Beast in the Tower

Shivering at the pending sense of loss she couldn’t quite explain, Kit looked up and down the street one more time. She couldn’t see much else through the steel scaffolding and plastic sheeting that framed the building’s facade and curved into the side alley. Though the work on her own first-floor apartment and business had been completed three months ago, the construction team renovating the twenty-nine floors above her in the Depression-era Sinclair Building never seemed to run out of projects.

The workers were the diner’s best customers for lunch. But, along with the handful of tenants on the second and third floors who’d stuck it out through first one construction company, then another, she suspected she wasn’t the only one tired of her absent landlord’s penchant for historic perfection. Heavy equipment had blocked the sidewalk and torn up the street for more than a year now, turning three lanes of traffic into two, and giving petty thieves, gang-bangers and the homeless plenty of places to hide at night. She suspected some unwanted squatters had even found their way into a few of the unfinished apartments above her.

Though she could admire the unseen Sinclair heir for trying to make this block of downtown Kansas City the same tourist-and-young-professional draw that Wesport or the Plaza to the south were, Kit feared that the working-class locals would be forced to move before any new influx of business could save them.

Kit’s parents hadn’t owned any pharmaceutical empires like the Sinclairs did. They couldn’t pack up and go to a second home in the islands when the weather turned bitter and the construction got in the way. They’d toughed it out and had paid the ultimate price in the fire that had taken everything. This block of Kansas City had been their home. True, Kit had gone off to college to pursue her science degrees, and had dreamed of working in a criminology lab in New York City or Chicago. But she’d returned when she was needed. To find out why her parents had died. To rebuild their diner and maintain their dream.

This was her home now. And her brother’s. Along with the countless castoffs from society like Germane and the handful of loyal workers she employed. They all needed her to succeed. She didn’t have time to want or dream.

Kit tilted her face and squinted up into the falling snow. The ominous shadows of the Sinclair Building’s Art Deco carvings and dark rows of high-tech replacement windows towered above her. The far-removed penthouse apartments on the top floors were completely swallowed up by the raw night sky. If the construction delays didn’t end, and the troubling rise in neighborhood crime didn’t—

“Watchin ’isn’t gonna make that boy come home any sooner.” Germane’s sympathetic warning stirred Kit from her thoughts. “This is the second night this week Matty’s missed his curfew.”

At eighteen, six years her junior, Kit’s brother looked more man than boy. And legally, she supposed she didn’t have any right to set boundaries and expectations for him. But even if he wouldn’t accept her hugs, she intended to protect him. From gangs, drinking, crime—from himself. He could hate her guts if he wanted, but Matthew Snow Jr. was going to make it to adulthood and make something of himself. She’d sworn that promise at her parents’ graves.

She couldn’t quite raise a smile. “You noticed, huh?”

“He’s giving you worry lines beside those pretty gray eyes.”

“He’ll be here.” She hoped. The worry that was never far from her thoughts cut through her like the bite of the winter wind. Doing had become a lot easier than feeling lately. That was how she dealt with the loss. She pushed Germane through the diner’s front door and locked it behind her. She’d wait until Matt showed up before pulling down the cage that shielded the front windows. “C’mon. We’ve got work to do.”

TEN MINUTES LATER Kit jumped at the scream from the alley. Elbow-deep in hot, sudsy water, she chilled at the words she heard through the kitchen’s back door.

“You?”

“Shut up and let go, you hag!”

“Take it. Please, just take—”

She preferred screams to the muffled thud and sudden, eerie silence.

“Germane!” He was mopping out by the tables. But she was just a few feet away from the shouts and scuffle in the alley. Kit tightened her grip around the iron skillet she’d been washing and ran to the exit. “Call 911!”

“Kit! Don’t you—”

But she was already out the door at the top of the loading dock. Not Matt. Please don’t let it be Matt. The crunching of snow drew her attention to the steel scaffolding beyond the light over her back door. She spotted the groceries scattered across the ground and hurried down the concrete steps toward the torn sack they belonged to.

“Next time, old lady, you’ll shut up when I tell you to.”

Kit’s eyes adjusted to the sight of two young men in saggy jeans and hooded parkas—one bearing the distinctive arrowhead of the Chiefs—squatting beside a woman’s still form in the slush near the garbage cans. “Matty?”

The bigger of the two stopped digging through the woman’s purse and swung around. Black hair and little else was visible above the scarf he’d tied over his face. Not Matt.

Blood boiled in Kit’s veins, overriding both relief and fear. “Get away from her. Get away!”

Kit charged before the startled man could rise. She smacked him in the shoulder, sending both purse and attacker flying. Unfazed by his fluent foreign curses, she jumped over the woman’s skinned-up legs and raised the skillet to go after the smaller man.

But a third pair of arms grabbed her from behind and slung her against the building. The skillet banged against the wall, stinging her fingers and popping her grip. It clattered to the ground as the man she’d struck lurched forward, wanting his own retribution. “Nobody hits me, bitch!”

He shoved her before she had a chance to react. She smacked into solid limestone. The air whooshed from her lungs and her head spun from the dizzying contact.

“Get out of here! Now!” Blurry hands pulled the man in the Chiefs parka back and urged him to run.

Kit sank to her knees as the three men scattered. By the time she could fill her lungs with cold air and clear her head, they were gone. Along with the woman’s purse.

Kit didn’t waste time pursuing them. The older woman, groaning but not moving, was a greater concern. Kit crawled over and knelt beside her, quickly assessing that her unfocused eyes were open and her pulse was beating. Recognizing the snowy cap of hair and slight build beneath the thick wool coat and knitted scarf, she asked, “Helen?”

Recognize was a generous term. The woman came into the diner for an occasional cup of tea, but usually just nodded and smiled when they passed each other on the sidewalk or in the parking garage. She seemed friendly enough, but very private. She’d probably been a resident around here for years, and was being cautious about the alarming changes in her environment.

Any wonder? The dangerous proof was the fresh tracks in the snow, exiting the alley between the parking garage and the Sinclair Building’s side entrances.

“Helen? That’s your name, right?” The woman gasped as Kit peeled the wool scarf away from the bloody wound at her temple. She’d had enough training in her forensic classes to identify the long, round indentation of the wound. Those greedy bastards had hit this fly-weight woman with a pipe, or maybe shoved her into one of the scaffolding bars. But this wasn’t the time for Kit’s innate curiosity to kick in. The woman was going into shock.

“Germane!”

Where was he?

Kit didn’t want to leave the woman’s side. Briefly peeling off her sweater and baring her flanks and back to the chapping cold, Kit removed her cotton turtleneck and pressed it against Helen’s wound while she redressed. “Where do you live? What’s your last name?”

Though she moaned at the contact, Helen was fading.

“Hang on.” She shouted over her shoulder, “Germane!”

“Right behind you, girl.” Germane limped through the back door, carrying a blanket beneath his arm and a cell phone against his ear. He relayed information to the dispatcher as he hurried down the stairs. “That’s right. The Sinclair Building at Ninth and Walnut. Looks like an elderly woman in the alley on the north side.” He paused and frowned. “I didn’t see nothin’. But if you don’t get that ambulance here soon, the cops’ll be investigating a murder, not a mugging.”

“Germane?” Kit took the blanket from him as he shut his phone and braced a hand on her shoulder to kneel on the opposite side of the woman. Kit winced at the bruise that must already be swelling on her shoulder blade.

His sharp eyes didn’t miss a trick. “How bad are you hurt?”

“I had a run-in with the wall, but it’s nothing serious.” Kit skipped the details and unfolded the blanket to tuck it around Helen’s slight figure. Germane was already listening to the older woman’s breathing and checking for pupil response. “How is she?”

“She’s got a concussion for sure. Hell, they could’ve cracked her skull, as deep as that wound goes.”

Kit turned toward the end of the alley where the footprints disappeared. “The muggers took her purse, and she hasn’t given me her name. I think it’s Helen, but I don’t who to contact or what to tell the paramedics. Do you know her?”

“Keep talking to her,” Germane advised, measuring the woman’s pulse. “All I know is, she lives upstairs. She’s been in a few times, pesterin’ me for my barbecue sauce recipe. Says she used to make as good. She’s always by herself, though, so maybe there isn’t anybody to cook for anymore.”

Or anyone to call. Kit smoothed away the droplets of melting snow from the woman’s cool cheek. “Helen? Can you hear me? Look at me, Helen.”

The rheumy blue eyes blinked. Her pale lips slurred a question. “Are you dead?”

“What?” Kit panicked when Helen’s eyes drifted shut. “No. I’m very much alive. And so are you. Stay with me, Helen.” She pulled the woman’s bony hand between her own and tried to rub some warmth back into it. “Helen? You’re not alone. Stay with me.”

Her cold hand went limp in Kit’s grasp as she murmured, “We’re all dead.”

Chapter Two

The fire was all around him, climbing up the walls and leaping across the ceiling.