then the sound of a helicopter. More cops were coming. She needed to be on her way, because they’d be searching the park. Her breath caught, she started down the park road that led behind her house and the homes on Putnam Drive.
Those cops, they’d disappeared. Vanished. Went away before her eyes. How could that have happened? And she’d killed. How could she have done such a thing?
A car screamed into the park, turning off Sierra, coming toward her. The gate was open now. She stepped off the road, but the dog did not. She moved behind a tree as the lights caught Hunter. The dog turned, ran back the way they’d come, then turned into the park as the black and white chased after him. Hunter was leading them away from her, giving her a chance to escape. He was one smart dog.
She ran toward the gate and Sierra. All of a sudden she remembered the gun in her hand as another black
