by Nancy Holder
He was holding a box of popcorn. He tossed out a few kernels and a tree squirrel approached in that stop-motion way that forest animals moved. A second squirrel joined it, and then a third. The man kept tossing popcorn kernels. Then he “dropped” the box, and as the squirrels dive-bombed toward it, he leaned down and rapidly dug the brown sack out of the snow.
He began to rise. His head was still down.
“No,” Catherine said.
“Wait for it.” DeMarco leaned forward toward the screen.
Suddenly a little girl ran over to the cluster of squirrels. She clearly startled the man and he looked at her, displaying a three-quarter profile to the camera. He was very young with dark hair, and he had a piercing on his upper lip and eyebrow. He caught himself, raising his hand toward his ball cap and tugging on it, effectively concealing his face again. On the back of his hand was a tattoo of what could be an octopus.
J.T. selected the image and pasted it into the square so that the Homeland Security imaging system had a reference to search against.
“Wait.” Catherine looked hard at DeMarco. “Let’s go over this one more time. If we get a name and address, you’re going to let us go in. Us, not you.”
“One chance,” he said, “and then I take over.”
Vincent was amazed that Catherine was doing this. Surely she didn’t believe DeMarco? He wanted to tell her that the man was lying. His heart was thundering.
“Once chance is better than no chance,” she said. “Okay, J.T.”
He gave the software the “go” command and it imprinted its grid over the face, triangulating thousands of variables in its search for a match. The system took over while everyone watched. Vincent noted that Catherine’s heartbeat was steady, given the circumstances. He would have expected her to be far more excited.
She doesn’t believe we’re going to find a match, he thought.
Sure enough, about a minute later, no match came up on the screen. J.T. exhaled and DeMarco let out a few choice curse words. He reached for the flash drive and J.T. ejected it.
“Thanks for nothing,” DeMarco said.
“We have leads,” Catherine said. “We’ll see if this takes us anywhere.” When he nodded as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying, she added, “Don’t do any more drops without telling us, and don’t let Robertson and Gonzales know you talked to me.”
“Got it,” he said. He put the jump drive in his pocket. He was about to go when Catherine gestured to him.
“Mr. DeMarco, can we speak privately for a moment?” He looked around the room, gaze landing on his bodyguards, who were both playing with Mr. Boston White Sox, and shrugged. Then he followed Catherine into the bathroom and she shut the door. Vincent sharpened his auditory system, and he could hear them perfectly:
“Claudia McEvers worked for Curt Windsor some time ago. We have found some connections between your son and that family. Do you have any idea why?”
DeMarco’s pulse quickened. “My son? What do you mean?”
“He had a picture of Curt’s daughter Tori Windsor hidden away. And he’s about to inherit a lot of money from Tori’s mother’s estate.”
DeMarco’s heart beast faster. “This is private family business. It doesn’t have anything to do with his kidnapping.”
“How can you be so sure?” Catherine asked. Her heart was beating faster too, and Vincent smiled faintly. She was enjoying tracking her prey, just as he would. Her quarry was answers and, ultimately, Angelo DeMarco.
“I just am.” There was silence, and then a long, heavy sigh. “I can’t tell you what you want to know. It would just open Angelo up to more danger. Don’t ask me about this again.”
The crime lord came out of the bathroom and headed out with his bodyguards, who handed off Mr. Boston White Sox to J.T. As Catherine walked back into the room, Vincent said, “I heard. So we’re stuck?”
Catherine smiled. “Only half stuck.” She turned to J.T. “Okay, let’s do it for real. Hopefully we’ll get a match.”
Vincent laughed. They hadn’t let him in on the scheme to fool DeMarco. J.T. saw his surprise and said, “Wait. It gets better. Did you see that thing on the back of mystery man’s hand?”
“The tattoo?” Catherine said.
“It’s not a tattoo. It’s a rubber stamp. They use it at Turntable on people who aren’t old enough to drink.”
“All right, J.T.,” Catherine crowed. “So this guy’s been to Turntable. And we have his picture. If the system comes up empty, we can show it around at the club.”
“Exactly. However, we’ll get a match if this guy is in the database,” J.T. reminded her.
They waited.
There was no match.
“This is for real,” J.T. said. “Not the faked result for DeMarco.”
“Not a problem,” Catherine said determinedly. “Can you print out some copies of his face? We’ll take them to Turntable and I’ll also see if I can develop our lead on whoever was in the alley when Claudia was killed. The popcorn-smell guy.” She turned to Vincent. “Can you watch Nico for us, so Tess can come to the club with me?”
“Sure.” He grew somber. It was time to come clean about what he had done to J.T. “Catherine, listen,” he began.
But she didn’t hear him. She was collecting printouts of the guy’s picture from J.T. while at the same time phoning Tess, planning to meet up at Turntable. J.T. glanced over at him and must have read the look on his face.
J.T. gave him a headshake and said, “Dude. It’s all good.”
It wasn’t, but Vincent understood that there was a time and a place for confessions, and this was neither. Then Cat was kissing him and sailing out the door, asking him to hurry back to the boat basin to relieve Tess of Nico-duty so Tess could join her.
After she left, J.T. said, “It’s forgotten, Vincent.”
“It’s not, J.T.,” he said.
Then there was a ding from the computer speaker. J.T.’s eyes flicked to the screen.
“Oh, man,” he muttered. “Vincent.” Vincent came over and looked where J.T. was pointing. Bob Reynolds had been spotted in a gas station about halfway to the Canadian border.
“You have to protect Nico,” J.T. said nervously. “You can’t leave.”
Vincent was quiet for a moment. “You could watch him for me. As a favor.”
J.T. cleared his throat. “The biggest favor I can do for you is tell you no. So… no.”
Vincent pursed his lips. “Then you give me no choice.”
Without another word, he went out the door.
* * *
3 A.M.
Cat and Tess had no luck at Turntable with the photograph of the guy with the octopus stamp, despite several kids verifying that they’d seen him around. Just as they were considering giving up, a heavily pierced girl bounced up to them breathlessly and said, “I think I saw him with this guy. Older guy. Creepy.”
“Can you describe him?” Cat asked.
The girl thought a moment. “He looked pissed off. He had a weird mark on his cheek. The older guy.”
It had to be Robertson. Cat suppressed her exuberance. “Where on his cheek?”
The girl shifted her weight. “Um, like here.” She touched her cheekbone. “Or… underneath it.” She made a pout of apology. “I don’t remember.”
“Thanks. That’s very helpful. Do you happen to know either of their names?” Tess asked.
She shook her head. “Oh, wait. I also saw the guy in the picture with Angel.”
“Angel. The guitarist.” Cat looked at Tess. She could feel dots connecting and it was a good feeling. She couldn’t see the big picture yet, but it was almost there.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Wannabe guitarist. He’s terrible.”
“Seen him lately?” Tess asked her.
“Angel?”
“No. But I haven’t been looking.” She smiled like a little puppy. “Do you guys think you could buy me a hamburger or something? I kind of don’t have any money.”
They got her a burger and left. As they climbed into Cat’s car, Cat handed Tess her phone and said, “I keyed in DeMarco’s private number. Why don’t you call him and ask if Robertson is there? If he and piercing guy have been seen together… we’re overdue to look at his house anyway.”
“Got it.”
Tess called. Robertson was at the penthouse, and DeMarco wanted to know why Tess was asking. Tess said, “Mr. DeMarco, is Robertson married? Is he living with anybody?”
“No. Why?”
“Anyone likely to be home?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I just want to know. And please don’t get your hopes up.”
DeMarco told her that Robertson was divorced, but got the house in the settlement. He made sure they had the correct address and gave her the burglar alarm code. He promised to keep an eye on Robertson while they searched.
“You need muscle, honey? I can help out.”
“No, Mr. DeMarco. No, no, no. And I am not a honey, sir.” Tess smiled and shook her head as she ended the call.
“Do you think this is too much of a long shot?” Cat asked her.
“It’s either check this out this or, I dunno, sleep,” Tess said. She looked down at her shoulder. “And bleed.”
“Maybe you should have stayed at the houseboat.”
Tess made a pfft noise at her. “If this is the real deal, and they have Angelo at Robertson’s house, we do call for backup. If we save him, Captain Ward will love us and we can fill in all the blanks about incorrect procedure when we need to.”
“Agreed.”
About forty-five minutes later, they had arrived in a beautiful wooded section of Westchester that had very few houses, all of them big.
“So this is casa bad guy,” Tess said, and she let out a low whistle.
Before them stood a hefty two-story house with a mansard roof shingled with slate, white wood exterior, and an attached solarium. By mutual unspoken agreement, Cat and Tess followed a slippery brick walkway around the side of the house. A redwood gate was partially open, and they peeked through.
“No, there is not a putting green,” Tess murmured as she stared at a little flag sticking out of the snow.
“Or a swimming pool,” Cat added, gesturing to a kidney-shaped pool adorned with a natural-rock formation waterfall. It was covered for the winter.
“We got jobs with the wrong agency,” Tess muttered.
“There’s no way he bought all this on an FBI agent’s salary.”
“Rich wife? DeMarco?”
“Or both,” Cat said. “But I think what bothers me most is that he’s not even trying to hide it. He’s flaunting it. He must have a solid alibi to explain all this. And protection that will back him up if he’s ever called on the carpet to defend it.”
She looked around for the burglar alarm box and found it on the other side of the fence, half-concealed by bushes dusted with powder. A deep breath, and she punched it in, half-expecting that DeMarco had sent them on a fool’s errand, although she didn’t know why he would do it. Then she typed in the key code for the door. If DeMarco had all this information, why hadn’t he checked Robertson out?
Then Tess said, “Someone’s coming.”
Cat cracked open the door and slipped inside, sliding against the wall so that Tess could follow. Cat heard footsteps. And then a man’s voice.
“Yeah, some kid at the club. Had piercings. I don’t know why they were looking for him. This stupid kidnapping couldn’t come at a worse time for us. Yeah, that was close. I still say we should have taken the body with us. We’d have figured out where to dump her. Okay.”
Cat slowly let out her breath. Either he’d hung up or walked out of earshot. Whichever was the case, they had to get out of there. She tapped Tess’s hand and Tess tapped back. Very slowly and cautiously the door cracked open, and Tess stepped out. Cat followed.
They fled back to the car, got in, and glided away. Not until they had put a sizable distance between themselves and Robertson’s house did either of them speak.
“Whoa,” Tess said. “So this is what I heard: first of all, that was not Robertson in the house.”
“I concur,” Cat said.
“The guy had either been at the club when we were, or someone tipped him off that we were there. He and his accomplice don’t know who that kid is, either. So they didn’t participate in the drop. So they aren’t in on the kidnapping. And they killed Claudia.” She grunted. “The Claudia part is the part I’m the least sure of.”
“I think you’re right,” Cat said. “Tess, what if Robertson and Gonzales are only involved in drug dealing? They may be genuinely trying to solve Angelo’s abduction.”
“When crimes collide,” Tess said. “So Claudia was trying to help Joey and got murdered for that? And the fact that she was working for Windsor… I don’t know, Cat, what do you think?”
“Angelo definitely has connections with the Windsors. But what if he didn’t know that Claudia had worked for them? What if that was just a weird coincidence, like Vincent suggested?”
Tess considered. “But that girl described an older, creepy guy our young piercings guy was with. With a cheek thing.”
“We just assumed it was Robertson.”
Tess’s phone rang. She pulled it out and said, “Hey, J.T. Oh, God.” She looked over at Cat. “There’s been a sighting of your father. He’s at the border. J.T. thinks Vincent may have gone after him.”
Cat gripped the wheel. She was about to say something when two headlights on bright roared right up behind her, momentarily blinding her. The car was gaining, inches from her bumper; she put her foot to the floor and blew out of there. Tess held on tight and shouted “incoming!” as the car moved to the left going at least a hundred miles an hour.
Tess looked into the side mirror. “I think I see a gun!”
If their attacker was going a hundred, Cat pushed it to a hundred and five. Tess drew her weapon and turned around in her seat.
“Roll down the window,” she said, aiming.
As they crested a rise, Cat saw a semi in the oncoming lane. She honked her horn to warn it and zoomed past it. Tess shouted, “Whoa!” and Cat braced herself for a horrible explosion of metal when the truck hit their pursuer.
The explosion did not come.
“Bad guys barreled off the road,” Tess said. “Truck is fine. Go, go, go!”
Cat flew.
* * *
I made it.
Gabe swapped out Shannon’s sedan for his car, worried that the sedan had been made and that she would be targeted. He wrote a quick note that he’d heard a strange scraping sound when he shifted gears, advised her to take it in to be checked, and offered to pay for it.
He checked for more messages from Celeste. Nothing.
Since he was at his office, he went inside and booted up his desktop to see if there were any responses to Reynolds’ APB.
Yes.
Gabe’s heart skipped a beat. Two beats. He felt dizzy.
Reynolds had been spotted about halfway toward the Canadian border, on a trajectory parallel to the one he just taken.
Gabe was caught completely off guard, exhausted and shaken. Nevertheless, he made himself the strongest pot of coffee in the history of the DA’s office and appropriated a prototype signal booster for his phone, a pet project of the DA. It looked like an extra large thumb drive, and could be plugged into a variety of phone models via a bouquet of connectors. He wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but he knew the DA said it would aid in the capture of targeted cell phone transmissions. Weak cellular coverage was not going to stand between him and Reynolds. It ended here. Now.
In his office, he had some warmer clothes he’d just purchased for an upcoming ski trip—a coat, silk underclothes, some snow boots he’d actually been planning to return because they were too big—and he slipped into as many layers as he could, gathered up anything useful, grabbed water bottles and snacks from the break room, got back i
n his car, and headed back almost exactly the way he had just come.
I am coming to get you, Gabe thought. He could feel it. You’re done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It was gone four a.m. when Cat knocked on Vincent’s door. It opened at once, and he stood before in his belted robe. Relief flooded through her and he gave her a pained smile.
“I almost did it,” he said. “I almost took off after him.” “But you didn’t. Where is he?”
“J.T.’s best guess is that they’re on the way to the border.”
“I want to go after him too,” she said, “but Angelo first.”
“Angelo first.”
She put her arms around him and kissed him. He lifted her into his arms. Nico was sacked out on his couch and they moved past him toward Vincent’s bedroom.
“Nico’s dead to the world,” Vincent said. “I don’t think he’s had a decent night’s sleep in forever.”
“I know the feeling,” she said.
Then they were in his bed, and she was in his arms, and after they shared a long, deep kiss, she told him about the night and what they might have discovered. And the car that came after them.
“It could have been the driver on the phone. Or someone else in the house. Or it might have been some random crazy people. Tess isn’t sure she saw a gun. The road was deserted and they didn’t hit us. They overtook us and then they began to pull up beside us.”
“You shouldn’t have taken such a risk,” he began, but then he laughed mirthlessly. “And why am I ever bothering to say that?”
“On the phone it sounded like Robertson and Gonzales aren’t in on the kidnapping,” she said. “The drugs, yes. Definitely.”
He looked like he wanted to say something. Instead he put his arms around her for a long time. Finally he said, “You’re quivering.”
She smoothed back her hair. “I’m just loaded with adrenaline. And not sure of my next step.”
“Remember that girl at the diner? Something was up with her. She was nervous.”
“Yes. She was.” She started to pull out of his embrace. “I wonder if she’s got the breakfast shift today.”
