For the Love of Pete

by Julia Harper

  She hastily smoothed out her expression. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, right.” He stalked to the bathroom and shut the door.

  The counter was tiny, and he had to pile the clean clothes on the toilet tank. Then he turned on the shower and stripped. He unwound the bandage from his leg and looked at the bruise underneath. The abrasions were beginning to scab over, and for a moment he considered taping a plastic bag over the wounds. But it seemed like too much trouble, and he was tired. He stepped into the tub.

  The shower head was one of those cheap little gizmos that produced either a trickle or a stinging spray. This one was of the stinging spray variety, but Dante didn’t care. The water was hot, thank you, God, and he just stood under it for a moment and let it beat against the back of his head. The background ache in the bruised leg receded a little as the hot water ran over his thigh and loosened the muscle. He sighed in relief. Then he reached for the tiny bottle of motel shampoo. There was less than a quarter of the bottle left, but it was enough. He scrubbed his scalp and then washed his face, the stubble of his beard scraping his palms. He’d have to ask Mr. Agrawal if he had any disposable razors behind the desk.

  Another five minutes and he stepped out of the shower, feeling the pull on his injured leg. With the water turned off he could hear the TV from the outer room. He dried off with the too-small remaining towel and rubbed a clear patch in the fog on the mirror. He looked like shit, but shit that felt a whole lot better. There were bags under his eyes, and his hair stood in spiky tufts. He ran his hands through his hair to comb it and glanced at the counter. Zoey had left a tube of toothpaste with a wet toothbrush poking out of one of the plastic motel cups. A brand-new wrapped toothbrush was sitting next to the toothpaste, and Dante felt a wash of gratitude. She might’ve bought him idiot shorts, but she’d thought about toothbrushes.

  Dante brushed his teeth, pulled on the sweatpants and sweatshirt, and took a breath before snapping off the light and leaving the bathroom. He double-checked that the outer door was locked as he passed it. Then he looked in the main room.

  The bedspread was piled in a messy lump beside the chair. She was sitting up on one side of the bed with the covers over her knees, the TV clicker in one hand. Her long wet hair trailed onto her sweatshirt, partially obscuring the cartoon on the front. She was staring at the TV, her brows slightly pulled together.

  She didn’t look up as he entered. “Did you know that male penguins have to stand with an egg on their feet for a month in the dark?”

  He looked at the TV. A bunch of stoic guy penguins were standing around in near-darkness, huddled against the Antarctic wind, speckled eggs perched on their feet. “Sucks to be a male penguin.”

  “Hmm.” She clicked the TV off. “Is this okay?”

  He shook out his trousers and held them upside down to find the leg creases. “What?”

  “This side of the bed.” She frowned at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Folding my pants.”

  She watched as he folded the trousers along the crease and laid them on top of his tie on the bureau.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What?” He picked up his jacket and frowned at a tear in the lining. Dammit, the entire suit was probably a loss.

  “You’re one of those guys,” Zoey said.

  He dropped the jacket on top of the pants and glanced at her. “What’re you talking about?”

  She stared back, her expression as horrified as if he’d strangled a kitten in front of her. “You’re neat.”

  “And you’re not,” he said mildly.

  He put away the rest of his clothes and turned off the light over the bureau before walking over to pick up the bedspread.

  That was apparently too much for Zoey. “Oh, my God,” she muttered again and slumped on the bed, pulling the covers over her head.

  Dante felt his mouth quirk. He finished folding the bedspread and laid it on the chair by the side of the bed—his side, since Zoey was taking up the other. The bed sank as he got in, and he winced. The springs were probably broken. He looked at Zoey. All he could see was the top of her head, damp springy curls against the white pillowcase.

  He reached over and pulled down the edge of the sheet, revealing her lovely scowling face. He smiled at her. “This side is fine. Thanks for asking. ’Night.”

  He turned and reached to the wall light on his side of the bed, flicking it off and making the room black.

  Dante settled back against his hard, thin pillow.

  In the warm darkness, he heard a feminine sigh and felt the bed vibrate as she turned over.

  “Good night.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Friday, midnight

  Rutgar pressed the END button on his cell phone and smiled a small smile. A new job. This was good. He placed the cell phone in the pocket of his leather coat and slid from the barstool. The bartender glanced at him sideways, then ducked his head and pretended to wipe a glass when Rutgar caught his eye.

  A man became lazy without work. It was good, then, to have work. Rutgar walked down the shadowy bar, watching as both men and girls turned their heads so they would not meet his gaze. This fear of him both amused him and made him satisfied. Those that turned away were smart. It was true: Rutgar was a dangerous man.

  He walked out into the cold street. The wintry night wind blew snow against his face and numbed his lips. It reminded him of Poland. Fucking Poland. Cold and stupid and backward. There was nothing in Poland but thin, diseased whores and bad food. Rutgar had left Poland as soon as he was able. He had come here, to Chicago, land of small cell phones and big guns. It was good here in Chicago. The work was good. The money was very good. But Rutgar still hated the cold.

  Tony the Rose had said that this new job was about old women. And a baby. A girl baby. It was perhaps a boring job. Two old women and a baby would not be a challenge. They would whimper in fear of Rutgar. And Tony the Rose had said that Rutgar should be careful. If Rutgar followed Tony the Rose’s instructions, the job would be very boring. One should always find what interest one could in a job. Perhaps he would not follow the instructions exactly.

  Rutgar smiled a small smile as he walked the dark Chicago street.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Saturday, 6:15 a.m.

  The room was black when Dante woke, and the darkness disoriented him for a moment. He lay still, letting his mind flip through possibilities until he lit on the right one and remembered where he was. Then he inhaled. The motel room smelled faintly of disinfectant, some kind of laundry detergent, and her. He could smell Zoey. He lay with his eyes closed and breathed her scent, and it finally came to him, there in the twilight, when his mind was at its most vulnerable, lost between waking and sleeping. Vanilla. The scent she wore was vanilla. Or maybe it was her own scent, the scent of her body, of her. That made sense. Zoey was home and hearth at her most basic level. Vanilla suited her.

  He opened his eyes again and could see now, faint shapes in the dark motel room, the silhouette of the chair beside the bed, the outline of the TV, and a thin crack of light at the curtained window. There must be a light in the parking lot.

  He turned his head and saw her shadowed form. She was facing him on her side, her body rising and falling gently with her sleeping breaths. He could hear the sigh of each breath as she exhaled, could almost feel the brush of air from her body. He inhaled her scent again, and his body pulsed with arousal. He wanted to touch her, feel if her skin was as soft as he imagined, brush the covers down and lie over her. Part her legs and enter her warmth.

  Someone knocked on the door. Dante turned his head to look. Zoey’s breath hitched, and she murmured in her sleep.

  The knock came again, a frantic pattering of blows on the wood.

  He got up and grabbed his gun from the holster, then walked to the door with the gun held down by his side.

  The knocking started again, this time continuing, along with an elderly feminine
voice. “Mr. Torelli! Miss Zoey!”

  Dante cracked the door.

  Both Mrs. Guptas were standing in the hallway. They wore matching terry-cloth robes, one in green, and the other in blue. The shorter lady had a sleeping baby on one shoulder and a cell phone in the other hand.

  She held out the cell when she saw him. “That Terrible Man has called me from my sister’s telephone. She left it in the purple minivan, and now he has it. He says he works for Mr. DiRosa and that he wants the baby boy.”

  Dante took the phone with his left hand and spoke into it. “Yeah?”

  “You got my kid,” a gravelly voice said on the other end.

  “Dante?” Zoey called sleepily from the bed.

  “Your kid?” Dante motioned the ladies into the room and shut the door, locking it behind them. He placed his Glock back on top of the bureau. “What do you mean, your kid?”

  “I mean you’ve got Neil Junior. My son.”

  Dante glanced at the sleeping baby. His curly blond head was resting on Mrs. Gupta’s shoulder. He looked angelic. Hard to believe this was the son of a man who worked for Tony the Rose.

  “The baby is your son?”

  “What are you, deaf?” the voice growled. “Yeah, that’s my kid, and I want him back.”

  Dante’s jaw tightened. “Do you have Ricky Spinoza’s daughter?”

  Zoey sat up in the bed and clicked on the bedside light. She looked at him with worried blue eyes. Dante noticed with one part of his brain that her hair fell in long corkscrew curls like she was some kind of Pre-Raphaelite maiden. Gorgeous.

  “Yeah, I got Spinoza’s girl.” On the other end of the phone a long baby wail went up, and Dante winced. The gravelly voice yelled over the wail, “I wanna make a trade.”

  Dante sat on the end of the bed. This had to be some kind of a trick. Tony’s henchman wouldn’t give up the Spinoza child this easily. But he played along. “Okay. How do you figure?”

  “We meet and exchange kids. Simple.”

  Simple if it wasn’t a trap. Dante narrowed his eyes, trying to think out angles. “Where do you want to meet?”

  “You know the rest stop on I-57, south of Marion?”

  They’d passed it last night. “Yes.”

  “Okay. I wanna meet there. No one else, just you and me. You come alone. No cops, you capisce?”

  Dante rolled his eyes. This guy got his dialogue straight out of a TV mob show. “Yeah, sure. What time?”

  The wail crested on the other end, stopped as the baby probably took a breath, and started again even louder. “Make it seven-thirty. I can’t wait to get rid of this kid.”

  Dante met Zoey’s wide blue eyes. “Seven-thirty it is.”

  The other end disconnected, cutting off the baby in midcry.

  Dante pressed the END button and looked at Mrs. Pratima Gupta. “We’re going to trade the babies. Can I borrow your phone in case he calls back?”

  But before the woman could speak, her sister let out a scream. “You will give this innocent child to That Terrible Man? Why?”

  Dante winced at her cry. It was awfully early in the morning for all this noise. “He says that’s his son. That would explain why he had the kid in his truck with him.”

  “His . . .” Mrs. Savita Gupta stared at the child as if he’d turned into a purple squid. The little boy yawned, opened his eyes, and smiled at her. “How is this possible?”

  “The wonder of genetics, I guess.”

  Zoey had gotten out of the bed by now, and she stood staring at him. “Are you really going to get her back, Dante?”

  He looked her square on, putting every ounce of sincerity he had in him into the one word. “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again her mouth was trembling. She nodded at him and went into the bathroom.

  Dante followed her with his eyes until his gaze met that of Mrs. Pratima Gupta. That lady looked pointedly from him to the bed—which had obviously been slept in by two people—and raised her eyebrows. Dante felt the same way he had when his Nona had caught him snitching freshly baked cookies meant for a family dinner. The difference being, of course, that he’d only been seven then.

  “This is awful,” Mrs. Savita Gupta wailed, breaking his silent stare-off with her sister-in-law. “I cannot give this precious baby up to That Terrible Man, no matter what.”

  “And what will you do, Savita-di,” the taller woman said. “Adopt this boy child? At your age?”

  Oh, low blow.

  Mrs. Savita Gupta turned dark red and inhaled.

  “It’s his son, ma’am,” Dante said soothingly before she could speak. “The baby girl isn’t his child, and it’s very important we get her back.”

  Mrs. Savita Gupta’s lips collapsed into a trembling frown. “But—”

  “Savita-di,” Mrs. Pratima Gupta said. “We cannot keep this little boy. He will miss his family. His father and his mother. Let Agent Torelli return him to where he belongs.”

  The shorter woman blinked as if keeping tears at bay, but she nodded.

  Dante blew out a relieved breath. “Good. Give us a moment to get ready, and we’ll meet you in the motel lobby.”

  Mrs. Pratima Gupta nodded, her mouth firm. “We will be there, Mr. Torelli.”

  He ushered them to the door and almost had it closed when Mrs. Savita Gupta suddenly whirled back around, hand held out to stay him.

  “The kesar!”

  “What?”

  But Mrs. Savita Gupta’s face had turned stricken. “Our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar that we told you about! That Terrible man still has it. It was in the purple minivan when he stole it.”

  “You’ll get our saffron back for us?” Mrs. Pratima Gupta asked. “Please?”

  “Yeah, I’ll try. Promise.” Dante watched smiles light up the elderly ladies’ faces.

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Savita Gupta exclaimed. “It is so important to us. This saffron is very, very special.”

  “I understand, but don’t thank me until you have the saffron in your hands. Speaking of which”—Dante glanced behind him into the motel room—“I’d better get dressed.”

  “We will meet you in the lobby,” Mrs. Pratima Gupta said. “Hurry.”

  She took her sister-in-law’s arm and hustled her down the hallway.

  Right. Dante closed the door. Time to get ready for a hostage exchange.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Saturday, 7:01 a.m.

  Zoey found herself clutching the armrest on the passenger side of the Beemer as Dante drove. She closed her eyes and tried to relax her stiff fingers. God. She was so close. If nothing went wrong she’d hold Pete’s solid little body in her arms in half an hour. The anticipation after the past two days of anxiety was almost too much. She just wanted to feel Pete’s warm weight, see her wide brown eyes, and know that nothing bad would happen to her. Half an hour.

  If nothing went wrong.

  Zoey glanced at the back seat. Neil Junior sat in a car seat borrowed from the Agrawals and was happily gnawing on cold flatbread left over from last night’s supper. The roads were pretty clear this morning, considering the snowstorm the night before, but the sky was dark and grim and the sun seemed to be giving up the fight to rise.

  “I’m going to need you to stay in the car,” Dante said. His eyes were focused on the highway, narrowed and intent and very, very serious. He had said hardly anything at all to her since receiving the call this morning.

  “Okay,” Zoey said. “As long as you bring back Pete.”

  He glanced at her, and something softened in his face before he turned his gaze back to the road. “We’re going to have to drive straight to Chicago after we get her. God only knows where they’ve stashed Spinoza, but he needs to know that we’ve got his daughter back so he’ll testify.”

  Zoey opened her mouth and then closed it again. It hadn’t even occurred to her to think about what they would do once Pete was safe again. But now that she considered the matte
r, she felt uneasy. Her first, instinctive reaction was to spirit Pete far, far away from Chicago. That wouldn’t work, though, would it? Ricky-the-jerk needed to testify in the mob trial that’d been going on for the last couple of weeks. She knew Tony the Rose was on trial for various terrible mob activities, including murder. Everyone in Chicago knew what the crimes were—they’d been detailed in the Chicago Tribune for months now. Tony the Rose should be sent to prison. She knew that.

  She knew that, but she didn’t want Pete back in danger.

  “There’s the rest stop,” Dante muttered as he flipped on his turn signal.

  Zoey clenched the armrest again, leaning forward in anticipation.

  Dante took the exit, breaking as they neared the rest stop. The access road forked before the building, one sign directing campers and trucks to the right, the other instructing cars to park to the left. The rest stop center was the usual dark brown building, long and low, crouched in the center of converging walkways. To the right was a small wood playground, black plastic swings frozen to the snowdrift underneath. To the left of the building was a vending machine shelter and beyond that a small stand of trees, bare and forlorn in winter.

  “He should be driving that purple minivan with the big daisy the Guptas had on Tuesday. That’s the car he stole from them yesterday,” Dante said. “Unless he’s switched vehicles.”

  This early in the morning there were only a few cars pulled up outside the rest stop. For a moment, Zoey’s heart stopped. She didn’t see a purple minivan. Then an SUV backed away from a parking space and revealed the minivan.

  “There it is,” she whispered.

  “I see it,” Dante muttered. He pulled into a parking spot and turned off the Beemer’s engine. He glanced at the minivan, then at her. “Stay put. Got it?”

  Zoey nodded, biting her lip nervously. His gaze dropped to her mouth and then back up to meet her eyes. She stared back, watching as his bitter-chocolate eyes narrowed, focusing solely on her. He leaned forward and time seemed to still, everything going silent except for the thumping of her heart.