The Dominic Wolfe Tales- The Complete Series Read online

  “Oops,” Otto wheezed. “Gotta work on my jump shot.”

  We split up from there. I rushed out to the alley while Otto jogged down the block to fetch his busted up Suburban from the parking garage. He was backing toward me in less than three minutes; two minutes more and we were on the road.

  ***

  We made it back to my place just after midnight. Otto left for home and I headed straight for the shower. I cranked up the hot water as far as it would go, and though it stung like a swarm of angry hornets, the shower somehow failed to scour away the filth I felt on me. An overwhelming sense of dread would follow me around for the next few days, in fact, trailing at the edge of my senses like a dementor on a string.

  “You did what you had to do, Dom,” Natalie offered by way of mollification. But she didn’t understand. What I had done—taking a client into the divide—was the most irresponsible thing I’d ever done. And believe me, that was truly saying something. The horrors subsequent to that mistake were the proverbial icing on the cake. I made no effort to cast aside the idea that it would all come back to haunt me because I knew deep in my bones that it would.

  Sooner or later, we all get what’s coming to us.

  ***

  That night as I lay in bed, I scrolled through the pictures on Lyle’s phone. There were hundreds of his family, ranging from trips to the Grand Canyon to images of a little girl I presumed to be Ellie, brushing a doll’s hair. A lovely black woman holding her college diploma, her youthful beauty pushing those megapixels to their absolute limits. I couldn’t help but envy the guy, surrounded by family and friends who loved him. It was the pictures of Ellie that got to me the most. Wearing braided pigtails in the most recent images, she bore an undeniable resemblance to Natalie in her childhood pictures. When my eyes began to sting, I took a deep breath and swiped the screen rapidly, repeating the motion until images of the key once again filled the screen.

  I was intrigued by the key as well as the bizarre conversation that had surrounded it in the divide. Still, whatever mystique the subject held for me was blighted by the reality that Lyle and Nora Jenson were both dead, and that their little girl was in grave danger. I couldn’t stop thinking about poor, defenseless Ellie. Would they—whoever they were—really kill her? What kind of person does something like that?

  Since I’m a nosy guy, I couldn’t help but sift through Lyle’s wallet before we got rid of him. Glad I did, too. Aside from the usual credit cards and whatnot, there was another grand in there—rightfully mine by all accounts—and a driver’s license. The address listed there was some thirty miles away in nearby Olathe. I borrowed Otto’s truck with the condition that I’d fill it up afterward. That wasn’t about to happen, of course. Piece of gas-guzzling crap was only half full to begin with.

  Olathe was far from the smallest town I’d ever seen, but it landed somewhere in my top twenty. Lyle’s address took me to a two-story bungalow in Stratton Oaks. It was a posh sort of neighborhood, one that would be gated and locked up tight in my hometown of Kansas City. As much as Lyle Jenson’s beamer stuck out like a sore thumb in my neighborhood, Otto’s Suburban must’ve glowed like a neon phallus here.

  When I dared to knock at the Jenson’s family home, the front door glided open, revealing the inner sanctum of what Otto would’ve politely called a sweet-ass honey trap. I took a brief stroll through the house, all three floors, and confirmed that no one was home. The stairwell was lined with framed photographs. Most were old, taken back in the fifties and sixties—Grandma and Grandpa Jenson with family, a five- or six-year-old Nora riding a pony. But there were some recent ones as well. It didn’t take long to find one of Alexis. When I did, I realized that I had jumped to some hasty conclusions.

  First, she wasn’t a kid. At least, not by my standards. Early- to mid-twenties, as far as I could tell. That and she was adopted; her skin shone like polished ebony, in contrast with her white parents and little sister. She was stunning. I recognized her from the graduation picture on Lyle’s phone, and it was suddenly obvious why there were so few images of her on the wall. She was all grown up. The house itself confirmed that Alexis didn’t live there. There must’ve been six bedrooms, including a spacious master, a kid’s room that could only have been Ellie’s and one outfitted as an office. The others showed no signs of use, other than for storage or guest accommodations.

  I spent an hour in the office, sifting through desk drawers and file cabinets. There were bank records for multiple accounts at the First Federal Bank, each lined with a whole lot of zeros. Mostly there were legal documents, all but indecipherable for a guy with my limited education. The only conclusions within my grasp were that this room had been the workspace of Mrs. Jenson rather than Lyle, and that she had been an attorney. Perhaps even a judge. The former I deduced by the feminine décor; the latter was elementary.

  I ventured into the kitchen, hoping to salvage something for my time. The fridge was basically empty, but I did find a forgotten Klondike bar in the freezer. I unwrapped it and took a bite.

  Did you know that ice cream can expire? Holy shit, I still can’t get that taste out of my mouth. Like frozen hummus in a wax shell. Anyway, I wouldn’t call this trip a complete waste, but there really wasn’t much to show for my efforts.

  That left the safe deposit box. I really needed to get Nora’s key duplicated. Until then, my hands were tied.

  Nothing else caught my interest and I had a feeling that I was overstaying my welcome. So I left for home, feeling confused and defeated. So frustrated, I’m ashamed to admit, that I didn’t even notice the car tailing me home.

  CHAPTER 6

  Pulling into my parking lot, I felt a tingling sensation. An overwhelming tugging in my chest that I couldn’t explain. Perhaps that’s why a blow to the jaw caught me so completely off guard as I exited Otto’s truck. Another to the solar plexus and I was gasping for breath.

  She was fast and strong.

  “Alexis? Wait—” I tried to interject, but she cut me off with an uppercut that completely rang my bell. I slumped to the ground in a heap, where she used my head like a doorknocker to put a rather unsightly dent in the truck door.

  Otto was gonna be pissed!

  If you’re even considering underestimating a member of the opposite sex, you should at least—wait, scratch that. Just don’t. Incidentally, this wasn’t the first time I’d been bested by a woman. Actually, I couldn’t remember outshining one as an adult, unless you count the one time I beat Natalie at Scrabble.

  Alexis held me against the side of Ottos’s Suburban with a combat boot against my chest. Not a Doc Martin, but the real thing. “Where is she?” she demanded.

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” I croaked, “but I’m just not interested in a relationship right now.”

  “Cute.” She thumped me on the bridge of my nose with a cleated heel; blood began to dribble down to my chin. “Last time I’m asking.”

  “Jeez, you really need to work on your greetings. One of these days, someone’s gonna come along and—” I swept her leg out from under her, causing her to collapse beside me on the ground. Before she could recover, I snaked an arm around her from behind and held her stationary with arms pinned against her sides.

  “Let me go,” she hissed.

  My whole body was tingling; I told myself it was adrenaline, but I wondered.

  Alexis squirmed with a grunt. “I said, let me go!”

  I took a breath. “I will. But first let’s lay some ground rules. You wanna know where your sister is? So do I. I’m not your enemy. So just take a breath and pretend to be a polite human being for a minute. Capisce?”

  Her body tensed as she coiled to make a move. I jerked my head to the side just as she whipped hers back.

  “Alexis, I feel like we’re just not communicating. You don’t have to beat anything out of me. I’m more than willing to talk. So here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna release you and we’re both gonna take a step back, okay? If you wan
na talk, I’ll answer your questions honestly. And I’d appreciate a return of courtesy.”

  I let her go. She jumped out of arm’s reach to glare at me. I scrambled to my feet, back gliding up the truck door. “My name is Dominic Wolfe,” I offered. “Your father was a client of mine.”

  “What do you mean, a client?”

  “He hired me to do a job. Don’t ask what, it was just a bunch of boring crap. What’s important is that he’s…” I looked at her directly. “He’s dead, Alexis.”

  Her eyes widened. “That isn’t possible.”

  “I’m afraid it is. I went to Lyle’s house in hopes of finding you. There are some things we need to talk about.”

  She stared through me with mouth agape, shoulders slumping.

  “I’m so sorry that you had to find out like this. But there’s more. You’re in danger.”

  With some persuasion, Alexis agreed to come in for coffee—ice and Ibuprofen, in my case. When I finished explaining the fate of her father—a completely mundane and mostly fictional version of his demise, that is—I expected an outburst of grief from her. Anger even. Yet she merely nodded with resignation.

  “I took some pictures of a key,” I added. “I think it’s important.”

  “Can I see his phone?” she sniffled, eyes brimming with fat tears.

  I plucked the phone from my pocket and turned it on. I added my name to the contacts—just in case—and placed it in her palm. Her spirits lifted at the sight of it; she didn’t look happy, to be clear. Hopeful, maybe?

  “We need to get a key made from those images as soon as possible,” I pointed out. “Until we know what’s in that box, we have no leverage whatsoever.”

  She eyed me warily. “Thanks for your help so far, but I got this.”

  I crossed my arms. “You realize we aren’t talking about a run-of-the-mill key, right? I mean, you can’t just pop into Home Depot and have one made. Even if you had the original.”

  Her lips pursed.

  “Don’t worry,” I sighed. “I know a guy. Unless you still can’t bring yourself to trust me…?”

  Her eyes went half-lidded. Damn, she was sexy.

  “Maybe I know a guy, too. And I haven’t decided if I trust you yet.”

  “Oh.” I counted to five in my head. “What about now?”

  She smirked, eyes rolling with disapproval. “No wonder you’re single.”

  “Pfft. Who says I am?”

  Jutting her chin toward the expanse of my apartment, she gave me a piercing expression that caused me to sag.

  “Fine,” I growled. “So what’s the plan then? What’re we supposed to do with the key once we have it?”

  “We? There is no we.”

  My heart sank a little. “Really? I mean, you gotta admit it has a nice ring to it.”

  A deadpan glare.

  Fine. “Listen, Alexis, someone has your sister. Soon they’ll be coming after you. I can help.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Donovan—”

  “It’s Dominic.”

  “Whatever. You’re in way over your head.” She rose to leave then. “My advice is to forget about all this. Forget about my stepdad, about me. My little sister. It’s your best chance to stay alive.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, well. I don’t scare easily. Everybody dies eventually.”

  Alexis needled me with a pained glare. “There are worse things than death, you know. Losing the people closest to you… you can’t possibly wrap your mind around how much that hurts.”

  I felt my expression soften. Hardly the time to bring it up, but I knew exactly how much it hurt. We had more in common than she realized. “You don’t have to do this alone, Alexis. Please, just let me help you.”

  In answer, Alexis pocketed the phone and walked out the door.

  “Give me a ring if you change your mind!” I called after her.

  She didn’t look back.

  Yup, she wants me.

  ***

  Otto was waiting in the parking lot of his complex when I drove up. He rounded the driver side to crack something smartass, but that cocky smile of his went sour almost instantly. “What the hell, Dom? What’d you do to my goddamn truck?”

  I exited the vehicle to inspect the damage. “Well, I guess I can see why you might think this was my fault. Considering the Dominic-shaped dent, I mean. But I promise it wasn’t my idea.”

  Otto’s cheeks were beet red. “If you didn’t already look like Mohammad Ali’s training dummy, I’d slap you around myself.”

  “Small favors.”

  Snatching the keys from me, Otto got into his truck and brought the engine to life. With the door still open, he turned a heated gaze on me.

  “Didn’t even bother to gas it up? You’re something else, Dom.”

  CHAPTER 7

  I’ve never been good at accepting rejection at face value. Some might call this creepy, a character flaw at the very least. Nevertheless, I am what I am. So it came quite naturally for me to do what I did the next morning. I took a cab downtown and set up across the street from the First Federal Bank. At nine o’clock sharp, a man unlocked the entryway from the inside. Within minutes, patrons began to trickle in and out as the business day stretched its limbs.

  There was a constant influx of cabs out front and I kept my attention trained on them. I was pretty sure Alexis owned a car—she’d managed to follow me home the night before, after all—but I had a hunch that she was smart enough to leave it at home. Sure enough, Alexis emerged from a cab and promptly sent it on its way. She walked briskly into the bank, gaze snapping to and fro; I honestly couldn’t tell if she was nervous or just really thorough. It was tempting to trail her inside, but I held my position. Better to catch her coming out than risk causing a scene inside.

  Half a block up was a hotdog vendor and the aroma was killing me. My stomach was moaning and groaning, so I grudgingly followed my nose. I coughed up eight bucks for two dogs the size of my fingers. I slathered them with mustard and downed the first in seconds. My gaze never left the bank entrance for more than a second at a time, yet I had a sinking feeling that I’d missed her. Missed something, anyway. I strolled warily back down the block, glancing around for some sign of mischief.

  Almost at once, I found something. A carload of pinstriped suits parked at the corner. When they exited the vehicle—a Champaign-tinted Cadillac—their size startled me. Huge slabs of muscle with eyes like obsidian. More startling than their size was their resemblance to each other. Twins weren’t entirely uncommon, even if they managed to raise an eyebrow on occasion. But triplets were another story. Of course, these guys lacked the long legs and boobs that normally boosted the novelty of genetic mutation to something worth getting excited about, but my pulse was racing nonetheless.

  The trio crossed the street and skirted the building in perfect sync. I wasted a precious second or two wondering who was driving as the car slipped into traffic and hung a quick left. When I came to my senses, I dropped what remained of my last hot dog and bolted across the street. By the time I got my feet in motion and rounded the building, they had disappeared into a side entrance. I was closer to the front entrance than the side, so I hightailed it through the revolving door, ready to raise a ruckus if necessary.

  Alexis was nowhere in sight, but fortunately, neither were the triplets. I approached the information desk, where a woman in her sixties was walking an elderly man through a brochure, one sentence at a time.

  “Safe deposit boxes?” I barked, causing her to flinch. She frowned. By the sudden stiffness of her posture, I surmised that a tongue lashing was coming. Seeing the desperation on my face though, the way my hands trembled, her expression flickered with unease. She pointed vaguely behind and to her left, her free hand creeping toward the phone.

  Down the hall I ran, eyes darting about for some indication of where to go from there. I passed the vault room entrance in a slide and had to backtrack several steps to get my body oriented. There was a
man seated at a desk in there—an employee of the bank, as evidenced by his burgundy coat and gold nametag. At my abrupt entrance, he stood in alarm just as Alexis exited one of the guest rooms.

  “Sir?” the man inquired, his voice steely.

  Alexis froze when she saw me. For a moment, she looked annoyed, but then her gaze darted over my shoulder and opened into a visage of shock.

  That’s when all hell broke loose.

  The bank employee abandoned his desk and held out a hand in protest as one of the triplets approached. In a flurry of practiced movement, the employee disappeared into a wall of pinstripes. The grisly sound of his neck snapping resounded like a gunshot in the confined space.

  Alexis screamed. At least, I choose to believe that it was Alexis rather than me. Kind of hard to say, in retrospect. She stumbled back toward the guest rooms and wrestled with a doorknob, then another. They were all locked.

  The triplets advanced.

  I sidestepped in front of her, fists moving into position like there was even the slightest chance I could take one of these guys on and live to tell the tale. One of them rushed me and I kicked him hard in the nuts. He didn’t go down, but he did falter. His brothers moved in and I heard Alexis pant behind me. I turned to hiss in her general direction.

  “Run!”

  I threw a wild kick into the throng of suits, but it cut the air uselessly. I heard the commotion of fabric against fabric as Alexis bolted past us for the door, followed by the clapping of her heels down the hallway. I allowed myself a smile of victory, until someone got a handful of my shirt and—

  ***

  I came to in the trunk of a car, just as the engine went silent. My head pounded, my jaw ached. Given a minute or two, I might’ve explored the space and found a tire iron or something useful against these guys. But the trunk opened almost immediately and a storm of a pinstripes and black eyes hauled me out with the hands of giants. Two of the triplets half-carried, half-dragged me up a curb and into a warehouse.