Page 2 of On the Chase
As expensive as it must have been, the decorating scheme was a little too ostentatious for Kaylee’s taste. It felt as if everything had been chosen to impress visitors with the owner’s wealth, rather than to create a home. Although Kaylee had a healthy appreciation for financial stability, she was happy just to be able to pay her mortgage and buy food and have enough left over for some really nice shoes. The pushy glamour of Noah’s uncle’s home left her cold.
“So, Kaylee,” Martin said, jerking her out of her thoughts. She gave him a polite smile. “You work at St. Macartan’s College?” Although he put a lilt at the end of the statement, it didn’t sound like a question. From the look in his eyes, Kaylee was pretty sure he knew perfectly well where she worked—and a whole lot more about her. Before inviting her to their gazillion-dollar mansion, Martin had probably had her investigated to make sure she wouldn’t steal the silverware.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m in development and fund-raising.”
“And how do you like that?”
“I love it.” A warm glow of satisfaction filled her, as it always did when she thought about her job. “Scholarships made it possible for me to go to college.” Scholarships and working her tail off, but Kaylee left off that part. It sounded too self-pitying. “Now I get to raise money so that other kids have that same opportunity.”
“Sounds…noble.” There was an off note to his tone that made Kaylee stiffen, even as she tried to define it. The expression on Martin’s face was uncomfortably close to a sneer, with a wrinkled nose and curled upper lip that made him look like he smelled something foul. She knew that look, had seen it thousands of times as she was growing up, but she wasn’t sure why Martin was wearing it now. She braced herself, ready to defend her job or her background or her worthiness to even be in the same room as his nephew, but Martin changed the subject. “Where did you go to school?”
“University of Minnesota for my undergraduate degree, and St. Macartan’s for my master’s.” There was a hint of challenge in her tone, but Martin didn’t take her up on it. Instead, he just asked what her major had been.
The conversation continued, so polite on the surface that it made Kaylee nervous. To be honest, Martin freaked her out a little. He had that crocodile-in-disguise manner, his eyes flat and cool even as he smiled. As soon as Martin turned his attention to an older couple seated next to him, Kaylee gave a silent sigh of relief and leaned toward Noah. “Restroom?” Martin had flustered her, and she needed a minute and some privacy to remind herself that she wasn’t that helpless, needy child any longer.
Noah tipped his head toward one of the doorways. “Turn left, then right; it’s the third door on the right. Want me to take you?”
“Oh no.” She stood, making patting motions with her hands as if to keep him in his seat. “I’ve got it. My sense of direction is excellent.” With a teasing smile, she excused herself to the rest of the guests. It was probably her imagination, but she thought she felt Martin’s sharp gaze on her back as she left the room.
Within a few minutes, she was hopelessly lost.
Kaylee made a low sound of frustration. She’d followed Noah’s directions, turning left and then right, but there had only been two doors on the right in that hall. Deciding that he’d left out a third turn, she’d made her way down another hallway, which only brought her farther into a twisted maze.
“Rich people and their ginormous mansions,” she muttered, deciding to just start checking rooms. There had to be a thousand bathrooms in this place, so she figured she’d eventually stumble over one. She tried several doors, most of which were locked, and the rest of which were definitely not bathrooms. As she reached for yet another doorknob, male voices caught her attention, and she turned toward the sound. Rounding the corner, she saw two burly men enter a room at the very end of the hall.
“Excuse me,” she called, hurrying as fast as she could on her impractical—yet very cute—shoes, but they’d already disappeared, closing the door behind them. When Kaylee reached it, she tried the knob. It was locked.
With a growl of impatience, she considered kicking the door, but refrained. Not only did she not know where a bathroom was, but she wasn’t sure how to get back to the dining room. Annoyed with herself, she started trying doors again.
She yanked at one. The handle turned with the heavy click of an automatic lock. Kaylee frowned. Why did Martin have a room in his house that could only be opened from the outside? She pulled at it, curious. The door was heavy and resisted opening at first, but then it swung toward her. To her disappointment, it wasn’t a bathroom. Instead, a flight of stairs descended to a concrete floor. She was about to allow the door to swing shut when she heard a sound.
“Hello?” she called, although her voice came out wispy. There was something about the blocky, utilitarian stairs and fluorescent lighting that gave the space an icky basement vibe. Her childhood home had left her with a special abhorrence for basements.
“Help!” someone called in a hoarse voice. The hair rose on the back of her neck. “Please help us!”
The words were so unexpected, so out of place in the glamorous mansion, that it took a moment for the plea to register. Her heart rate sped up. “Who’s there?” Forcing her feet forward, she descended a few steps. The door started to close and, remembering the automatic lock, she wedged her clutch purse against the jamb before releasing the door.
Her shoes sounded too loud on the steps. “Who’s there? Are you hurt?”
“Down here!” The voice was rough and scratchy, the urgent tone enough to make her stomach clench. How had she gone from fairy tale to horror movie in just a few hallways? Her gaze darted toward the door, and she briefly considered running up the stairs and escaping, but she told herself firmly that she was being ridiculous. This was Martin Jovanovic’s fancy-pants mansion, not a haunted house. She clomped down the remainder of the stairs with forced confidence. She was the girlfriend—well, almost-girlfriend—of the perfect man. She’d been invited to a California dream home. She belonged here, damn it. There wasn’t any reason for her to feel intimidated.
Then she saw the blood.
Oddly, the first thing Kaylee felt was exasperation. Now Penny would get to say “I told you so,” because her friend had been right…again. The mansion, the boyfriend, the food…everything had been too perfect, so it was time for reality to kick Kaylee in the face once again. Her gaze followed the dark-red trail across the floor until it reached the source of the blood…so much blood. Then her brain shut off as horror swamped her, rushing over her in a black wave as her lungs sucked in a huge breath, automatically preparing for a scream.
“Help,” a man—although he was barely recognizable as human—gasped, startling Kaylee into swallowing her shriek and turning it into a harsh croak instead. “Please.”
There were three of them, tied to chairs and facing one another in a rough triangle. Her gaze darted from one battered, blood-soaked form to the next, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. “I was just looking for a bathroom,” she whispered.
A wheezing choke—was it a laugh?—came from the man whose face was so swollen that it was hard to pick out his features. A slitted, glittering eye peered at her from the wreckage. Her lungs flattened and refused to take in any air as Kaylee stared at his battered visage. Someone had done that to him, had tied him up and tortured him…someone who could be coming back at any moment. “Good thing for us. A hand?” He tilted his head toward the table that sat in the center of the small room. When she stayed frozen, he added, “If you could grab something sharp and cut us loose, we’d appreciate it.”
His words were oddly polite, but they held an underlying plea that jerked Kaylee into motion. It was hard to think, to understand what was happening or what she needed to do, and she seized on his gently worded request.Cut them free, she mentally repeated.Cut them free.
Sucking in a much-needed breath, she rushed toward the table, her heels clattering against the concrete. Her body felt foreign and awkward, and her movements were jerky, as if she were a marionette with someone else controlling her strings. She stumbled to a halt next to the small folding table, and a small, near-hysterical portion of her brain noted how the cheap metal stand didn’t go with the rest of Martin’s decor. No wonder he hid it in the basement.
Stop. Don’t freak out. Just breathe.
She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. As her brain registered what the items on the table were, what horrific things the knives and pliers and hammer and—oh shit—theice pickhad been used to do, she couldn’t stop from returning her gaze to the first man’s ravaged face. He tried to smile at her, but the result was macabre.
