Queen of Spades Page 10

  His face was red, his chest heaving. Blood oozed out from the towel he’d tied around his leg. He looked down at her, his face twisted in a mask of fury. She heard a click as he undid the safety on the gun. She stared back at him, defiantly. She would die with honor.

  They both heard a voice in the room, a tinny sound from far away.

  Detective Collins.

  Nikos’ eyes flicked to the phone on the bed. It seemed to snap him back.

  “If it were up to me, you would have died the first moment I saw you.”

  She smiled.

  He frowned. “What’s so funny.”

  “Up to you? You’re not in charge. You think you’re a stone-cold killer, but you’re really just someone’s bitch.”

  He kicked her in the ribs, sending her back to the ground groaning and gasping in pain. At the same time, she heard shouting from the phone. When she sat up again, he was gone. She heard the sound of his footsteps racing down the stairs. The pile of clothes he’d discarded outside the bathroom door was gone.

  As she scrambled to her feet, she heard a motorcycle roar away.

  That’s why she hadn’t seen a car. She still couldn’t figure out how he’d gained entry to the house without leaving a trace. Unless. Unless he had come in the same way she had.

  It suddenly dawned on her that the police probably hadn’t found the secret room, but he had. He’d probably arrived just moments before her, leaving the door wide open as a trap. He may have even been hiding outside, waiting for her to enter first and search it so she would feel safe and let her guard down—just as she had done—before his attack.

  All this raced through her head as she stumbled to the bathroom, using the wall to support herself. She left bloody handprints on everything she touched. Like the rest of the house, the bathroom was trashed—the contents of the medicine cabinet had been dumped on the floor. She kneeled and frantically sorted through the assorted bottles and containers until she found the painkillers. She grabbed a dress out of a pile on the floor and pulled it on over her bare body, then slipped inside the secret room and closed the door behind her.

  It was only once she was down the staircase and under the deck, that she remembered her burner cell left on the bed with the line open to the detective. For once, she regretted making the burner phone untraceable. But then, to her surprise, she heard the distant whine of sirens. Maybe the detective was smarter than she thought and had put together the same clues as she had. It had just taken him a lot longer.

  Eva felt like she was going to vomit as she stumbled down the beach. She’d planned to get to her car, using the cover of night, but realized that her wounds were too great. She needed to rest and maybe get stitches. She turned toward the Camdens’ house. Once inside, she quickly glanced at a laminated sheet on the counter. It gave instructions for the house and its care while the owners were gone. She’d seen it earlier. Now she scanned for dates.

  The maid wouldn’t come for another week. Thank God. She yanked open a cupboard and grabbed the first food she saw—two cans of peaches with a pull tab, a box of crackers, and four tins of sardines. Clutching these provisions, she made her way up to the second-floor bathroom where she could see her house. She propped herself up against the wall and watched as a convoy of police cars and ambulances pulled into her driveway. Cops emerged from their vehicles, guns drawn, and raced toward the house.

  Good old Collins. Did this mean he believed her now?

  She stripped and stepped into the shower without turning on the bathroom lights. Glancing down as the blood washed off her and formed a pool of frothy pink on the shower floor, she tried to examine her wounds. Most seemed shallow. One, low on her abdomen, gaped open. She needed to do something to stem the blood flow. But first she wanted to clean them. When she lathered soap into her wounds, she collapsed onto the shower floor, nearly passing out from the pain.

  She tried to stand and slumped back down onto the shower floor. Hard. It took all of her effort to reach one hand outside the shower and rummage in her boot for the bottle of painkillers. She tossed a few in her mouth and then opened her mouth like a baby bird capturing some of the warm water beating down so she could swallow them. She rested one hand on the shower wall and moaned, praying the painkillers would work before the hot water ran out. She needed something to fight the pain so she could crawl into the guest bedroom and sleep.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, the pain seemed to lessen. She tried to stand and, this time, managed to stay up. She turned the faucet off and wrapped herself in one of the huge plush towels hanging from a towel rack. Dripping pink, blood-stained water behind her, she peeked into the master bedroom’s medicine cabinet and found some bandages.

  She emptied the box. And the blood was still seeping through. She realized she’d need something more. Down in the garage on a small shelf she found some super glue. She sterilized her wounds with some rubbing alcohol and then after drying her skin, used the super glue to seal her deepest cuts.

  Back upstairs again, exhausted from her efforts, she found a soft, navy blue velour track suit that was a few sizes too big. Thank you, Mrs. Camden. She managed to put the track suit on and made her way into the guest bedroom where she pulled back the covers on the bed and crawled inside.

  Soon, she was drifting off to sleep. But she kept jerking back awake in excruciating pain. She’d stopped the external bleeding, but maybe she was bleeding internally. Had he lacerated her liver? Could you bleed out from that? Most of the cuts seemed shallow, but who knew? The pain didn’t feel like they were shallow, that’s for sure. Maybe she was going to die. Guilt swarmed through her.

  She wished she had the energy to write a note to Mr. and Mrs. Camden, telling them she was sorry for breaking into their home. If she made it out of their house alive, she’d anonymously send them a substantial amount of cash to make up for it. But right then, she wasn’t sure she would make it out of the house alive. She shook off that thought. She had to survive. She had to heal. Because before she succumbed to death, she needed to hunt down Nikos and make him pay in a way he’d never imagined, even in his worst nightmares.

  Nineteen

  1990s

  Los Angeles

  Nearly a week later, she knew she’d survive. She’d gone through three days of fevers, which she was sure stemmed from infected wounds. Feverish and nearly delirious, on the second day of the fever, she’d managed to make her way to the master bath medicine cabinet and found some antibiotics. They had expired two months before, but they seemed to do the trick because on the fourth day she’d woken up clearheaded again.

  She’d found a case of bottled water under the sink in the master bath and had dragged them back into the guest room with her, putting them beside her in bed. She knew that she could do without food, but water was another issue.

  Ravenous, she’d scarfed down peaches and sardines, but now that her fever had broken, she knew she’d never eat either food again.

  The first day she woke without a fever, she got out of bed and gingerly did some stretching and mild strength training. She couldn’t afford to lose the strength she’d built up over the years. At first, it involved curls with canned peaches, but before long she was able to do some very, very gentle crunches and push-ups. She was careful not to open her wounds, but even so, one day she had to super glue a larger cut that had opened up during her stretching.

  Each day, she worked out, considering it physical therapy. Each workout left her exhausted and sweating and dizzy, but she pushed herself a little more each day.

  On the sixth day, she remembered the maid was scheduled to come so she woke early, scrubbed the bathroom, cleaned up her mess, and made the bed in the guest room. Then she spent the entire day hidden in a basement storage room that she barricaded from the inside. The maid didn’t show up until noon. As she heard the sounds of vacuuming and banging around above her, Eva remained in the dank, dark space until she heard the maid leave.

  She sank into the guest bed wit
h relief, knowing she had the house to herself for another week. The next week, she hid from the maid again. After the maid left, Eva stepped into the garage with a wad of keys she’d seen hanging on a hook in the entryway. She left the Hummer and stepped into the Volvo station wagon. She knew the car wouldn’t be reported stolen for at least another week when the maid returned.

  Back at her new house, she threw open the windows to let in fresh air and unearthed one of her burner phones. She dialed Detective Collins.

  “You’re alive.” He spoke before she did. “With the amount of blood we found at your house, I thought maybe you were a goner.”

  She grunted in reply, wondering how he knew it was her on the other end of the line.

  “I don’t give this number out to just anyone,” he said, reading her mind.

  “Only the girls you really care about?”

  “Exactly,” he said. He actually sounded happy she’d called.

  “I haven’t watched the news. Am I still a suspect?”

  He paused.

  “Guess that’s a yes.”

  “I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Listen. The killer? He was the one who stabbed me nearly to death. And I know who it is now. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “It’s a man now?”

  “Nikos Alexopoulos.”

  “Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

  “He was the father of one of my daughter’s classmates.”

  Silence.

  “He withdrew his kid from school shortly after the…deaths.” It pained her to say the word.

  “I’ll check into it.”

  “It would be a lot easier for me to find him if you lifted this arrest warrant off my head.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Even if you prove he did it?”

  “Even if.”

  “Did you find the wig and mask in my house?”

  “Actually, we did.”

  Eva sighed audibly with relief. “Do you believe me now?”

  “I wanted to try it on,” he continued, “to see if I would look like you, but the forensic tech guys didn’t want me to touch it. They sent it away to see if they can extract DNA.”

  “So, I’m cleared, right? No more arrest warrant?”

  “Oh, there is still an arrest warrant.”

  “What?”

  “You’re forgetting one key detail.”

  She waited.

  “You killed a man right in front of a witness.”

  She actually had forgotten that part. Krystal. “You mean because I saved a woman’s life and she doesn’t understand that.”

  “A jury will determine whether it was self-defense.”

  “I didn’t say it was self-defense,” Eva said, her jaw tightening. “I said I saved a woman’s life. What is wrong with your country?”

  This time the detective was silent. As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a major mistake. She’d let him know that she wasn’t an American-born citizen. Fuck.

  But he seemed to brush it off, saying, “That’s all fine and good if it’s true, but it would still be up to a jury to decide that, and I’m sorry to say, but putting your sole eyewitness up on the stand isn’t going to help your case.”

  He paused. She remained quiet. She had nothing to say to that.

  He continued, “Why does she hate you so much?”

  “Any number of reasons, I guess,” she glanced at the time. “Hey, when I called how did you know I was calling from my old house?”

  “Somebody called it in.”

  “What in?”

  “Some old guy saw you walking down the beach from the parking lot.”

  Eva thought about that for a second. “That was about an hour before I was inside my house.”

  “I didn’t get the tip until right before you called me. I put two and two together.”

  For a second she almost thanked him, but instead she hung up and tossed the phone across the room. They weren’t friends. He was the enemy. She wasn’t sure why she’d called him for help anyway.

  She didn’t need his help. She didn’t need him at all. What she needed was to find Nikos and make him pay. Meanwhile, she would start preparing for battle.

  She dug out some leggings and a sports bra, laced up her running shoes, and began her training. Four hours. Then a break. And then four hours more.

  Her recovery was over. Even though her wounds still ached, she was done lying around in bed. It was time to start warrior training. She wanted to be in top shape for battle. Now that she knew the face of her enemy, nothing would stop her.

  Twenty

  1990s

  Los Angeles

  Late that night, sitting in the light from her laptop, Eva began her Dark Web search for Nikos Alexopoulos.

  But then she paused. Might as well search the easy stuff first. She hacked into the school’s website and files and pulled up the information on Nikos Alexopoulos and his son’s registration.

  Not surprisingly, when she pulled up the address on Google satellite, she saw it belonged to a strip mall mailing center in Cerritos.

  When she searched the address itself, she came across something interesting. It was registered to a Vincenzo Scannacristiana. Was that Nikos’ real name?

  The surname meant “People Slayer” in Sicilian dialect. He was an assassin of the highest order. She’d heard that the name was passed down from generation to generation, and only one person could hold the title in a lifetime.

  He basically held the title of King of the Assassins in Sicily. And he was after her.

  Eva searched the Italian newspapers and websites for information on the latest incarnation of this generation’s lo scannacristiana. A blurry photo taken from surveillance footage at a funeral four years before revealed a photo showing the man’s face, but only in profile. Eva enlarged it and then gasped. It was unmistakable. Vincenzo Scannacristiana was Nikos Alexopoulos. But there was more.

  In the photo, he was dipping his head about to duck into the backseat of a livery car. Eva zoomed in on the picture. Inside the car, already seated, was a frail-looking older woman in a black dress, gloves, and veil. Eva’s heart pounded. They were attending a funeral. She clicked on the photo to get to the article.

  Vincenzo was attending his uncle’s—Alberto Cannuci’s—funeral. Eva’s mouth grew dry. No wonder she’d always been so drawn to Nikos and felt like he was a kindred spirit. He was her childhood friend—Vincenzo Canucci.

  She’d last seen him in Sicily when they were both ten. Their parents had been close friends. They spent Sunday suppers and even some holidays together. Her best friend, Tomas, always felt left out because even though he was Eva’s best friend, his parents were not in her parents’ inner circle. To be in that inner circle you had to be a Mafioso.

  But the year Eva turned ten, her father suddenly grew cold when it came to the Canucci family. They were no longer invited over for supper or for outings to Sardinia or other holidays. And worst of all, her father forbade her from playing with Vincenzo. Within a month, the Canucci family had disappeared.

  Eva discovered this one Saturday when her mother sent her on an errand into town to buy eggs. She took a detour that led her right in front of the Canucci’s small two-story house perched on a hill. She’d hoped that Vincenzo would be looking out the window as she passed, and maybe he’d smile at her. She knew better than to go knock on the door or initiate conversation in any way. Her father’s temper was not to be trifled with.

  But as she side-eyed the house, she noticed the front door was wide open, and the house was empty. She ran over to it and glanced inside. There was nothing there. Not even one tiny piece of furniture. It was unheard of in her life.

  In Sicily, even if people moved for some reason, they left their furniture behind, and somebody else stayed in the house until they could return or until a family member could move in. Nobody bought and sold property in those years. Instead, homes were kept in families for generations, pa
ssed down for eternity. At least in those days.

  Eva’s shock could not have been greater. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  She forgot about the eggs and ran home. She flung open the front door and, instead of knocking as required, she burst into her father’s study, startling a group of men who stood there.

  Her father’s eyes narrowed, and his face grew red. She immediately knew she’d made a grievous mistake.

  “Sorry.” She backed out of the room, heart pounding.

  She immediately ran into the next room, the bathroom, grabbing the water glass and pressing it to the wall so she could eavesdrop. It was something she’d read in a detective story.

  To her surprise, it worked.

  “My apologies. She is a strong-willed child. I will teach her manners later.”

  Upon hearing this, Eva trembled in fear.

  She kept listening even though the glass pressed up against her ear was starting to be painful.

  “They will no longer cause us problems,” her father said.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Do you question me?” Her father’s tone was calm and dangerous.

  “No. No, of course not.”

  “Good.”

  She heard a chair scrape against the floor. “If there is nothing else, I must attend to my daughter and teach her some manners.”

  Eva didn’t wait to hear the rest. She tore out of the bathroom and then through the front door, running all the way into town. When she returned home later, her father was not home.

  The next morning, she pretended to be busy in her room until it was time to walk to church. She stayed close to her mother, holding the woman’s hand while her two brothers walked ahead with her father.

  Sitting in the pew at mass, she prayed fervently that her father would go easy on her. And it worked. He never mentioned her barging into his study. And she never mentioned the Canucci family.