Protector With A Past

by Harper Allen

  "You're a nice woman, and Lopez is lucky to have you for a friend," she answered stiffly. "But touchy-feely isn't my style, Erica. I don't feel comfortable discussing my personal life at the best of times."

  Her words were just short of rudeness but Erica wasn't put off. "I knew someone like you once," she mused. She looked at her dark blue linen skirt and flicked a nonexistent speck of lint from it. "She was wound as tightly as a top, but everyone saw her as a competent, unflappable success. She never let anyone get close enough to her to realize that she was screaming inside. She was me, of course," she added quietly.

  "You?" Julia stared unbelievingly at the other woman. "But you seem so—so centered," she protested.

  "And you seem so detached." Erica met her gaze. "But you're not, are you? You didn't stop being a cop because of a cool and rational career decision—you left because you were hemorrhaging to death, and you didn't know any other way to stop the bleeding."

  Those clear blue eyes saw too much—way too much, Julia thought. With relief she heard the crunching of tires on gravel and turned, surprised but grateful that Cord and Lopez had returned in time to terminate this excruciating tête-à-tête.

  But the vehicle slowing to a stop in front of them wasn't the sports utility that Cord had rented yesterday. As the gleaming black limousine idled a few feet away, she realized that it had to belong to the funeral home that had taken care of the arrangements today.

  "They'll be bringing more flowers. The church was full of them," Erica said in a low tone, but Julia wasn't listening.

  Her intuition, after two years of disuse, was rusty. But once upon a time she'd relied on it, not only for her own safety, but for the very survival of the children she'd been assigned to protect. She'd been trained to see below the surface—to notice the incongruity of a little boy who wore long sleeves on a hot summer day to hide bruises, the terrible secret that a little girl might signal by mutilating a favorite doll, the puppy chew toy in a household where there was now no pet—a possible sign of a murderous violence that was just one step away from claiming a tiny, human victim.

  And now that intuition was telling her that a limousine with windows tinted so darkly that its occupants were invisible was not the vehicle that would be used to transport floral tributes. "Erica, get up and run back inside the gates," she commanded in a terse voice, her lips barely moving as the door to the limousine unlatched with an audible and solid-sounding thunk. "Make your way back to those workmen as fast as you can."

  "What's the matter?" Alerted by her tone, Erica had risen. Her shoes lay on their sides on the grass where she'd kicked them off.

  "Now!" Julia snapped. "It's you they want—you're supposed to be an object lesson, just like Sheila was. Run, Erica!"

  The car door was opening even as she spoke, but the slender, elegant blonde was already moving through the gates and over the manicured lawns, her escape witnessed by the two burly men hastily exiting the rear doors of the limousine. As they approached, Julia saw the telltale bulges in their jackets. Her leg muscles tightened unconsciously as if to ready herself for instant flight, but logic told her that DiMarco's men weren't interested in her. To kill indiscriminately would nullify the message they wanted to send—that they were targeting specific individuals who were somehow linked to the investigation of their boss.

  "I know you're not here to pay your respects to the dead," she said flatly. "What do you want?"

  "You Julia Stewart?" The man who spoke had a curiously light voice, as if something had damaged his larynx. She was surprised into a slight nod. At it, he smiled, reaching into his jacket.

  "You're making a mistake." She'd left it too late to run, Julia thought. The best she could do was stall for a few precious seconds and hope that Cord and Lopez would arrive in time. The burly man's hand withdrew from his jacket as the frantic hope raced through her mind, but instead of a gun he was holding what looked like a short leather stick. It was a blackjack, she thought, confused.

  "No mistake, Miss Stewart. You're the one we want," he said in that oddly delicate voice. Before she could react he stepped nimbly behind her and brought the weapon down on the base of her skull.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  «^»

  They were out in the Sunfish and the boom had swung around, but it was different this time—this time the boom had attacked her, not Davey. She'd started to fall overboard, but he'd jumped up and saved her. This was the way it was supposed to have happened, Julia thought happily. She was crying, but not because her head hurt so much. Davey had never died. Dad wouldn't make her invisible anymore and Mom wouldn't be sick so much and she wouldn't know, always and for the rest of her life, that she was responsible for the terrible thing that had torn her family apart…

  "This is the way it was supposed to have happened," she insisted groggily, struggling to hold onto the dream as futilely as she so often struggled to escape the nightmares. She could hear muffled music and then a voice that stirred a faint chord in her memory, although she couldn't immediately place it. It was an older man's voice, very slightly accented and tight with anger.

  "I told you not to lay a hand on her—what didn't you understand about that, you fools? This was not the way it was supposed to be!" The words alone held no threat, but the thread of icy fury that ran through them was clear. She knew who he was now, and felt dazedly thankful that his anger wasn't directed at her.

  Vittorio Falcone's displeasure, though less easily roused than it once had been, was still something to be avoided at all costs. His enemies had a way of vanishing.

  There was the sound of a door being opened, and as it did the music got briefly louder. Then it closed and the room fell quiet. Julia opened her eyes and met the knowing gaze of the man watching her.

  "Hi, Vittorio," she said in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. "I take it I'm at the strip club?"

  "Yeah. I heard you were out of a job."

  The thin lips stretched into a smile as he sat down behind a battered metal desk overflowing with papers and cash register receipts.

  "But the customers aren't paying to see ribs, cara. You'll have to put some meat on that scrawny frame before you can work here at the Bootie Palace."

  His hands looked a little more arthritic than she remembered, but Don Vittorio's hooded dark eyes still reminded her of the bird of prey that was his namesake, and the aura of ruthless power that hung around him as palpably as a cloak had never depended merely on physical strength. Despite the fact that he based his operations out of this shabbily utilitarian office and made a point of knowing everything that went on in the club, he could never have been mistaken for an elderly small-time businessman. There was something about him that commanded respect.

  He still had a full head of thick, steel-gray hair, and he still dressed the way he had when she'd first met him—a soft white shirt, its sleeves rolled halfway up forearms that had once been more muscular than they were now, gray flannel pants and always a vest. He kept his shirt buttoned up to the collar, but once she'd seen the small gold medallion that he wore around his neck. St. Jude, he'd told her with an oddly rueful smile—because he himself was probably a lost cause.

  It had been a telling remark, and when he'd made it Julia had known without asking that any favors Vittorio Falcone might request of St. Jude would be for his grandson, not himself.

  He had lost his wife years ago, and his only son had been killed during a brief but bloody power struggle between rival mob families. Falcone had paid a high price for his power and wealth. He was determined that his beloved grandson's life would follow a different path.

  "I have to make a phone call, Vittorio," she said firmly. "The people I was with when I left so abruptly for this meeting will be worried."

  Cord wouldn't just be worried, she thought apprehensively—he'd be going crazy blaming himself for having gotten her into this.

  "They know where you are by now. I sent one of my men with a message as soon as those fools
told me how they'd handled things," Vittorio said with a grimace. "Again, my apologies, my friend."

  She sat up cautiously, her immediate worries subsiding, but still determined to contact Cord herself as soon as Vittorio Falcone had told her what he'd brought her here to say.

  Friend. Vittorio Falcone didn't use the word lightly, she knew. He had acquaintances, associates and underlings by the score, but he could count the number of people he called friends on the fingers of one hand. She was one of those few.

  "How is Anthony these days, Don Falcone?" She seldom used his title, but the old man had just honored her, and she wanted him to know she was aware of that.

  "He's been accepted at Harvard Medical—can you believe it? A Falcone at Harvard."

  "He'll make you proud of him. One day you'll have to call him Dottore," Julia said huskily. The old man gave an unsteady little laugh, his eyes suspiciously bright.

  "He still asks about you, you know," he said gruffly. "He knows how much he owes you. I do too, cara."

  Anthony Falcone had been a vulnerable teenager on the road to self-destruction when Julia had first come in contact with him years ago. He'd been one of her earliest cases, and at first no one had realized that the rebellious young runaway recovering in the emergency ward from a near-fatal sample of angel dust laced with strychnine was the grandson of Vittorio Falcone. Anthony had refused to identify himself to Julia when she'd questioned him in the hospital, and the next day when she'd shown up again she'd been told that he'd gone.

  With a workload that she could hardly keep up with, it would have been easy for her to simply chalk him up as one more runaway who didn't want to come home and go on to her next case. But in her brief interview with the underage teen, Julia had sensed the terrible emotional turmoil that he'd been going through, and for the next two weeks she'd spent every off-duty hour scouring the city for him. By then the papers were full of the news that Don Vittorio's grandson was missing and believed kidnapped, but no one linked that information with the young boy who'd walked out of the hospital.

  She'd found him, finally, and not a moment too soon, unconscious in a cardboard box in a garbage-strewn alleyway. This time when he'd been rushed to the hospital someone had recognized him, and Vittorio Falcone had been notified.

  He'd sat by his grandson's bed for three days and three nights, never leaving his side, until the boy was out of danger and on the mend. Then he'd paid a visit to Julia. She could name her price, he'd told her harshly. Whatever he had was hers, in return for saving his Anthony's life.

  She'd turned down his money incredulously. If he really wanted to repay her, she'd told the mob boss, he could get his grandson into counseling to ensure that whatever problem he'd been trying to run away from was resolved. Vittorio himself was probably partially to blame for the situation, she'd gone on heatedly. Armed and stone-faced minions had stood stolidly by, sure that the slender young woman angrily chewing out their impassively silent boss was signing her own death warrant.

  Instead, Don Vittorio had kissed her hand as he'd left with his phalanx of bodyguards. He'd followed her advice and repaired his relationship with his grandson, and over the following years he had kept her apprised of Anthony's achievements.

  And he had added her to the very short list of people he considered friends.

  "You should be proud, Vittorio. You brought up a fine young man," Julia said with affection.

  "He would have been dead if it hadn't been for you." Under shaggy gray brows, the hawk-like eyes bored into hers as he delivered the blunt statement. "How many others like him have there been?"

  Disconcerted, she looked away. "It was my job. There were too many I lost."

  "And now you have another one to protect, eh?"

  Shocked, her eyes flew to his. "Don Vittorio—how did you know that?"

  He calmed her agitation with an upraised hand. "Don't worry, it's not common knowledge. But me, here—I'm like a spider sitting in the middle of a web. Anything happens at the edges of my web, I hear about it. I put all those pieces of information together and do some thinking and I come up with answers." He frowned. "Then I tell myself, Vittorio—maybe your friend Julia, who two years ago walked away from everything she cared about and who told you she didn't need your help when you offered it—maybe she just might need your help now. They think the killings of the detective and his wife were ordered by Vince DiMarco, don't they?"

  Julia hesitated. "It's the only possibility they've come up with so far," she admitted slowly. "And his death seemed designed to—to send a message."

  It was still unbearably hard to talk about. If Vittorio Falcone had been involved, even peripherally, in arranging Paul's gruesome murder and Sheila's senseless execution, Julia thought suddenly, her friendship with him would disappear as if it had never been. She would destroy the old man herself if she had to, but he would pay for his crime.

  "Don't look at me like that, cara." He sounded testy. "I wasn't part of—"

  With a violent crash, the door to his office flew open. From the club beyond, the sound of high-pitched screams and angry shouts drowned out the music, but all Julia's attention was focused on the two men entering Don Vittorio's inner sanctum.

  One of them was Cord. The other was a stranger, but whoever he was, he was holding his right arm close to his chest and his face was drained of all color. He stumbled ahead of Cord into the room, and only then did she see that he was being propelled forward by the barrel of the automatic Cord was pressing into his spine.

  "Are you all right, Julia?" Cord's question was tersely urgent.

  Vittorio held up his hands in a placating gesture. "She's fine, my hotheaded young friend. I brought her here to give her some information, that's all." He rose and walked to the door calmly, flashing a disgusted look at his disarmed minion. "Come. We must talk, Julia—but I advise that your impetuous Detective Hunter conceal his weapon before the rest of my men see it." He pushed open the door to the public area of the club, leaving them no choice but to follow him. Julia darted an incredulous look at Cord.

  "You were aware that I knew Falcone. What the hell were you thinking of?" She kept her voice low, but it throbbed with anger.

  "Some thug collars me in the precinct parking lot where I was just about to start setting up a search for you and tells me not to worry, you're with your old pal the crime boss," he whispered back at her. "That was supposed to reassure me? You don't know me at all, do you?"

  His face was inches from hers and his voice was a furious whisper. Her lips parted in shock. "I'm the man who's loved you since the day you stopped wearing pigtails. Didn't it occur to you that I wouldn't believe you were safe until I heard it from you? You've got my damn cell number—was it too much to expect that you'd phone me yourself? I thought you'd been killed, dammit!"

  She'd known he could get angry. She hadn't realized he was capable of directing that anger at her, no matter what the provocation. Cord had always had boundless patience and infinite forbearance where she was concerned.

  "You're right, I should have—" she began.

  "Shove it, Julia," he snapped tiredly. "It either comes from the heart or it doesn't. I don't need the Emily Post version."

  He strode ahead of her. Even the back of his head looked rigid with anger, she thought, dismayed and oddly disconcerted by his curt dismissal.

  As she sat at the secluded corner table the old man had selected, Vittorio sighed. "I have a grandson. He will never conduct his business in such a place as this." He inclined his head toward the large stage in the middle of the room, where a woman with impossibly platinum hair and even more impossible breasts was going through her routine.

  "You despise me because of who I am and what I do. Fair enough. We are enemies, in a way." Vittorio turned to Cord, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. "But no one will ever despise my grandson. As he grows into manhood he will be honored and respected, and one day the name of Falcone will come to stand for something very different than it does now.
This I owe to my friend here." He nodded at Julia, his expression softening as he did so. "But she has never let me repay her, and Vittorio Falcone, as you may know, does not like unpaid debts. So when I hear what has happened to her friends, and I learn who is thought to be responsible, I know that this is my chance to pay back some small portion of what I owe. The whole debt, of course, can never be paid in full," he said softly, the fierce brown eyes brilliant with emotion.

  "Short of having Vincent DiMarco gift-wrapped and delivered to us for questioning, I don't see how you can help us," Cord said dismissively. "And that's not about to happen. Even the police haven't been able to locate him—the man's gone underground."

  "Ahh…" Vittorio spread his callused workingman's palms out in an expansive gesture that took in the darkened club, the garishly lit stage, the afternoon drinkers. "But this is the underground—and I rule it."

  As soon as the words left his lips, she heard the sudden sound of a commotion coming from the main entrance of the club. A group of businessmen who had been enjoying the show from a nearby table turned their heads to look, their slightly befuddled expressions turning to sharp alarm. Hastily grabbing the suit jackets they had shed and tossing bills down beside their latest round of drinks, they exited hurriedly. Other patrons were exhibiting similar signs of nervousness—either leaving as quickly as the table of businessmen had or turning to stare straight ahead at the stage, their faces carefully blank.

  "Not gift-wrapped," Vittorio said, his lips thinning in distaste. "But yours to question."

  The reason for his distaste was as apparent as the reason for the sudden consternation that had swept the club. Weaving their way through tables that emptied as if by magic before them came four of Vittorio's men, all of them solidly built and grim-faced. The man they were frog-marching toward the corner table looked to be in his thirties, with fleshy good looks that were right now distorted by rage and humiliation.