No Mercy by Joanna Schaffhausen

Author:Joanna Schaffhausen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

9

Ellery was true to her word. After dropping Reed at the airport, she was extra cautious returning home, checking her rearview mirrors to make sure she was not being followed, taking care to park her rented car in a spot she could see from her apartment windows. If someone was watching and targeting her, it was possible that they were waiting for these first few moments when she was alone again. She kept her gun holstered to her hip and her coat unbuttoned as she walked to her building, but she did not see anyone lying in wait. At her door, she braced herself for the possibility of another nasty note, but she found only Speed Bump wagging on the other side. He snuffled her in greeting and then looked past her toward the hallway. Ellery closed the door and locked it. “Sorry,” she told the dog. “He’s gone home.”

Bump nosed the crack at the bottom of the door, sniffing hard as though he could pick up Reed’s scent. Ellery sighed at his fickle behavior and went to the living room to phone Manganelli again. She tried not to notice how empty it seemed now without Reed and his suitcase taking up space. Reed was one slightly larger than average man who had been in her home for two days. It’s not like he’d had time to become a part of her landscape. Bump seemed to feel differently, though, as he ambled into the room and sat directly on her feet to get her attention. He looked up at her with baleful eyes, and Ellery frowned at him. “You realize your hero doesn’t even like dogs, right? He thinks you smell.”

Ellery tried Manganelli again on her cell phone, but she only got his voice mail, the same as before. She left another message asking him to call her back, and then she set the phone and her gun on the coffee table to wait. After a while, she put on music to try to distract herself—Hallowed Ground by the Violent Femmes—but she barely registered the different songs. Later, she took Bump for a walk, pausing to check her cell phone every time he stopped to sniff a snowbank. No one followed them as near as she could tell. But neither did anyone call.

It was not until Tuesday that she finally heard back from Manganelli. “Sorry,” he told her. “I’ve been a little busy. You might have seen the stories about the two jewelry store holdups. The last one, on Saturday, the owner got shot. It’s all hands on deck for this one.”

Ellery didn’t usually watch the news. It never had anything nice to say. “That’s terrible. Did you catch the guy?”

“Guys, plural. There’s two of ’em. And no, we’re still running down leads. I’m actually calling you from the head because that’s the only time I get a break right now. Look, I got the stuff you sent me. Thanks. I’ll be sure to check it out as soon as I get a chance.

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