Gemma nodded and then walked to her car in a daze. She was conscious of Detective Greene being picked up by an unmarked car as he looked back at her one more time. She pulled Fred out of the bag and held him tight to her chest as she sat in the driver’s seat, letting the tears flow freely as her body was wracked with sobs.
CHAPTER TWO
Gemma pulled into her sister’s parking space at the apartment complex and stared at the cement wall. There was a crack running along some of the blocks and she followed it until it ended. Gemma debated leaving, but she didn’t know where else to go. Her home would seem so empty. She had needed to feel her sister again so she found herself driving to Gia’s apartment. But she stayed in her car, hesitant to go upstairs. The pain would be too much to bear.
Gemma knew she didn’t need to wait for Detective Greene to tell her when her sister died. She had known the second it had happened. She had felt it. She had lived it right here in her own car. Gemma had felt the pain, the fear, and finally the moment her sister could no longer fight. That’s why she was here and that was why she needed to find the courage to go upstairs. She needed to feel a connection to her twin again to help with the anguish washing over her.
“Come on, Fred,” she said softly as she put her windblown dog back into the large bag.
Gemma felt as if she were in a nightmare as she made her way to the elevator and pressed the eleventh floor. It didn’t seem real. The walls blurred and she couldn’t focus on anything but the red elevator numbers as they ticked off the passing floors. When the doors opened, she pulled out her keys and headed to the end of the hall to her sister’s apartment. She heard every
“What the hell?” Gemma turned the handle. The door was unlocked. Suddenly she remembered that Gia was mugged and her purse taken. The killers would have her address and her keys. What if they were still here? Anger like she had never felt filled her as she shoved the door open. “Come out, you bastards!” she yelled into the apartment as her pulse throbbed in expectation.
Her breathing quickened as she hurried through the apartment, turning on lights and flinging open doors, but luckily, there was no one there. She set her bag down on her sister’s couch and Fred popped his head out and looked around as Gemma sat next to him on the white couch. She grabbed the dark blue decorative pillow and pulled it to her, hugging it while rocking as tears flooded her eyes once again. When she smelled her sister’s flowery lotion on the pillow, it felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Fred jumped out of the bag and rested his head on her leg in silent support.
“It’ll be okay, buddy,” she choked out. She wiped her eyes and held on tight to the pillow as she looked around the room. It was then she noticed that her sister’s usually spotless place was a complete mess.
“Looks like those assholes were already here.” She shook her head, feeling violated at the thought of those killers pawing through her sister’s things.
Gemma pulled out her cell phone and dug around the back pocket of her jeans for Detective Greene’s number.
“This is Greene,” his gruff voice rang out over the phone.
“Detective, this is Gemma Perry. I'm at my sister’s apartment and it’s been ransacked. It’s a mess. My sister would've been so upset,” she trailed off.
“I thought that might be the case. I've already sent an officer over to secure the premises. Try not to touch anything. Use a tissue or a glove. We want to be able to get fingerprints,” Detective Greene instructed. “Can you tell me what was taken?”
“Um, her computer is gone.” Gemma walked around growing more and more confused. “But that’s all.”
“That’s all? TV and jewelry still there?” he asked, perplexed.
Gemma walked into the bedroom and opened the jewelry case sitting on the dresser. “That's all I can tell is missing. Jewelry and other valuables are still here.”
“Your sister was an investigative reporter; did she ever investigate dangerous people?”
“All the time . . . do you think this was planned?” Gemma asked as her heart stilled. She instinctively went to the door and looked into the empty hall as if the killers might be there waiting to be caught. She shut and locked the door and set the security chain before going back into her sister’s bedroom.
“I’m beginning to think that. The crime scene screams professionals. Who would want your sister dead?”
“I don’t know. She was working on something, but she didn’t tell me what. Hold on. She has a drawer filled with flash drives for storing her research and notes.” Gemma hurried from the bedroom, down the narrow hall, and back into the living room. Gia’s desk was on the far side near the kitchen, overlooking the fire escape.
Using a tissue, Gemma opened the top right drawer and looked in. “Empty. All her flash drives are gone.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Detective Greene said as Gemma heard the sound of a car being started.
“Okay. I’ll sit tight.”
The boss watched his right-hand man, Sergei Klimov, look up from the reporter’s computer and curse in what had to be Russian. “That
“Tell me you've found something on those flash drives,” he growled. He felt his anger radiating from his thin frame. This was why he hired help like Sergei and all the other little minions. They were supposed to take care of these things for him. That’s why he was the boss.
He knew a man like Sergei held power simply because of his physical strength—and the fact he was a psychopath. While he himself stood only five-feet-eight inches or so and probably weighed half of what Sergei did, there was no way Sergei would ever cross him. While he may not look physically intimidating, he was quite possibly the most powerful man on the planet.
He could overthrow a dictator, a president, or even an entire royal family with a flick of his manicured hand. With one press of the button on his phone, a country could be bombed or a satellite shot down. Of course, people had to pay heavily for him to issue those orders.
At any given time, he was orchestrating arms deals with rebels, pirates, and warlords while running a highly profitable sex-trafficking ring. His men ran the black market for guns, weapons, and stolen goods. He had just sold
He had more money than many nations and more people of power in his pocket than all of the lobbyists in D.C. He had done it all by himself, too. The idea started when he was just a child, sitting in his room thinking, while his mother
His mother had been a prostitute. He realized it by the time he was five. Men had come in and out of their small row house in New Jersey day after day. She was beautiful and they gave her things. They even gave him things. Later his mother had told him her body was marketable and she was going to use that to her advantage. She had her eyes set on the governor of New Jersey and a better life for her family.
She wasn’t shy about the fact that his father was her high school sweetheart who had died in Vietnam along with so many other men. She later told him that her heart had died that day and the only way to put food on the table was to use her body. She started off small, with city council members and influential merchants. They received free groceries and a bus pass that month.
By the end of the year, she was the mistress to the governor and her son was starting first grade in the best private school in the state. But, she hadn’t stopped there. She moved on to senators and eventually the vice president of the United States. All the while, the boy had listened and learned. These men had real power and he learned by listening to them talk on the phone when they visited his mother. Sometimes they held meetings at his
