Smokin’ Seventeen(64)

He pulled me to him and kissed me, and I had a ripple of panic when I didn’t feel anything. First Morelli and now Ranger. No belly heat. No tingles in private places. No desire. Nothing.

“Babe,” Ranger said. “Do we have a problem?”

“Bella removed the vordo curse, and I think she might have removed too much.”

“Too bad,” Ranger said, opening the door to his Cayenne. “It would have been interesting to see what you could do in an SUV.”

Fifteen minutes later we drove past Kan Klean. Lights were off in the building’s second- and third-floor windows. There was moderate traffic on the street. Teens hung in groups in doorways and in front of the pizza parlor.

We turned at the corner, took the service road, and idled behind the Kan Klean van. There were no other cars in the small lot. No light shining from back windows. No street lights or exterior porch lighting. Ranger parked on the shoulder one door down, we walked back to the Kan Klean building, climbed the stairs, and Ranger tried the door. Locked. He worked at it for a moment, and the door opened. One of his many talents. We stepped inside and closed the door behind us. No alarm sounded. There were no blinking diodes on a control panel suggesting a silent alarm. Ranger clicked a penlight on and flicked it around the room. I did the same.

We systematically moved through the apartment, beginning with the small eat-in kitchen. We were looking for anything that would tie Alpha to the killings. The mask, the jumpsuit, clothesline, notes, personal items removed from the victims, dates marked on a calendar, car keys. We didn’t find anything in the kitchen, so we went to the living room.

The living room was filled with guy furniture. A flat-screen television, a big leather couch, and two leather recliners in front of the television. The coffee table in front of the couch was loaded with newspapers, two cardboard boxes filled with file folders, a take-out pizza box, empty beer cans, a box of Sugar Smacks, and a giant bag of Funyuns. We each took a file box and picked our way through.

“He used Bobby Lucarelli for some of his transactions prior to his time in jail,” Ranger said. “I don’t see anything else of interest.”

I returned my file box to the coffee table. “Nothing here. Miscellaneous receipts.”

We had a bathroom and two bedrooms to go. The first bedroom was standard fare. Rumpled bed. Dirty clothes on the floor. A dresser with man junk on it. Keys, a watch, a couple empty beer cans, a couple girlie magazines, an open box of condoms. There was a clock radio and more girlie mags on the single nightstand. A small armchair with a flowery print had been shoved into a corner. We didn’t find anything incriminating in the closet or dresser. Nothing under the bed. Nothing incriminating in the bathroom.

Ranger stood in the doorway to the second bedroom and flashed the penlight at the middle of the room. “Nice,” he said, his light shining on a monster of a freestanding safe. “They had to bring this in with a skyhook.”

“Seems excessive for a Stark Street dry-cleaning operation.”

He toed the door open. “It’s not locked. And it’s empty.”

I looked in. “No Frankenstein mask.”

Ranger went still. “Someone’s on the back stairs.”

I froze and a moment later a door creaked open. I heard footsteps in the kitchen. Men’s voices. The door slammed shut. The footsteps and voices moved through the kitchen. They were walking in our direction. Ranger pulled me into a closet, wrapped an arm around me and closed the closet door. It was completely black in the closet. I was smashed into Ranger, and I could feel his heart beating against my back. His heartbeat was even. Normal. Mine was racing. A slim bar of light appeared at the bottom of the closet door. The light had been switched on in the room.

“Now what?” one of the men said.

“Now we put the bags in the safe.”

“Do we need to count it?”

“No. It’s already been counted. Just shove the bags in.”

The closet door muffled sound, but I heard a thud and some scuffling.

“Close the door and lock it,” one of the men said. “Then we can watch TV until Nick comes home.”

The bar of light disappeared from the bottom of the door and the men left the room. A couple beats later the television droned from the living room.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered to Ranger.

Ranger’s voice was low, his lips skimming across my ear. “We’re going to stay here until either all of them leave or Nick goes to bed.”

“That could take hours!”

“Yeah,” Ranger said, his hand sliding up to my breast.

“Stop that!”

“I liked you better when you had vordo.”