by Julia Harper
Ahead, the Hummer was slowly widening the gap between them. Dante couldn’t tell if the driver had noticed yet that he was being tailed. Not that it mattered—neither of them could go any faster in this mess.
His passenger was one of those women who didn’t bother with makeup and was in-your-face about not dressing to please a man. Right now she was wearing a navy pea coat, orange mittens, and an orange and purple knitted hat with ear flaps that looked like it was made by color-blind reindeer herders. Red-blond braids snaked out from under the flaps. And she had on a long pink fuzzy scarf that clashed with everything else. Oh, and boots. But not the sexy kind with a heel. Nope. This chick was wearing big ugly boots like something a bear hunter would wear. Except he’d bet his Cartier watch that she’d be more likely to take out the hunter than the bear if she had a gun in her hand.
Dante glanced in the rearview mirror, looking for any way to get around this traffic logjam. The dirty gray Toyota behind him was right on his tail. Even if there was an opening on the side, there was no way he could back up enough to clear the bumper of the SUV in front.
“Shit,” he muttered.
The woman shot him a reproving look and went back to talking to 911 on her cell. Like that was going to help. The Chicago PD was notoriously slow to respond. The Hummer would probably be in Wisconsin by the time the local cops showed.
Actually, beneath the god-awful reindeer-herder hat, she had kind of pretty eyes. A clear, sharp blue. Her face was round, not because she was fat, but because that was the way it was shaped, all soft curves. Cheeks pink from the cold, a little nose, and full, sweetheart lips. Her body was probably round, too, somewhere beneath the pink scarf and shapeless coat. When he’d covered her body with his he’d thought he’d smelled something in her hair. Not flowers or perfume. A more familiar scent that he couldn’t quite place.
Not, of course, that it mattered what her body looked like or what scent she wore. He was on a job. And with that thought, a realization hit him.
“You were stalling me.”
She took the cell away from her ear and looked at him, brows furrowed. “What?”
“That whole parking-place thing. You were stalling me so he could grab the kid.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What are you talking—”
He jammed the brake a little too hard, making her jolt in her seat. Then he leaned his arm on the wheel and half turned toward her. “Don’t even try an innocent act. We know who you are. We know about your relationship to Nikki Hernandez. We know you consider yourself that baby’s aunt.”
Her face had gone blank beneath the multicolored reindeer hat, and for a moment he thought she’d deny it. But then she said, “Pete.”
“What?”
“Her name is Pete.” She inhaled and laid the open cell in her lap. “And, yeah, I am her aunt—there’s no ‘consider’ about it.”
“And did you help this guy”—he jerked his chin in the direction of the Humvee—“kidnap Pete?”
“If you know that I’m Pete’s aunt, then you know that I’d never do anything to harm her.” She looked at him steadily, her blue eyes clear. “So, no, I didn’t help this asshole.”
He stared at her a moment longer. She seemed honest, but then there were a lot of sociopaths out there who could lie with a perfectly straight face.
She cleared her throat. “So, you’ve known all along that my mother fostered Nicki.”
He’d turned back to the road, frowning as he watched the traffic creep forward another couple feet. “Yeah. We did a full background on Ricky Spinoza and Nikki Hernandez. And if we hadn’t caught you on Hernandez’s background, we sure would’ve when you signed the lease on that second-floor apartment.”
“So?”
He clenched his jaw. “So, Spinoza and Hernandez were both clearly instructed to tell no one—no one—where we were hiding them.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not just anyone,” she shot back. “I’m Nikki’s sister.”
He glared at her a moment. She was a problem that should’ve been foreseen when they’d done the write-up on Hernandez’s file. Foreseen and headed off before she’d gotten the notion to move into the same apartment building where they were holding Ricky and his family in protective custody. If Dante’d been in charge of this operation, he sure would’ve seen that she was a big fat problem waiting to happen. But Dante had joined the Chicago office only a little over a month ago. He’d not been in on the initial planning of this case.
He grunted and looked away from her. “The brass went back and forth for a whole day on whether or not to let you rent that apartment. In the end they decided it was better to have you where we could keep an eye on you, in case you and Hernandez were cooking something up between you.” He looked at her curiously. “That was a gutsy move—taking the place right below where we were holding your sister and her boyfriend in protective custody. Why’d you do it?”
“If you did a background on Nikki, then you know how close I am to her and Pete.” Her lush mouth had tightened. “I saw Pete almost every day before they went into hiding. I couldn’t stay away from her when Nikki called and said they were coming back to Chicago. I just couldn’t.”
Dante stared at the traffic ahead as he thought about that. His left calf was beginning to ache from pressing down on the clutch. This was the one problem with driving a stick. It was a bitch in stop-and-go traffic. He eased up on the clutch as they crept forward a couple of feet. The black SUV ahead stopped suddenly and Dante tapped on the brake, the BMW’s wheels skidding on packed snow and nearly sliding into the SUV.
Ricky Spinoza was a low-level mob bag man—definitely not the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer. He’d gotten into debt and decided to fake being robbed of the mob money he’d been carrying—almost a half a million dollars. Unfortunately for Ricky, his acting skills had not been nearly as up to par as he’d thought, and he’d quickly come under suspicion by his mob bosses. He’d been on the verge of being picked up and taken for a final dive off of Navy Pier when Ricky had had the smartest idea of his life: he’d decided to turn state’s evidence.
Ricky and his family—his girlfriend, Nikki Hernandez, and their baby, Pete—had been protected by the FBI for a year now, being moved from one place to another. They’d been brought back to Chicago only in the last couple of weeks in preparation for Ricky going on the stand to testify in the biggest mob trial Chicago had seen in decades. The trial to put big Anthony DiRosa—Tony the Rose—away for good. Because, as it turned out, idiot Ricky Spinoza had actually witnessed Tony the Rose popping an underling who had displeased him. The mob boss had a nasty temper, and with Ricky’s evidence, it would put him in the federal pen for the rest of his life.
The SUV began to move, and Dante’s attention snapped back to the traffic. The cars all rolled forward about twenty feet and then ground to a halt again. They were on an overpass now, the yellow Hummer almost a hundred feet ahead, nearing an exit at a snail’s pace.
Dante flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “What’s your name?”
“What?” She’d started talking on the phone to the 911 operator again, and now she turned and stared at him as if he’d made a kinky pass.
“Your name. I forgot it from Nikki’s file. What is it?”
She scowled. “Zoey.”
He glanced at her, brows raised.
She sighed heavily as if the question was a real bother. “Addler. Zoey Addler.”
“I’m Special Agent Dante Torelli.”
She nodded. “Nikki told me who you guys were, but she didn’t have time to give me names.”
He cocked an eyebrow in question.
“We met a couple of times to talk,” she said. “On the stairwell or in the laundry room. I hadn’t seen Pete in all those months you had them in protective custody away from Chicago, and—”
But Dante cut her off with a curse under his breath. The yellow Hummer had reached the off-ramp and was exiting the freeway.
“Dammit!” Dan
te leaned on his horn. “Tell the 911 operator that he’s getting off on Old Orchard.”
Zoey relayed the information as Dante rolled down his window and waved at the car ahead. If the SUV moved even an inch, maybe—
But the SUV driver blew his horn back, flipping the bird out the window.
Meanwhile, the Hummer had made Old Orchard.
“Shit.” He had literally nowhere to go. The cars were too close together, and even if he could get to the side, there wasn’t decent room for a car, because they were on the overpass. “Shit!”
“He’s pulling into that gas station,” Zoey said.
Dante looked, and wonders of wonders, sure enough, the yellow Hummer had pulled into the corner BP not a block from the overpass. The black SUV ahead lurched forward, the traffic awakening sluggishly.
“Blow your horn again.” Zoey examined him critically. “Don’t you have one of those magnetic police-light thingies to put on the hood of your car?”
He gritted his teeth. “This isn’t Starsky and Hutch.”
“No kidding. Maybe we should get out of the car.”
“And do what? Take a flying leap off the overpass?”
“We could run to the ramp—”
He snorted. “And when he takes off we’ll be left trying to run down a Humvee on foot.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here,” she said, but he noticed she made no move to leave the car.
His BMW crawled forward another yard, and the UNSUB got out of the parked yellow Hummer.
“Jesus.” Dante gripped the wheel. “Where the hell are the cops?”
“Maybe he’s just going to leave her there,” Zoey said. “Maybe he saw us following him and got scared.”
Dante glanced at her in disbelief. Not likely. But he didn’t want to crush the hope in her voice. The UNSUB pulled open the green and white door to the gas-station convenience store. What was he doing? Taking a leak? He must know he’d been followed.
The SUV ahead stopped suddenly, and Dante again nearly ran into it. He felt his neck muscles contract. The asshole wouldn’t stay in the convenience store forever. If he could just get down there. Maybe he should take Zoey’s advice and leave her with the car. If he ran down the ramp he could make the gas station in a few minutes.
He unlocked his door.
Zoey leaned forward, staring out her window. “What—?”
He looked over. A little bright green Civic had been parked to the side of the BP station. As he watched, two elderly women hopped out, ran to the Hummer, and got in.
Dante leaped from the BMW and ran down the side of the overpass, his black dress shoes sliding on the ice.
The Hummer pulled out of the BP station and crossed two lanes of traffic, narrowly missing a navy sedan. It bumped over the concrete divider, turned left, and accelerated through the yellow intersection stoplights.
“Fuck!” Dante slammed both fists on the overpass rail, watching helplessly as the Hummer drove by underneath. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
He had no idea who’d taken the kid, he had no idea why he’d let Zoey Addler get in his car, and he had no idea who the second kidnappers were. In fact, the only thing he did know was that under their winter coats, the elderly women had been wearing Indian saris.
Chapter Three
Thursday, 5:03 p.m.
You are driving too fast, Pratima,” Savita Gupta said, clutching both the door and the dashboard of the truck at the same time.
“Pardon me,” Pratima Gupta replied tartly to her sister-in-law, “but I was not aware that you knew how to drive, Savita-di.”
Pratima steered the very large yellow Humvee truck into a turn, fishtailing just a tiny bit, which was only to be expected. After all, she had never before driven a Humvee truck, a vehicle designed by the US of A army to be used in wars, not on the streets of Chicago. Streets that were even at the best of times slippery with ice. Also, here in the US of A, Pratima must constantly keep in mind that vehicles drove on the right side of the street, instead of the more natural left as was done in India.
“Right. Right. Right,” Pratima chanted under her breath.
“I may not be able to drive, but only a fool would not understand that you are going too fast,” Savita-di said. “And what is that you are saying? I cannot understand you!”
“I am not saying anything, Savita-di,” Pratima said cheerfully. “Perhaps you are imagining things.”
Savita-di was hunched on the passenger side of the truck, her little round body almost in a ball in the big seat. Her shiny hair was streaked with gray, and she’d had it cut in a bob within a week of their arriving in the USA. Pratima still wore her own long hair pinned up at the back of her head—the same style she had worn since the age of twelve. Savita-di had on a long, puffy, silver down coat, a twin of Pratima’s own coat. Although, of course, Pratima’s coat was several sizes larger, as she was nearly half a head taller than her sister-in-law. Underneath the coat, Savita-di wore a green and mustard-yellow sari, and on her feet were heavy black boots—Savita-di had a fear of slipping and falling on the icy Chicago sidewalks.
Pratima Gupta and Savita Gupta had known each other for all of their lives. Or at least all of Savita-di’s life, for she was the older of the two ladies by one year and nine months. They had grown up in the same middling-sized town in the Marwar region of India, their houses only a stone’s throw apart. Naturally they had played together as little children. As young girls they had shared a mutual interest in the English language, which they learned from a battered collection of Victorian romance novels. And eventually, when they had come of age, they had married the brothers Gupta. Savita-di had married the elder, more handsome brother, Pratima the younger but more business-wise brother.
Now, nearly fifty years later, their husbands were dead and their children grown, with families of their own. When Savita-di’s youngest daughter, Vinati, had implored her to come to America, naturally Savita-di had asked Pratima to come, as well. They might be only sisters-in-law, but by this time they might as well be sisters in truth.
And if they were sisters in truth, then that would make Savita-di the bossy older sister. “Do you wish us to be arrested by the police?”
Pratima lifted her foot from the gas pedal, because truth be told she did not want to be pulled over by the police. There were two reasons for this. One, that she and Savita-di had just stolen back their precious supply of Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar. And two, because while Pratima was a very good driver indeed, she did not actually own a driver’s license.
“You must look into the box to see if our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar is intact,” Pratima said in order that her so-bossy sister-in-law would stop complaining about her driving.
They were on Skokie Boulevard now, traveling very fast, but of course not speeding. Pratima drove in the direction of their wonderful restaurant. For that was the dream that both women had held in their hearts for many years: a restaurant of their own where they could serve the secret recipes of their youth. Now that dream was so very close to being realized.
“Yes, yes, I am already doing so, Pratima,” Savita-di replied rather crossly. She reached to the box sitting on the floor between her feet.
Pratima did not reply, for the other woman’s hands were shaking as she pried open the lid of the box. It was a plain wooden box, a little smaller than a shoebox, and not marked at all. One would never know, looking at it, what treasure it hid inside.
“Ahhh,” Savita-di breathed as she lifted the lid. “Everything is most wonderful. Our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar is intact.”
She moved aside the bunched plastic tail of the bag inside the box. Revealed were the dark maroon threads that lay inside the plastic. It was a full kilo of the very finest kesar—saffron in English—from Kashmir, India. Mongra kesar was fantastically expensive, legendarily flavorsome, and very, very illegal indeed. It was also the essential ingredient to Mrs. Savita Gupta and Mrs. Pratima Gupta’s top-secret Very Special Kesar
Kheer recipe. Their kesar kheer was going to be the crowning dish in the wonderful Indian restaurant the sisters-in-law would open in Albany Park. It would make them famous and ensure their restaurant’s success, thus making them very, very rich indeed. Pratima had seen grown men weep when the first spoonful of Very Special Kesar Kheer touched their tongues.
Unfortunately, India was quite stingy with its kesar. The Indian government had banned all export of the miniscule annual crop of Mongra kesar for years. This had made it somewhat difficult for Pratima and Savita-di to obtain the kesar, until they had enlisted the daughter of Pratima’s aunt’s son. This girl most fortuitously worked in the Indian consulate in Chicago and for a small fortune had smuggled the kesar out of India in a diplomatic pouch.
All had been delightful then, the kesar in their possession, the restaurant about to open, everything in readiness. Until That Terrible Man had walked into the kitchens last week, demanding protection money. Protection money! Here in the US of A? This was the Land of the Free! Most naturally, Pratima and Savita-di had refused That Terrible Man, waving their wooden cooking spoons indignantly. He had left, cursing them in foul language.
And then disaster had struck, for That Terrible Man had returned the next day—this last Tuesday—when Pratima and Savita-di had not been about to protect their investment with their wooden spoons. That Terrible Man had broken several dishes, frightened the elderly man hired to mop the floor, and, most criminal of all, stolen their kesar. He had then held their precious spice as ransom so that they would pay the protection money. What iniquity! Naturally they had not the funds to pay the protection money, and naturally they must steal back the kesar to open their restaurant.
