by Julia Harper
They were at a dead end.
He could question the occupants of the house, and the neighbors, too, see if they had any information about sari-clad little old lady kidnappers, but essentially his game was done. He had orders to come in this morning. He glanced again at Zoey, sleeping so innocently. She wasn’t going to like him leaving the chase.
Dante frowned on that thought and got out of the car, bracing himself against the god-awful cold. Shit, this was not going to be fun. He chose the alley running behind the houses and jogged over to relieve himself.
Five minutes later when he got back in the car, Zoey was just beginning to wake up.
“Oh, my God, it’s cold!” she moaned and pulled the blanket all the way over her face.
Dante grinned. “I’m turning on the engine now. We should have heat in another minute.”
“I want a hot bath,” came her muffled voice from beneath the blanket, “and hot slippers and a hot robe and hot coffee and hot oatmeal.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oatmeal?”
“Oatmeal is very nutritious.”
“Not to mention soggy.”
“Not with lots of brown sugar and cream—”
“Still sounds soggy.”
“And raisins.”
“Raisins in oatmeal are disgusting,” he informed her kindly.
“Oh, yeah? Well, what do you eat in the morning?”
“Toast, usually.”
“Bo-oring,” she intoned from under the blanket.
“I wouldn’t mind eggs today, though,” he mused.
“Bet you like bacon and eggs and hash browns, with the eggs over easy so they’re all runny and you can dip the bacon in them.”
“Well, yeah.”
Her snort puffed up the blanket over her face.
He grinned. “But I usually have just toast and coffee instead. Hard to run off bacon, eggs, and hash browns.”
“Oh, my God, you run.”
“So?”
“That’s what’s disgusting. Getting up early and going running, making the rest of us feel guilty.”
He peeled back a corner of the blanket to look into clear blue eyes. “I can’t see you feeling guilty.”
She just blinked sleepy, sexy eyes at him for a minute, and he realized his body was responding.
Then her eyes widened. “I don’t suppose there’s a potty anywhere nearby?”
He released the blanket edge and sat back. “Nope.”
“Damn.” She was still a moment. Then, in a burst of speed, she threw off the blanket, grabbed the door handle, scrambled from the car, and disappeared into the same alley he’d used.
Dante took advantage of her absence to run his hands through his hair. He grimaced. God, he probably smelled really rank right about now.
His glum thoughts were interrupted by Zoey opening the passenger-side door and flinging herself back into the car.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” she chanted as she wrapped the blanket around herself again. “It’s freezing out there.”
“I didn’t think it was that bad.”
She stared at him incredulously.
“Compared to yesterday. Or the day before.”
She scowled. “You didn’t have to bare your entire rear end to do what you had to do.”
He shrugged.
“It’s not fair,” she grumbled. “Women are at a stakeout disadvantage. All you guys have to do is unzip and take out your—”
Dante smiled and turned the air up full blast.
Zoey was immediately diverted. “Ohhh, that feels so good.”
She leaned into the heater on her side as she had the night before, and Dante again felt a tightening in his gut. Or rather just below his gut. He looked away from the sight of her eyes closed in bliss and tried to control a surge of lust. Maybe it was the husky tone of her voice, or maybe it was the sensual pleasure in the expression on her face. Or, hell, maybe it was just his usual morning woody, pure biological fact, nothing to do with the woman sitting next to him at all. It hardly mattered, in any case. They’d go in today, Headington would debrief him, Zoey would get some protection until this was all over, and odds were that they’d never see each other again.
And that thought shouldn’t be such a depressing one.
“I wish I had a brush,” Zoey muttered. She took off her hat and unwound her red-blond braids. Her hair was messed up from the hat, but gold threads glinted in the morning sun and he had a sudden urge to touch them.
He looked away. “I wish I had a comb.”
“Yeah, you are beginning to look a little scruffy.”
He turned the rearview mirror and looked before he realized she was teasing him.
She grinned finger-combing her hair. “You’re so vain.”
“Am not,” he muttered.
“You’ve got dirt on your forehead.”
“Where?” He looked again.
She started laughing.
He knocked the mirror back into place. Being careful of how he looked wasn’t vain.
Was it?
“So, what do we do now?” Zoey asked. She was rebraiding her hair now. “Should we try the restaurant again, or—?”
Dante glanced at the dash clock. It was only a little after six. They had a couple of hours until the meet with Headington. Even allowing for morning traffic, that left plenty of time. The least he could do was take her to breakfast before they had to drive to the overpass south of Chinatown. Maybe someplace that had both hot oatmeal and bacon and eggs.
He was opening his mouth to invite her when a light went on in the little house they were supposed to be watching.
Dante straightened. Someone was in there, after all.
Zoey had seen him go on alert. “What?” She glanced at the house and her eyes widened. “Hey . . .”
The front door cracked open and a head peered out. For a moment nothing happened, then a slim figure emerged and scurried down the front steps, stooped, and retrieved the morning newspaper, which had been thoughtfully left on the front walk.
There wasn’t much he could do. He was about to hand over the case; it was no longer any of his concern. But even as Dante had the thought, he was putting the BMW into gear and pulling into the empty drive in front of the house.
“That’s not one of the women we saw yesterday,” Zoey pointed out as they got out of the car. “She’s younger.”
“I know.” Dante strode to the front door and knocked.
Beside him, Zoey had her hands deep in her pockets and was rocking a little from side to side. “It’s so darn cold!”
Dante knocked again just as they heard movement from inside.
The door was pulled partially open, a flimsy chain holding it back from opening all the way. A woman peered out, her dark eyes wide. “What is it? Who are you?”
“It’s okay,” Zoey said before Dante could answer.
“FBI, ma’am.” Dante flashed his ID. “I’m Special Agent Dante Torelli. I need to talk to you. May we come in?”
If possible the woman’s eyes widened even more. “FBI? What is this about? You must be mistaken. My husband’s visa is perfectly in order. It doesn’t expire for another eight months. I assure you—”
“Do you know two old ladies who wear saris and drive a little green Civic?” Zoey cut in loudly.
The flow of words abruptly stopped. The woman stared at them a long moment as if stunned, her mouth still half-open. Then she blinked and closed her mouth with a click.
“Oh, God, what have they done now?”
Chapter Sixteen
Friday, 6:34 a.m.
The house was warm, blessedly warm, and while hot, milky tea wasn’t the same as hot coffee, it did fine in a pinch. In fact, Zoey thought as she sipped from a delicate china cup, hot tea was just about perfect when your butt was nearly frozen off.
They sat in a small living room done in early Ikea with traces of Indian to give it color. The black sectional sofa had a bright pink embroidered throw over the bac
k, and the lamp on the end table was engraved brass.
Dante set his nearly empty teacup down on a glass coffee table and took out a small cordovan leather notebook from his breast pocket. He flipped to a clean page and looked at the petite Indian woman sitting opposite them. “Can I have your name again?”
“Priyanka Agrawal.” She sat at the very edge of her chair, looking like she might topple forward in her anxiety at any moment.
Dante nodded and wrote her name in his notebook as the woman watched him. He was in some kind of FBI zone, his focus completely on Ms. Agrawal. He sat relaxed but alert, his body leaning slightly toward the young woman, his dark brown eyes narrowed. Zoey felt a small pang of envy. To have all that masculine energy focused on her . . . Hastily she took another sip of tea, because obviously her brain had frozen.
Priyanka Agrawal was in her late twenties, slim and delicate in a way that inevitably made anyone—any woman—of European decent feel like a big, hulking troll. She had shoulder-length black hair that swung in a curtain when she moved her head, and even without makeup her face was incredibly lovely. Zoey sighed into her milky tea and wished she could hate the other woman for winning the grand national gene lottery.
“And the names of the two women in saris?” Dante asked.
Ms. Agrawal pursed her lips. “Savita Gupta and Pratima Gupta. What have they done?”
“Kidnapping, vehicular theft.”
“Oh, dear God.”
“Can you spell their names for me?” Dante murmured, scribbling in his notebook.
She spelled the names, her delicate hands twisting in her lap anxiously.
Dante looked up. “They’re sisters?”
“No, oh, no,” Ms. Agrawal licked her lips. “The mamis—aunties—aren’t related by blood at all. They’re sisters-in-law to each other. They married brothers, oh, ages ago, in India.”
“They’re your aunts?”
“No. My husband’s aunties. Well, actually his father’s aunties, I suppose. What do you call that in English?”
“Great-aunt?”
“Yes, that’s it.” She frowned down at her own teacup. “He’s going to be so upset when he hears they’re in trouble. They drive him mad.”
“Where is your husband?”
Ms. Agrawal hunched one shoulder. “In Los Angeles. He’s at a conference until Sunday.”
“What kind of conference?”
“Computers. He works at the computer lab at Loyola.”
Dante nodded. “His name?”
“Karan Agrawal.” She spelled it for him, and for a moment the only sound in the room was the scratching of Dante’s pen across the page.
He looked up. “Where do your husband’s great-aunts live?”
“With us at the moment.” Her eyes narrowed. “Although it was really Saumya’s turn, the cow. She always manages to get out of family obligations.”
“Who is Saumya?”
Ms. Agrawal sighed. “Look, it is an extended family, you understand? Saumya is married to my husband’s cousin, Sujay Agrawal. They are all descended from Savita Gupta’s elder sister.”
“So Saumya is related to the Gupta ladies?”
“No, it is Sujay who is related.” Her lovely mouth twisted. “But it is the ladies in the family who must look after the elderly relatives.”
“Look after,” Dante repeated, frowning. “Are you saying they’re senile?”
“No, although they act that way sometimes.” Ms. Agrawal rolled her eyes. “They are such pains in the neck. You can’t imagine how much trouble they cause. Savita’s own daughter, Vinati, won’t let her mother live with her. She claims her apartment is too small, but I think she knows her mother would drive her to murder.”
“Where does the daughter live?”
“Out in Cicero, but you won’t find her there.”
“Why not?”
“Vinati has gone to Walt Disney World. In Orlando, Florida,” Ms. Agrawal explained, as if Dante might not know where Disney World was. “She left over a week ago and will not be back for another week. It’s monstrous! Saumya and I are supposed to take care of the mamis, but of course Saumya has wriggled out. She claims she has pneumonia and thus cannot care for the aunties.”
“So, they’re staying here with you and your husband?”
“Yes, yes.” Ms. Agrawal waved a hand. “They really ought to be in India, cooking and nagging their grandchildren to do better in school. But nooo. They insisted that they must come to America. They said they wanted to see more of the world and that they had lives to lead now that their husbands were dead. Can you imagine? At their ages? Absurd is what it is.” She tightened her mouth into a little prune shape.
“I see,” Dante said in a noncommittal voice, and Zoey couldn’t help but snort. Naturally he’d take the part of the fun-suppressing younger generation.
Dante shot her a repressive look, and Zoey widened her eyes in mock terror.
But Ms. Agrawal wasn’t paying attention to their byplay. “They’ve been living with us for two months, and what a bother they’ve been! Poor Karan has had a sour stomach the entire time, and if he develops ulcers I will blame them, truly I will.”
Dante flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook. “The green Civic they were driving is registered to Saumya Agrawal. That’s the same Saumya you’ve been talking about?”
“Yes. She lent the aunties her old car. It’s practically the only thing she has helped with.”
“Okay.” Dante wrote in the notebook. “But they’re driving a lavender Dodge minivan now with the words ARTIE’S FLOWERS on the side. Do you know where they could’ve got it?”
Ms. Agrawal stared at Dante for a moment. She jumped up and ran to the back of the house. Zoey looked at Dante and then followed her. There was a small kitchen at the back of the house, and Zoey found the other woman standing over her sink, looking out the back window.
“Oh, no,” she moaned. “Oh, no! Those wicked aunties have taken Karan’s minivan. And look what they have left in its place!”
Zoey followed her pointing finger and looked out the window over the sink. In back of the house there was a rectangular concrete slab, extra parking for vehicles that couldn’t fit in the one-car garage. There sat the yellow Humvee, as out of place as a giant cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest.
Ms. Agrawal looked like she was in shock, so Zoey took her arm and led her back to her sofa. “It’s okay. The police won’t blame you for the Humvee. In fact, the owner probably hasn’t even reported it stolen.”
The other woman didn’t seem comforted. “But what about Karan’s minivan?”
Dante cleared his throat. “Do you know why your husband’s aunts would want to steal the Humvee? And then dump it?”
Ms. Agrawal stared. “Oh, God, who knows? Who knows? My husband will have to bail them out of jail, and there goes our summer vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. He’ll—”
“Or kidnap a baby?” Dante cut into the catalog of woes.
“A baby?” Ms. Agrawal’s lovely mouth fell open. “They took—”
“Kidnapped,” Dante murmured.
“A baby?”
He nodded.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” Ms. Agrawal leaped up but then didn’t seem to know what to do, so she just stood there. “Karan will lose his work visa. We’ll be deported. Oh, my God!”
Dante sat back on the couch, his manner relaxed, but Zoey knew his interest was still totally engaged. “Do you know where they might go?”
Ms. Agrawal’s gaze settled on him like a lifeline. “Go?”
Dante shrugged. “They aren’t here, are they?”
She gazed around the little room as if one of the sari-clad old ladies might pop up from behind a chair. “No. They didn’t come home last night.”
Dante’s eyebrows shot up. “That didn’t worry you?”
“Naturally—”
“Two elderly ladies in a big city like Chicago?”
“I—”
Dante sighed. “Ha
ve you reported them missing?”
Ms. Agrawal chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I was going to, but it didn’t seem necessary yet. I did call all the family in Chicago. No one had seen them.”
Dante simply stared at the woman. The silence grew, and Ms. Agrawal’s skin darkened. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes, and even Zoey was feeling guilty.
“Where do you think your husband’s great-aunts might be right now, Mrs. Agrawal?”
“I don’t know.”
Dante sighed and closed his notebook, the movement oddly ominous.
Ms. Agrawal must’ve thought so, too. She stuttered into speech. “I-I don’t know! Really I don’t! There’s only my husband’s brother and sister, and Auntie Savita’s daughter, but she’s in Disney World in—”
The notebook was flipped open again. “Your husband’s siblings’ names?”
She sank into the chair, looking dazed, and rattled off a list of names.
“Who else?”
“I don’t know!”
“They don’t have friends in the city?”
“No.”
Dante arched an eyebrow, obviously skeptical. “Not at all?”
Ms. Agrawal shrugged. “They’ve only been in the US for a couple of months. They spend all of their time on that stupid restaurant they plan to open.”
“What about neighbors?”
“No.”
“Acquaintances? Clubs or religious groups they might belong to?”
“I told you, they spend all their free time at the restaurant.”
“Okay.” Dante sighed. “No friends, no acquaintances, no clubs. Only the family you’ve mentioned: Mrs. Gupta’s daughter, your husband, his brothers and their wives, and his cousin. That’s it?”
“Well . . .”
Dante looked up. If he’d been a wolf his ears would’ve pricked forward. “What?”
Ms. Agrawal waved a hand dismissively. “My husband has one more cousin—another of the aunties’ nephews—but he doesn’t even live in Chicago.”
