Trapped

by Rhonda Pollero

  “Time to push Ziggy into overdrive.”

  Chasyn stifled a yawn. “I feel like we have a bunch of puzzle pieces that don’t fit into the puzzle.”

  “Me, too. There has to be something else to this that we’re not seeing.”

  “Like how and why Lansing hired two different hit men to kill me. If all the intelligence on someone like Müller says he doesn’t work with minions, then the two guys from last night were working on their own. Why the overlap?”

  Declan was quiet for a minute. “Lansing is a pretty thorough guy. Maybe he was just hedging his bet.”

  “But isn’t that dangerous? I mean the more people involved, the better chance of getting caught, right?”

  “He seemed pretty sure that he was untouchable,” Declan told her. A minute later, he glanced over at her. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m a little tired.” God, was that ever an understatement. She was so tired her body actually hurt.

  “There’s a sleep room at the hangar. Why don’t you try to get some rest while Ziggy and I work on a few things?”

  “I can’t sleep while you work.”

  Declan reached out and patted her bare knee. Her skin tingled from his touch. “I need you to work on Lansing’s past cases and you’re too exhausted to do that right now. A few hours of sleep will do you some good.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “You were up all night, too.”

  “I’m used to it and I have a serious caffeine addiction that helps me get over the hump.”

  “You’ll rot your insides with all that coffee,” she warned.

  “I’m tough,” he said as he put the Explorer into drive. Not long after, he pulled into the hangar and cut the engine.

  Gavin, Chuck, Adam, and Ziggy were gathered around an industrial coffee maker, the kind Chasyn had only seen in diners and restaurants. Without asking, Declan went to the adjacent fridge and took out a bottle of water and passed it to her. She took a long drink and waited for the others to fill their mugs with coffee.

  Once everyone was gathered, Declan had the floor. “Several things,” he began. “First, I want to know the minute the cops get an ID on the dead guy from last night. Then I want to know everything about the white SUV down to the VIN number and the mileage. Then I want whatever information you can get”—he looked at Ziggy—“on the names in the cases Chasyn printed at her office.”

  Chuck spoke up. “I’ve already talked to my contact at the police lab. He’ll call me as soon as they run the guy’s prints.”

  Adam added, “I’ve got a lead on the SUV. I’m just waiting for the rental place to open for business.”

  Ziggy said, “I’ve already started on the searches on Chasyn’s list. There are a lot of names in the transcripts—witnesses and experts—so it won’t be quick.” She took a sip from her mug. “While I’m waiting, I’m still going through Mary’s and Lansing’s financials. I decided to go back a few months to see if anything pops.”

  “Good idea,” Declan said. He turned to Chasyn. “Come with me. I’ll take you to the bunk room.”

  She felt a little guilty that she’d be napping like a toddler while the rest of the group was hard at work. But she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. Declan led her into a small room with a pair of cots and one rickety table with a lamp on it.

  “It isn’t the Ritz…”

  “It’s fine,” she insisted. “Just a twenty-minute power nap and I’ll be as good as new.” She lay down on the cot but Declan remained, leaning against the doorjamb. “What?” she asked.

  “Just making sure you go to sleep.”

  “I can’t go to sleep with you watching me. It’s creepy.”

  “I like watching you.”

  Chasyn lifted her head off the pillow. “I’m too tired to spar with you right now. Maybe later.”

  Declan chuckled, then left the room. Chasyn took just two coffee-scented breaths before she fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  When she roused, she checked her watch and bolted upright. She’d been asleep for nearly six hours. She sat up, ran her fingers through her hair, careful to avoid the annoyingly itchy stitches, then reached into her purse for a breath mint. Following the sounds of muffled voices, she made her way back down to the first floor.

  Chasyn was self-conscious about her long nap but if any of them noticed, it wasn’t apparent. Everyone greeted her as if it was normal to sleep half the day away. “May I have some coffee?” she asked.

  “You never drink coffee,” Declan said.

  “I’m making an exception this time. Why did you let me sleep so long?”

  “Because you’re sleep deprived. I just made a fresh pot,” Declan said. “Help yourself.”

  Chasyn went to the machine and poured herself a small mug of coffee. One sip and she nearly choked on its strength. These people didn’t fool around. But she valiantly drank it down, needing the caffeine boost to clear her head.

  “Anything new?” she asked.

  “Does the name Armando Velez mean anything to you?” Declan asked as he led her to Ziggy’s wide world of computer monitors.

  There was an unflattering mug shot up on one of the screens of a scruffy brown-skinned man with black hair and brown eyes. Very weathered looking. “I’ve never seen him before. Why?”

  “He’s the dead guy from last night,” Declan explained.

  “He looks homeless,” she offered.

  “He was. Has a long list of priors but they’re all for penny ante stuff. Trespassing, loitering, drunk in public.”

  “So why was he shooting at us?”

  “He was the passenger,” Declan said. “No traces of gunpowder on his hands. So he definitely wasn’t the shooter.”

  “How do we find the shooter?” Chasyn asked.

  “I’m on that,” Chuck said. “I’m heading out now to see some of the people he’s been arrested with in the past and to hit a couple of shelters to see who he used to hang with.”

  “What about the white SUV?” she asked. “Anything to link it back to Lansing?”

  “It was stolen three weeks ago from a rental lot in Lake Worth.”

  “Then we basically have nothing,” she said on a sigh.

  “Not true. We have a few more pieces of the puzzle,” Declan countered. “And we’re not finished digging.”

  Chasyn blew out a breath of frustration. “Only we don’t know what the puzzle looks like.”

  “But we will,” Declan assured her.

  “We need a miracle,” Chasyn said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As if on cue, Ziggy came rushing out of the computer lab. “I think I found something,” she said excitedly. “Come take a look at this.” She led them back to her area. All the screens were compiling data or displaying information and images.

  Declan and Chasyn waited while she pulled a bank statement up on the larger, main screen mounted on the vast wall. “Nice going,” Declan said.

  Chasyn scanned the data until she spotted an intriguing entry. “A 354-dollar debit card transaction to Store-All in Delray Beach made four months prior to her death.”

  “I did a little digging,” Ziggy said. “That company has a small unit they rent for 59 dollars a month if you prepay six months up front.”

  “I think we need to take a look inside. What’s the address?” Declan asked.

  Ziggy wrote it down on a small sheet of paper and handed it to him.

  “Aren’t those places secured?” Chasyn inquired. “I don’t think the management will just let us stroll in and browse. And we don’t have a key.”

  “Minor details,” Declan remarked with a lazy grin. “Grab your purse.”

  Chasyn retrieved her bag from the bunk room and joined Declan at the Explorer. “Do you have a strategy?’ she asked as she hoisted herself into the seat.

  “Always,” he assured her. “We’ll stop on the way to the storage place for some food. I need to refuel.”

  “Do you eat all your m
eals out?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “I love to cook,” she said. “It relieves stress.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Maybe I’ll just show you. All I would need is a quick trip to a grocery store.”

  Declan merged the car onto I-95 and increased his speed. “And a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond. My kitchen is stocked with the bare minimum in cookware.”

  “I have everything under the sun back at our apartment,” she said. She felt a pang of grief stab at her heart. “I mean my apartment.” Chasyn tugged on the seatbelt to relieve some of the pressure. “I have to buy out my lease and get my stuff moved. I guess I have to find a new apartment first.”

  “You’ve got enough on your plate right now,” Declan told her. “You can worry about the apartment situation later.”

  “Says the man who owns his own home.”

  “You made that sound like a character flaw.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean it that way. I guess I’m just jealous that you’re all settled and my life is a total shit show right now.” She rubbed her bare arms even though the car was filled with bright sunlight. Shaking off her uncharacteristic self-pity, she asked, “So what do you think Mary kept in her storage unit?”

  “We’ll find that out soon enough.” A short while later he eased the Explorer down the off-ramp and pulled into a small restaurant adjacent to the interstate.

  As soon as Chasyn stepped from the car, her nostrils filled with the most wonderful smells. She found herself practically salivating as she walked with him to the nondescript place. A neon sign above the door said WELCOME, and based on the number of cars in the lot, this little place wasn’t much of a secret.

  Opening the door for her, Declan ushered Chasyn into a dimly lit, funky room with a bar running down its right side and small tables crammed along its left. There was a kitchen behind the bar and a small group of men and women manned the various stations.

  “Two?” a pleasant hostess wearing jeans and a shirt with the restaurant’s logo asked.

  “Yes,” Declan said.

  Chasyn placed the young woman somewhere in her late teens to early twenties. The hostess grabbed two voluminous menus and said, “Follow me.”

  They were directed to a small table near the rear of the room. Declan asked Chasyn to squeeze into the bench seat while he took the chair. The hostess handed them menus and a loose page of daily specials.

  “How did you find this place?” she asked over the low buzz of other diners’ conversations.

  Declan placed the menu aside and held on to the list of specials. “Jack turned me on to it,” he said. “He tried a case in West Palm for three weeks and ate here every day. I joined him once and got hooked on the food.”

  Chasyn perused the menu. It was a fascinating salute to Caribbean fare with some interesting pairings, like tuna over a bed of spicy seasonal fruit. She felt oddly normal just sitting in a restaurant, selecting an entrée. This felt almost like a date. Correction: a first date. She had a fluttering in the pit of her stomach and there was a palpable thread of tension connecting them. Or maybe that was just in her mind. Maybe she was just indulging in a fantasy. Still, it was intriguing to wonder what it would be like if he’d actually asked her out. If they were just two people on the cusp of getting to know one another.

  He would definitely be the kind of man she would notice. Who couldn’t? There was something implicitly sensual about those ice-blue eyes set against his tanned skin. It didn’t take her mind long to conjure the memory of him shirtless in the kitchen. Doing so caused a flip-flop in her belly. Heaven help her. She was strongly attracted to him on many levels, but his attraction seemed to be limited to the physical. That wasn’t her style but the alternative was grim. Maybe she should accept him on his terms. Maybe not for the long haul, but for however long it lasted. She could get him out of her system and then go back to her carefully thought-out life plan. Somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, a question lingered. Was Declan Kavanaugh really the kind of man she could get out of her system?

  “Have you made a choice?” he asked.

  I’m working on it. “Yes.”

  The waitress arrived, took their drink orders—Chasyn really needed a glass of wine—then scurried off toward the bar. In a flash, she was back with a beer for Declan and a glass of merlot for her. She stood tableside, pen poised above her pad. “Are you ready to order?”

  “I’ll have the tuna,” Chasyn responded with a smile, then folded the menu and handed it to her.

  Declan selected the grilled mahi-mahi with plantains on the side. Then he relaxed in his seat and brought a frosty bottle of beer to his lips. They were magnificent lips, she thought as she took a healthy sip of her wine.

  “What do you do for fun?” she asked.

  “Life is fun,” he answered easily. “I have a career I enjoy. Every day is different so I’m not tied down to anything. I really can’t complain. You?”

  “I run.”

  “From killers?”

  She shook her head. “I run on the beach every morning. I like to watch the sunrise.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the athletic type.”

  Chasyn tilted her head and regarded him for a moment. “I’m not a gym rat but I do try to stay fit.”

  “I just meant that you don’t have that gaunt runner’s look. You have great curves.”

  She almost choked on her drink. “You have to stop saying suggestive things to me.”

  “Why?”

  She pursed her lips for a second. “Because! Because we’re having a professional relationship and we shouldn’t complicate it by, by…”

  “Sleeping together?” he said easily, reaching across to gently brush the back of her hand.

  The touch was a jolt she felt from the top of her head to the ends of her toes. This man had some sort of magical powers. One steamy look and her bones turned to mush. And her brain…well, that part of her anatomy was fixated on his physical attributes. And there were many.

  She was horrified when she felt her cheeks warm. Thank God the light was low in the restaurant. She pulled her hand away. It was hard to think—hell, it was hard to breathe when he was touching her. She had to regain some modicum of control. “We shouldn’t even be kissing.”

  “It’s a prelude to the sleeping together part,” he explained as casually as if he were giving her directions to the closest service station.

  Chasyn ran her fingertip around the rim of her nearly empty glass, trying in vain to get the visual of them tangled in his sheets out of her brain. “You make it sound like a foregone conclusion.”

  “You won’t get any resistance from me,” he said in a deep, sensual tone. “I can tell you get all hot and bothered when I kiss you.”

  “Now you just sound arrogant.”

  “Arrogant maybe, but not wrong. But I’m not going to push you, Chasyn. I’m just letting you know that I’m interested. Very interested.”

  The way he said it made her toes curl. She was in big, big trouble with this man.

  * * *

  They reached Store-All a few minutes before six. Inside the single-story office they were greeted by a young man in an orange shirt with the storage logo emblazed on the front. “Can I help you folks?”

  Declan stepped forward with authority. “My sister’s storage bill is about to come due and I want to extend her rental for another six months,” he said as he took a credit card out of his wallet.

  “Name?” the clerk said as he stepped to a computer terminal.

  “Mary Jolsten.” Declan impressed the clerk by rattling off the dead woman’s date of birth, phone number, and driver’s license number.

  “Unit 104,” the clerk said with a nod.

  “Right,” Declan agreed. “Oh, and she’s lost her key to the unit.”

  The man looked up and frowned. “There’s an additional hundred-dollar fee for replacements.”

  “Not a problem,
” Declan assured him. “Just add it to the bill.”

  “I’ll need some ID,” the clerk said.

  Declan pulled out his driver’s license and passed it over the Formica counter.

  The clerk looked at it and then looked back at Declan. “Your last name isn’t Jolsten.”

  “My sister’s married name,” he explained easily.

  The clerk thought for a moment, then seemed to accept the lame deception. Chasyn was awed by how easily Declan lied when the situation called for it. When she lied, red blotches appeared on her throat.

  In no time, they left the office, key in hand. Declan drove slowly around a long row of units, then turned and drove partway up the second row before they reached 104. The building was concrete under a layer of beige paint. The garage-style door for each unit was painted the same bright orange as the young man’s shirt.

  Key in hand, Declan grabbed the lock on the door and twisted the key until she heard an audible click. Reaching down, he grabbed the handle at the base of the door and rolled it up on its tracks. At the same time, an overhead fluorescent light within flickered to life.

  It was a small unit, maybe five-by-eight, practically empty save for a few boxes, an assemble-it-yourself plywood-veneered desk, and an expensive mountain bike.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  “The boxes,” Declan answered, moving into the musty-smelling room toward where five boxes were stacked in a single tower against the back wall. He placed one at her feet, then selected the next one for himself.

  Chasyn’s box contained a pile of loose photographs. “Mary, the early years,” she said as she began picking through the images. Still, there could be something of importance in the three or so inches of photos, so she kept digging.

  “I’ve got books,” Declan said. He took down a second box and peeled it open. “I’ve got more books.”

  Chasyn finished looking at the photographs and shoved the box aside with her foot. She had started for the next box in the stack when Declan grabbed her arm. “Let me get that for you,” he said.

  She moved back and he took down the box and laid it at her feet. Chasyn was about to bend to open the flaps when she felt him come up behind her. She straightened immediately. Too late. He was already lifting her hair off her neck. The sensation of cool air was instantly replaced by the feel of his hot mouth nuzzling her neck. Instead of breaking away, she reached around and gripped his thigh as he slowly explored the side of her throat. He moaned against her skin and his hand snaked around her waist.