Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5)

by W. D. Gagliani

  But this time she hadn’t sexted, she had merely called, and even though his response had spread a loving and very lust-filled warmth throughout her system, she felt nothing but regret at having to change the mood immediately.

  Well, maybe not quite yet.

  “Hello, sailor,” she whispered throatily into her iPhone. “I’m hoping your ship, uh, slips into port again soon. The port misses your big ol’ vessel.”

  He chuckled. “That just might get me through the next few days, Jess. Thanks! On the other hand, it’s too bad there isn’t a shot of the harbor for me to look at…”

  “I can remedy that,” she said mysteriously. “Maybe later.”

  “Deal. Anticipation, you know. It’s great to look forward to…docking.”

  Jessie laughed. “I think we’ve dragged the metaphor through the mill enough!”

  “Ooh, a mixed metaphor. Very sexy!”

  Damn good thing there’s no one around to listen, she thought. This could just be pathetic on our part. And it was so much nicer than when they fought like the proverbial canines and felines. She winced. It was nice to talk to Nick and feel connected again. But then she brought down the mood by asking, “What’s with the next few days?”

  “Ach, we’ve had another bus shooting. A really bad one. Let’s just say if this had been a bomb, we’d be all over the news as a terrorist attack.”

  “My God,” she said, unconsciously touching her cheek. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Nah, thanks. We’ll sort it out, I think. But Ryeland’s starting a task force. And get this, he’s tapping Dee to run it.”

  “That’s great! Your partner’s very reliable. I’m happy for him. You?”

  He sighed. “I should be upset, I outrank him every which way. But I’m tired, Jess. I don’t mind taking the second slot on this one. It’s gonna be bad if we don’t get this crazy fucker. We think we already have a pattern, so we may have some time before he hits repeat, but it’s…let’s say puzzling.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to—”

  He didn’t hear her. “Plus there’s this thing about my father…”

  “What?” Her spine went a little cold. She knew most of what he’d recently learned about his stern father, but he kept tripping over new angles—new dead ends.

  “You know, let’s talk about it another time. What did you need?”

  “Nick, I hate to unload anything else on you…” She had second thoughts now. “Shit, now I wish I hadn’t called.”

  “You kidding? You…gave the vessel a very rigid keel.”

  “L.O.L., Nick,” she spelled out deliberately, knowing it annoyed him.

  “All right, O.M.G., can we get to the good stuff?” He chuckled.

  She loved that they’d gotten back on track after what she sometimes called The Incident. That damned night she’d gone to Heather Wilson’s place with murder in her heart and a deadly werewolf-killing blade in her hand.

  “Okay, listen, this might all be a big bunch of nothing, but…”

  She tabled her fears and plunged ahead. She told him what she’d overheard. She told him most of what she’d overheard. She left out what she had learned at the library, but she wasn’t sure why. There would be time to mention that later.

  Still, Nick made a long hiss at the other end.

  Lupo

  Christ, can it get any worse?

  Ghost Sam had issued his cryptic warning, but he hadn’t clarified. The ghost, or Lupo’s own prophetic ability pretending to be ghostly, seemed to be consistently right. But who knew it was going to be this much crap to deal with?

  The bus shooter escalating. His father’s secrets slowly unpeeling like a damned onion. And now, what? The fucking Mafia? Could it be true?

  Lupo trusted Jessie with his life. She’d saved him enough to sure prove it. And as he thought about it now, he trusted her ears and her perception.

  If she heard thugs referring to a completely illegal tribal casino grab, then that was what she’d heard. Her only flaw ever had revealed itself to be her sudden and incomprehensible gambling addiction, and…

  Shit…

  In the excitement of their little game of innuendos and then the hard info, he’d completely overlooked the fact that she’d been in the casino when she heard them talking. He was pretty sure her therapy discouraged return visits.

  But he knew they had a good food court and she’d eaten there before.

  I’m not going to judge.

  Hell, Anders would have frowned at him if she heard him judging another’s problem.

  He was trying. There was more to worry about than some harmless gambling, if the tribal rez—and damned Eagle River itself, although the town was outside the boundaries—was about to be overrun by thugs.

  He walked through the graveyard squad room. It seemed almost every single cop, uniform or not, was doing something related to the shooting, or filling in somewhere else to make up for those who were. What he needed was an expert, someone to run this intel past. He knew just who, and he bet she’d be around right now. Her section was made up of her, all by herself, and she was famously a late arrival and late-night lurker.

  He headed for an office at the far corner of the cavernous room.

  There was a soft glow from her desk lamp shining through an open door.

  Colgrave

  Damn it!

  Why did they have to do that?

  She held up the coffeepot. It was empty again. The last guy to help himself to the toxic sludge they often dared call coffee hadn’t bothered to put any on. But as punishment he had to be lying dead in a cube somewhere—no one could survive this stuff hitting the bottom of the stomach. On some damned television show somebody would have brought in an expensive espresso and cappuccino maker. But this wasn’t a damned show, and everybody was a cheapskate.

  Including her. Much easier to complain than to actually do something about the problem.

  Sergeant Danni Colgrave gave up on the coffee, figuring the Starbucks around the corner was good enough. The steady line of police customers was probably what kept the place in business.

  She stepped back toward her office and spotted a tall, muscular detective leaning against the doorway.

  “How ya doin’, Colgrave?”

  “Nick Lupo, what brings Homicide to my door? You guys never come around.” She smiled, softening the rebuke, and sidled past his bulk to enter her tiny office. Overstuffed file cabinets, a desk, a couple chairs bearing stacks of papers, a Cold War-era coat rack with her leather jacket bunched on one of its hooks, and some institutional style artwork, made up the office décor. Her computer monitor, a laptop, and a phone were the only modern things in there. Everything else was paper, stacks of file folders presumably arranged in some kind of order.

  She snatched a smaller stack off one guest chair, dropped it on top of another stack on her desk, then squeezed behind the desk. She waved Lupo into the empty chair, noting that today he was limping. He lowered himself into the seat.

  Either his injury was inconsistently painful or he sometimes forgot to limp. She didn’t care, it wasn’t her business. Rumors on Lupo ran the gamut. Hero all the way to crooked cop, even killer. His temper was well-known. The way IA’s Killian and Lupo had wrangled was epic, and then Killian had vanished. Some had wanted Lupo investigated, but there was no indication the disappearance had had anything to do with the homicide detective, and Killian had been hated by almost everyone in the Department. Hell, she had one encounter with the bastard herself, and she wasn’t terribly unhappy he was no longer stalking the hallways like the Reaper.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  She felt almost naked under his gaze. Not that way, but laid bare emotionally. She’d noticed he seemed to carry burdens, and sometimes his intensity was off the charts.

  He looked that way today.

  Before he could answer, she added, “I heard about the bus shooter. Any leads?” She was far removed from that duty, though on
call if somebody requested her. Maybe this was what he wanted?

  Lupo sighed. “That motherfucker’s not done, I can just tell. We just don’t have anything. He’s neutralizing the bus cameras, and then he’s just…disappearing. I just got some prelims from the crime scene techs…because it’s a bus, there’s DNA everywhere, dripping off every damn corner of the thing. Could take them months to try and separate all the different lines, if they even can. Ryeland’s getting pressure already, and there’s a task force…”

  “Of course, that’s what the politicians always want,” she said.

  “Sure, otherwise it looks like we’re not doing anything. But anyway, we have to try to predict what he’s going to do. If there’s just one more shooting before we get a solid lead…”

  “And you think there will be.”

  “He’s escalating. Traditionally that means we’ll be playing catch-up forever. Only way to get this guy is to get lucky. These days there’s a decided lack of luck floating around.”

  “So how can I help?” Colgrave said. She’d always believed in cutting to the chase.

  Suddenly Lupo seemed embarrassed. His hands fidgeted in midair.

  What’s this? she thought.

  “Uh, it’s not about the bus shooter. It’s, uh, something else. Just dropped into my lap. You’re the head of OC, and I need your expertise in that area.”

  She enjoyed his embarrassment a little. Like he was sorry he didn’t need her help for the bus shooter. But that wasn’t her area, anyway, so she was not likely to get sucked into it. Which suited her just fine.

  “Sure,” she said. “Like what?”

  “I think it may be old-school mob.”

  “We don’t get much old school. In fact, we’ve had so little organized crime intervention to do, I’m not sure how I can help.” She looked up at her ceiling, thinking. “You know the one legitimate local mob family from around here was busted up in the seventies and eighties, right?”

  He nodded. He remembered the DeLucas well.

  “There hasn’t been much action since then. We do keep eyes and ears on the up-and-comers, the Russians and Serbs. And now I hear about Albanians. Occasionally there’s a blip in what might be tong activity, but it’s usually related to geography because Chicago’s Chinatown is so close by. Otherwise we tend to get skipped. Though I figure one day they’ll discover us and our relatively open port.”

  Lupo looked over her head as he formulated his explanation. Colgrave stopped talking, so maybe he’d just spit it out.

  “Well, this is very unofficial, but I have a source who says a group out of Vegas and out East is about to muscle in on the tribal casino up near Eagle River.”

  Colgrave sat back in her chair, stunned. “Shit! Tell me more.”

  “Not much to tell. Appears some guys are in town to make sure no one gets cold feet. The interest will be as a silent partner, but that’s still in violation of the tribe’s treaty rights. They can’t accept such a partnership, even a legit one.”

  “You’re right, this wouldn’t be acceptable from any point of view. For one thing, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act requires that tribes receive at least seventy percent of their casino revenue, and any kind of partnership would likely be a crime after payroll was met. And that’s for a legit partner. Clearly, a mob interest would be off the books. They’d use it to launder money, for one thing. Plus it would be a stream of clean cash coming out, probably heading straight for numbered bank accounts.” She paused, letting it all sink in. “You sure about the source?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed, “the source is good.”

  “Anything more specific?”

  “No, but there’s zero chance there’s a mistake in what was overheard… The chatterboxes are enforcer types, sent in to smooth the way.”

  “Wait, Lupo, this is based on something somebody just overheard?” She couldn’t help making a face.

  He leaned forward. “I know, I know. This is why I’m coming to you in stealth mode. I don’t wanna get the big heads all aflutter. Yet. But I believe this is real. There’s something else. The current chief elder on the council, who’s automatically the CEO of the casino, seemed to be clueless about it, so—”

  “So you’re saying maybe they’ll fend it off? That it’s not a sure thing?”

  He smiled with a grimace. “What the fuck’s a sure thing, these days?”

  “I hear ya. But…”

  “Look,” he said, using his hands to punctuate, “I just figured I’d give you a heads-up, maybe the chance to stick your finger up in the wind, see where it’s blowing from. If it’s nothing, no harm done. But if it is something…”

  Colgrave sighed. “Okay, what outfit is this supposed to be?”

  Lupo grinned more sardonically this time. “Gonna have to work for it. I only have the names of two torpedoes, Johnny and Marty. Don’t know anything else, not yet.”

  Colgrave gave him an awed stare. “My compliments, I haven’t heard the term torpedoes with regard to organized crime in…like, four decades.”

  “Come on, Colgrave, you weren’t around four decades ago.”

  “I might have been.” Okay, I was about three, but still…

  Lupo stood up. “I’d better go, I don’t want to raise any flags by being here.” He looked down and met her eyes, and she noticed how great his were for the first time. Dark and haunted. Just her type. “I really believe my source. If this is what they heard, this is what they heard.”

  His intensity convinced her.

  “I’ll…make a few calls, reach out to some of my sources. How’s that?” Her hand hovered over the phone, as if she would do so immediately.

  “It’s a start.” He smiled. “Thanks, Danni. We don’t get to work together much. Ever. Maybe this is our chance.”

  “You predicting homicides?”

  “The way my life’s been, I have to say it’s definitely possible.”

  “You realize it’s out of our jurisdiction, right?”

  “You’re just doing me a favor right now. We’ll cross that other bridge if have to.”

  Or something like that, she thought as he left her office. She stared at her phone, thinking.

  Lupo

  There’s something about that Colgrave, he thought as he navigated through the squad room cubes to the oversize one he shared with DiSanto.

  Their desks were no longer the old-fashioned battered corporate workhorses they used to be. The modern cubes encompassed a single long desk on which both their computers sat, back to back, facing their own walls. File cabinets lined most of the space below the desktop. Stacks of paper and folders leaned in every direction on the desktop, because like cops all over they still wanted to see paper whenever they could. Smart phones and iPads were making inroads, but Lupo was old enough to have a foot still firmly planted in the old world of paper forms, even though every form was now available online and stored on servers. The department even had an IT division designing police apps in order to disseminate mug shots, rap sheets, and typically paper-oriented forms that once littered the squad room like confetti after a parade.

  But though Lupo appreciated the app idea, some of the other so-called improvements had proven less than reliable, if not outright buggy.

  He was privately snorting his distaste of the newer systems—not because they were new, but because they often simply did not work the way he wanted them to!—when he turned the corner ready to drop into his chair and…

  Heather. Heather Wilson.

  Damn it.

  She was sitting in his chair, her long legs stretched out so her feet could rest on a small square of desk not covered in Cousins Sub Shop, Chinese restaurant, or National Avenue Mexican joint menus, or the ubiquitous old-school manila police files. She was paging through one of the files.

  What the fuck?

  The last he’d seen of her, she was leaving for good. After the takedown of Wolfpaw, Heather and Jessie had almost killed each other. In any other world he might have been flattere
d, they’d almost killed each other over him.

  But instead it just pissed him off.

  He felt the rage boiling through his system now.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he blurted out, snatching the file out of her hands.

  But down below the surface of his skin, the Creature felt something completely different.

  She turned those eyes on him, eyes that had probably doomed lesser men to slavery at her feet.

  She had that effect on men.

  Hell, she’d even worked as a dominatrix. Sure, supposedly in pursuit of the story (and the Wolfpaw CEO), but he bet she’d liked it. Liked it a lot. She would have been perfect for the part.

  Heather Wilson was the closest thing to a sex machine he’d ever seen, and he’d seen plenty of deviancy in his days working his way up the ranks.

  Jesus, she was gorgeous. He immediately felt her impact on him when she turned her smile on him, her lush lips curling upward with genuine flirty delight.

  Probably not only at seeing him, but more likely also at his reaction. She was too perceptive, a quality that had served her well in her career as an investigative journalist and television anchor.

  Sure, she worked a story like a bull in a china shop, but made such a lovely bull that no one noticed or cared about the damage.

  “Nick, is that any way to greet an old friend?” She batted perfect eyelashes at him playfully.

  He was lost. Her eyes captured you even when they weren’t doing their werewolf kaleidoscope trick. She was just like that. He’d almost fallen for her the day he’d met her, as had good old Tom Arnow, then the sheriff of Vilas County. Those animal attacks had turned out to be anything but, and Heather had come out of that fiasco as a werewolf …something that should have been traumatic, as it had been for Lupo, but she had taken to it like a duck to water, as people in Eagle River—or DiSanto—would say.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he repeated. There was no reason to be polite, as she’d caused him a fair amount of trouble ever since she’d been bitten.