“Stop!” he shouted at Riley. “You need to come with me.”
He was big. Over six foot tall and built like an NFL linebacker. In his late fifties, Riley thought. Used to giving orders and being obeyed. He had a scar running down the side of his face and a military-style buzz haircut.
Riley’s assessment was that he was scary as hell and made Rollo look like a choirboy. No way was she going anywhere with him. She rammed the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and rushed inside. She threw the bolt, ran down the short hall to the front foyer, and ran up three flights of stairs to the safety of her apartment. She let herself in, locked her door, and looked out a back window at the man standing in the yard.
He looked confused. Unsure what to do. Less threatening from this vantage point. He looked up at her and she jumped away from the window. When she returned moments later, he was gone.
I’m in big trouble, Riley thought. And I don’t know where to go for help. I could trust my dad but I don’t want to drag my family into this. Going home to Texas is no longer an option. I can probably trust Emerson, but he’s weird and I don’t know how to get in touch with him. Government agencies are out. I don’t know how far the Grunwald tentacles reach into those agencies.
She set the tote bag on a kitchen chair and checked the time. Almost noon. She should have lunch. Keep up with the normal activities, and maybe everything would eventually fall back into place. She stared into her fridge and let the cold air wash over her while she scanned the contents. White bread, strawberry jelly, mustard, a carton of eggs, 1 percent milk, provolone cheese slices, some deli ham, a jar of olives, a bag of baby carrots.
She was contemplating a cheese sandwich when she was grabbed from behind. An arm crooked around her neck, and her head was pushed forward in a choke hold.
It was Rollo.
“Memo to Riley,” Rollo said. “Check for killers hiding in closets when entering your apartment. Oops, guess you won’t be able to use that advice since you’ll be dead. I’m going to slit your wrists after you pass out, and you’ll just be another unstable woman who was driven to suicide over losing her dream job.”
Riley grabbed at the arm around her neck and kicked back with her foot, but she was already too oxygen-deprived to be effective, and she slipped into unconsciousness.
—
Emerson and Larry Quiller took the stairs to Riley’s apartment two at a time.
“I tried to stop her,” Larry said, struggling to keep pace with Emerson. “I told her she needed to come with me, but she ran into the house.”
Emerson reached Riley’s apartment and found the door locked. He stepped aside and Larry kicked the door open, splintering the doorframe, sending the door crashing against the wall.
Rollo was on one knee, bent over Riley with a knife in his hand.
“Mr. Knight,” Rollo said. “We meet again.”
Larry lunged at Rollo. Rollo jumped to his feet and hurled himself through a kitchen window, shattering the glass. He landed on a narrow metal fire escape, shook off the glass shards, and scrambled to the ground.
“Agile little bugger,” Larry said, looking down at Rollo, who was limping away, dripping blood.
Riley struggled to breathe, to open her eyes, to rise out of the suffocating darkness and into the light. The first face that swam into view was Emerson’s. The second face she saw was the big guy with the scar.
“What? Who?” Riley asked.
Emerson leaned close and shouted at her. “I AM EMERSON KNIGHT!”
“Crap on a cracker,” Riley said.
Emerson moved back. “Precisely. And the large man to my right is Larry Quiller. Larry was my chauffeur when I was a child.”
“Very pleased to meet you,” Riley said to Larry.
“Likewise,” Larry said.
Riley looked at her wrists. Not slit. Good deal.
“Rollo was going to kill me,” she said.
“Fortunately we arrived in time to prevent that,” Emerson said. “We were parked across the street waiting for you when we saw Rollo go into your apartment house. We thought it more prudent to intercept you rather than try to root Rollo out before you got home. I was on a phone call when you drove past us and parked in the back, so I sent Larry to retrieve you.”
Riley pushed herself up to a sitting position, and Larry helped her to her feet.
“Larry scared the bejeepers out of me,” Riley said. “I thought he was one of Werner Grunwald’s henchmen.”