Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  Think fast, Janey.

  Digging one hand into my bra, I took out Shepard’s pistol and tossed it to him, taking off again as soon as his eyes were fastened on the weapon.

  Clearly, along with a better cardio routine, Shepard also had far superior reflexes, because my stunt bought me approximately three seconds.

  I had barely flung myself through the revolving door when Shepard caught up with me and stopped it cold, trapping me in the glass chamber between entry and exit.

  Watching his face through the glass—all flared nostrils and downturned mouth—I felt a flash of sympathy for male silverback gorillas I’d once seen at the San Diego Zoo. All that raw power and masculinity forced to endure the sticky faces of school-age children smashed against the barrier.

  No wonder they always looked so testy.

  “Can’t we just . . . talk about this?” My words were filtered out on puffs of air as I tried to regulate breathing made riotous by the unexpected aerobics.

  Shepard was panting too, but something told me his had less to do with cardio exhaustion and more to do with black-brained rage. “You,” was all he said.

  “Pronoun. A part of speech that takes the place of a noun. See how we’re bonding over what brought us together in the first place?”

  How often had the fifth-grade creative writing teacher I’d idolized admonished that dogs growl, men talk?

  Next time I saw her, I was calling bullshit.

  Growl was the only accurate word for the low, threatening rumble emitting from deep in Shepard’s chest. “I’m going to strip you naked and cuff you to a fire escape. We’ll see how the fuck you like it.”

  “How is that even fair?” I fought a wiggle of excitement at the prospect. “I cuffed you to a private shower.”

  From the way the fat vein rose in his temple, I surmised this was not, in fact, the commendation of my thoughtfulness I had hoped it would be.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?”

  “I told P-Ripple I wouldn’t let Valentine hurt you.” The hot breath from his nostrils fogged the glass between us. “I made no promises about myself.”

  “Sir. Sir, please exit the revolving door.” One of the security guards tapped impatiently on the glass with his baton, but jumped back when Shepard turned and bared his teeth.

  I used the distraction to throw all my weight against the opposite door, trying to budge it enough to sneak out of a crack onto the street.

  And that’s when I saw her.

  Her.

  A woman with dark hair peeking out from under a knit cap. Sunglasses shading her striking cheekbones. Solid shoulders inside a gray hoodie. Rounded hips in dark jeans.

  I might not have looked twice were it not for the way she moved.

  A figure out of place among the mindless, milling Saturday-evening bar traffic. Weaving among them like a wolf moves among sheep.

  “That’s my mother!”

  “Nice try,” Shepard said.

  I slapped my palm hard against the glass. “Shepard, look!”

  Reading the desperation written plain on my face, he scoped the street over my shoulder.

  “Hey! That’s your mother.”

  “I fucking told you!”

  Then I was hurtling forward, barely getting my feet under me and tumbling out onto the sidewalk only to be hauled up by my shirt.

  “Mom!” I shouted the word with every ounce of desperation I held, which, by this point, was a lot.

  The figure only wove through the foot traffic faster, ducking into an alley.

  “Come on.” Shepard kept a hand at my back as I half jogged, half sprinted to keep from being dragged along at his pace.

  We reached the alley’s mouth just in time to see a set of sneakers disappear into the open side doors of a white van. The vehicle screeched away fast enough to leave the smell of burned rubber in its wake.

  I tried to run after it, but Shepard still had me by the waistband of my skirt, steering me back the way we’d come despite my resistance.

  “They took her!” I couldn’t stop the words from bubbling out of my mouth. “They took my mother.”

  Shepard wasn’t listening to me. He had his phone out and was barking into it. Street names. Terms I vaguely registered.

  “I need a hot pickup on Seventeenth and Lincoln. Tango is a white van, tinted windows, no plates. Headed eastbound toward Coors Field.”

  “What are you doing?” I demanded, leaping at the end of my brachial tether like a spastic trout. “They’re getting away.”

  Shepard pocketed his phone and spoke in clear, calm tones antithetical to panic. “Jane, listen to me. We’ll never catch them on foot, and my car is two blocks in the opposite direction. My partner is around the corner. He’s going to pick us up. I have another guy stationed two blocks north with visual confirmation of the van. A lot of shit is about to happen in very short order, and if you’re going to be any use to me, I need you to. Calm. Down.”

  “Okay.” A gusty exhale. “Okay. I’m calm. I’m calm.”

  Lie.

  The inside of my head felt like an anthill at present. Thoughts swarming down various tunnels, stinging and biting as they vied for position.

  What did this mean?

  That my mother hadn’t been kidnapped before, and now she had? That she had escaped her captors only to be captured again? And if she had been free, why hadn’t she met with Valentine as scheduled?

  Because of me? Because of something I’d done?

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to fall down in the street and pound the pavement with my fists until the whole fucking world stopped and someone gave me some goddamn answers.

  But it didn’t seem like any of those courses of action would be available to me, because at that very second, a gray Honda squealed to a stop at the curb.

  Shepard hustled me toward it with a grunted, “Get in.”

  I scrambled into the seat behind the driver and was surprised to see Shepard right on my heels. I had assumed he’d take shotgun, but running around to the front of the car apparently would have required more time than he was willing to spend.

  “Go, go, go!” he instructed the driver before he even had the door closed after us.

  I was still trying to negotiate the back seat, cluttered as it was by the same implements I was used to seeing in my mother’s vehicle—duffel bag, camera case, bottled water, a tub of unsalted mixed nuts—when Shepard climbed over me and into the front seat.

  Seeing how nimbly he performed this operation made me wonder what else he might be able to do in the limited environs of a car.

  “Hey, watch the leather,” the driver admonished.

  But Shepard didn’t seem to hear him as he was already on the phone again. “Professor, you still have visual? What do you mean no—fuck! There they are!”

  I looked through the windshield just as the white van turned the corner onto Wynkoop three car lengths ahead of us.

  “I see them,” the driver said.

  I wanted to ask his name but figured this might not be the most opportune time, so I contented myself with silently sizing him up.

  He favored an aesthetic I’d call Starsky & Hutch Chic, which is to say, he looked like the rebellious Italian detective on any number of ’70s cop shows. Wavy black hair shot through with silver and long enough to curl at the nape of his neck. Brown leather jacket. Dark jeans. Though I couldn’t see his shoes, I’d have bet my best set of brass knuckles they would be cowboy boots.

  And he knew how to apply them to the gas too.

  “Watch it, D-Town,” Shepard said, still keeping the phone to his ear. “This cat’s going to screw you at the light.”

  The Civic cut a sharp diagonal to shoot past a Lincoln town car and straight through a blinding-yellow stoplight.

  “D-Town?” I hadn’t meant to ask this out loud, but a filter between brain and mouth has never been one of my strong points.

  Shocking, I know.

  “You can ca
ll me Danny B. Only this fool insists on using call signs.” He jerked a cleft chin at Shepard, whose knuckles were white from the effort of not grabbing the steering wheel.

  I may have been enjoying his distress just a shade too much.

  “Stay in his blind spot!”

  “You telling me my business, Junior? Do I need to remind you that if you hadn’t fucked up and gotten out of your vehicle, you wouldn’t have asked me to pick you up in the first place?”

  “That was actually my fault.” I raised my hand to indicate ownership of the suboptimal deed.

  “How is that your fault?” Danny asked.

  “That’s not important—”

  I ignored Shepard’s attempt at interjection, feeling the need to unburden myself to Danny B., who had the kind, compassionate eyes of a priest.

  “If I hadn’t handcuffed Shepard to the shower door, he wouldn’t have been so pissed off. If he weren’t so pissed off, he wouldn’t have felt the need to chase me down the street.”

  “Handcuffs?” Danny cut a disapproving look toward Shepard. “What the hell did I tell you about boning clients?”

  “Oh, no,” I clarified. “It wasn’t a sex thing. I just didn’t want him following me.”

  And that’s when I discovered one of my new favorite sounds in all the world—Danny B.’s laugh. Loud. Raucous and contagious as all get-out. Back in the days of radio shows, he could have made a mint as “guy busting a gut.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Danny said, wiping a tear from the crinkled corner of his eye with the back of his hand. “You managed to smuggle handcuffs into a safe house, cuff Shepard to the shower, and get away?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “They were Shepard’s handcuffs.”

  This produced a whole new gale of hysterics during which Danny actually slapped his knee.

  Meanwhile, Shepard’s jaw was demonstrating muscles I didn’t even know the average human had. “Just keep your fucking eyes on the van.”

  Danny sighed as the last wave of mirth ebbed out to sea. “Shepard, my boy, I know what I’m doing. I was following targets while you were still praying for your balls to drop.”

  “Which is why you drive like my goddamn grandmother,” Shepard muttered.

  “How are you going to talk about your grandmother like that?” Danny B. looked at his cohort like he wished he had a wooden spoon to thwack him with. “That’s so disgraceful.”

  More mandibular flexing from Shepard.

  “Your face is disgraceful,” I offered a few seconds too late. “No offense, Danny B. I like your face. I was just trying to help. Shepard doesn’t seem to be all that good at this back-and-forth thing.”

  “None taken.”

  “What the—” Shepard lurched forward in his seat. “They’re turning. Why the fuck are they turning?”

  “I’m on it.” Danny gunned the Civic’s engine as soon as the van cleared the corner, then slammed on the brakes hard enough to clack my teeth together.

  A city bus came roaring out from beneath the bridge, slowing only once it had us blocked. The bus driver looked at us a good long while as he passed.

  Then he was gone and so was the van.

  Chapter Eleven

  There are a few things I know I’m good at.

  Lying.

  Blow jobs.

  Memorizing and regurgitating obscure legal terms.

  Before today, I might have been tempted to add swearing to this list. Not anymore.

  Shepard had me beat by an order of magnitude.

  The man could string together profanities like Louis Comfort Tiffany could string together chandeliers. Lighting up the night with florid, complex configurations that left even the most unflappable of spectators in gap-mouthed awe.

  In fact, I can’t even repeat half of what he said, because I’m a motherfucking lady.

  We’d spent the better part of the evening driving in ever-expanding squares all over downtown in search of the van.

  Finally forced to admit defeat, Shepard had blown several gaskets, going as far as to kick a trash can hard enough to evict its guts onto the street.

  “I don’t even know what you’re so upset about. It was my mother in that van.”

  My attempts to hail him from my own berg of frustration were unsurprisingly ignored. I resigned myself to taking a spot next to D-Town on the stone steps of a nearby office building. It took a minute of doing to fold my legs just so, making sure I wasn’t casually flashing passersby.

  “He’s never not completed a mission successfully.” Danny B. clicked his lighter closed and exhaled a cloud of silvery Marlboro smoke into the spring night. In a world where it was damn near mandatory to be gluten free and vegan just to be considered a responsible human being, you had to sort of admire a guy who voluntarily took toxins into his body just for fun. “Of course, to my knowledge, he’s never been handcuffed to a shower by someone he was supposed to protect either.”

  I winced.

  “Okay. I probably shouldn’t have done that. But he was being a total shitshark. Trapping me in that safe house. Telling me no not once, not twice, but thrice.”

  A smile creased one half of Danny’s face. “You’re Alex’s daughter all right.”

  I felt my heart give an involuntary lurch.

  “You know my mom?” Earlier today, this revelation might have banished me deeper into my pocket of dread. Now, recovering bits of information she’d squirreled away from me felt like progress, strange though it may have been.

  “Everyone knows your mom.” He must have heard my jaw unhinge, since he hastily added, “Not in the biblical sense, I mean. In the industry. Not that plenty of guys haven’t tried. Not me, of course. I’m an old married guy. But if I wasn’t . . . and I should probably just shut my face about now, because if P-Ripple heard me say that he’d be hanging my balls from his rearview mirror.”

  “He won’t hear a peep from me.”

  We watched as a bicycle-drawn rickshaw whizzed by, bleeding bits of overloud conversation from its inebriated passengers. Giggling girlfriends staggered by arm in arm, supporting each other on towering boots as ill-suited for the evening’s pursuits as my sandals had been.

  They all looked so hopeful.

  So young.

  I bet not a single one of them knew how to drive someone’s nose into their brain or wire a pipe bomb.

  “It’s funny,” Danny said.

  “What is?”

  “See that rail over there?”

  I glanced across the street to the concrete wheelchair ramp where a handful of skate punks were practicing their various grinds along the metal handrail. “Yeah.”

  “I once saw a guy tossing his mistress’s salad over that rail.”

  “At least you got proof for the wife. It’s better than wondering, I’d say.”

  “That’s the sad part.” Danny dragged on his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring. “It was an insurance case. He was claiming whiplash from a car accident. His wife wasn’t the one who hired me. She didn’t even know.”

  In days past, I might have pitied the woman. Even judged her an unobservant fool. Now I felt her pain acutely. The resonating ache of realizing the person you thought you knew best in the world was, in fact, a stranger.

  “Someone should tell that kid to brush his teeth,” I said, witnessing one saggy-jeaned unfortunate become physics’ bitch. “Because he just ate that rail.”

  “Point to just about any spot in this city, and I can tell you about a case I’ve worked there. After a while, the whole city is a memory.” Danny stubbed out his cigarette and flicked the butt into a nearby ashtray. “Taco?” He held out a brown paper bag spotted by grease and smelling of heaven.

  So we sat on the marble steps, eating tacos beneath the buzzing streetlights. Every now and again, a staccato shrill of distant laughter punctured the night.

  Shepard stalked over to us at last, looking no less bulky for the steam he’d jettisoned.

  “What’s the plan?” Da
nny crumpled the yellow paper he was holding and dropped it back into the taco bag. We’d slayed about three apiece.

  “The plan is, I’m taking Jane back to the safe house, where she will stay this time.” The look Shepard inflicted upon me could have cut glass. “Then I’m going to check in with P-Ripple and see if he’s heard anything.”

  I’d have much rather stayed at my own place and pestered Paul Gladstone myself, but a warm belly full of tacos disinclined me to argue.

  Tacos are good like that.

  “What about you?” Shepard asked Danny. “You working tonight?”

  “Not me.” The illustrious D-Town stood and stretched. “I was on all last night, and there’s a nap with my name on it. Call me if you need me.”

  “Will do, brother.”

  They did some sort of complicated handshake/back-pat ritual; then we parted ways, heading toward our separate vehicles.

  It was slower going for me, blistered and exhausted as I was.

  Though I didn’t indulge in muttering florid curses with every step, I was certain Shepard heard each sharp intake of breath.

  “You want a piggyback?” he offered.

  “Pass.” Though I knew it to be impossible, I was somehow certain Shepard would be able to feel my naked ladybits against the small of his back.

  Now there was a thought powerful enough to distract me from the pain for a good five seconds.

  “Do you always have to be so stubborn?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, heaving a huge sigh of relief when we reached the car.

  All I wanted was a bed.

  Lie.

  All I wanted was a bed and my mom.

  “Jesus Christ. Your feet.”

  Shepard stared at the angry-looking constellation of sores as I limped past him into the bathroom, shoeless and graceless and past caring about either.

  “I’ve had worse,” I said.

  “I haven’t. And I had to break in leather combat boots on a three-day hike in the Iraq desert.”

  “Army?” It wasn’t so much a guess as an attempt at conversation. Though it hadn’t been officially confirmed, I’d have wagered my newly acquired doctorate of jurisprudence on it.