Strictly Need to Know

by MB Austin

  “How long before the fire started?”

  Hannah’s clinical tone made Rose want to throw the tea at her. “I don’t know. I was asleep. Maybe three hours. What does it matter?”

  “Every bit helps,” Hannah replied calmly, as if Rose hadn’t raised her voice at all. “How did she perform during the fire?”

  How did she perform? Rose blinked. Did this woman love her goddaughter at all? “Like a trouper, of course. You trained her, after all.”

  “Rose. The next few hours are critical. If you are concerned about her fitness, I need to know specifics. How did you know about the fire? How did she respond?”

  Oh, of course she cared. And she could help. Rose sipped the tea, recalling the details while Hannah waited quietly. “The alarm went off, and we both jolted awake. At least, I’m pretty sure she was asleep, too. At first I thought it was a drill like the one a few weeks ago. But then I smelled the smoke. Before I was even off the bed, Maji was calling 9-1-1 and checking the door handle, at the same time.”

  “Very good,” Hannah said, touching Rose’s hand lightly. “Breathe.”

  Rose took a second to come back into the kitchen, safe. “Then…she sent me into the bathroom to soak a towel and put it under the door. While she got the window open and checked the outside.” She closed her eyes, picturing the events. “She made me climb down first, talking me through the holds. By then there was…the roof was on fire, I think. And then she was next to me, pushing me away from the house as we ran.”

  “And who thought to bring your go bag?”

  “Maji.”

  “So she was all right, despite the smoke and heat and noise?”

  Rose nodded. “Focused. Maybe angry, but not scared. We moved the Humvees for the fire trucks that were coming, and she used one to push Ricky’s Corvette off the drive.” Rose smiled faintly at the memory. “Then she talked to the fire chief while the medics checked me out. I think I met Brenda. Karen’s Brenda. She’s nice. I wanted to follow Maji—I could see her over by the trucks—but Brenda wouldn’t let me. Said Maji would be back for me. She knew her name. Maji’s name.”

  “It’s all right,” Hannah said, gently squeezing Rose’s hand. “You’re safe. And Maji will be fine. Get some rest. I’ll be right here.”

  Rose wanted to wait up, too, to keep hearing Hannah’s calm voice until Maji walked in the door, whole. She yawned, not able to stifle it. “What about Angelo? Seeing him off?”

  “Not safe enough for you. I’m sorry.”

  Rose nodded, and stood. She made it as far as the living room couch. Hannah spread an afghan over her, and crouched down to look at her, eye to eye. “Is it always like this, to love one of you?” Rose asked.

  Hannah seemed to know what she meant. “If you choose Maji, you will have to let her go over and over and over. And it will never be easy. I can’t tell you whether that’s worth it, or not.”

  “Ava thought so.” The pain in Hannah’s eyes made Rose want to take the words back.

  “Ava knew me from the beginning, and she knew what I did, and why. She was a clinical psychologist in Israel before we moved here. We lived and loved in the shadow of death, and we never took each other for granted.”

  “But then you lost her.” Why were the tears running down her face, when she’d never even met the woman?

  Hannah brushed Rose’s cheeks with her thumb, a faint smile in her eyes. “Death will take everyone you love, whether you are ready or not. When she was first diagnosed, we actually joked about that, the irony of cancer threatening us more than bullets and bombs.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rose said, struggling to keep her eyes open. Hannah’s face blurred.

  “Shh,” Hannah soothed. “Sleep now. Just rest.”

  Angelo laid three bulletproof vests on the kitchen counter in the Big House, while Gino watched. “Ma’s going to need a place to stay.”

  “Of course she’ll be here,” Gino answered the unspoken question. “We’ll look after her. And you—try to be discreet for a while, over there. Word travels.”

  Angelo suppressed a smile. That was as close as Gino would ever get to saying gay out loud. The door to the veranda opened, and Frank and Maji walked in.

  “All quiet by the boat,” Maji said, wiping her hands on her jeans. Her forearm was bandaged, and there were a bunch of Band-Aids on her hands, but she looked ready to roll. Tired, a little sooty here and there, but ready.

  Angelo gave her the nod and reached for the metal case of tokens. He stopped himself—first things first—and handed a vest to Frank.

  “Where’s Ricky?” Frank asked, removing his jacket and shoulder holster in preparation for putting the vest on.

  “Out cold,” Angelo answered.

  “Now, you two, you make sure he gets there safe,” Gino said. “They are riding over with you, right?”

  “All the way to the airstrip. In full battle rattle.”

  “Come again?”

  Maji finished strapping on her vest, right over her leopard-print shirt. “Vests and shit. Just in case.” She frowned at Angelo. “I still don’t like how long we’ll be on the open water.”

  “Coast Guard’s thick on the Sound, on our route.” He took the last vest off the counter and slipped it on. “We’ll come in close to the Navy base, where they keep the subs. Even Sirko wouldn’t try anything. I told you, it’s as safe as we’re going to get.”

  Maji sighed. “It is what it is.” She turned to Gino. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. B. I won’t be coming back.”

  “I hear you. Things change, get in touch.” To Angelo’s surprise, he offered her his hand, and they shook.

  As the three of them walked down the lawn toward the water, Angelo nudged Maji. “Very chummy.”

  “Yeah. Lupo offered me a job, too. Please tell me I was allowed to turn him down.”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw him nod. “After today, just the loose ends we discussed. And, Maji—”

  “Don’t.” Whatever he would say that started with her real name, she didn’t want to hear. “Let me focus.”

  “Hooah.”

  Frank entered the boathouse first, and on his clear they followed.

  Angelo walked down the dock and placed his laptop case and the locked metal case on the stern of the Grand Banks. “Cast off the bow,” he said.

  Maji looked at Frank, shrugged, and walked to the bow cleat near the end of the dock. A hint of light warmed the sky over the Sound. She crouched and started unwinding the line from the cleat.

  A hand grabbed her from behind, and a pair of booted feet landed on the dock. Over her shoulder she saw that the hand belonged to a wet-suited figure in an inflatable, the boat his buddy had undoubtedly just disembarked. She spun in her crouch, twisting the man’s arm as the boat scooted under the dock. She let him fall backward into it and rolled herself down the dock, toward land.

  Coming to her feet facing him, several feet between them, she registered first the gun trained on her. And then the red dot on his chest. She slowed her breathing, ready to move.

  “Looks like a standoff,” Angelo said. When the man didn’t blink, he said, “Repeat that, Ri.”

  Maji repeated the message in Russian, and added, “What do you want?”

  “The two cases,” he said in a calm voice.

  Maji spared a glance out to the water and noticed for the first time a small sub partially surfaced about a hundred yards out. “He wants the cases,” she said in English. “For the sub Sirko sent.”

  The man’s face twitched at the sound of Sirko’s name. He said something curt in Russian, and Maji realized it was a name. The second man popped up by the dock across the empty slip, and Maji guessed he’d dropped off the inflatable into the water while she skirmished with the other one. Now his torso stood above the shallow water near the boathouse’s far wall, his rifle pointing somewhere behind Frank.

  “Frank,” Angelo said slowly, “don’t.”

  “Sorry, Ang,” Frank said, and Maji turn
ed just far enough to see him lift the two cases off the boat’s stern. “I can’t let them kill you. Or her.”

  “Frank,” Angelo said, “you give them those, I’m as good as dead. And look—our friends got sights on them both. See?”

  Frank looked at the red dot on each diver’s chest. Surprised, as if he’d had no idea Dev and Tom were in the rafters with rifles.

  “Ang,” Maji said, “let him come as far as me.” To the gunman on her dock she said in Russian, “He’ll hand them to me, and I’ll hand them to you. Nice and easy.”

  The two men in scuba suits looked at each other, noted again the red dots, and scanned the rafters. “Slowly,” the one in the water said.

  Maji took the first handle in her left hand and reached the other hand behind her for the second. Make them work for it. As the case touched her leg, instead of grasping for the handle she pulled her gun. She flung the hard case at the man on the dock, rolled toward him, and came up shooting in the spot where he had been a second before. The other man was gone as well, and as she turned to run back down the dock toward Angelo, she saw the laptop case being pulled underwater between the docks.

  The guys swung down out of the rafters, still holding their rifles, while the divers tossed the two cases into the inflatable and roared off toward the waiting sub. Dev sprayed bullets into the water after them, then turned with a smile to join the team again.

  Curtains on performance number one, Maji thought. She was confident they had been convincing enough that Sirko would not hesitate to use the stolen chips and software. Now for the hard part.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  At the sound of gunfire, the three FBI vehicles waiting outside the Benedetti estate roared in. The first stopped to cuff the two guys at the guard station, while the other two barreled up the long drive to the Big House. Guns drawn, six agents knocked, announced themselves, and entered the quiet house. They nearly ran into Nonna, in her robe.

  “Not here! By the water.” She pointed the way through the house to the back stairs.

  Lead agent SA Seacrest motioned a team to search the house and led the others at a run toward the kitchen and the back lawn beyond it. “Land the bird,” she said into her comm as they went.

  The sound of distant rotors cut discussion in the boathouse short.

  “Go time,” Angelo said.

  Maji gave Dev, Tom, and Frank each a quick glance. They were ready to move the show to where a new audience—one with access to the house’s security cameras—could see. She gave Angelo the nod and took a deep breath, willing herself to relax. “Do it.”

  When Angelo’s fist connected with her nose and cheekbone, the crack sounded more inside her head than out. She pinched the throbbing bridge of her nose with one hand and wiped blood away from her mouth with the other. Swallowing blood would make her puke again, and there was no time for that.

  “Shit,” Angelo said. “Did I mess up your vision?”

  The eye might swell shut, but not right away. Maji shook her head and grabbed Frank by his jacket collar. “Roll, and then stand up. When you get hit, stay down.”

  He nodded, and she jammed one foot by his hip, rolling herself backward and him out the door of the boathouse. She let him fly, rolling herself into a low crouch that Tom could clear easily. At the crack of the rifle, she stood and ran out the door after Frank.

  As Maji checked Frank’s pulse—which was strong, but dangerously high—Angelo came backing out of the door, his hands raised. A bullet to the vest knocked him backward, and she sprang toward him, leaping over Frank’s prone form.

  As Maji tackled Angelo, more pops sounded from inside the boathouse. She felt a sting on her shoulder, one of Tom’s precise shots just grazing her. Then the ground rose up to smack Angelo, and her ribs crunched into his shoulder. Maji stayed on top of him, a human shield, while pulling her gun back out of the waistband holster. As she fired blindly through the door, the engine of the big boat roared to life. She hoped Dev and Tom made it to their Coast Guard capture without any interference. Sirko’s crew had provided enough surprises already.

  Overhead, the rotor noise grew quickly louder.

  “Why am I still here, Rios?” Angelo asked as Maji rolled him onto his back and made a show of checking his vitals.

  “Don’t worry—a good soldier always has a Plan B.” She found his jugular and took a slow breath to steady her hand before inserting the tiny needle.

  “Ow,” he said, his beautiful brown eyes widening. Then he smiled crookedly. “Tell Ma and Rose I love them.”

  Maji nodded, too choked up to reply.

  “Now, you gotta sell it.” His voice weakened, even as he clung to consciousness.

  “Stick to your own lane,” she replied.

  “You are my lane.”

  “Not anymore.”

  His face struggled to smile, as he slid into oblivion. “Fuck you.”

  “I love you, too,” she told him, fighting against the tears. Maji left her gun on the ground, covered in her fingerprints, and stood. She faced into the churning air and the grit stirred up by the helicopter with FBI on its side. Waving her arms, she yelled, “Medic! Medic!” into the dying sound of the slowing rotor.

  The SWAT team deployed rapidly, covering the boathouse even as their medic helped Maji get Angelo onto a backboard and loaded into the chopper. She accepted a hand up into the bird, and as they took off she looked down at the scene. Two agents were cuffing Frank, now sitting up. Toward the house, two agents flanked Gino, who walked with his hands cuffed behind him. She pulled the headset on and spoke to the agent watching her. “The VA hospital. They’re standing by for us.”

  Rose peered through the glass in the door to Angelo’s room in the ICU. The sight of Angelo in the hospital bed, hooked to monitors and a drip line, pale and intubated, reminded her of Grandpa Stephano in his last days. But he wasn’t dying, dammit. They just had to control the bleeding in his brain, keep him stable.

  “ID, ma’am?” the deputy by the door said.

  Rose frowned. “Oh, I…I don’t have my purse.”

  The door cracked inward a few inches, and Maji’s voice rasped, “She’s family.”

  The deputy nodded and pushed the door farther open, allowing Rose to walk through.

  The fluorescent lights overhead were mercifully dimmed, and the curtain between the beds was pulled back. The near bed was empty, its bedding rumpled. Maji limped away from Angelo’s bedside toward her. Rose felt torn between embracing her and rushing past her to Angelo. His eyes were closed, a ventilator tube taped in place in his mouth. She stepped toward Maji, reaching for her. “Ri.”

  Maji stopped her hand before it made contact, limping over to the empty bed and leaning back on the edge. Rose gasped at the sight of her face, the left eye swollen nearly shut, the skin red, and the bridge of her nose bandaged.

  “I’m fine.” Maji turned her face away, so only the undamaged side showed.

  “The hell you are.” Rose stepped closer and slid her hand onto the back of Maji’s neck, just under the braid.

  Maji stiffened but didn’t pull away. “Where’s Jackie?”

  “Still unconscious. Too much sedative.”

  The door shushed open, and a man’s voice said, “Sergeant, I have the—”

  Rose turned and looked at him, pulling her hand back to her side. A man in scrubs looked at her, then over to Maji.

  Maji nodded, and he continued. “The papers for you to sign.”

  She held out her hand for the clipboard, face blank.

  He stopped short of her. “Let’s get that leg elevated again, okay?” His tone suggested it wasn’t really a request.

  Maji glared at him, but scooched back on the mattress and turned herself, swinging her legs up. Rose noticed for the first time that one pant leg was cut up the back from cuff to knee, an Ace bandage wrapped around the ankle. Maji hit the control buttons on the bedside table, and the back of the bed tilted her upright. She put her hand out for the clipboard, took it,
skimmed through a few pages, signed it, and handed it back.

  He took it back from her. “Ma’am.” Then he simply turned and left.

  Rose looked a question to Maji.

  “They need to induce a coma. Until Jackie gets here, I have to sign off on his care. He gave me power of attorney.”

  “When?”

  “Couple years ago. He has mine.” She smiled grimly and moved her legs farther over, making room for Rose. “Sit. We need to talk before they come question me.”

  Rose perched on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap. “How can I help?”

  Maji leaned forward and took one of her hands. “I’m sorry. But I need to know who came to the house, what they asked you, and what you told them.”

  “Two FBI agents came. I didn’t have much to tell them, but I begged a ride here.” Rose had been desperate to see Angelo, and Maji as well. “Hannah gave me a message, though. She says your vacation is nearly over. And the firewall was never down. Does that make some kind of sense to you?”

  Maji’s eyes moved to the wall, then back to her. “Yeah. Thanks.” She tilted her head toward the other side of the curtain. “Go talk to Ang, huh? Can’t hurt.”

  Maji woke to the sound of Sander’s raised voice. “I don’t care about your list. Let me the fuck in!”

  She made it to the door and cracked it enough to be heard. “He’s family, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When Ricky or Gino finally deigned to visit, she planned to withhold that line.

  Sander looked like hell, and he didn’t bother to hide his impression of her. “Jesus H. Christ on a raft.” He looked past her. “I need to see him.”

  “You flew back? Just like that?” She held her ground.

  “No. We rerouted to Newfoundland, and I got a charter back.”

  “We?”

  “Me and couple of the guys, for security. Papa went on to Austria. But I couldn’t leave Angelo behind.”

  Maji moved aside, and he slipped past the curtain to Angelo’s bedside. Looking at him holding Angelo’s limp hand, stroking his forehead, she almost felt sorry for Sander. “Stay as long you want.”