by Amy Faye
She settled into her car and rubbed her eyes. It wasn't a graceful exit. But she'd told Nick that she was being followed, so it only made sense to tell him that the cops were calling her in. Being dragged in by the cops at two in the morning sounded about right, and it had a certain poetry if she had to end up pulling Nick in around the same time.
Her gut reminded her that wasn't going to happen, and she made sure to remind her gut that it didn't make the decisions about who she did and didn't pull in for questioning. That was all investigation and study and good police work where she could get it. Not instinct and gut feelings and hunches.
She took a turn and stopped at a McDonald's for some of their entirely forgettable coffee. But it had caffeine and on four hours sleep, that was what she was prepared to accept. Forgettable, but caffeinated. That was what the job entailed and she had wanted this job since she was a girl.
So if there was a little challenge, then she would rise to meet that challenge. She pressed dial on the phone as she pulled away, nestling the cup into her cup holder.
"You got something for me?"
"Nice to talk to you this morning, Detective Hunt."
Brianna bristled, but that was what she was supposed to do. That was why she'd said it. Because she knew Brianna wasn't going to like it.
"Yeah, you got me out of bed, so what's going on?"
"Well, I just heard you were asking around about Roe,"
"You know, a whole lot of people seem to know what I'm asking around about, lately."
"Oh yeah?"
Brianna soured. That brown Buick wasn't watching the house. He was watching her. She wondered when he'd picked her up. There was no way that he stood out in her mind the first time that she'd seen him. Which meant that he'd probably been there longer than that, since God only knows when.
"Yeah. Not going to talk about it. What have you got for me?"
"I've got a friend in organized crime for you," she said, her voice flat. "He says he's heard the name."
"That's unusual. Apparently nobody's heard of him."
"Well, that's part of it. You'll see when you talk to him."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. I've got him waiting for you. Say hi, Jimmy."
A man's voice from away from the phone said 'hey' just loud enough to be audible. They were waiting for her, huh?
"I'm five minutes out."
She took those five minutes in three minutes and pulled up with her heart thumping. What were they supposed to find out about Nick now? Now that they had something?
She took the stairs. The elevator was slow. And she took those stairs two at a time, in spite of the fact that it probably wasn't super safe. No big deal. Safe was overrated. Allison was sitting off to the side of Brianna's desk, but there was no mistaking that she'd taken the detective's chair to sit in. Her 'friend,' apparently called Jimmy, had taken another chair. They were readily available. His was of the folding metal tubing variety.
"What have you got for me?"
"When do I get paid," came Jimmy's response, though she wasn't sure whether he was asking her or Allison or both.
Brianna raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said he was from organized crime?"
"Well, that was an over-simplification."
It certainly was. Jimmy looked less like a cop and more like a drug dealer. And not like an undercover, either. He looked like they'd just picked him up off the street.
"You'll be paid by the lady at the desk, same as always," came Allison's response. "Once you've made yourself useful."
"Useful, huh?"
Brianna didn't have time for this, and she suspected neither did Allison, even though she would no-doubt engage all day in this kind of back-and-forth.
"What do you have for me on Nick Roe?"
"I have a name and I have orders from up top to leave him be. I've got a basic description, but it could be anybody. 'Big guy, dark hair, dark eyes.' Could be anybody."
It was a surprisingly perfect description, Brianna thought. It wasn't until you saw him that you realized how perfect it was. 'Big' seemed like a good description of a lot of guys until you saw Nick, and then you realized that 'big' was a relative term, and relative to Nick Roe nobody was very big.
"Stay away from him? Why?"
"He's bad news, mostly. I don't know. They wouldn't talk about it."
"Is he connected?"
Jimmy looked over at Allison with an expression like he was waiting for permission. She shrugged as if she didn't know what he was supposed to be waiting for.
"I don't really know," Jimmy said finally. "He's dangerous and he's a name. I heard once that he busted up a couple of our guys, pretty bad."
Brianna nodded, frowning. This wasn't the sort of help she wanted. It wasn't even a little bit solid, for one thing, and she needed something very solid. "But that's just talk?"
"Far as I know. None of the guys who made it out really wanted to talk much about it."
"'Made it out'? There were people who didn't?"
"Always are, in my line of business. In this case, I got the distinct impression–well, my impression was that he didn't seem to want 'em killed, per se. It was just acceptable. Like he didn't mind so much if they died."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
A thought flashed through her head. "You know a lot of names, Jimmy?"
"I guess I know a few, if you got any money."
"What you've given me so far hasn't been much help. I could have gotten that by looking at the guy's picture."
"You got a picture of the guy?"
"Not one I'm sharing," Brianna answered, picking up on the tone. "If I said the name 'Jeff Wilde' to you–"
"Jeff? Yeah, I know him. Why. Your boys pick him up for something?"
That was all she needed to know. She took a deep breath. Things were taking a turn. She just didn't realize yet how much of a turn they were taking.
Eleven
The first thing that she knew after her eyes shot open was that there was a sound of shattering glass. It wasn't exactly unheard of, once you started messing with people who were heavy, that you got sent a message, but this was the first time that Brianna had gotten one. And on a case where she knew next to nothing, it was almost insulting.
The next thing she knew was the sound of the door opening. A scream rose in her throat and she had to force herself to be still as best she could, but she knew already that it was pointless as soon as thick, powerful arms grabbed her out of bed and dropped her unceremoniously on her feet.
"Get up," Nick said in a voice that wasn't about to be questioned. "We're leaving. Now."
Brianna eyed the place where she kept her gun, inside the bedside table. If she reached for it, it would be so easy for him to wrap those big hands around her neck and twist her head right off.
"You can grab that in a second," he said, as if it weren't going to be used against him and he wasn't worried. She doubted very much that he wasn't at all worried, but she wasn't in a position to question him, either. "Right now, as great as you look with no clothes on, I need you dressed."
He was already opening her closed and tossing clothes out of it onto the bed. A shirt, some trousers, a bra. She was already wearing panties but he threw a pair of those as well, and then started hunting for socks. Socks he wasn't going to find, she knew, because they were the one thing she actually kept in the dresser.
But it meant one thing: he wasn't looking. She reached for the gun and had it out in an instant and pointed right at him.
"Don't move, creep."
He turned on her, his face sour. "I don't have time for this, and neither do you. Put the gun down and get dressed, Detective whatever your name is."
She frowned and pursed her lips. "Fuck you."
But she did what she was told anyways. She told herself it was because she was pretty sure she couldn't take him down before he took her with him, and she wasn't ready to die. That was easier to stomach than surrendering because she believed him when
she had absolutely no reason to.
He didn't look threatening. He didn't even look very menacing at that exact moment. He looked no different than he had when he'd clocked that tough in the alley. Like he was saving her life at his own inconvenience. Out of what she guessed was something like pity. So she dressed even though she couldn't understand why.
When she had her clothes on, she holstered her gun quickly, and grabbed for her backup before he could tell her not to, and then followed him out. He had a car parked outside, she saw. "Get in" was all the instruction he gave before slipping into the low-slung muscle car. She did as she was told in spite of her natural inclination to do anything but follow his instructions on pure spite.
"What the fuck is this?"
She waited until they were on the road to ask, but she wasn't going to be denied her answer eventually.
"You said you were being followed," he said, roughly.
"Yeah, so what?"
"So you only told half the truth."
She looked at him. He looked angry, but his tone sounded as calm as if he were commenting on the weather. She'd never seen such self-control, and certainly not with someone's tone of voice. He didn't sound strained at all.
"What's your point?"
"My point is, you pissed off the wrong people."
"How did I do that?"
"I guess the easiest way to explain is, you said the magic words."
"Which would be?"
"My name," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You were snooping around my apartment, as well."
She was done playing catch up. If he wasn't going to answer why he'd come and grabbed her out of nowhere, he was going to answer some other questions. She'd see to that.
"What do you know about Jeff Wilde?"
He looked at her with a bored 'not the time' expression. "You're like a dog with a bone, you know that?"
Brianna bristled, and this time she didn't stop herself, regardless of whether or not it was intentional.
"You got some kind of fucking hearing problem? I asked you a question."
"Yeah, and I didn't answer it. Because I'm not an idiot. I came and got you because the people following you aren't the kind of people that you piss off, and because now that they've no doubt followed you to the apartment–"
"I wasn't followed."
He took his eyes off the road a second time, and this time his expression was a lot less polite. Something that Brianna hadn't realized was possible, because his original expression was a little insulting.
This one was openly insulting. "Sure you weren't, sweet thing. Not as far as you could tell, anyway."
"Are you trying to say that I'm incompetent?"
He just rolled his eyes. "They know where I live, they know where you live, and it's only a matter of time before they decide to close this case, you get my meaning?"
She frowned. "Yeah, I guess. I don't know what I did to piss them off, though. I don't know anything."
"You know I'm still kicking, for one thing. They'd kill you in a heartbeat if they thought that it would get information on where I'm hiding out."
"You really thing you're that important, huh?"
They were leaving the city, she saw. Passing by the roadhouse where he'd been waiting for something. Very possibly for her; it wasn't outside the realm of possibility, even if it was hard to believe.
"I'm not important, Detective. What I am is…" he snorted a laugh. "I'm an endangered species, so to speak."
She didn't bother to ask what that meant. He'd made enemies, that much was clear. And now, because she knew him, those enemies were her enemies, whether she liked it or not. Well, the damage was already done.
Now she just had to get used to it.
Twelve
They drove for a long time in silence. This wasn't out of town, she realized. This was way out of town. This was 'vacationing up north' kind of out of town. They'd been on the road a long time, and at this time of night, there was hardly anyone on the road.
In spite of the offensively manly ride, he took the route slow, and whenever lights appeared behind them, he waited for the car to pass. Almost meek. It took a long time to realize that he was looking for someone who was following them. Longer than it should have.
But he also looked away from the road as often as towards it, as if there might be some superhuman bicyclist riding along the side of the road to follow, as well. Whatever he saw–Brianna knew that she saw nothing, but he could have imagined something, or perhaps he saw signs that she didn't know the meaning of–he didn't relax until they had been on the road the better part of five hours, and were crossing the bridge to the upper peninsula.
Then he let the car open up a little more. Five over the speed limit seemed to be the slowest the vehicle could go, all of a sudden. She wasn't exactly in a position to complain, and besides that, complaining would just mean that she'd have to talk to him. So she let herself lay her head back and closed her eyes and tried not to think too hard about what was going on, who she was with, and why she'd gone with him.
That was the easiest way to go about it, anyways. She didn't realize that she fell asleep until she felt his hand on her shoulder. "I'm up," she said. "Just resting my eyes."
"You were snoring," he said softly. "We're here." As if he were worried about letting someone else hear him.
She didn't know where they were, but she knew that she couldn't have found it again. More than that, she didn't know that she could find her way back again. Her phone showed no signal.
"Where are we exactly?"
He looked at her flatly. "Home base, I guess. Used to be, anyway."
She raised a quizzical eyebrow, but he didn't seem to have time nor inclination to respond. He just went around to her side of the car and pulled the door open expectantly. The cold early-morning air hit her hard, and between the two of them and the soft scent that meant Nick Roe was around, she could feel her skin getting sensitive and her nipples tightening.
She stepped out of the car and stretched her legs. She was sore, she realized. Very sore. She was glad to be up, even if it were only for a few minutes. Then she was following him inside. 'Home base' didn't seem to fit. 'Hunting lodge' sounded right, but when she got inside it was well-furnished. He started a fire without hesitation and flicked on electric lights.
The front room at least was covered in photos, framed and placed carefully, but they spider webbed across the walls. Placed carefully, but not placed systematically. They weren't in some kind of clear grid, but appeared to have photos stuffed in wherever there was blank space.
Over the door there was a stuffed wolf's head. "What, you some kind of hunter?"
She looked from one photo to the next. They were all photos very much like the one that had been in Jeff Wilde's wallet. Shots of a group of guys, smiling big, toothy grins and looking at the camera like they were thinking about eating it.
All of them outside. Outdoorsman, or something. Was there money in that?
He seemed to hear her question a few minutes after she'd asked it. "Hunter? Yeah, I guess."
That seemed to be plenty of answer for him, but it sure as hell wasn't plenty of answer for her. "Where are we?"
"I told you–"
"Yeah, 'home base.' What is this place?"
"It's mine, and nobody's going to be looking here. The boys and I, we–" He stopped there, though why that was, she didn't know. "Uh, before we got separated, we had already moved away from here."
"So, what, these photos are–"
"Not really," he said, before she could even ask her question. "Just old junk. Meet-ups for… uh… hunters."
"What, like some kind of convention?"
"Something like that."
The fire behind him roared. It looked real hot, but Brianna could feel tiredness tugging at her strings, threatening to untie her completely.
"Which room is mine?"
He stood and dusted his jeans off. "This way."
He led her up the steps and towards the back. When she stepped inside he followed her for a step. The Detective turned. "Not right now, big guy. We'll talk in the morning, and then we'll see how I'm feeling."
"I wasn't thinking about that," he said.
She didn't know how to tell when he was lying. He was inscrutable, and his expression was as intense as ever. So he wasn't kidding, but lying was a different question. Brianna blushed, because she knew exactly what it was he wasn't thinking of, and she had to admit that she was too tired for it, but she absolutely had been thinking of it.
"Get some sleep," she said mildly. "Then you can try explaining even a little bit of your cryptic bullshit to me in the morning. Maybe once I've slept a few more hours, I'll be able to figure it out."
"You're a detective, after all," he agreed, and then he shut the door, and she saw why she thought he was following her in. The room was dark. Dark as pitch, she realized, and more than that, she didn't really know where she was supposed to find the light switch.
She fumbled for the wall, and when she finally found it, she moved her hands around gently, hoping not to knock anything down or break it, until she finally found an electric switch. She flipped it and the room lit up. There was a big bed against one wall, open on the other three sides, and she had to admit that it looked comfortable. She pulled her shirt off and took a breath. Long night. At least now, she hoped, it was done with.
Thirteen
Brianna's eyes didn't shoot open, which was an unusual surprise. It should have been normal. She usually woke before her alarm, and turned it off before it fired. The loud noise upset her enough to turn it off before the sound made her stomach turn.
But the last few days had involved being woken from her sleep so much that being able to wake on her own felt unusual. The sun streaming through the curtains, that was even more unusual. After a minute she remembered where she was. Not at home. Some mystery cabin in the upper peninsula.
But at least it was warm. The entire cabin seemed much warmer than it had the night before. She pulled her shirt on halfway and left the room. Nick wasn't in the main room. She looked back at the hall of doors. There were more than just one or two, she saw. And without a doubt, there were more downstairs, as well.
