Page 47 of Brutal Legacy

Could they truly stop a man like my mercenary?

On the way, I stopped by the post office and finally got the package my father had sent me. I sat in the little lobby and stared at the envelope with trepidation. Did he have what my mercenary was looking for? Would it save me or damn me?

I reached inside and withdrew a flash drive. It was small, tiny enough to tuck into my bra. I went to the bathroom and did just that, throwing the envelope in the trash on the way out, and then stopped. The flash drive felt like a neon sign over my head.

Incriminating Evidence Here!

I couldn’t leave it there. It felt too obvious and easy to lose. I opened my bag and rummaged through it. The other week my cheap lipstick had fallen out of my purse and smacked onto a tile floor. The entire inner tube had slid out, separating from the larger case. I’d forced it back in at the time. Now, I dropped the shiny black case on the floor and broke it again. Tossing the inner tube of lipstick in the trash, I slipped the tiny flash drive into the empty lipstick container and snapped the lid on. It wasn’t a bad little disguise. Not at all.

I tucked the lipstick into my bag and headed to work.

I needed to see what was on the drive.And then what?Then I’d lose plausible deniability. Like my mercenary cared about that. He’d already deemed me guilty by association with my father and sentenced me to whatever it was he was taking me to.

A headache pressed at my temples, but I got to work and got settled, while Eddie made a pile of the work I’d missed out on.

My eyes glazed over as I looked at it. I’d be here a week at least, trying to catch up.

So, in addition to getting on the LAPD’s radar, sitting through an interrogation, and having nightmares of seeing a man get shot in the head, I had another thing to thank the black-clad asshole who’d dragged me around all day for.

I worked steadily through the day, grateful for a distraction from my worries.

While it was comforting that the LAPD was searching for my captor, I didn’t have high hopes for them finding him. He seemed like a man with skills, and he’d been confident that he’d get to me again.

It was all because of my father. Clearly, there was a lot I didn’t know about how he’d lived his life, and it had been far from the squeaky-clean image he’d projected. He’d been best friends with Salvatore De Sanctis, of course, I’d always known that, but I’d been naive.

Willful ignorance.The man in black’s voice echoed through my mind. His disdainful tone had made it clear how little he believed my protests of innocence.

Before I knew it, it was time to go home, and my coworkers were on their way out. It was the weekend, and they had places to go. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do that was more important than catching up on my missed work.

I chewed on my lip and thought of my half-sewn designs. I’d been dumb enough to stuff them into that hastily packed go bag, along with my most precious possession. The box of my mementos.

Now, they were at the mercy of that man. He’d probably tossed them in trash the first chance he got, ridding himself of the dead weight and any vestiges of mercy for me. I focused on sewingto drown out the hopelessness I felt when I thought about my belongings abandoned somewhere in LA.

When I lifted my head up again, it was dark outside, and my lamp was the only pool of light in the workshop.

I checked my watch and was shocked at the time.Eleven p.m.? How?

Something had jolted me out of my work-focused delirium. I listened for it — the soft sound of rain falling. It had started raining? That was pretty unusual for this time of year in LA. I didn’t normally hear it in the workshop, underground as we were.

I listened to it, enjoying the sound before it stopped.

Wait, it stopped?I stood and stretched, walking to the sliver of window that ran along the top of the wall, and glanced up. Raindrops streaked down the glass. So, why had the sound stopped?

It was like a window had been open and someone had closed it.

Or… a door.

Fear blew through me in a sudden rush, setting my nerves on high alert. I strained my ears, trying to hear something, anything, from whoever else was still in the building.

Maybe it was just a coworker upstairs in the showroom. That seemed doubtful, though; it was late. Really late.

I hurried back to my desk and clicked my lamp off, plunging the room into semidarkness. After a few moments, my eyes started to adjust to the gloom, and the meager amount of streetlight falling through the small window.

Outside on the street, legs passed by the window, walking quickly. There was only one thing in the direction that they were going, and it was the emergency exit to the showroom.

Panic hit me hard. There were men creeping in here… for me.

I had to get out of here. If the men were coming in through the back, then I had to make a break for the front.

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