The Sometime Sister by Katherine Nichols (e novels for free .TXT) 📗

would pick blossoms from the vines and suck nectar from them. She pretended she was a butterfly, laughing and prancing from vine to vine. The memory soured as I remembered reading that butterflies like the taste of blood.

His voice brought me back to a reality where my sister would never laugh again.

“I’m going to grab some water from the lobby.” He tossed me the keys to the rental. I rolled down the windows, blasted the air conditioning, and waited.

When he returned, he handed me a bottle and took hold of my hand as I reached for it. “You look better this morning. Maybe a little worse for the wear, but not too bad.” He grinned.

“Thanks a lot.” I dreaded returning to the scene of my captivity, fearful of what I might find. I wasn’t about to give Justin an excuse for dumping me, though, so I smiled and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder.

After an exaggerated wince, he asked if I could find something on the radio that wasn’t salsa or reggae.

It wasn’t an easy request, but I located an oldies station, and we listened to Aretha belt out her demand for respect. I recognized the rocks lining the right side of the road, but today I saw wildflowers blooming and armadillos scuttling by.

A cloud came between us and the sun, and I flashed back to the pitch-black surrounding me in my hiding place under the stairwell. I hit the automatic button on my window and stuck my head out, inhaling deep breaths of air the way Stella and I had sucked the nectar from those delicate petals so long ago.

The terrain got rockier as the road narrowed, and I recalled the sensation of bumping along the same route less than twenty-four hours ago.

“That’s the turnoff to the house.” Justin pointed up a steep drive lined with manicured shrubbery. “I’m thinking we should park the car and walk if you’re up to it. We can duck behind the bushes if we see anyone approaching.”

He removed a gun from the glove compartment, then unsnapped the holster and stuck the weapon into the back of his waistband. Despite my mother’s and grandmother’s predilection for guns, I hated them. After my experience last night, however, I could hardly question the sensibility of being armed. We climbed out of the car and started toward the house. By the time we reached the summit, I sweated the band-aids off my scraped knees.

“The stairs to the deck wrap around the side of the house. You can’t see them from here, but if I’ve got my bearings right, Prez fell just behind those flowery bushes.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here,” he said, removing the gun from his waistband. “Let’s go around back and try getting in through the doors to the deck.”

We followed a stone-paved pathway I missed the night before. I stopped at the corner of the house, dreading the possibility of seeing Prez’s body sprawled at the foot of the stairs.

“Why don’t you wait here?” he suggested when he noticed I wasn’t right behind him.

I shook my head and resumed walking. Prez wasn’t lying dead on the ground below the deck. Justin examined the decorative pebbles. “No blood, but it looks as if someone smoothed the gravel here.”

We climbed the deck stairs. When we reached the top, he pulled me into a crouch beside him. It was a short distance to the glass doors, but out in the open the way we were, it seemed to take longer than our hike up the hill. He reached the entrance first, covered his hand with the bottom of his T-shirt, and pushed the door open.

Except for the hum of the air conditioner, the room was silent.

“The kitchen’s that way,” I whispered and braced myself for the sight of Javi’s bloody body. But the kitchen was empty. Every surface—granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, hanging light fixtures—was so clean it sparkled. There was no blood and gore smeared on the built-in refrigerator. If not for the scent of bleach in the air, there was nothing to suggest anyone had been there.

“I don’t understand. Javi was right there.” I froze at the spot where Ben’s henchman had slumped against the fridge, mouth open as if his friends had just popped up to yell surprise. “How did they get the place so clean so fast? They must have had a team of mini-maids in here before dawn.”

Justin pointed to the door leading downstairs. “This way?” he asked.

He held the gun in front of him just like in the movies as we went downstairs. We paused at the bottom. Colorful throw pillows I hadn’t noticed the night before covered the leather sofa. I walked to the place where I had smashed Prez’s face with the tequila bottle. No glass, no blood.

“You’re right about this being a professional clean-up job. But it wasn’t mini-maids. Where did you leave your bag?”

I walked down the hallway to the bathroom and eased the door open. The same cleaning crew must have wiped the counters clean. There was nothing there. If Harry and Justin hadn’t found me careening down the hill last night, I might have thought I imagined everything.

“No purse?” I jumped at the sound of Justin’s voice. “Sorry,” he said. “After the job they did on the rest of the house, I’m not surprised. Come on; let’s get out of here.”

We left the way we came. I froze at the spot where I saw my first murdered thug. Still no Javi.

“I don’t understand,” I said, as we drove down the mountain. “How could someone wipe away everything that happened last night?”

“One thing’s for sure,” Justin said. “It wasn’t the police. What worries me is that goddamn bag of yours. Whoever has it knows you were there last night, and that you witnessed a murder.”

“I didn’t actually see anyone get shot. Just because Prez came down after I heard the gunshots doesn’t mean he killed Javi.”

“Right. But odds are he did. Besides, professionals did