Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

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    We systematically moved through the apartment, beginning with the small eat-in kitchen. We were looking for anything that would tie Alpha to the killings. The mask, the jumpsuit, clothesline, notes, personal items removed from the victims, dates marked on a calendar, car keys. We didn’t find anything in the kitchen, so we went to the living room.
    The living room was filled with guy furniture. A flat-screen television, a big leather couch, and two leather recliners in front of the television. The coffee table in front of the couch was loaded with newspapers, two cardboard boxes filled with file folders, a take-out pizza box, empty beer cans, a box of Sugar Smacks, and a giant bag of Funyuns. We each took a file box and picked our way through.
    “He used Bobby Lucarelli for some of his transactions prior to his time in jail,” Ranger said. “I don’t see anything else of interest.”
    I returned my file box to the coffee table. “Nothing here. Miscellaneous receipts.”
    We had a bathroom and two bedrooms to go. The first bedroom was standard fare. Rumpled bed. Dirty clothes on the floor. A dresser with man junk on it. Keys, a watch, a couple empty beer cans, a couple girlie magazines, an open box of condoms. There was a clock radio and more girlie mags on the single nightstand. A small armchair with a flowery printhad been shoved into a corner. We didn’t find anything incriminating in the closet or dresser. Nothing under the bed. Nothing incriminating in the bathroom.
    Ranger stood in the doorway to the second bedroom and flashed the penlight at the middle of the room. “Nice,” he said, his light shining on a monster of a freestanding safe. “They had to bring this in with a skyhook.”
    “Seems excessive for a Stark Street dry-cleaning operation.”
    He toed the door open. “It’s not locked. And it’s empty.”
    I looked in. “No Frankenstein mask.”
    Ranger went still. “Someone’s on the back stairs.”
    I froze and a moment later a door creaked open. I heard footsteps in the kitchen. Men’s voices. The door slammed shut. The footsteps and voices moved through the kitchen. They were walking in our direction. Ranger pulled me into a closet, wrapped an arm around me and closed the closet door. It was completely black in the closet. I was smashed into Ranger, and I could feel his heart beating against my back. His heartbeat was even. Normal. Mine was racing. A slim bar of light appeared at the bottom of the closet door. The light had been switched on in the room.
    “Now what?” one of the men said.
    “Now we put the bags in the safe.”
    “Do we need to count it?”
    “No. It’s already been counted. Just shove the bags in.”
    The closet door muffled sound, but I heard a thud and some scuffling.
    “Close the door and lock it,” one of the men said. “Then we can watch TV until Nick comes home.”
    The bar of light disappeared from the bottom of the door and the men left the room. A couple beats later the television droned from the living room.
    “What are we going to do?” I whispered to Ranger.
    Ranger’s voice was low, his lips skimming across my ear. “We’re going to stay here until either all of them leave or Nick goes to bed.”
    “That could take hours!”
    “Yeah,” Ranger said, his hand sliding up to my breast.
    “Stop that!”
    “I liked you better when you had vordo.”
    “You’re not suggesting we do it in this tiny closet with two men watching television in the next room, are you?”
    “It’d be limiting,” Ranger said, “but at least you wouldn’t have your ass on the horn.”
    After what seemed like three days but was closer to an hour, Nick Alpha came home. He stomped around in the kitchen, moved to the living room, and talked to the guys watching television. I caught a few words, but for the most part the conversation was lost to me. The television was silenced, and a short time later a door slammed shut. And a few minutes after that a toilet flushed.
    “I’m going to take that as a good sign,” Ranger said.
    We waited awhile longer, and Ranger cracked the door. The apartment was dark and silent. Ranger took my hand, andwe ever so quietly crept out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out of the apartment. We were down the stairs, running for the car when Alpha’s door crashed open, and Alpha fired off a shot at us. He was firing at sound and not sight, and his shot went wild. He squeezed off a second and third at the Cayenne, but we were