Zeke blinked in recognition, not of this particular place, but of similar establishments he had frequented. He knew a bedroom in a brothel when he saw one.
He could almost hear the echo of Sadie’s voice scolding.Johnnie, why must you have anything to do with bad girls like those?
“This time, lady, I swear I’m innocent,” Zeke murmured. How had he come to be here? Not by his own power, of that he was certain. He couldn’t even remember leaving Rory’s flat.
He shifted on the lumpy mattress, his head throbbing with the effort to remember. It had been too warm in Rory’s parlor. He had opened the window, climbed up to the roof.
The roof! Footsteps behind him, the thug with the jagged scar, the heavy club crashing down—it all came back to Zeke in a blinding flash.
Attacked by the same man twice in one night? It made no sense. Obviously, the scarred man had trailed Zeke to Rory’s flat and lurked in the street below, waiting for him to leave. When Zeke had climbed up to the roof, the thug must have spotted him and followed. In Zeke’s experience, pick purses usually weren’t so persistent. He didn’t know what this was all about. He was only sure of one thing—he had to get out of here.
Zeke struggled to raise himself. But at that moment, he heard the scrape of a heavy boot, the chink of a key as someone unlocked the bedchamber door.
Too weak to risk further conflict, Zeke felt it might be better to lie still. Closing his eyes, he feigned unconsciousness as thedoor swung open. The floorboards creaked, and Zeke sensed someone standing over him.
He risked peering beneath his lashes enough to see who it was—two men, undoubtedly the same two who had assaulted him earlier.
The ugly one with the scarred chin leaned closer. “Hey, I thought I saw him move. I better give him another thunk.”
Zeke tensed, keeping himself motionless with great difficulty. To his relief the second man intervened. “Naw, stupid. He’s supposed to wake up.”
“Yeah?” the scarred man grunted. “Well, I ‘like none of it, all this play-acting and games. This feller’s too dangerous. Damn near broke my jaw before. I shoulda just slit his throat the first time we jumped him.”
“Good thing you didn’t. The boss man would’ve been mad as hell. He might not have paid us. He wants him alive for now.”
The voices faded and Zeke heard the door close, telling him he had been left alone again. He tried to clear his disordered thoughts, make sense of what he had just heard. The boss man wants him alive for now.
So he had been right. This series of attacks was no coincidence, no minor attempt at thievery, but part of some more sinister plan directed by a person who had not as yet revealed himself.
It would seem you have an enemy, Zeke, my boy. There was nothing new about that. In the old days, he could have taken his pick of any number of rival gang members who might have wanted to see him dead. Now that he was a respected pillar of the community, that was supposed to be all behind him. It had been a long time since he had even been threatened. Not unless one counted Charles Decker’s pathetic bluster.
Zeke’s lips curled in contempt as an image of the politician rose in his mind, the weaselly fellow sitting in Zeke’s officehemming and hawing, while he had hinted that Zeke should drop his support of Stanley Addison or else he would be sorry.
All bluff. Or so Zeke had thought. He still had difficulty picturing Decker, in his natty checked business suit, dealing with street toughs and arranging something so desperate as abduction, possibly murder.
Yet Decker had been hard-pressed of late. Any rat when cornered would bite. Maybe Zeke had been foolish to underestimate the man.
Only one thing was clear. He would find out nothing lying here in some night chippie’s bed. Nothing except how they intended for him to die.
Luckily his captors had not taken the trouble to bind him. Whoever was paying the scarred fellow wasn’t getting much value for his dollar. The thug wasn’t that good in a fight, nor was he overburdened with brains.
This time when Zeke struggled to rise, it still hurt, but his head didn’t swim so bad. He made it to a sitting position, the ache behind his eyes settling to a dull throb. Hell, he always had had a hard head.
Swinging his legs off the bed, he planted his feet on the floor and nearly stepped on someone.
Startled, Zeke drew back, glancing down and realizing he was not the room’s only captive. Sprawled on his back lay a young man with waves of wheat-gold hair, staring at the ceiling, glassy-eyed, the sensitive contours of his face gone rigid.
Zeke’s throat tightened with recognition. “Addison!”
The shock of seeing the attorney somehow numbed Zeke’s own aches. Shaking off what remained of his confusion, he sank down to his knees beside the man.
He didn’t need the absence of a heartbeat or even the sight of the dark red pool on the attorney’s slender chest to know. Addison was dead.
Addison, with all his muddleheaded ideals that Zeke half-admired and was half-driven crazy by. Addison, his blue eyes empty now, with all his dreams snatched away.
Zeke rocked back on his heels, feeling sick. It was not the first time he had confronted death, even in its more violent forms. Why did this one wrench so hard at his gut? He barely knew Stanley Addison, yet he felt pierced with a sense of loss. He was actually shaking. His fingers trembled as he moved to close those gentle, unseeing eyes.
As his hand dropped back to his side, Zeke struck against something hard, half-protruding from beneath the bed. Grasping it, Zeke pulled the object out, only to find his fingers curling about the thick handle of a knife, the blade encrusted with blood. His sorrow gave way to anger.
