For the Love of Pete

by Julia Harper

  Dante swallowed and tried to focus. “Is there any word about Spinoza? Did they get him?”

  “That I do know. Spinoza and his girlfriend are okay. Apparently they had a fight, Spinoza snuck out of the apartment through the bedroom window, and the girlfriend followed. They weren’t even in the apartment when the thing went down; got back and found three dead FBI agents and the baby gone. I heard the mother had to be sedated.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Dante tried to think as he drove the BMW, aware that sweat was beading at the small of his back. This couldn’t be happening. How could he have been set up so neatly? How could they—whoever they were—have known that he’d be late to work today and unable to help his colleagues? If he’d been on time . . . He swallowed as he made the final connection. They hadn’t known he was going to be late. Had he been on time as he usually was, he’d be just as dead as the three other FBI agents. What a lovely thought.

  On the other end of the phone Kevin’s breathing hitched. “Dante . . .”

  “What?”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What? Spit it out.”

  “Charlie Hessler had a stroke last night.”

  “Fuck,” Dante breathed. Charlie Hessler was a friend, a mentor in the FBI, and, at the moment, his link to the outside. “Is he dead?”

  “No, he’s in the ICU. They don’t know yet if he’s going to recover. He didn’t—”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Dante snapped. He braked to a stop at a red light.

  On the other end, Kevin breathed nasally, not answering.

  Dante blinked hard and thought. Hessler was out, maybe permanently, and it looked like someone was trying to set Dante up to take the fall for three of his colleagues dying. If he didn’t figure out what was going on now and how to stop it, he was going to end up in jail—or worse, on a metal shelf in the morgue. “Who did you tell where I was, Kevin? I need to know.”

  “Uh, why?”

  “Because the cops arrived only minutes after I told you my location.”

  “It was these two humorless dudes in suits,” Kev whined, “like all the rest of you field ops.”

  “What were their names?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know. I’d never seen them before, and they weren’t wearing ID tags.”

  “Okay.” Dante breathed through his nose as he tried to calm his heart rate. “You don’t tell them anything else from here on out, you hear me, Kev?”

  “I—”

  “Nothing, got it? Just keep your mouth shut.”

  “Okay, I got it. I’m not talking. Promise.”

  Dante felt his jaw tighten. Kevin was going to betray him again; he knew it, and there was nothing he could do about it. The little weasel was his only link to the information department. Best to find out what he needed and hang up fast.

  “Is Headington there? I need to speak to him.”

  “No. I-I don’t know where he is right now.”

  Dante grimaced. He needed to speak with his boss, but he couldn’t stay on the phone that long. “Did you get a name for me on that license plate?”

  “Yeah, I got it here.” There was the clicking of keys in the background. “It belongs to a woman named Agrawal A-G-R-A-W-A-L, first name Saumya, S-A-U-M-Y-A, lives up in Wheeling.” Kevin gave a street number and address.

  “Thanks.”

  “So.” Kevin cleared his throat. “So, you going there now?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m just asking.”

  “Don’t ask.”

  Dante cut the connection, rolled down his window, and threw the cell phone out the window.

  Zoey rubbernecked to see where the cell went and then turned to face him. “What’s going on?”

  “They think I took Pete,” he said as he made an abrupt turn onto a busy boulevard.

  “You . . .” She stared, open-mouthed. “But that’s ridiculous! You were guarding her. How could they even think that you’d be in on the kidnapping?”

  And this was the weird thing. The Chicago PD was chasing him, his whole career was going down in flames, and he was sitting next to a woman in a goofy reindeer hat. Yet hearing Zoey’s absolute faith in him made him feel better.

  Not, of course, that he showed it. “The three other agents who were on this assignment with me were shot dead in the apartment, and someone in the local FBI has pointed the Chicago PD in my direction.”

  Her inhaled breath rasped and she opened her mouth.

  He continued before she could voice her fear. “Your sister and Ricky Spinoza are fine. They weren’t in the apartment when the agents were killed.”

  “Nikki wouldn’t leave Pete alone.”

  “Apparently she was arguing with Ricky and followed him out the window in the bedroom.” He shrugged. “Probably she figured she’d only be gone a couple of minutes and the FBI agents were in the apartment. In any case, it’s a good thing your sister and her boyfriend weren’t there.”

  “Or they’d be dead, you mean,” she whispered.

  Dante nodded.

  “Oh, God, I’ve got to call Nikki. I’ve got to see if she’s okay.”

  “She’s been sedated,” he started, but she was already dialing her cell.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror as she held the cell to her ear. As far as he could see they weren’t being followed.

  Zoey blew out a frustrated breath and snapped her cell shut. “She’s not answering.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” he said soothingly. “My contact says she and Ricky are fine. Try again in a little bit.”

  “What else did your contact say?”

  He shrugged. “He got me the name and address of the owner of that little green car the two old women jumped out of.”

  “And we’re going there?”

  He glanced at her and then turned the BMW into a corner gas station, slowing and creeping between cars pumping gas before exiting on the far corner. “See anybody behind us?”

  She looked over the headrest. “No.”

  “Sure?”

  He expected a glare but got a steady stare instead. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  They were traveling backstreets now, a residential neighborhood that’d seen better days. The houses here were one-and-a-half story, mostly brick, with aluminum awnings that had probably been installed in the sixties.

  “I don’t understand how you’re going to find Pete,” Zoey said beside him. “You haven’t forgotten her, right?”

  They stopped at a light, and Dante turned his head to eye her. She was chewing on one corner of her lush mouth. “I haven’t forgotten Pete.”

  The light turned and the cars started up again. Dante returned his gaze to the road. He thought about the little girl. He hadn’t had much interaction with her—she was mostly in the bedroom with her mother when he’d talked to Ricky—but he remembered huge brown eyes and dark hair curling in wisps about her head. Babies always seemed to have such big heads on such soft, vulnerable necks. Dante tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  “So, how’re we going to find her?”

  “Trust me.” He turned onto a boulevard and headed for the Edens Expressway again. Crosstown traffic was letting up now and they were moving faster, though he still kept his eye on the rearview mirror.

  He felt her looking at him. “Trust you? I don’t even know you.”

  His mouth twisted. “Same here.”

  Her teeth clicked together audibly as she snapped her mouth closed. He would’ve smiled if the situation weren’t so grim. The woman was certainly prickly. They drove in silence for a while. The winter light was fading outside, the dark grays taking over the sky, the city lit by neon and the lights of cars and streetlamps.

  He exited the expressway and slowed, looking for the street. This area was pretty run-down, the old shops along the street mostly boarded up. But there were some signs of a possible revival: a newish drugstore, a big hole whe
re something had been torn down, and evidence that something would be erected in the empty spot.

  Dante turned down a cross street, passing an alley, and then turned again. The buildings that backed onto the alley were part of a strip mall. There was a discount dollar store, a liquor store, several windows with newspaper taped over the glass inside, and one shop with a brand-new sign. It read, “THE TAJ MAHAL RESTAURANT.”

  Zoey straightened in her seat. Dante circled the block and parked on the curb opposite the alley entrance. He craned his neck to peer down the darkening alley. Halfway down, partly obscured by a Dumpster, was an SUV. It was hard to tell in the dusk, but he was pretty sure it was bright red.

  Dante smiled in satisfaction. “Bingo.”

  Chapter Six

  Thursday, 5:45 p.m.

  The veteran FBI agent watched Kevin Heinz hunch his shoulders and type jerkily at his computer. The FBI agent’s office was beside the tech department and if he leaned a little to the side in his desk chair, he had a clear view of Kevin in his little cubical.

  Kevin wasn’t working out.

  The FBI agent closed his eyes and tapped slowly on the arm of his chair. Twenty-five years he’d given the FBI. Twenty-five years of wrestling bureaucracy and watching lesser men advance ahead of him. Hell, he even had a bullet scar on his shoulder and a wall full of commendations. And for what? A measly government pension? No goddamned way.

  So he’d gone into business for himself, amassed a nice fortune, and was this close to retiring to someplace anonymous when something had put the wind up old Charlie Hessler. Charlie had ordered an internal investigation, sent in Special Agent Dante Torelli undercover, and Torelli had lived up to his reputation as a hotdogger by almost immediately finding a trail—one that led straight to the veteran FBI agent.

  A tiny shard of pain pierced his temple. The FBI agent opened his center desk drawer and took out a half-empty bottle of aspirin. He swallowed two, washing them down with cold coffee from the mug on his desk. Torelli should’ve been killed at the safe house this afternoon. That was the plan: kill the informant and all the FBI agents. Make it look like Torelli had been lured into the mob’s pocket and three brave agents had died trying to save Ricky Spinoza’s scrawny ass.

  Instead what he had was a big old pile of shit: Torelli and Spinoza still alive. Hit men and corrupt Chicago cops to pay off for work they’d screwed up.

  The veteran FBI agent tapped his fingers. The key was not to panic. He’d been in the Bureau for twenty-five years. He had balls of steel and was damn smarter than anyone he knew. All he had to do was remain calm and figure another way to off Torelli before he could come in. Before Torelli could destroy him.

  The tap of his fingers on the chair arm was the only sound in the room.

  Chapter Seven

  Thursday, 6:13 p.m.

  There’s a hole in your roof,” Zoey said.

  She hadn’t noticed the small hole in the Beemer’s canopy until they’d been parked for ten minutes. By that time most of the heat in the car had vanished and she’d felt the cold air blowing in the hole.

  She stuck a mittened finger in the hole.

  “Don’t do that,” Lips muttered.

  She withdrew her finger. “It doesn’t help anyway. Just makes my finger cold. Do you have any duct tape?”

  “What?” He’d been staring at the back of the Taj Mahal Restaurant this entire time, not talking or anything. He must be a whole lot of fun on a date—not. But maybe his dates were happy simply to gaze at his strong, silent profile.

  Zoey sighed. “Duct tape. Do you have any duct tape?”

  “What for?”

  “For the hole in the roof of your car. Duh.”

  There was a streetlamp halfway up the block. In the reflected light she could see him draw his perfect, straight eyebrows together. “Why would I have duct tape?”

  “I dunno. Seems like something a guy would carry around with him in his car.”

  He turned and looked at her, one eyebrow arched.

  “Okay, so you don’t have duct tape.” Zoey folded her arms. “Sheesh.”

  He went back to staring at the alley.

  Zoey twisted in her seat, drawing one leg up.

  “What are you doing?” he asked without turning.

  “Trying to get comfortable.” She looked at the hole again. It sure was producing a lot of cold air for such a tiny hole. Lips didn’t seem like the kind of guy to drive around with a hole in his pretty Beemer . . .

  “Hey, that’s a bullet hole!” She sat forward to peer at the hole more closely. It was perfectly round. Definitely a bullet hole. “Oh, my God. We could’ve been shot. Did you know that was a bullet hole?”

  She looked at him.

  He elevated both eyebrows a fraction of a hair. “Duh.”

  Okay, maybe she deserved that. Zoey turned around in her seat and peered into the back.

  She heard a heavy masculine sigh. “Now what’re you doing?”

  “Where’d it go? It must’ve gone out of the car somewhere.” She leaned over the seat, squinting at the black back-seat upholstery, nearly diving headfirst into the back floor.

  She felt him grab her coat, his grip firm and sure. “Back driver’s-side window.”

  The window had a tiny hole with a spiderweb of cracked glass around it.

  “Wow.” Zoey faced forward and sat back down. He had his arms crossed now, which was kind of too bad. She wouldn’t’ve minded if he’d kept his hands on her just a little longer. “That’s gonna cost to replace.”

  “My insurance will cover it.”

  “Your insurance covers gunshot holes?”

  He glanced at her. There seemed to be a muscle jerking under his eye.

  Zoey held out her palms. “I’m just saying, my insurance probably wouldn’t cover it. They’d call it an act of God or something. But, hey, I’m sure you have special top-secret government-agent insurance. Good thing, too, huh?”

  He’d turned away, and all she could see was the back of his head and his neatly trimmed dark hair. He had a nice neck. Strong, not too thick, but not weenie-thin. He gave a small sigh.

  Zoey clasped her hands in her lap and tried not to think of Pete. Was she crying? Scared out of her wits, riding around with strangers? God, she hoped not.

  She sighed softly. “I don’t think she’s ever been away from either me or Nikki.”

  She didn’t expect Lips to necessarily catch on right away to what she was talking about—her words had been kind of obscure—but he understood. “Pete?”

  “Yeah.” She shifted in the seat again, the rustle of her coat against the leather loud in the car. “It was mostly me or Nikki with her. Nikki can’t afford sitters much.”

  “Ricky didn’t help?”

  She shrugged. “There’s a reason I call him Ricky-the-jerk.”

  He nodded.

  She laughed, but her breath caught and it came out almost a sob. “Pete didn’t remember me, of course, not after six months away. But this last week she was smiling when she saw me. I thought, you know, that we’d eventually catch up.”

  “You will,” he said, and it was the kindest thing anyone had said to her in a long while.

  She cleared her throat because it was swelling and she didn’t want to start crying in front of him.

  “I thought her name was Petronella.”

  “It is. Petronella Spicy Hernandez. Nikki named her on the spur of the moment. I think she was still under the influence of the painkillers. Anyway, we’ve been calling her Pete pretty much since she came home from the hospital.”

  She realized she was jiggling her right knee up and down and stilled it. The car was getting pretty cold, and as it got colder, her bladder seemed to contract. She squirmed around in the leather seat, trying to get comfortable.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you know how long we’ll be here?”

  Lips tore his gaze from the alley to look at her. “As long as it takes.”

  “But, like, do you think
it’ll be hours or minutes?”

  “Do you have somewhere to go?” He arched his right eyebrow. Was that obnoxious or what? Who went around arching one eyebrow, outside of the movies? She’d bet her last dollar that he practiced in front of his bathroom mirror, probably daily. The sweet guy who’d comforted her about Pete seemed to have evaporated.

  He returned his gaze to the red SUV in the alley across the street. There was a single light, high on a pole in the alley, that had switched on automatically a couple of minutes ago. It was probably meant to deter burglars. At the moment, it was the only thing that made the red SUV visible.

  Jerk. Zoey looked at the alley, too. Nothing was moving in the red SUV. Maybe Baldy had gone to sleep in there. Maybe the Indian ladies were off joyriding in Wisconsin with Pete.

  “How do we know they’re even in the restaurant?” she asked.

  “We don’t,” he murmured. “But the kidnapper is in that SUV, and if he’s waiting for the Indian women here, they’ll probably show eventually.”

  “But what if they don’t?”

  She heard a gritting sound like he was grinding his teeth. “If they don’t show, I arrest him and get him to talk.”

  “Oh.” She stretched her legs out carefully. Her bladder felt like a water balloon perched in her pelvis. Any sudden movement and it might burst.

  “Can’t you hold still?” Lips asked without taking his eyes from the alley.

  “I have to pee.”

  His looked at her and blinked, long girly eyelashes brushing his cheeks. “Oh. Uh . . . the dollar store probably has a restroom. We’re behind him and far enough back in the shadows that I doubt he can see you exit the car. Just don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “I’ll try not to jump up and down and wave my arms,” she said sweetly. “Be back in a sec.”

  Zoey grabbed for the handle of the car door. Was it her imagination, or were his cheeks darker? She didn’t stay to see. This was already embarrassing enough.

  Trudging through the frozen slush in the street and around to the front of the block, she hoped that Baldy wouldn’t take off when she was in the store. Just her luck she’d come back and Lips would be gone.