Officer Jackson follows me home and, as I have been doing lately, I park on the street beside my apartment. Jackson is right there at my door when I exit, and another officer joins him. None of us speak. We’re all on edge, watching our surroundings. Once we’re at my building door, the second officer remains outside at the entrance, while Jackson and I head upstairs. At my door, Jackson holds up a hand. “I’ll clear the apartment.”
“I can clear the apartment, but thank you.”
“No. I’m doing this,” he insists. “I’ve been tasked with protecting you.”
I’m too tired to argue. I offer him my key and step back. He disappears inside and I wait. And wait. I wait too long. My adrenaline begins a slow rise. I pace back and forth. Something feels off. I dial patrol. My phone won’t work. I try again. It still won’t work. Someone is using a portable cell phone jammer. And there is only one person I know of who has that kind of skill.
I draw my weapon and cautiously enter the apartment. Silence greets me and I can’t get eyes on Jackson. I begin a search, clearing the kitchen and then the bedroom, heading cautiously into the bathroom and closet. Finding nothing, I head back downstairs and go to the one place that is left. The stairs that lead to the attic.
Slowly, I take one step at a time, my heart thundering in my ears. I inhale as I step into the room, a vise closing around my throat at what I find. Jackson is knocked out at my feet, a syringe beside him. Wade is tied to a chair and unconscious, but he’s not naked, which tells me he refused to undress. I’m not sure how Nolan knocked him out or how he got him in the chair.
Nolan is standing beside Wade with a pill pressed to Wade’s lips, and in the depths of Nolan’s eyes is an evil I hadn’t seen during our prior encounters. I feel that evil now, too. Lang was right. Nolan is not one man, but two, at the very least. This is the killer’s side of Nolan’s personality, the one I haven’t met in person until today. Stubble covers his normally clean-shaven jaw, and his white button-down shirt is wrinkled. He looks frazzled, drugged even, running on no sleep. A man of control losing control, which, in my experience, is a bomb about to blow.
“They aren’t dead,” he says. “Yet. They’ll end up like Roberts and be dead if you don’t do as I say.”
The confirmation that Roberts is dead is a brutal one that does what he hopes. It tells me he really will kill Wade and Jackson, and probably me, too. “What do you want, Nolan?”
“Drop your gun or I’ll shove this in your boyfriend’s mouth and kill him right now.”
I decide right then that I will never complain about someone calling Wade my boyfriend ever again. I’m fairly certain Jackson injected himself to save Wade.
I kneel and set my gun down, but there’s a second one in my desk drawer. I’m paranoid that way. “Okay. Now what?”
He motions to another chair that used to be in my kitchen against the wall, beside the desk. “Sit.”
I don’t argue. That desk is closer to him and Wade. It also has my backup weapon inside it. I need to be in that chair. I do as he says, crossing the room and claiming the chair. Now he’s got Wade positioned in profile to me and Jackson. He’s behind Wade, but he’s on this side of him, which is a problem. He could grab for me if I reach for the drawer.
“How did you get Wade to sit down?” I ask, trying to keep him talking. “He’s a big guy.”
“Big isn’t a weapon against drugs. He didn’t even know I was here.”
He got him from behind, I think. “And Jackson? Did he inject himself to protect Wade?”
“He did. I wasn’t sure he was that brave, but he proved otherwise.”
And I doubted him. I couldn’t feel shittier right now. “What did you inject them with?”
“Heroin. A heavy dose.” He reaches into his pocket. “They’ll need these.” He holds up two syringes. “An epinephrine boost. It could cause a heart attack, but that’s their only hope.”
My own heart about stops with those words. “Give them the shots and I’ll do anything you want.”
He’s still holding the pill, and he also has the syringes. The pill is no longer at Wade’s mouth, but I’m not sure I can get to him before he changes that.
As if he senses my thought process, he throws the syringes across the room, out of reach and then, to my surprise, grabs a gun from the back of his pants and shoves it at Wade’s head. “You understand this a little better, don’t you? Now maybe you won’t consider coming at me. You were, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t,” I lie, and while I’m aware that he could shoot us all, I don’t believe he will. He doesn’t like to get dirty, but I don’t know where the cyanide pill went, either, and his hand is shaking now. He’s losing it. He’s on edge. He doesn’t have the control he values. He’s going to act out if I don’t act first.
“I did all of this for you and the greater good,” he says. “You need to commit to the greater good. The world depends on it. I killed your father. I killed Roberts. They were distracting you. They were keeping us apart.”
“You didn’t kill my father,” I say. “Richard Williams killed my father.”
“I paid him to kill your father. Your father didn’t deserve the Jazz name and what it means to this world. The Jazz name is everything. The Jazz name is royalty. It must be protected. Your father had to be removed from the lineage. And Roberts got in the way. You had to be close to me. You have to be trained. They were all in the way. I paid him to get rid of all of them: your father, Roberts, and Newman.”
I suck in a breath, trying to calm the shock rolling through me right now. He had my father killed? He thinks we’re really blood relatives to my grandfather and if I tell him differently, he might kill us all right now. I try to focus, I try to just focus and keep calm, keep him talking. My father is too close to me, an emotional topic for me when I can’t afford emotion. I go elsewhere. “Why kill Newman? Why involve him? What was that all about?”
“I set him up, I gave him to you. I wanted you to judge him, to feel pleasure when he was dead. To know that was the right thing, the right judgment.”
And I had. I’d felt pleasure at his death, and that terrifies me. “Richard Williams killed himself.”
“I killed him because he wanted to kill you, too.” He kneels in front of me. “I will always protect you. I love you. I love your grandfather. You just need to prove you understand your destiny. You have a duty. You have a duty!” He shouts the last declaration right in my face.
Somehow, I don’t react. My voice is low, controlled. “Inject Wade and Jackson and we’ll leave. We’ll get out of here and you can teach me. I want to do what I need to do.”