The sun was fully up and so bright she knew it was frigid out—it always was coldest when it was brightest. She shivered, recalling how cold she’d been last night, especially standing outside the truck. She considered the nature of terror: freezing and shaking one moment, dripping sweat the next. How different the body’s response to the same stimulus. She was still shivering but her body was back in Louisiana, battered and bruised in the bottom of a boat. She pulled back the covers and crawled underneath, seeking warmth. It had been warm—hot and muggy—on the bayou, yet she had shivered. And she had slept . . . perhaps she would sleep now, for a few hours, and then go to work.
5
SINCE COLLEGE, CAROLE ANN HAD sought refuge in her work. No matter what was happening in her life, she could avoid or evade or escape or dismiss it simply by turning to work. When she was younger, she’d had to work at shifting the gears. By the time she became an accomplished legal practitioner, it was habit. She had work to do this morning. Yesterday didn’t exist. So engrossed was she in reviewing the surveillance reports from the electronics warehouse that she jumped slightly, startled by the gentle tapping at her office door. She looked up, still writing on the yellow legal pad with one hand, flipping a page of the report with the other.
“Give me two minutes, Paolo,” she said, waving him in and toward the sofa. “I’m almost done here,” she added, speaking more to the papers on the desk than to him. In slightly less than the two minutes she’d asked for, she dropped her pen and looked up at him. “Sorry about that. So. What’s up?”
“Should you be here?”
“Where else would I be?”
“Can we talk about yesterday?” he asked, altering his tone.
She frowned slightly, as if, perhaps, there really had been no yesterday. “What about it?”
He inhaled deeply. “If there’s anything that you know that you didn’t tell the cops, anything you heard or saw or felt or thought that’s surfaced since last night, I’d like to know it, C.A. You know, it often happens that when a stressful situation ends, the mind releases little bits and pieces of things.”
She folded her hands, interlocking her fingers, and studied him, thinking that he was very good at his job. He’d actually made his comment sound like a question that required an answer. A tactic from hostage-release training.
“I’ve got work to do, Paolo—”
“You can’t pretend that yesterday didn’t happen, C.A.”
She rose swiftly to her feet, the motion so sudden and sharp that it was cutting. “—and so do you. I suggest you get to it.” She walked around the desk and stood before it and watched him tense but remain seated. And she realized that some kind of change had occurred within him; something to do with her and yesterday. His next words proved her correct.
“I’ve seen a few situations like this, and few people have managed as well as you did. I admire your courage and your strength. But the aftermath of this kind of thing—”
She cut him off by moving toward him, which quickly forced him to his feet; she knew he couldn’t remain seated on the low-slung couch with her towering over him. “I don’t need a protector, Paolo, or an advisor, or anybody telling me what or how I feel. Is that clear?” The words were volatile but there was no emotion in her voice. Her tone was cold and flat and had the intended effect on him.
He dipped his head and squared his shoulders and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “We’ve still got to find out who did this.”
“No, we don’t,” she replied. And not allowing him time to reply, she shifted gears. “What are you doing on Annabelle?”
He blew out a long, slow breath, and inhaled deeply to replace it. “I’m flying up to Boston tomorrow. I’ve got an interview at her alma mater.”
“Good,” she said, turning away from him and toward her desk. “Make sure you get a letter from Islington authorizing the release of her transcripts and giving permission for the school to talk to us. And see me as soon as you get back.” She was back at her desk, seated and working before he was out of the door. But there was a sound and she looked up to see Paolo backing into the room to allow Jake to enter, then exiting the office.
Jake was as visibly upset and rattled as his partner was tightly contained. Though he was cleanly and neatly dressed—he, too, had gone home for several hours before coming in to work—his aura was rumpled. His eyes were puffy and red, as if he’d wept for a long time. He walked slowly and hunched over like a shuffling old man, hands shoved into his pockets.
“Hey, Paolo,” he said, barely raising his head. Then he stopped suddenly and both men had to turn back toward each other in order to speak. “I just want you to know how much I appreciate what you did yesterday.”
“I’m glad it turned out the way it did, Jake,” Paolo said, towering over his boss as they stood framed in the doorway.
“Yeah,” the ex-cop replied, sounding not at all like a cop and every bit like a man who’d allowed himself to believe that he was about to be a widower.
“Jake,” Paolo began, and got no farther.
“It’s over, Paolo. Finished. There ain’t nothing more to be said or done. Let it go. Let it be.” And he turned away and Paolo disappeared and Jake closed the office door and shuffled toward Carole Ann.
She met him midpoint between the office door and the desk and they shared a brief but fierce embrace. They released each other and crossed the office and dropped wearily down, Jake on the sofa where Paolo had sat, Carole Ann into the rocking chair across the table from him. “You look like shit, by the way,” she said to him.
Something that two days ago would have been his trademark grin barely lifted a corner of his mouth. “I can always count on you, C.A., to raise my spirits and comfort my ego.”
“That’s what friends are for, and don’t you forget it.” The smile she tried was only marginally more successful. “How’s Grace this morning?”
The grin worked this time. “Stubborn as ever and still mad as hell. Refused to let me stay home with her, claiming I’d be more on her nerves than the damn kidnappers. Said I kept her awake with my tossing and turning and getting up every five minutes to check the doors and windows.” Then the humor faded and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t think I can live there anymore, C.A. Somebody broke into my home and stole my wife. How can I live there and be happy again? Especially since I don’t know who did it or even why?”
Helpless anger rolled off him in waves and he clenched and unclenched his fists and pounded the tops of legs, just as he’d done when he was paralyzed and the legs didn’t function. She studied him quietly, watching his mind work. She knew how he thought, and she could almost hear his internal dialogue.
“So, should we find out who and why?” she asked.
“I don’t know, C.A. For the first time in my life I’m more scared than mad. And I’m plenty mad.”
She’d said all she wanted or needed to say. She’d given him the window; it was up to him to open it and climb through. She, too, was more frightened than angry, and was content to let the fear rule. But of course, no one had invaded her sanctuary and stolen what she valued most.
“Let me think about it for a while. In the meantime, I need a favor.”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows and waited.
“Oh, relax. You’ll be doing yourself a favor at the same time,” he said, and explained that he wanted her to replace him in two days’ time at the signing of a major security contract in Los Angeles, business that Tommy Griffin and Anthony Killian, the principals in the GGI West Coast office, had initiated. Jake had done the survey four months earlier, and submitted the GGI bid, and they’d received word two weeks ago of their selection. The project involved the total renovation of a number of warehouses on the pier at Long Beach, with state-of-the-art security and surveillance equipment installed during construction, and constant GGI monitoring once the construction was completed and the trucking operation was under way. It was a lucrative, long-term
contract.
“Sure, I’ll go, Jake. After all, it hasn’t been two whole months since I’ve seen my mother,” she said dryly, and with a hint of pain. Her mother still was angry with her for the events that led to her being shot the previous year, and she still was angry with her mother for not understanding that she’d had to rescue Tommy back then, just as she’d had to rescue Jake’s wife yesterday.
“It didn’t really register until this morning, C.A., what it must have taken for you to go after Grace,” he said, apropos of nothing except the ability to wander around her thoughts.
She held up a hand to stop him. “It’s over now, Jake. Let’s let it be, all right? If I’m going to L.A. in two days, I’ve got a load of paperwork to complete, two cases to shove off on you, and a lot to learn about the installation, maintenance, and monitoring of security and surveillance systems in warehouses.”
He stood up and shoved his hands deeply into his pockets. “The up side is that you get out of D.C. during the shittiest time of year. Who was it that said February and March are the cruelest months?”
She giggled. “It was only one month, Jake, and I think it was April. And the weather in L.A. in February and March can be pretty ugly. Gray and rainy and chilly . . .”
“It doesn’t rain in L.A.!” he snorted, sounding almost like himself. “It’s always warm and sunny.”
After he left, she succumbed to the exhaustion she’d been fighting. She closed the office door and lay down on the love seat, her long legs dangling over the side. As she lay there, she realized that what she’d thought was fatigue really was the return of feeling—all of it. The fear and the anger and the resentment and the resignation all came flooding back at once. She lay there, eyes closed, and allowed it to happen. Then she allowed herself to remember the real reasons why she hadn’t wanted to remember.
Anger and grief had driven her to New Orleans to avenge her husband’s murder, and she paid a terrible price for unveiling a murderer: she was abducted and brutally beaten. Jake Graham, at the time paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, sent Tommy Griffin, then a D.C. cop, to find and save her. And a year later, because she’d gotten him into danger, Carole Ann believed herself obligated to save and rescue Tommy from a gang of smugglers of human cargo operating out of a desert compound on the California-Mexico border. She got shot that time, and almost died.
She sat up, rubbing the place between her left breast and shoulder blade that was a bullet wound. Despondent as she was over Al’s death, she hadn’t wanted the physical or emotional pain from either of those encounters. She had done only what she’d believed to be right and necessary at the time. But she never wanted to experience that degree of fear again. Yet she had. And so now what? Another pledge to never again knowingly or willingly place herself in danger? Until yesterday, she’d thought it possible to make and keep such a pledge.
She lay back down, still massaging the soreness that held on and wondering if she’d notice when it went away or if, one day, it just wouldn’t be there and all she’d have left would be the scar and the memory. And her life. She had her life. Twice she’d almost died and twice she’d lived. Close calls. But close only counts in horseshoes. Somebody used to say that all the time . . . she didn’t recall who and it didn’t matter. Almost dead was not the same thing as alive and she was alive. And being alive meant living. And living sometimes would result in painful or even dangerous situations. And sometimes, like yesterday, it could result in doing good for another person who would appreciate the deed. Most of the time, she thought, days and deeds done in them would be basic and ordinary. And safe. Like life.
Tommy scooped her up and wrapped her in a bear hug when finally she emerged from the plane, one of the last passengers. “Welcome home! And the first order of business is to brown you up a bit. You got that East Coast, winter-time pale look about yourself.”
“And you look positively Hollywood,” she beamed at him, ignoring the paleness crack. “It would appear that we’ve switched hometowns.” Indeed, in his cream-colored silk shirt, tan slacks, and dark brown slip-ons, he bore no resemblance to the former D.C. beat cop that he once was.
“Just call me Angeleno,” he said with a wide grin and another big hug. “So what’s up with Jake that he couldn’t come? Not that I don’t appreciate your company,” he amended quickly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she teased back, feigning hurt feelings.
He placed one gigantic palm across his chest and gave her a wounded, hangdog look. “You know, Carole Ann Gibson, that after my wife, my mother, and my grandmother, I love you more than any woman alive.”
She giggled and playfully punched him on one of his massive, muscular shoulders, and knew that through the silliness he was being completely honest. They shared a very special bond. “I’ll tell you all about it over lunch. I’m three hours past hungry. My body thinks it’s three o’clock in the afternoon.”
A Los Angeles native, Carole Ann routinely experienced intense longings for the things and places and people that had tempered and textured her growing up, and ever since Jake had asked her to make this trip in his stead, she’d been imagining a burger, fries and a chocolate milkshake from Fatburger—the original one—and Tommy’s wide grin when she announced her lunch preference bespoke his approval. By the time they were seated and eating, and Carole Ann was explaining why she was in L.A. instead of Jake, Tommy’s face had creased into a deep frown and his fingers kept up a steady drumbeat on the table.
He made her tell him everything a second time and then he asked enough nitpicking questions to make her truly annoyed with him. “You’re sounding and acting like a cop, Tommy,” she hissed at him, usually enough to make him stop. Not this time. He idolized Jake Graham. Jake was the kind of cop Tommy always wanted to be, would have been, had he not been dismissed from the D.C. police department. Dismissed because, at Jake Graham’s request, he had traveled to New Orleans to rescue Carole Ann from a murderer.
“Damn, C.A.,” he said over and over. “That’s some really scary shit.”
“Yeah, Tommy, it is,” she agreed.
“And you all are just gonna drop it? Just like that?”
“What else can we do, Tommy? We don’t know who those people are or where to look for them, even if we wanted to look for them, which we don’t.”
Tommy slapped the table with his palm, making a loud, cracking noise, attracting the subversive attention of nearby diners. Then he rubbed his hands together. Then he began cracking his knuckles.
“Stop that!”
He ducked his head, blushing, and grinned, and she was reminded how young he was—not yet thirty—and how vulnerable. He totally and completely trusted her and Jake, would do whatever they asked without question. “I would just feel . . . I can’t tell you how I would feel if something happened to Jake or Miss Grace and I’m all the way over here . . .”
“Tommy.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “No one could have prevented what happened. You think Jake and I haven’t beat ourselves up for not realizing that there was something shaky about that outfit? We were just so pleased to have business walk in the door that we didn’t notice the muddy footprints on the welcome mat.” She hadn’t told him, and didn’t think it necessary to tell him, about the disagreement that she and Jake had about the OnShore contract.
He sat back, a quizzical look on his face, his hand still nestled in hers. Then he leaned forward again and placed his other hand on top of hers. “Is this going to hurt business? I mean, will people find out about it and think we somehow did something wrong? You know how easy it is these days to blame the victim.”
She smiled at him, then half stood and leaned across the table and kissed him. “You are good to the core, Tommy Griffin. Do you know that nobody has verbalized that fear? We’ve all been walking around with it, praying that whatever this mess is, it won’t double back around and bite us on the butt. But not one of us has had the courage to voice it. And the answer is, I don’t know. Because nob
ody really knows what it’s all about.”
He frowned, his thoughts playing out on his face. “But isn’t that too risky? Not to know? If we don’t ever know what this is all about, what’s to say it can’t or won’t happen again?”
Her warm fuzzies for Tommy were beginning to fade. He was raising every issue she’d ducked for days; issues she knew that Jake was ducking as well, the both of them hiding behind their fear. Fear as a shield . . . She shook her head to shake off the discomfort of that thought. “You’re right, Tommy, and I don’t have an answer. We haven’t discussed it. We need to and we will as soon as I’m back in Washington, that’s a promise.”
“Unless there’s something even uglier about those OnShore and Seabord folks you haven’t found out about yet . . .”
She raised her hand to stop him. “Let it go for now, Tommy. No point in pursuing this line of questioning. I told you there are no answers. Not yet.”
Tommy stood up. “So what do you want to do?”
She, too, stood. “I want to see our warehouses, then I want to go sit in the sun and forget how cold it is in D.C., and then I want to go see Valerie and the little Griffin-to-be.”
“Well, what are you standing there for?” he growled in perfect Jake Graham imitation. “Let’s roll.”
The drive out to Long Beach was relaxed because they simply ignored the traffic and talked the entire way, Tommy answering all of Carole Ann’s questions about Valerie—Tommy’s wife and soon-to-be mother of their child—and Anthony, the other GGI Los Angeles operative, and Anthony’s mother, whom she had known in another lifetime. Yes, Tommy said, he kept tabs on Grayce Gibson, Carole Ann’s own mother, and on Roberta and Angie, her mother’s best friends and neighbors. Addie Allen, a local lawyer, kept the GGI operatives busy with investigative work of her own, and with referrals from other law firms in town.
He told her several Addie Allen stories that made her laugh until tears ran down her face. Addie was five feet tall in her stocking feet and weighed barely one hundred pounds and Warren Forchette called her the West Coast version of Carole Ann herself, “only meaner.” She was the best lawyer Carole Ann knew; after all, she’d successfully defended Carole Ann against a murder charge and had fought for over a year to restore her status with the California bar. Yes, Carole Ann thought, wiping her eyes and agreeing with Tommy, “Addie Allen, Esquire, definitely is a piece of work.”
The Step Between Page 9
