“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Nick said. “The cops are on their way. Malcolm called them in. We’re trying to save your ass.”
Vanessa wrenched free, gasping as she spoke. “He doesn’t want to be saved. He wants us to decide he’s too much trouble and put him down.”
She struggled to catch her breath. “His wife is dead upstairs. He knows Malcolm will have framed him as his final revenge—hopefully exacted after Stokes has helpfully killed us. But his timing was a little off.”
Nick gave Stokes a shove. “You need to run.”
Vanessa grabbed her gun and slapped it back together as she asked, “How far off are they?”
“Maybe a couple of blocks. We’ll need to—”
Stokes snatched the knife from earlier. Nick wheeled, ready to block his attack. Only he didn’t attack. He drew the knife back and plunged it into his heart.
When Nick lunged for him, Vanessa grabbed the back of his shirt.
“He was going to do it,” she said. “It was just a question of whether he took us along.”
“But the cops wouldn’t have thought he cut out his own tongue.”
“Doesn’t matter. Malcolm wasn’t letting him walk out of this. Let’s just hope we can.”
The ambulance had indeed stopped at the Stokes house. So had two police cruisers. The cops had gone in first and called to the paramedics, presumably when they found Stokes dying on the study floor.
“Wait,” Vanessa said. “Wait …”
Nick could point out that he hadn’t given any indication that he planned to do anything except wait. They were in the yard behind the Stokes house, waiting for a chance to run through the rear yards to the car. The trick here was to time their departure just right.
One pair of officers had already circled the property. A perfunctory search. Stokes had obviously stabbed himself. It wouldn’t even be clear that there’d been an intruder until they realized their victim was missing his tongue.
The officers had gone, but Vanessa still held off, making sure they didn’t pop back out to check something.
“Still clear?” she whispered.
“Yep.”
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
Nick steered them through this yard and the next. There were fences to scale and it was obvious Vanessa was out of practice, but she didn’t pretend otherwise, letting Nick help her as they went.
At the halfway point, Nick stayed on the fence after he’d helped Vanessa down. He rose, balancing, to get a look back at the Stokes house. It wasn’t a clear angle, but he could see enough of the road to be sure no new emergency vehicles had joined the others. As he readied himself to jump down, though, he saw two police cars pass.
Nick crouched on the fence until the cars pulled in with the others. Two detectives went inside. Two uniforms stayed on the front lawn.
He jumped down and told Vanessa.
“They’re guarding against curious neighbors,” she said. “They may have shut off the lights and siren, but people will have heard the vehicles. Any minute now, every occupied home here will have someone peering out, trying to see what’s going on. Which means we need to move. Fast. Nosy neighbors are worse than cops.”
They jogged across the back of the yards, and got through two before it seemed as if half the neighborhood lit up. When a door opened, they dove behind a shed.
“Go on,” a voice muttered, thick with sleep. “Be quick about it, Mitzie.”
Nick swore.
Vanessa whispered, “We’re fine. City pets are used to people nearby, and any pooch named Mitzie isn’t going to be a world-class guard dog.”
“Which doesn’t matter when one of us is a werewolf,” Nick whispered back.
He’d barely finished before the dog started wailing louder than a police siren. Vanessa was right about one thing—Mitzie was no guard dog. She’d caught one whiff of Nick and started throwing herself against the door to be let back in before the monster devoured her.
“Take the lead,” he whispered to Vanessa.
She scaled the rear fence, which left them blocked by the shed. A door opened, Mitzie’s owner muttering, “What the hell?” as the dog barreled inside. The door shut, but as soon as Nick topped the fence, a deck light turned on in the yard he was climbing into.
“Go!” he called down to Vanessa.
Nick jumped. A muffled shout from inside the house told him he’d been spotted. He made a run for it—in the opposite direction. Back over the back fence. Then through the yard where Mitzie’s owner had, thankfully, retreated indoors to tend to his distraught pet. Hop the next fence. And then circle around into the yard of the empty house where they’d parked.
Vanessa had the car running and the garage door up. He raced to the passenger side and jumped in.
“Go!” he said.
“That neighbor saw you run into this yard,” she said. “If we back out now—”
“I went the other way around.” He rolled down the window. “The witness will tell the cops I ran toward the Stokes house. Now go.”
17. NICK
With the headlights off, the car rolled down the driveway. Once they were sure no cruisers were ripping after them, Nick pulled his knee up, rubbing his calf and wincing.
“I think I pulled something back there,” he said. “Five fences in five minutes. I’m too old for that shit.”
Vanessa gave a shaky laugh. “Five fences in twenty minutes was too much for me. I’ve been too old for this shit for a while. Out of practice, too. I need to get out in the field more. I can’t believe Stokes got the jump on me back there.”
“You handled it,” Nick said. “And he is a professional killer.”
She screwed up her nose as if to say that wasn’t an excuse. Nick watched her as she drove, her gaze fixed ahead. She was a beautiful woman … which was almost certainly not what should be going through his mind at this moment.
Vanessa cast an anxious glance in the rearview mirror.
“I’ll hear anyone coming after us,” Nick said. “My window’s cracked open.”
“I know.”
“We’re fine.” He paused. “Relatively speaking.”
She gave a tight laugh and loosened her death grip on the wheel, flexing her hands, only to squeeze it again with both hands, her gaze staring into the night.
“You know what we need?” he said. “A drink.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Think we can find one at”—he checked his watch—“three-thirty in the morning?”
She glanced over. “You’re serious?”
“I am. We’ve made our getaway. We aren’t going to track down Malcolm tonight. We need to rest and convey our updates to our respective bosses. And then we need a drink. Or three.”
Her laugh loosened then, as did her grip on the wheel. “If you really are serious, I won’t argue. I’m sure we could find a corner store and grab—”
A phone buzzed.
“Speaking of bosses,” Nick said. “That must be yours.”
“Um, no. When I’m in the field, I don’t even put it on vibrate.”
“Well, mine is on vibrate and …”
He trailed off as they looked at each other. Nick whipped around, clicking his seat belt off as he looked in the backseat. The phone kept ringing. He pinpointed the sound, coming from under his seat. He reached down, feeling around until his fingers touched plastic.
He pulled the phone out. A blocked number showed on the screen. He was about to answer when Vanessa grabbed the phone from him and yanked the wheel, braking hard, but not before the car lurched up over the curb.