Tag, You're It!

by Penny McCall

  Jack shrugged. “Nothing illegal about putting money into a treasure hunt.”

  There was if you tried to kill the person who allegedly found it. Not that Sappresi had made an attempt on his or Alex’s life. Yet. But Sappresi had finally made a mistake. Its name was Bennet Harper.

  “What you need to focus on here is getting him off your back,” Jack said. “Fast, before he finds out you’re in town, and he comes after you. Or her.” He jerked a thumb in Alex’s direction.

  Not advice Tag needed, and not just because of his thirst for justice. Sure, he wanted Sappresi to pay for killing Zukey. He wanted Alex safe more.

  “What would you be willing to do to get him before he gets you?”

  Tag didn’t have to think very hard to get Jack’s point, not when he knew the other agent’s recent history. “You’re suggesting I take the fight to him, like you did with Corona.”

  “I’m saying sometimes you have to throw out the rule book,” Jack said. “Zukey knew that.”

  “That’s what got him killed.”

  “Tom Zukey was a pro. He had good reasons for what he did and how he did it.” Jack pulled his chirping phone out of his coat pocket, looking at the readout while he finished his thought. “Something went down he wasn’t ready for. It can happen whether you’re following the rules or not.”

  Jack answered his phone, listened for a half a minute, then disconnected without speaking. “We have to go,” he said to Aubrey.

  “Really?” She streaked across the room, squealing as she threw her arms around Jack’s neck. She was positively glowing.

  Jack looked like he’d had a bad plate of oysters.

  “She’s not pregnant, is she?” Tag asked.

  Jack went from green to white, ample payback for the Indiana Jones outfit.

  “It’s my first assignment,” Aubrey said.

  “Don’t get all worked up.” Jack unfastened her arms from around his neck. “It’s a small case, and I’m not letting you carry a gun.” He looked at Tag. “She has a tendency to wound me. All the time.”

  “I don’t need a gun,” Aubrey said. “I have a backpack.”

  Jack rolled his eyes, but there was that ever-present sparkle of amusement.

  They took off without more than a quick good-bye, leaving Tag and Alex alone, staring at one another, both with their own thoughts.

  “So what were you and Aubrey talking about?” Tag finally asked Alex.

  “The map, but we already know that’s a dead end. Did you find out who the mystery investor is?”

  “I think so.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a matter for the FBI.”

  “It’s revenge.” She walked over to him. He couldn’t have missed her disgust if she’d hit him over the head with it. “You’re going after Sappresi.”

  “You were listening.”

  “I heard enough.”

  “That was the important part.”

  “No, the important part is what’s going on in there.” She tapped his forehead. “Sappresi killed your partner and tried to kill you, and you’re going back for more.”

  He started to deny it.

  “Don’t fall into your old habits,” Alex said.

  “Okay. I’m going to deal with Sappresi. Alone.”

  She crossed her arms, one eyebrow inching up to her hairline. “You know what, Donovan? That’s exactly the kind of idiocy I’d expect from you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “YOU’RE GOING TO CALL ME STUPID AND JUST walk away?”

  Halfway to the bedroom, Alex turned back. “That’s what you’re doing.”

  He started to deny it, but she came back and drilled a finger into his chest. “How would you take it if I expected you to sit here doing nothing while I went after somebody who wanted me dead?”

  “He killed my partner, Alex.”

  “Yeah, I know that. What I don’t understand is why you’re in such a hurry to take him on. All the ducks are ready to quack, Tag—”

  “And while we’re waiting for them to line up in a nice, neat row, what’s to keep Sappresi from coming after us? Once he finds out I’m back in town it’ll be open season, Alex.”

  And there, in his eyes, was the real reason he wouldn’t wait. “You’re afraid he’ll come after me.” It might have given her a warm little glow, if he hadn’t been putting his life on the line to save hers.

  “He thinks you found the treasure. By now your mother has put the word out. That means Harper knows you’re in Boston, and if Harper knows Sappresi knows.”

  Something skittered along Alex’s nerves, something that burned off her temper. This must have been how Tag felt when he found out Sappresi was within his reach, she thought, excited, nervous, anxious to get the show on the road. There was a healthy dose of fear mixed in, too; probably not something Tag was suffering from, but she didn’t do this sort of thing on a daily basis. And she wasn’t afraid Bennet Harper would actually harm her. She was afraid she’d never get a chance at him.

  “I’d think you were speechless,” Tag said, “but I know you better than that. What’s cooking upstairs?”

  Alex shrugged. “You’re right, I just didn’t want to say it.”

  “You’re not going to try to talk me out of going after Sappresi anymore?”

  “What good would it do me?”

  “None.”

  “Then good luck.”

  “That sounded final,” Tag said.

  “I won’t be here when you get back. If you come back.”

  “I will, Alex, and when I do you’ll still be here.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She whipped around, heading for the bedroom. She made it three steps before it hit her. She closed her eyes and took a few seconds to let some of the pain and anger settle in so she could keep her voice steady. She wasn’t strong enough to face him. “You have agents downstairs,” she said without turning around.

  “You’re staying put until all the loose ends are tied up. Even if I have to put you in custody to do it.”

  “I’m already in prison,” she said, her heart feeling like lead in her chest.

  “This is a nicer cell than we usually provide,” Tag said, “but you’re right about the men downstairs, and their job is to keep you in, just as much as it is to keep the rest of the uncollected players out.”

  “You’re going to lock me up while you go out and finish this thing, after everything we’ve been through?”

  “You’re not FBI, Alex.”

  She did turn then, and she didn’t give a damn what he saw on her face. “Now you want to make me into a victim because it’s convenient for you? After all your big talk about not living my life that way?”

  He strode across the room, took her upper arms in a grip that was sure to leave marks. She couldn’t feel anything but the wounds he was leaving on her heart.

  “Do you think I could stand it if you got hurt? Do you think I could even concentrate on what needs to be done, knowing you were in danger?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.” She brushed his hands off and stepped back. “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  “Alex…” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking every bit as miserable as she felt. But he wasn’t changing his mind. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  ———

  TAG WALKED OUT AND LEFT HER THERE. SHE’D GIVEN him no choice. But it was eating at him.

  Jack Mitchell was right. Tag had to go after Sappresi before he came after them. Tony the Sap hadn’t gotten his nickname because he was an idiot. He’d started his career of crime as a hit man, one who’d taken a great deal of pleasure out of beating his victims to death with a lead-weighted bag—a sap. He didn’t do his own dirty work anymore, but he was still a dangerous guy. Too dangerous for Tag to leave him walking the streets when he had a vendetta to settle, and Alex was on the other side of it.

  Tag knew she understood what he was doing and why. She was only being diff
icult about it. Because he’d hurt her, and he’d let her down. She wanted to see this thing ended as much as he did, and he’d cut her out. In her shoes, he’d be pissed, too—hell, he was pissed. Anger had gotten him to the lobby, but the anger was gone, and now he was at war with himself.

  Now would be the best time to go after Sappresi. Tag knew that. Sappresi worked out of his home in Savin Hill. Usually his wife or his kids would be around, except they’d flown out a couple of days before on their annual school’s-out vacation. That meant there’d be one, maybe two of Sap guys in the house. Because he wouldn’t be expecting any trouble.

  All Tag had to do was go in, throw the truth in his face, and sit back and wait for Sappresi to make a move on Harper. It was going to stick in Tag’s craw to rescue the guy who was setting Alex up to the homicidal mobster. But it had to be done.

  Better, anyway, than Tony fleeing the country, which was what would happen if Tag waited for Mick and Franky to be picked up and sweated for their statements, and Sappresi got wind of it. Not a chance he could take. Sure, he’d be risking his life, but Zukey would have understood.

  And anyway, Alex was safe—burning mad, but safe. The sooner he walked out that door and did his job, the sooner he could get back and talk her out of her bad mood, just like he’d always done.

  So why was he standing in the middle of the lobby, staring like a lunatic at the bank of elevators, instead of walking out the front door? Alex, he thought, and Sappresi.

  She’d left him feeling… guilty, he decided. Unsettled. Sappresi had undermined Tag’s self-confidence months before. And here he was, mooning over Alex’s hurt feelings when he should be running out the door to finish something so important to him he’d nearly died trying to take care of it the first time.

  Again, no contest, and since running would be overkill, he glanced at the elevators one more time and walked away. He made it to the sidewalk before he stopped again, the late morning pedestrian traffic flowing around him like a logjam in a river. He rubbed a hand over his chest, not liking the way it felt. Tight, a little painful, but the real source of wrongness was lower in his gut. And then it hit him, and he was racing back inside, punching the elevator button even as he decided not to wait for it and slammed through the door to the stairs. He took them two by two, but it wasn’t fast enough. He was all but passing out, black spots dancing in front of his eyes, chest burning with every breath he dragged in. His effort wouldn’t be enough, though. Alex was going to die.

  ———

  NOT FIVE MINUTES AFTER TAG LEFT, THE DOOR TO THE hallway opened again. Alex’s heart jumped, settling back to flutter in her chest and leave her nervous, breathless. Hoping. But she wasn’t running back to Tag. He’d walked out, he could make the first move.

  She finished tossing the rest of her things in her mother’s Chanel bag, including the Miss USA outfit she’d worn that morning. She’d changed back into her jeans and T-shirt, beating herself up for using what few feminine wiles she possessed to keep Tag from walking away. The only thing worse would have been if they’d worked.

  Whether she wore couture or denim, she was the same woman, and that woman had never been able to keep up a pretense for long. She was pretty good at torturing herself, though, which was what she was doing by putting off the inevitable.

  She turned, took a deep breath, and headed out of the bedroom. She got as far as the doorway before she stopped.

  She’d had some half-baked idea of trying to sneak out of the hotel and having her own reckoning, just like Tag was doing. The man standing in the suite’s sitting room made it unnecessary.

  “How’d you get in here?” she asked him.

  “I charmed the maid into believing I forgot my key,” Bennet Harper said with a smile that proved his claim. But the maid wouldn’t have known him well enough to see the jittery edge in his eyes.

  “Did you charm the guards downstairs, too?”

  “They were pathetically easy to elude,” he said. “All it takes is a bit of self-confidence and a delivery man’s uniform.”

  “While they’re looking for a guy in a suit.” For the first time she noticed his clothing: cheap blue workpants and a blue shirt with an oval name patch on the breast pocket. His attitude of entitlement hadn’t lessened one bit, but it was slicked over with a thin sheen of panic.

  Alex leaned against the door frame, hoping she looked a hell of a lot more relaxed than she felt. “You didn’t go to all this trouble because you couldn’t wait to see me again.”

  “Actually, I did.” Bennet jerked forward half a pace and stopped, running a hand back through his hair. “I knew you’d be here, in this hotel. Your mother’s precious reputation demands it.”

  Absolutely, Alex thought, she’d chosen the Colonnade on purpose, but not for her mother’s sake.

  “It was a mistake, Alex.”

  “Was it?” she asked him. But it wasn’t the question that got to him, it was the confidence in her voice when she asked it. And it was her smile. She could see the puzzlement and the worry. For the first time Bennet was beginning to wonder what he’d walked into.

  He swore with a foulness that surprised her—she hadn’t thought he’d known words like that—and then he tore through the suite. Alex took a seat at the bar and waited for him to finish his tantrum.

  “There’s no one here but the two of us,” Bennet said.

  “Did you think I needed help to take you down?”

  Bennet reached into his pocket. “I’ve got the gun,” he said, pulling it out and pointing it at her.

  “So you have,” she said, a little zing of satisfaction mixing in with a healthy dose of fear. Having a gun pointed at her was nothing to scoff at, even if she’d wanted exactly this. “Now what?”

  “Your mother, Alexandra. She’s ruining me.”

  “Good. I asked her to.”

  “Then you—you can make her stop.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Alex said. “Gossip has a life of its own. You know how word of mouth works, you use it whenever you can. The only difference is it’s not working in your favor this time.”

  “It will be,” he said, some of the nerves backing off behind his sneer. “First you’re going to call your mother and tell her to stop spreading lies about me. Then we’re going for a short drive.”

  Alex snorted softly. “You going to shoot me and throw my body into the bay?”

  “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

  “Maybe not personally, but you’re going to hand me over to Anthony Sappresi.” He bobbled the gun, and she smiled. “You didn’t know we’d figured that out, did you, Benny?”

  “Don’t call me Benny,” he snapped, his whole body shaking now, vibrating with a mixture of rage and fear.

  “You used to like it when I called you that.”

  “I tolerated it, just as I tolerated you.”

  “Yes, I caught on to that. It took me a while, but then I was young. And stupid. I’m not anymore.” She cut her gaze to the door, and he jumped to exactly the conclusion she was going for.

  “You’re stalling,” he said, “waiting for that nobody who’s fucking you to come back and save you.”

  “That nobody is an FBI agent, and he didn’t fuck me, Bennet, you did. And quite a few other people while you were at it. It wasn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the last, but your little run of fraud is over. The FBI knows all about you and your latest treasure scam. They know about Anthony Sappresi, and they know you set me up so he’d kill me instead of you.”

  Alex eased off the bar stool and took a step toward him, then another. “And what makes you think I need anyone to save me? I live in a place where everyone carries a gun. I’ve learned to know who’s dangerous and who’s not.”

  Bennet swiped a hand over the back of his mouth, a hand that shook. “Stay away from me,” he warned, “I’ll shoot.”

  “No, you won’t. If you were capable of doing your own dirty work, you wouldn’t have needed to set me up to get Sapp
resi off your back.”

  “I don’t want blood on my hands,” Bennet shot back, “I’m too smart for that.”

  “You don’t have the guts for it. Or should I say the balls?”

  “You’ve gotten crude since I dumped you.”

  Alex laughed. “I can be as crude as I choose. I’ve still got the pedigree you’ll never have, no matter who you marry or how much money you accumulate. You’ll always be the kid who grew up in a trailer because you can’t let it go. Just like you couldn’t let go what happened between us. That was your mistake, Benny.”

  She stepped forward again. “And I dumped you, remember? After which I left town, but that wasn’t enough for you, was it? You shoved into my life again, you tried to get me killed, and you left me no choice but to come back here. For you.”

  “Another mistake,” he snarled, jerking the barrel of the gun toward the door, then again, and when she still didn’t move, it was clear he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

  “That always worked in the movies, didn’t it,” she scoffed.

  His eyes darted around the room then back to her face, and a bead of sweat dripped from his temple down to the collar of his shirt.

  Alex walked toward him again. “Shoot me,” she dared him. “You can go to Sappresi and tell him what a big man you are. You won’t have the money, but you can find a whole new flock of sheep to fleece and pay him off with the proceeds.”

  “D-don’t Alex,” he stammered, “I’ll pull the trigger if you make me.”

  “Go ahead,” she said, her voice getting louder, her tone more belligerent. “If you can find the balls to pull that trigger do it.”

  And he did.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  WHEN TAG HEARD THE GUNSHOT HIS HEART stopped beating, his feet stopped moving, and he swore time stood still. The only thing still ticking along unhindered was his imagination. Worrying about Alex getting hurt was nothing compared to the possibility of her getting dead. Because he hadn’t gotten there in time. Just like Zukey.

  Harper shrieked something unintelligible, and Tag knew Alex had pushed him over the edge. He had the key card in his pocket, but he went through the door, going in low and fast, not so much worried about his own safety as aware of the fact that he wouldn’t do Alex any good if he was shot trying to get to her.