by Paula Graves
"Picayune," she supplied.
"—Picayune instead of calling police," Cooper continued. "Do you know how freaked out her father is at the moment?"
"Do you know what an accomplished actor my father is?" Maggie spat back. "He knows if I'm with Jack, I'm safe."
"Well, he might if you hadn't lied to him about Jack puttin' moves on you," Laura murmured.
Maggie glared at the other woman. "He didn't believe me."
Laura held up her hands. "Look, let's get out the hallway, okay?" She moved forward, toward the doorway at the end of the hall, pulling her keys and something small and black from her purse. Cooper fell in step with her. After a moment's hesitation, Jack started toward her as well, tugging gently at Maggie's elbow, urging her to follow. Remy brought up the rear.
Laura entered her apartment and turned in the doorway to face them, her index finger lifted to her lips, shushing them. As Maggie watched with growing confusion, Laura walked slowly around her apartment, the black gadget in her left hand extended. She waved the device over table tops, under shelves, along the back of the chic tomato-red sofa and coordinating cream chairs that comprised the seating area nearest the door. Maggie couldn't see much beyond that part of the loft apartment from her position behind Jack and Cooper, but she could tell from their expressions that Laura continued her odd ritual throughout the rest of the lower floor.
"What's she doin'?" Remy whispered in Maggie's ear.
"I think it's some sort of voodoo ritual," she whispered back, only half-joking. Jack glanced back at her, his expression stern but a slight twinkle of amusement in his blue eyes. It was the first hint of a positive emotion from him in over an hour. Maggie hugged it to her heart.
Laura reappeared in the doorway. "It's okay. You can come in." She stepped aside and let them enter.
Cooper put his hands on his hips. "Want to explain what that was all about?"
"You think your place may be bugged," Jack surmised.
"I know my place may be bugged. My phone is."
Jack cocked one eyebrow. "By whom?"
Laura kicked off her pumps and dropped gracefully onto the sofa, propping her feet on the cream-colored ottoman with studied nonchalance, as if she weren't fully aware of how artfully the pose displayed her shapely legs. "Let's say it wasn't anyone who went to a judge for permission."
"Blevins," Maggie murmured.
Laura nodded. "Or one of his men."
"Blevins?" Cooper echoed, sounding doubtful. "Mark Blevins, the cop?"
"Mark Blevins, the very dirty cop," Laura responded. She patted the sofa cushion next to her, her gaze directed toward Travis Cooper. "Let me tell you a story."
Cooper sat next to her, his lean body turned toward her expectantly. Jack crossed to one of the chair across from the sofa and sat as well, leaning forward. Even Maggie found curiosity tugging her into the circle. She took the chair next to Jack and motioned for Remy to sit beside her on the floor. As the boy sat, cross-legged, Laura began to speak.
"Eight months ago, the U.S. Attorney's office for Eastern Louisiana opened an investigation of corruption in the New Orleans Police Department. Unlike past investigations, we were lookin' not at widespread criminal activities but somethin' smaller and, frankly, harder to pin down. The allegations were second-hand or third-hand, rumors more than evidence, datin' back for a couple of years. If we hadn't received such a sheer volume of tips, it's unlikely we would have thought an investigation was necessary—or legal."
"And you think Mark Blevins is part of this corruption?" Cooper still sounded skeptical.
"I can't prove it yet, but yes." Laura dropped her feet to the floor and sat forward, her hands clasped in front of her. "Four months ago, I stumbled into a very lucky break. A police detective named Gerald Phelps backed into a retaining wall at a convenience store in Slidell while I was getting gas at the same place. The impact popped his trunk and tangled his back bumper in some of the rebar holding the concrete wall together." Her lips curved slightly. "When he started freakin' out, trying to rip off the bumper to get free of the rebar, I got suspicious."
"Something in his trunk?" Jack guessed.
"A hundred kilos of street-grade coke, some of it with evidence tags still on them. And an athletic bag brimming with hundred dollar bills."
"Let me guess—he started singing?"
"Like a nightingale. I got the feelin' he's been wantin' out for a while. He's been workin' with us, helping us try to build a case against Blevins and the other dirty cops."
Maggie gazed at her, stunned and angry. Laura and her fellow attorneys had known all this time that Blevins was dirty and hadn't done anything to protect Remy?
The same thought apparently occurred to Remy, who pushed himself off the floor and took a step toward Laura, his hands curling into fists. "You knew the dude was a creep. Why didn't you people tell the cops to listen to me about him? You let him kill the Bakers, man! I can't believe this!"
Jack rose before Maggie could, placing his hand on Remy's arm. "Come on, son, let her finish. There'll be time for hashing out the mistakes later." He sat Remy in the chair and stood behind him, holding the boy's thin shoulders with a firm but gentle grip. "I assume you had a good reason for staying quiet?" he asked Laura.
"We thought so at the time. We don't yet have the evidence to arrest Blevins. Phelps hasn't been able to give us any sort of definitive proof that Blevins is even involved in the corruption, much less actin' as head of the operation. Phelps is too far down the food chain." Laura met Remy's glare, unflinching but not defiant. "Remy, I didn't think you could get a jury or a judge to believe you. There were too many strikes against your reliability. I hoped that if you were discredited, Blevins wouldn't feel threatened enough to try to do something. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I was wrong."
"I don't know why I should believe you," Remy growled.
Jack's hands smoothed over the boy's shoulders, somewhere between a warning and a caress. "Why would Blevins be bugging your phone?"
"Because he thinks he has me under his control."
Chapter 15
An hour later, they took a break. Laura went to make a pitcher of iced tea, leaving Jack with Maggie, Remy and Travis Cooper to make sense of everything she had just told them.
If he didn't know better, Jack would have thought she was relating the plot of some fantastical movie she'd seen—an untouchable villain hidden behind the face of a saint, a criminal cabal protected by labyrinthine layers of secrecy, a group of helpless innocents swept up into a maelstrom of madness and murder, and a U.S. Attorney who set herself up for blackmail in order to get closer to the heart of the whole mess.
"Letting herself get nabbed with three ounces of heroin—she's either brave as hell or crazy as hell." Cooper stood and began to pace a tight circle in front of the sofa.
Jack crossed to the sofa and took the seat Cooper had just vacated. He looked at Maggie in the chair across from him, slumped and silent, her gaze fixed on the area rug beneath her feet. She had spoken little throughout Laura's recounting of the investigation into Mark Blevins' activities, her face growing paler as moments stretched into minutes. She'd had a long day and an eventful night, just as he had.
Oh, he was still angry about her lies. Hurt that she'd kept what she'd done for him. Did she think he wouldn't understand? Hell, he'd taken a foolish chance himself to get the money they needed to keep going.
She hadn't trusted him enough. Maybe she never would. And fixing her inability to trust was beyond his abilities; he'd finally learned his lesson about trying to fix people.
But that didn't mean he'd stopped loving her.
He touched her knee. Her gaze lifted to meet his, her solemn expression unchanged. "You okay?" he asked.
She dropped her gaze, but not before he saw her eyes grow bright with moisture. "I'm Fine."
"A lot to process, huh?"
She licked her lips. "Do you believe her?"
He sat back, his fingers trailing ove
r the curve of her knee before letting go. "It fits with what we already knew."
Before Maggie could respond, Laura returned to the living room with a tray carrying five glasses of iced tea. She set the tray on a table next to the sofa and passed out the drinks.
"Blevins will never trust me enough to let me inside his organization." Laura picked up her story where she left off. "Which is frustrating, because I'm positive he keeps meticulous records on everything he's involved in."
"Would he risk a paper trail?" Cooper asked.
"I don't think he can help himself," Laura said. "It's not about money for him. It's about power. It's some elaborate puzzle, and he's the only one who sees where all the pieces fit. He gets off on that fact. For him, the records of his dirty transactions would be like trophies to a serial killer."
"Something to remind him of his accomplishments," Cooper said. "His superiority."
"And nobody has a clue where he'd keep his meticulous records?" Jack asked.
"Why'd he kill the hit-man from Philly?" Maggie asked. Every gaze turned to her, including Jack's.
"We don't know," Laura admitted.
"Let me rephrase. Why would anyone kill a hit-man?"
Jack felt the same niggling sensation at the edge of his mind that had been there when Laura first revealed the tattooed man's identity. There was only one reason to kill a hit man. "Tamburello could finger Blevins in a murder for hire."
"Milton Berry," Cooper breathed, his mind apparently following the same path as Jack's.
Two months earlier, in the middle of an unusually heated race for New Orleans Mayor, Milton Berry had made waves in the Republican primary. A charismatic black businessman with solid conservative credentials, Berry had looked likely to beat his primary opponent and clinch the Republican nomination.
Until he'd ended up dead in an abandoned building near the French Quarter with a bullet in his brain.
"Why would Blevins want Milton Berry dead?" Laura's tone was more curious than skeptical. "I thought everybody suspected his opponent in the primary."
"Rogers isn't the kind of guy who'd put out a hit. We scoured his background and his contacts. Squeaky clean."
"You finally settled on Klan elements, right?" Laura asked.
"Only by default."
Maggie made an impatient gesture, pulling out of her slumped position and leaning forward. "When I was trying to get protection for Remy, the D.A. told me if I was sure Blevins was a murderer, I should take it up with Mayor Davies."
Laura made a soft sound, drawing Jack's attention. Her expression lit up with understanding. "They're poker buddies."
Maggie nodded. "Maybe Davies didn't want to go head to head with Berry in the general election. He knew he could beat Rogers—he'd done it once already. But Berry was getting buzz."
"Reggie Davies is ambitious but I can't see him ordering a hit," Cooper cut in.
"He didn't," Laura said. "Blevins did it on his own."
"As a favor?" Jack asked.
"As leverage," Maggie said softly.
Jack looked at her. Her gaze was locked with Laura's, her face as alive with excitement as the other woman's.
Laura nodded slowly. "All he'd have to do is hint that the Berry assassination was his doing. He wouldn't have to say it outright. Davies would get the message, and he'd be at Blevins' mercy for fear he'd end up blamed for the murder."
Jack's stomach curled into a knot. If the new theory was true, Mark Blevins was thorough, careful and utterly without a conscience. He kept himself largely insulated from the criminal acts of his associates, which would make proving his involvement difficult at best. But Jack knew, gut deep, that the only way to get Remy and Maggie out of danger was to bring Blevins down. "We have to find those files."
"Believe me, I've tried," Laura said. "Gerald Phelps has put his own neck on the line tryin' to help me figure it out, but we can't pinpoint a place to look. Phelps has even been to his house and looked around."
"A guy that careful wouldn't keep the files in a place that could be connected to him that way," Maggie said.
"Why'd he cap the dude himself?" Remy interjected. He flushed a little as everyone turned to look at him. "I mean, this guy's so careful, like you say, keepin' his nose clean and sh—stuff—why'd he shoot Tattoo Guy himself instead of gettin' someone else to do it?"
Great question, Jack had to acknowledge. Getting his hands dirty wasn't Blevins' style. "Maybe he didn't want anyone in his crew to know he was involved in this particular crime."
"He'd have to feel safe." Maggie's brow furrowed. "He wouldn't have done it himself if he thought there was a chance to be seen. He's into the details, right?" She directed the question to Laura, who nodded. "He'd want to be sure he was completely in control. That's why he's been so ruthless in coming after Remy, even though nobody believed him. Blevins doesn't do loose ends."
Another puzzle piece clicked into place in Jack's mind. He turned to Remy. "Where did you see the murder take place?"
Remy frowned. "In an alley between a couple of warehouses around Duvalier Street. Not far from the youth center."
"Do you remember the exact street?" Cooper asked.
Remy shook his head. "I was haulin' ass 'cause I was already late. But when I heard the shot—"
"I thought you saw the shooting," Cooper interrupted.
"I hear the pop, I look up and see the cop standin' over Tattoo Guy, holdin' a gun. I don't see nobody else—who d'you think shot him, Santa Claus?" Remy's look of unadulterated teenage disdain was comical, despite the seriousness of the situation, and Jack had to bite back a laugh.
"He didn't see you or you'd already be dead," Laura said.
Remy's look of exasperation faded, replaced by tension. "Yeah. Lucky me." Laura's cell phone trilled, and the boy jumped. He grew red again and made a chuffing noise to hide his embarrassment, but Jack wasn't fooled. The kid had been through hell over the last week, and he was close to the limit of what he could take.
They were going to have to come up with a solution. Soon.
"Did you tell them you saw us?" Laura had moved away from the group to answer her phone, but her question came out in a tense, higher-pitched tone that drew Jack's attention to where she stood by the kitchen bar. Her body was almost rigid, her eyes wide and bright with alarm. "Okay, Mr. Lowry, thank you for the heads up." She shut off the phone.
"What is it?" Cooper asked.
"Two men showed up at Lowry's pawnshop in Picayune twenty minutes ago. They sniffed around my car and then went inside to ask Mr. Lowry some questions. Lowry told him I'd been there and that I'd picked up Maggie. But he didn't like the way they were actin', so he thought he'd better call to let me know."
"What do you think it means?" Maggie asked.
"Someone was tracking her car—probably some sort of real-time GPS system," Jack said as Laura dropped onto the sofa next to Cooper. "I have one on the Beretta for security purposes."
"And that means they know you're with me," Laura added.
"They know Remy's with you, too." Maggie's face grew ashen, and her eyes darkened with fear.
"So let's get y'all out of here." Cooper pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "I can arrange a safe house."
Laura covered his hand, stopping him. "Don't." When he looked at her like she'd lost her mind, she added, "I think there may be someone in your office who's tipping off Blevins."
"That's crazy."
"Maybe not," Jack said. "I contacted two people asking questions about Maggie and Remy—you and Laura. I don't think either of you told Blevins. But someone did. Did you talk to anyone else about my questions?"
Cooper frowned. "I had my secretary call Jim Becker at the D.C. office of the Secret Service. Just to make sure you were still in good standing. I mentioned you'd asked about the Remy Chauvin case because of your prior connection to Ms. Stone. But Carol's always been completely reliable."
"She wouldn't have thought that was classified information, would she?" Jack ask
ed. "She might have told almost anyone in passing—a friend, her boyfriend . . ."
"Maybe we don't need a safe house," Maggie said.
Jack turned to look at her, surprised. He would have thought that running to the next rabbit hole would be exactly what Maggie would want.
But she met his look of inquiry with a steady gaze. "This won't be over until somebody takes Blevins down, right?"
"I'm afraid you're right," Laura agreed.
"So let's do it. Let's find his files."
"How? I don't have enough for a warrant. And if we start poking around, he'll move the files to an even safer place."
Maggie's lips curved with a smile so reminiscent of the naughty sex kitten who'd seduced him the night before, Jack's breath caught in his chest.
"That's what I'm counting on," she said.
The plan was simple. While Jack was out on the street, attaching the real-time GPS tracker under the front bumper of Blevins' car, Maggie would approach Blevins inside the restaurant where he was eating lunch. She'd tell him she'd figured out where he kept his secret files and that if he didn't leave her and Remy alone, she'd let the F.B.I. know as well.
"It's got to be somewhere around the alley where he killed Tamburello," Maggie had explained as she outlined her idea. "He felt safe there, safe enough to commit murder with his own hands. He knows that place. That's where he'd keep the files."
Even Jack had agreed, although he had balked at the idea of Maggie confronting Blevins. "Laura's the one who's built up the relationship with Blevins' crew—"
"Not Laura. He'd suspect a trap." Maggie shook her head. "But he thinks I'm vulnerable. He'll buy my trying to blackmail him to stay away from us."
"You are vulnerable." Jack shook his head.
"She's right," Laura said quietly. Jack shot the other woman a fierce glare that Maggie might have enjoyed seeing under different circumstances. Bur Laura stood her ground. "It's direct enough a threat that he'd check it out, but he won't think Maggie has the resources to set up a sting."
"We should wire Maggie so someone can listen in on the conversation with Blevins," Cooper suggested.
