June marched up to the door, Manny and Lewis right behind her, grim and lethal. She pushed the doorbell but didn’t hear it ring, so she pounded hard on the blue metal with the flat of her hand.
No answer. She pounded again, this time longer and harder. June was good at getting people to talk to her, it was an important skill for every journalist. But she was asking an attorney to open her client files to three strangers. Conversation wasn’t going to be enough.
She was still pounding when the door jerked open to the limit of a security chain and a woman peered out at them from the shadows. She was middle-aged and plump in a faded blue twinset. Her voice was sharp with annoyance. “Don’t you see the sign? No soliciting.”
She stepped back to close the door. June stuck the toe of her hiking boot into the gap. “Are you Ann-Marie Wildman? Wildman Legal Services?”
“Yes,” she said. “Who the hell are you?”
June kept her voice pleasant. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but we need to ask you a few questions. It’s about one of your clients.”
Wildman’s face pinched tight. “I’m an attorney. Client information is privileged. Are you the police? Do you have a warrant?”
“No, ma’am. But we desperately need your help. Two women have been kidnapped.”
Wildman looked past June, scanning the street. “Are you filming? Is this some kind of prank? If so, I certainly don’t appreciate your involving me.”
“It’s not a prank,” June said. “The women’s names are CarlottaMartinez and Eleanor Thorsen. Please, can we talk for a few minutes?”
“Without a warrant? I don’t think so. Anyway, I don’t see what those women have to do with me or my clients.”
“This is taking too long,” Manny said. He reached past June and wrapped both hands around the edge of the door by the chain. June pulled her toe from the gap, stepping back to give him room. Manny pulled the door almost closed, then, with a single explosive movement, slammed it open to the limit of the security chain.
June heard a crunch as the chain-plate screws pulled loose from the interior trim. Manny shouldered his way into the entry hall as the lawyer backpedaled up the hall, fear on her face.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Manny said. “But one of those kidnapped women is my wife. The other is a thirteen-year-old girl entrusted into my care. So either you tell us what we need to know or you’ll have to watch as we go through your files one by one.”
“If you do help us,” June added, “we’ll leave as quickly as possible.”
Wildman already had her phone in her hand. She turned and ran toward the living room, punching the screen as she went.
Manny sprinted after her, caught her wrist, and plucked the phone from her hand. “She called 911.” He tossed it to June and clamped his hand over Wildman’s mouth.
June fumbled the throw, dropped the phone to the carpet, then picked it up and put it to her ear in time to hear a voice say, “911. What’s your emergency?”
“Crap, I’m so sorry,” June replied. “Everything’s fine here. My five-year-old thought he was being funny.”
The voice hesitated a moment, gauging her answer, then finally said, “No problem, ma’am. Have a safe day.”
“Thanks, you, too.” June put the phone in her pocket. At the end of the hall, the middle-aged lawyer struggled against Manny’s grip, eyeswide. June sighed. This was not how she’d wanted things to go. “Ann-Marie, we don’t want to hurt you. But we need information or people are going to die. Will you help us?”
Manny unclamped his hand from her mouth. The skin was red where his hand had been. She said, “I told you, it’s privileged. If I help you, I can be sued. I could be disbarred.”
Lewis had come inside and locked the door behind him. “Not gonna be a problem,” he said. “Guy we’re looking for ain’t never gonna know we even talked to you, not unless you call the cops once we gone. You do that, it’s public record. Maybe your other clients find out, too. Won’t be good for your business.”
Wildman shook Manny’s grip from her wrist, then planted her hands on her hips and glared at them all, one by one. “So you’re blackmailing me.”
“It ain’t like that,” Lewis said. “Once we get what we need, we’re gone. Then you do what you gotta do. I’m just laying out the possible consequences.”
“The person you’re looking for. If he really did what you say he did, kidnapped those people, who’s to say he won’t come after me next?”
Lewis looked at her. “He won’t.”
“How can you possibly promise that?”
Lewis gave her a tilted smile, the cold, hard version that didn’t reach his eyes. “Because he’ll be dead. That’s a promise.”
Wildman took an involuntary step back. Her lips thin and white, the tendons standing out in her neck. “You broke into my home. You’re holding me by force, against my will. Now you tell me you’re planning to kill someone? How are you any different from those kidnappers?”
