Beloved Enemy Read Free Page A

house, one he had lived in from the time he had run away from home and been taken in by the former owner, a huge black man named Gus. Gus had owned a hockshop where Jack had worked until Gus had been murdered and Jack had set out to find his killer.
    Jack felt Gus’s presence in every room of the house, a kindly, ghostly presence that he often fancied looked out for him. Jack stopped in the kitchen. The intruder was in the next room. He could feel the tiny electrical pulses coming through the open doorway to the dining room. Listening again, Jack deduced two things: whoever had broken in did not know the layout of the house’s interior, and the intruder was searching for his bedroom, which meant he or she was after him.
    Silence.
    Pressing his back against the kitchen wall, he turned toward the opening, listening as the small, furtive sounds rose again. The intruder was heading toward him. He raised the flashlight and, as the shadowed figure appeared, switched it on, bringing the beam to bear on the intruder’s face.
    At once, he saw the flash of a service pistol, and he swung the light away, palmed the kitchen light on. A dark-skinned hand over his plunged them both back into darkness.
    “No lights, Jack.” Nona Heroe’s voice was both hushed and urgent. “No one must know that you’re home.”
    Jack’s heart leapt. “Is someone watching the house?”
    “Let’s hope not.”
    Nona, a Metro police detective in charge of the violent crimes unit Jack had worked with last year, had recently been promoted to chief of detectives by the new commissioner, after her boss, Alan Fraine, had been killed. She was a fine detective, serious-minded, with a keen brain and an acute sense of danger. That, combined with her tone of voice, brought Jack up short.
    “Nona, what’s going on?”
    “Grab your coat.” As she followed Jack back through the darkened house to the entryway, she added, in her soft, round New Orleans–inflected tones, “Do you have your passport on you?”
    “Always.”
    “Get rid of it,” she said. “Leave it here.”
    “What? Why?”
    At that moment, twin beams of a vehicle’s headlights swung across the front windows.
    “Another egress,” Nona snapped. “Quick!”
    Now was not the time to question her, Jack knew. He heard car doors slamming, and he led her down to the basement. Gus, whose business had sometimes crossed the letter of the law, had made certain he had a way of exiting the house, should the need ever arise.
    A dusty crawl space led to a large metal grate affixed to the concrete-block wall. Jack pulled it off, revealing a tunnel large enough for a grown man to comfortably crawl through on hands and knees. Gesturing Nona through, he followed her, turning in the cramped space, replacing the grate and locking it in place from the tunnel’s side.
    He touched her back to gain her attention, gestured her forward. The tunnel ran for perhaps three hundred yards, before making a dogleg to the right. This section sloped upward. At its terminus was a short vertical metal ladder.
    Squeezing past Nona, Jack led the way up, pausing long enough to unscrew a heavy metal grate. When it was free, he pushed it aside. The sounds of speeding traffic came to them as they emerged in a section of filthy trees and underbrush on the far side of an expressway.
    Nona looked around for a moment, getting her bearings. Then she nodded. “This way.”
    Risking a glance behind him, Jack saw light from his house streaming through the trees. People were inside. A siren wailed, approaching.
    “Come on,” Nona urged, pulling him along.
    He saw her on her mobile, speaking tersely, before pocketing it. Her service pistol was in her right hand, and this alarmed him all the more. More sirens, more lights—some red now—behind them, until they turned down a side street.
    An enormous black SUV without any ID idled, waiting for them. Nona bundled him into the passenger’s seat, climbed in behind the wheel, and took