Secrets Collide (Bluegrass Brothers)

bag.
    Gemma felt as if she were in a nightmare as she made her way to the elevator and pressed the eleventh floor. It didn’t seem real. The walls blurred and she couldn’t focus on anything but the red elevator numbers as they ticked off the passing floors. When the doors opened, she pulled out her keys and headed to the end of the hall to her sister’s apartment. She heard every clink of the key as she pushed it into the lock.
    “What the hell?” Gemma turned the handle. The door was unlocked. Suddenly she remembered that Gia was mugged and her purse taken. The killers would have her address and her keys. What if they were still here? Anger like she had never felt filled her as she shoved the door open. “Come out, you bastards!” she yelled into the apartment as her pulse throbbed in expectation.
    Her breathing quickened as she hurried through the apartment, turning on lights and flinging open doors, but luckily, there was no one there. She set her bag down on her sister’s couch and Fred popped his head out and looked around as Gemma sat next to him on the white couch. She grabbed the dark blue decorative pillow and pulled it to her, hugging it while rocking as tears flooded her eyes once again. When she smelled her sister’s flowery lotion on the pillow, it felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Fred jumped out of the bag and rested his head on her leg in silent support.
    “It’ll be okay, buddy,” she choked out. She wiped her eyes and held on tight to the pillow as she looked around the room. It was then she noticed that her sister’s usually spotless place was a complete mess.
    “Looks like those assholes were already here.” She shook her head, feeling violated at the thought of those killers pawing through her sister’s things.
    Gemma pulled out her cell phone and dug around the back pocket of her jeans for Detective Greene’s number.
    “This is Greene,” his gruff voice rang out over the phone.
    “Detective, this is Gemma Perry. I'm at my sister’s apartment and it’s been ransacked. It’s a mess. My sister would've been so upset,” she trailed off.
    “I thought that might be the case. I've already sent an officer over to secure the premises. Try not to touch anything. Use a tissue or a glove. We want to be able to get fingerprints,” Detective Greene instructed. “Can you tell me what was taken?”
    “Um, her computer is gone.” Gemma walked around growing more and more confused. “But that’s all.”
    “That’s all? TV and jewelry still there?” he asked, perplexed.
    Gemma walked into the bedroom and opened the jewelry case sitting on the dresser. “That's all I can tell is missing. Jewelry and other valuables are still here.”
    “Your sister was an investigative reporter; did she ever investigate dangerous people?”
    “All the time . . . do you think this was planned?” Gemma asked as her heart stilled. She instinctively went to the door and looked into the empty hall as if the killers might be there waiting to be caught. She shut and locked the door and set the security chain before going back into her sister’s bedroom. 
    “I’m beginning to think that. The crime scene screams professionals. Who would want your sister dead?”
    “I don’t know. She was working on something, but she didn’t tell me what. Hold on. She has a drawer filled with flash drives for storing her research and notes.” Gemma hurried from the bedroom, down the narrow hall, and back into the living room. Gia’s desk was on the far side near the kitchen, overlooking the fire escape. 
    Using a tissue, Gemma opened the top right drawer and looked in. “Empty. All her flash drives are gone.”
    “I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Detective Greene said as Gemma heard the sound of a car being started.
    “Okay. I’ll sit tight.”
     
    The boss watched his right-hand man, Sergei Klimov, look up from the reporter’s computer and curse in what had to be Russian. “That suka had nothing on her computer,” Sergei yelled as he threw the laptop into the wall. The screen cracked and broke when it fell onto the floor.
    “Tell me you've found something on those flash drives,” he growled. He felt his anger radiating from his thin frame. This was why he hired help like Sergei and all the other little minions. They were supposed to take care of these things for him. That’s why he was the boss.
    He knew a man like Sergei held power simply because of his physical strength—and