The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [101]
J.T. slid around the corner and she followed quickly, focusing on taking quiet, shallow breaths. The hallway was long and dark and seemed to bisect the house as a main artery. Her nose twitched. She recognized the scents from years before. The pungent odor of chemicals sprinkled and sprayed onto carpets, the oily residue of fingerprint powder clogging the air. The distant rusty scent of something she didn’t want to contemplate. Crime scenes had their own distinct fragrance of old violence and fresh chemicals. It made bile rise in her throat. She swallowed it back down.
J.T. turned right and led them straight into a tiny kitchen. Dishes were still stacked in the sink and a newspaper was open on the kitchen table, giving the eerie feel of life interrupted. The vinyl floor, however, no longer looked like a kitchen floor. Huge sections had been ripped up, cut out, and sent off to the state crime lab. Most likely they were being analyzed for blood.
J.T. opened the lower cupboards and swept the dank depths with the penetrating flashlight beam. The light came up, washing over an old countertop, now coated in luminescent chemicals.
The beam continued relentlessly. The walls glittered as the light picked up various residues. As he glanced up, he saw the flashlight illuminate dark dots arching across the ceiling like a rainbow. The spray pattern. Indicating a beating with a blunt wooden instrument. Like a tree limb or mop handle or baseball bat.
She was having a much harder time breathing. She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured Sam. You’re doing this for your daughter. You will be strong for your daughter.
“Hold it together,” J.T. growled in her ear. He moved into the living room.
After another deep breath she followed. There was less disturbance here. The furniture looked like it had been hastily rearranged by cops looking for evidence. Random squares of carpet had been cut up and sent off to labs. It was obvious, however, that the main action had happened in the kitchen. The living room just got the residue.
“Stay here,” J.T. said curtly. “I’ll check out the rest of the house.”
“What about my six-to-twelve responsibilities?”
“The wall is the only thing holding you up. Let’s not push it.”
He slid down the hall without another word, taking his flashlight with him. She gripped her gun tighter in her sweaty palms. Carefully she eased away from the wall. She wasn’t going to be sick, she wasn’t going to faint, she wasn’t going to be scared. She was going to be strong, she was going to be tough.
Jim walked up right behind her and popped the plastic bag over her head.
“Theresa,” he whispered in her ear. “I see you answered my invitation. And it looks like you brought me your mercenary to kill.”
J.T. HAD JUST opened the last dresser drawer in the spare room when he knew he was no longer alone. Tess? She couldn’t move that quietly. These were the steady steps of a professional.
Beckett. How?
He tightened his finger around the trigger of his 9mm and rolled up on the balls of his feet just in time to hear the telltale whistle of a bat whizzing down. He leapt to the side and fired twice. The bat crashed into the dresser.
J.T. pivoted, tried to aim, and received two sharp blows to his kidneys for his efforts. His gun went flying. He lashed out with his foot and heard the grunt of Beckett receiving the blow.
Whirling his head around, J.T. spotted his gun. He lunged. Simultaneously Beckett lifted the bat.
Roll and fire, just like a shooting drill, except Beckett wasn’t a cardboard target and the stakes were real.
His finger pulled back sharply, one, two, three, and through the ringing in his ears he heard Beckett’s sharply indrawn breath. The bat, however, rose again.
J.T. moved but not fast enough; the bat caught him with a solid crack against his forearm. His fingers went immediately numb, then flared red hot with pain. The gun dropped from his lifeless hands.
“Shit.”
The bat rose.
There was no more time for thinking. Now it was about adrenaline. It was about rage. And J.T. felt