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ADAM
Adam stood on the corner and looked up at the lights in the penthouse apartment. He was too low to see anything, but he knew Ruby was up there with his daughter, living the high life like she hadn’t fucked him over.
Fucking cunt.
He forced himself to breathe. Roman Kalashnik was gone, along with the blond giant who seemed to be his personal bodyguard, the one who’d beaten Adam to within an inch of his life in New Orleans.
Adam lifted a hand to his nose, still healing from the break. His left eye wasn’t quite the same either, and he walked with a limp thanks to a kick the blond asshole had delivered to Adam’s right knee.
And it wasn’t just Roman and his groupie who were gone. Another man had gotten into a second Escalade after loading the cars with black duffel bags. Both SUVs had pulled away from the curb at the same time, leaving only the slightly pudgy Russian who seemed to follow Ruby and Olivia everywhere when Kalashnik wasn’t around, now the only guard watching Ruby and Olivia.
Adam tried to stem his excitement, forced himself to stay calm. He’d been waiting for an opportunity like this one for weeks. He couldn’t afford to blow it.
He took a deep breath and felt for the taser in his pocket. He’d considered going for a gun. They weren’t hard to get off-market. But guns were noisy and Adam wasn’t about to go down for a murder wrap if worse came to worst and he got caught.
Besides, he was just as comfortable with a taser, knew from his police work that they would do the job of immobilizing someone for up to an hour if he tased them long enough.
An hour was more than enough time for him to get Olivia, to make Ruby pay for what she’d done.
He started walking, hands in his pockets, toward the big pudgy Russian. It was late, the streets empty, and Adam kept his pace slow, just an average Joe out for a walk, not at all unusual in the city, even at night.
The Russian sized Adam up as he approached.
“Hey man, got a light?” Adam asked when he was a few feet away.
“No,” the man said, holding his ground.
“Oh well, thanks anyway,” Adam said.
He was even with the Russian now, saw his shoulders loosen just a little, enough for Adam to know he’d analyzed the potential threat and deemed it safe.
Adam removed the taser from his pocket and pointed.
The man fell to the ground, his body spasming.
Adam pocketed his taser and dragged the man off the street and against the facade of the building, then propped him up like he was a passed-out drunk.
He fished through the man’s pockets, bypassing the key card to the elevator in search of a better prize. A few seconds later, he found what he was looking for in a key ring with four keys.
He would have to try them all.
He took the Russian’s gun for good measure and stepped into the building’s lobby, looking for the entrance to the staircase. There had to be one — Adam had been forced to attend more than one evacuation drill in buildings just like this one.
His gaze landed on a metal door tucked into a vestibule at the back of the lobby.
Bingo.
Buildings constructed after 9/11 were built with emergency staircases that were accessible to first responders in the event of a power outage or catastrophic event.
He started toward it.
Ruby probably didn’t even know it was there.
35
ROMAN
They staged at a clearing off an old logging road, the three SUVs clustered together, their lights off to avoid drawing attention. There hadn’t been time to secure a safe house. The situation in the city was deteriorating.
