Lou lunged at her, gripped the front of her shirt and pulled her to his face. His rancid breath turned her stomach. “There isn’t gonna be any book. You either get me that envelope or you die right here. I guarantee Viper and I can convince you to cooperate.”
She tried not to show her fear and revulsion. Her false bravado was draining fast. She felt a tremor go through her heart. “There already is a book. I delivered the final draft the day that jerk kidnapped me,” she lied. “The deal is, all the evidence goes to the Feds anyway, but not until the book is out.”
“Then you can’t stop it?” Lou asked, a little of the steel gone from his voice. He stepped away from her, releasing her shirt.
“There’s a clause in my contract giving me the right to pull out up to ninety days before publication. That time runs out tomorrow. If you want me to help you out of this, Taranto, you better talk fast. I can make one call at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow that will put the brakes on this entire thing.”
Lou cupped his chin in one hand and squeezed. He met Viper’s lecherous gaze, and she knew exactly what they were thinking. They’d humor her, offer her whatever she wanted, get the evidence in their filthy hands and then kill her anyway. She didn’t care. It would only take a call to the publisher to tell them she’d made the whole thing up anyway. She was betting on its being after hours. They wouldn’t be able to confirm her story until morning. She would have bought some time and nothing more.
“How much,” Lou finally asked.
She shrugged. “A million-five?”
“Done,” he said quickly.
“And…” Lou glared at her. “Look, I’ll do a lot for that kind of money. But if I’m going to get him killed, I’d just as soon not have to be here to know about it. I do have a few morals. I know you have to do it, but if you want my help you’ll wait until I take my money and leave.”
Lou turned a skeptical gaze on her, and she hoped she hadn’t blown it by pleading for Nick’s life. If Lou knew how much she cared, he’d have the best weapon against her he could’ve found. He eyed her now, and then Nick.
“You cold, greedy, lying bitch!” The vicious words exploded from Nick. He pulled again at his bonds, this time looking as if he’d like to wring her neck with his bare hands. “I’ll kill you for this, you frigid little cat. If I get my hands on you, I’ll—”
Viper smacked him in the gut again, knocking enough wind out of him so he couldn’t go on. Toni heard the breath rush from his lungs. For just an instant Nick’s scathing words stung, and she turned her back to him, her throat burning. She took one step away. She felt drained. All she wanted now was to slink back to her darkened corner and collapse. She’d done all she could, and if Nick couldn’t see that, then…
She stopped herself and gave her head a small shake. What was the matter with her? Nick wasn’t an idiot. Besides, he knew her better than to believe a word of that line she’d fed Taranto. He knew things about her that she’d only begun to realize about herself. Slowly she turned, and Nick lifted his mistreated face to meet her gaze.
“In the morning, then,” Taranto said gruffly. She had to look away from Nick, but not before she’d glimpsed the reassuring glint in his eyes. “You’ll make that call. I’ll give you the money as soon as the envelope is in my hands. Deal?”
“Yes.”
Chapter 14
Joey gripped the IV pole with one hand, his heaving stomach with the other. He closed his eyes slowly and waited for the nausea to pass.
“You can barely stand,” she told him. “You’re not going to be any help out there in this condition, unless you plan to apprehend Lou Taranto by throwing up on him.”
Her scolding tone didn’t hide the anguish in her voice. “Nausea is normal with concussion. It’ll pass.” He straightened, reached for the closet door and saw his clothes inside. He stretched his arm for the hanger, then paused when his balance deserted him.
She reached past him, retrieved his clothes and tossed them on the stiff white sheets on his hospital bed. “‘Multiple concussions’ was the term I heard them use. Joseph, you should be lying down. Harold is doing everything—”
“Yeah, but he hasn’t found them yet. Damn Harry for not telling me when Nick didn’t check in!” He sat on the edge of the bed and yanked his trousers on without removing the tie-in-the-back hospital gown he wore. He stood to fasten them, then offered Kate his back. She unfastened the ties without being asked. Joey turned again, picked up his shirt and poked his arms into the sleeves. As he buttoned it he heard her sharp intake of air. He looked up fast. Her ivory skin had paled considerably, and her blue eyes glistened beneath a thin film of tears.
Her gaze on his shoulders and chest reminded him the shirt wasn’t exactly clean. He looked down and saw the spattered patterns of dried blood. His lips thinned. He met her gaze again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“He has them, doesn’t he?” Her eyes seemed to beg him to deny what she knew. “They would have called in if they’d been able. I’ve racked my brain to think of a feasible reason they wouldn’t have, but there just isn’t one. Taranto has them.”
Lying to her would be useless. She was an intelligent woman; she’d see right through it. “Probably,” he admitted. “But don’t think that means…” He broke off, searched his foggy brain, and began again. “He wouldn’t kill them if he thought they had information he could use. He’d keep them alive until he got it from them. Nick knows that, and Toni—she seems like a smart girl. She’s probably figured it out, too. They can use that knowledge to stall, and in the meantime we’ll find out where he’s holding them and—”
“I heard Harold say they’d checked every piece of property Taranto owned and found nothing. Where else can you look?”
“Every piece we know of,” Joey corrected her. “Contrary to popular belief, we don’t know everything. Toni already proved that.”
A tiny glimmer of hope lit her eyes. “Antonia is very thorough in her research. She might know of other holdings—”
“If she did, how would I find out?”
Kate dove into the closet, her movements livelier. She retrieved his shoes and socks, his jacket and his gun. “It would be in her computer.”
Joey nodded, his mind racing ahead of him as he mindlessly dressed his feet, checked his gun, adjusted the holster. “Okay. Do you have a key to her apartment?” She nodded. “Give it to me and—”
“I’m going with you,” she told him.
“No.” He straightened too quickly, and the resulting rush of dizziness nearly knocked him down. She came close to him, gripped his arm until it passed. “You’d better stay right here,” he said finally. “Harry will kill me if I try to take you—”
“You know as well as I do that Harold isn’t here. He’s out looking for them along with everyone else. Besides, you wouldn’t know how to retrieve the information. I do. Now, please don’t waste time arguing over this. Where do you think Antonia got her stubborn streak?”
He sighed, pulled on his jacket and turned slightly to close the closet door. It was then he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror mounted there. He almost jumped. He looked like something from an old Saturday-afternoon horror flick. Dark-colored bruises with angry purple rings at their outermost edges covered most of his face. His nose bent at an angle near the center. His eyes were still swollen, their lids so blue they looked made-up. He shook his head, closed the door and looked at her again. “I’m surprised you didn’t run screaming when you got a look at this.” He indicated his face with an open palm beneath his chin.
“Yes, you do look fairly awful,” she told him. Her gaze dropped. “I, um, made Harold show me your identification photo last night.”
Joey’s brows shot up. He opened the heavy door and held it for her to precede him through. “Damn. And here I was planning to tell you I normally resemble Clark Gable.”
She looked up at him, and her lips curved slightly upward. That he’d managed to make her smile, even so slightly, in the midst of al
l this gave Joey an absurd sense of satisfaction.
She insisted on driving, and within thirty minutes Joey stood over her in Toni’s apartment-office. Kate sat in a padded swivel chair, punching buttons on a keyboard. In a moment the words “Holdings: Real Estate” appeared on the electric blue screen. Letter by letter, line by line, a list took shape below. Joey scanned, his impatience nearing an all-time high. Then he saw what he was looking for.
“There! Number eighteen, that’s one I’ve never heard of. I don’t think we knew about that one.”
Kate punched in 18 and hit the return key. “Farmhouse,” the screen told them. “Rural. Chenango County—Upstate N.Y.” Joey read that Taranto had purchased the property for back taxes, using his cousin’s name on the deed. Toni suspected the place was a dispatch point for drugs being shipped to Syracuse, Binghamton and other surrounding cities. The house itself, she’d noted, was in a state of chronic disrepair, but ideal for Lou’s purposes, being completely surrounded by state forest. Joey shook his head, a sickening feeling in his stomach that hadn’t been caused by his concussions this time. “How do we find this place?”
Kate pushed a quick series of buttons then, and a map appeared on the screen. “Antonia is nothing if not scrupulously thorough,” she said softly. She hit Print, and the machine nearby began making lifelike noises. A moment later she leaned over it and tore a sheet free. She shook her head as she handed it to him. “The drive will take hours.”
“Who said anything about driving?” Joey folded the map and slipped it into his breast pocket.
It was several moments before Nick could speak again. The last blow to the midsection had struck a rib on the way in. He couldn’t draw a breath. He forcibly clung to consciousness despite the pain that washed over him like a tidal wave and the dizziness it brought with it. He had to stay lucid. At least until he could be sure Toni knew why he’d said what he had. When she’d asked that he not be killed right way, Taranto got suspicious. Nick knew him well enough to recognize the look. He had to do something to convince Lou that there was nothing between them.
Taranto and Viper left the room, and he heard locks being slid home. A second later Toni was behind him, deftly untying his hands. Circling to the front of him, she dropped to her knees and loosened the ropes that held his ankles. She stayed there a minute, not looking up.
She drew a breath. “I hope I’m right about how well you know me, Nick.”
He rubbed his wrists roughly, then placed both hands on her shoulders. “You put on one hell of an act, lady. And you’d better damn well know by now when I’m doing the same. Call it a supporting role.”
Her head rose slowly, her eyes scanning his face. “You knew what I was doing?”
“Almost as soon as you did. It never entered my mind to believe a word of it, Gypsy.” He closed his arms around her, but she stiffened and held herself away.
“Are you all right?” Her eyes danced back and forth as she studied his face. “I wanted to club that bastard with something…I almost jumped on him without anything but my hands to use as weapons.”
“I believe that.” He smiled to show her he was okay, but she touched his face gently with her palm, and her eyes grew damp again. “I’m fine, I swear to God. It probably looks worse than it is.” Seeing the genuine concern in her eyes was a bit more than he could handle right now, so he tried to change the subject. “You were good with Taranto, Toni. You pinpointed his weakness and you nailed him with it. He’d do anything to save his organization.”
She shook her head, getting to her feet. “I don’t know. He’ll be angrier than ever when he finds out I was lying.”
Nick rose, as well, glancing around the musty room. “You bought us some time. Now all we need to do is find a way out of here. It’s a basement…a cellar. A house, and not a new one by the looks. I wonder where the hell we are?” He walked as he spoke, examining the rotted wood, the toppled water tank, the broken wooden crate. He knelt beside it and pawed through the dust-covered bottom to identify the shapes there. He found bent nails, a broken screwdriver and some wire. He tucked the screwdriver into his rear pocket and rose again, glancing upward at the cobweb-coated ceiling. “Not a heating duct or a register in the place,” he muttered.
“I don’t think anyone’s been here in a while,” Toni observed.
“You’re right. He had to bring us somewhere isolated. With warrants out on him, he couldn’t risk hanging around where we could find him easily. He can’t have had time to round up much help, either. I imagine most of his thugs scattered in panic.”
He glared at the door, frustration rising within him. “If we could get through the damn door, we might have a chance.” He paced the room. “What if I make some racket, get whoever’s guarding the door to open it up?” He was thinking aloud, the plan coming together in his mind as he voiced it. “I could jump the guy when he comes in. You could run out, close the door so he couldn’t yell or come after you.”
She closed her eyes slowly and shook her head. “No.” When she opened her eyes again, the look in them was intense. She held his gaze forcefully. “Listen to me for once, Nick. I will not leave you.” He frowned, searching her face, and she caught his face between her cool palms. “I mean it. I won’t.”
He sensed she wanted him to read more into her words than what she’d said, and the idea awed him. Could she be trying to tell him that—
No. In his entire life no one had ever cared enough about him to stay with him. How could she? He shook his head at the impossibility of it. Still, some small part of him wondered. She hadn’t left him yet, though remaining with him had put her at risk. She hadn’t left him, even when he’d tried to make her go.
Again he shook his head. “Toni, this might be your last chance. I’m offering you a way out. I don’t see any other options.”
“He’d kill you,” she said softly. “He’d have no reason not to.”
“If you stay, he’ll kill us both,” he told her.
She sighed, looked at the floor. “You really think I could just walk away from you, Nick? After all of this? I can’t, you know. I couldn’t if I wanted to. I won’t. Even…” She drew a steadying breath and brought her gaze up to his. “Even when it’s over.”
He couldn’t believe what he saw in her eyes. It hit him harder than Viper had, rendering him speechless. He opened his mouth, and only air came out. Was she saying…?
The sound of a key turning in the lock startled him. Toni shoved him away, both hands flat on his chest. He knew she intended for him to sit down, as if he were still bound. He didn’t, though. He couldn’t take his eyes from her face. He couldn’t stop his heart from pounding. The door opened, and two men he hadn’t seen before stepped through it. Both held guns, and both barrels were trained on Nick.
“You!” The fiftyish one with the crew cut and brown teeth waggled his gun barrel toward Toni. “Come with us.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Nick said softly.
“What’s a matter, Manelli? You want to keep her all to yourself, is that it?”
The one beside Brown Teeth shifted his stance. He was younger, with a pocked face and body like a bean pole. “I don’t know about this,” he muttered. “Lou said not to touch her until he’d had his turn.”
“There won’t be anything left to touch when he’s had his turn, kid. You ever seen a woman after he’s had her?” He shook his head and moved closer to Toni. His gaze moved down her body slowly, and Nick clenched his teeth. “I won’t hurt you, babe. I know how to handle a woman. You might even like it.” He licked his lips. “You don’t come along like a good girl, though, and I’ll have to put a bullet in Nicky. See, Lou would kill me if I hurt you. But I have permission to shoot him if he gives me a reason.”
Nick saw Toni’s eyes harden. It amazed him once again, the backbone she had. He knew at that moment that all his resolve hadn’t amounted to a damn thing. He’d been in love with her all along.
“That’s right, sweet thing. I ca
n see you realize you have no choice. You give me trouble, you get to watch him die and then you do what I tell you anyway, right? So why get Nicky blown away for nothing? You just come with me and you keep what I said in mind while we’re in the other room.” He glanced at the younger one. “I think she’s gonna be real willing to accommodate us, Ray. I think she’ll do anything we tell her to. Won’t you, babe?”
She didn’t answer until the younger one lifted the muzzle of his gun to Nick’s temple. Nick’s eyes were on Toni as she stiffened her spine. “I’ll come with you.”
“The hell you will,” Nick said.
“They won’t kill me, Nick.”
“They won’t touch you.”
He heard her stifle a sob. She swallowed. “I don’t want to lose you like this,” she rasped. “Let it go. It won’t be me, I swear to you. They’ll be touching an empty shell—”
“Enough of this damn talk. Anybody’d think you two had a choice in the matter!” Brown Teeth grabbed Toni’s upper arm. “Come on, baby, I been waitin’ for this.” He yanked her toward the door.
The younger one pressed the barrel harder to Nick’s temple, but Nick’s eyes were on Toni. Her gaze sent him a silent message, begging him not to do anything. Aloud she whispered again, “It won’t be me, Nick.”
“You’re damn right it won’t,” he growled. In one swift move, he’d pulled the broken screwdriver from his pocket and jammed it into the skinny man, just below the rib cage, angling upward and thrusting it clear to the handle. The shock and pain caused his hand to relax on the gun, and it thudded to the floor. Brown Teeth turned at the sound, saw his partner drop to his knees, gape mouthed. He released his hold on Toni and leveled his gun at Nick. Toni whirled, clasping both fists together and bringing them down on his forearms. The gun roared, but the bullet only embedded itself in the packed dirt of the floor. The deafening sound exploded in the small room. Nick used the split second Toni had given him to lunge for the gun at his feet. He had it in his hand when Brown Teeth backhanded Toni, slamming her into the cinder-block wall. He aimed at Nick once more, but not fast enough. Nick pulled the trigger, sending another earsplitting boom into the confined space. The man staggered backward three steps, then folded in on himself, ending in a heap on the floor.
Reckless Angel Page 20
