Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  She stood up abruptly, and Jason stood, too, although a little more slowly. She was biting her lower lip, her eyes were big with worry, and she looked so pitiful, and was at the same time so obviously summoning every bit of grit she had and trying to be brave, that he put his arms around her and pulled her against him, hugging her, holding her close. For a moment she remained rigid in his arms. Then some of the tension left her and she sagged into him, taking a ragged breath, letting her head drop to rest on his shoulder, sliding her arms around his waist.

  “I’ll take you home,” he told her. “You’re not alone. We’ll figure this out together.”

  “Iacono told me that if I tried going to my friends in the department again, or if I told anyone else, or didn’t come alone, he’d kill Jenny and the girls.” He could feel the too-rapid rise and fall of her chest against his. Her head came up, and she looked at him with a heartrending combination of rage and fear in her eyes. Although he usually considered himself even-tempered, Jason found himself wanting to kill the bastards who made her look like that. ‘’My sister never hurt anybody in her life. She’s a teacher. And Lauren’s nine, and Kate’s only seven.”

  “Would these people really shoot kids?” Tina asked, sounding horrified.

  “Edward Lightfoot had two daughters. They killed them and his wife,” Mick replied. “I don’t know if they would really shoot Jenny and the girls if I don’t show up, but I think they might. I can’t chance it.” She pulled out of his arms, scrubbed her hands over her face. “I could call everybody in the whole damn department from the chief on down, and they might not believe me. They might all really think I’m involved in those murders. And even if they don’t, look what happened when I called Curci.”

  “Forget the Detroit PD. I’ve got some friends at the FBI.” After he’d gotten fired—which a lot of people he’d worked with at the Bureau had not agreed with—he’d kept in touch, had done a few favors for some people here and there. If there had ever been a time to call those favors in, this was it. “Going in there alone would be suicide. We need some firepower. And some law enforcement we can trust on our side.”

  “Okay,” Mick said, and he was able to gauge the magnitude of her fear for her sister’s family by the fact that she didn’t offer a single argument in favor of her own department. Squaring her shoulders, she pulled out of his arms. Watching her gather up some things from the chair, Jason wasted a passing second or two wondering why she hadn’t been more surprised to find out that there were people he could call at the FBI.

  “Goddamn it,” Jelly said. “I hate those FBI assholes. In case you’ve forgotten, those guys didn’t give a flying flip if I got whacked. You hadn’t come back for me, I would have been wearing cement shoes.”

  “The good news is, you don’t have to see them,” Jason retorted. “You can stay right here and keep up with your golf. I’ll give you a play-by-play when it’s all over.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jelly gave him a disgusted look. “Like I’m going to let you go alone. With her. Hell, count me in.”

  Actually, Jason had been counting him in. He knew Jelly.

  “Me, too,” Tina said. “No way are you guys going without me.”

  Clothes over her arm, Mick, who was on her way to the bathroom presumably to get dressed, looked back over her shoulder at them.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said and smiled at them. The tremulousness of that smile was so absolutely non-Mick that Jason felt his heart turn over. It was right about then that he faced the fact that, on his part at least, this thing between him and Mick was way more serious even than he had thought.

  Call it a love affair.

  Then she spoiled the whole tremulousness thing by looking at him and adding fiercely, “I’m going to need a gun. If Mr. Paul Iacono makes one wrong move, I’m going to take a lot of pleasure in blowing him straight back to hell.”

  Now that was Mick.

  “Sig suit?” he asked. As far as handguns went, they were his weapons of choice.

  “Perfect.”

  As her eyes lit up with what he was pretty sure was (blood) lust, he had to smile a little wryly to himself. What was this, their equivalent of dirty talk?

  She was already out of sight before Jason remembered the things he had bought her in George Town because Tina had given him a heads-up that she and Mick were not exactly the same size, thus making Tina’s loaners practically useless. The lingerie he’d picked out was on the sexy side, okay, he admitted it, but the flimsy little panties and bras were wearable as well as being eye candy, and he’d already noted that she was suffering from a distinct lack of undergarments. Most of the rest of the stuff was island appropriate, but he’d purchased a pair of jeans and some sneakers for her, too, and that, plus the winter stuff the rest of them had lying around, should see her through one more frigid Detroit night.

  “Get the Cessna ready,” he said to Jelly when the two of them were back in the living area. He had already dispatched Tina back to the bedroom to give Mick the things he’d bought her in George Town. “It’s faster than the Bonanza. We don’t have much time if we’re going to make that deadline, and I need to make some calls.”

  “You know, Marino’s guys should be wanting the money we stole,” Jelly said slowly, looking at him. “And they should want you just about as much as her, because you saw those murder pictures same as she did. And they should be wanting me and Tina, too, although maybe not as much. She and I, we never saw anything.” He frowned. “What’s to keep them from hitting Mick the second they set eyes on her, is what I want to know.”

  “I thought about that. But I think they won’t, precisely because they want us. They have no idea we would just come along with Mick, they have no clue who we are, which means they don’t have any leverage to use to get us to show up, and they’re probably planning to torture our whereabouts out of Mick, along with the location of the money, as soon as they get their hands on her.”

  “Yeah,” Jelly agreed. Then he gave Jason a straight look. “You know as well as I do that there is no way they’re letting her get out of there alive.”

  Yeah, he knew. The knowledge made him feel like strangling the key players, from Marino on down, one at a time with his bare hands. But there was no way he was letting Jelly in on anything that revealed so much of how he felt about Mick.

  “That’s why we’re going with her” was all he said.

  “Just think how much easier our lives would be if you’d just let me shoot the damn woman back in Marino’s study like I wanted to,” Jelly groaned, taking himself off.

  Reconnecting with his FBI buddies was slightly labor intensive, because nobody was just sitting around the office waiting for his call, but when he finally got hold of the people he needed and walked them through what was happening (without specifically mentioning that he had stolen Marino’s ill-gotten cash, which was what had set the whole fiasco in motion; not that he believed any of them would object in any official capacity to his having relieved a crook of his illegally acquired cash), they were on board with enthusiasm. Murder, kidnapping, corrupt cops—it was like throwing a hungry dog a steak. When Jason hung up, he was assured of having all the firepower, and law enforcement, he could want waiting for them when they touched down in Detroit.

  Loaded down with gear, he was on the way to the Cessna with Mick when he noticed that she was clutching the disposable phone. He looked at it askance.

  “You still making phone calls?” he asked.

  “Just one,” she said. “I called my father. I was afraid to use his home number, or his cell, because of what happened with Curci, so I called the gym where he likes to hang out. Sure enough, he was there. He needed to know about Jenny, and I thought maybe there was something he could do to help, because he and Unc—he and Nicco are so close. He said he’d heard that Nicco had cut his vacation short and was back in town, although he didn’t know it had anything to do with me. He said he was going to find him and tear him apart. And I had to tell him no, he couldn�
��t, I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody and they would kill Jenny and the girls if I did. He went ballistic, but I calmed him down. I’m going to meet him at Twenty-ninth and Kennedy twenty minutes before I’m supposed to be at the Michelangelo.”

  “Jesus, Mick. Can you trust him?”

  “He’s my father.”

  The flight back to Detroit was tense but uneventful. Zach Wheeler, now special agent in charge of the Chicago office and one of the old buddies Jason had contacted, had arranged for them to land at Selfridge, a National Guard field near Detroit, just in case Marino’s guys were keeping watch on the airports. When they touched down, it was full night, and snowing.

  “Better get your winter gear on, guys,” Tina said from the back of the plane as they taxied down the runway.

  Minutes later, when the plane had stopped and he was getting up to open the door so that they could descend to the tarmac, Jason saw that everybody but him—he’d been a little busy landing the plane—had followed Tina’s suggestion: island casual had been replaced by Eskimo chic.

  “Looks like we got us a welcoming party.” Jelly was looking out through the open door prior to heading down the steps. From Jelly’s glum tone, Jason wasn’t surprised to see half a dozen people he had no trouble identifying as FBI agents, despite the fact that they were dressed in civilian clothes, spilling out of a van and heading toward the plane.

  “Let the good times roll,” Jason responded dryly, and Jelly nodded and went on down the steps. Tina was behind him, and Mick, bundled in a black ski jacket of Tina’s over the form-fitting jeans he’d bought her, would have followed directly after her if Jason hadn’t stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “Here,” he said, passing over the Sig he’d promised her, along with a couple of extra magazines.

  “Thanks.” She took the gun, stuck it down her waistband in the small of her back, then dropped the ammunition in her pocket. She was back in full cop mode, all cool efficiency and tough as nails.

  “Mick.” When she looked up at him inquiringly, he slid a hand around the back of her neck and kissed her, a brief, hard kiss that despite the circumstances still managed to get his blood revving. When he let her go, he thought he saw a reflection of the same thing he was feeling flaring through the grimness in her eyes. “Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

  “I won’t,” she said, and turned and walked down the stairs.

  They left the airport in two vans. He and Mick were in the first one with Wheeler, who had flown in with another agent from the Chicago office to oversee the operation, and two local agents. Jelly and Tina were in the second van with four more local agents. Wheeler had been all for stashing Jelly and Tina in a hotel until the action was over, but Jelly objected, and anyway, they were running out of time. It was already a little after ten.

  “So here’s the plan,” Wheeler said, throwing an arm over his seatback and turning to look at Jason and Mick as they drove. Dark-haired and square-jawed, a few years older than Jason, he was in the front passenger seat, with a local agent, Something Rice, Jason hadn’t quite caught his name, at the wheel. Jason and Mick were in the middle seats, with two more local agents behind them. “We fit Mick with a tracking device. See? We got one just for girls.” He held up what looked like one of those clip things women used to hold their hair out of their face. A barrette. “If they do a body search, they won’t find this. Mick, you walk up to the restaurant. I figure when they show up, they’re going to tell you to get in their vehicle, which is what we want you to do. They will almost certainly take you to wherever they’re holding your sister and her kids. We follow you, and the thing’s done. Chalk up one more win for the good guys.”

  “What if they don’t take me to wherever they’re keeping Jenny and the girls?” Mick asked.

  “We grab whoever’s holding you and apply pressure until they talk. It’s messier, but the job can get done that way, too.”

  The next few minutes were spent getting the tracking device fastened securely in Mick’s hair and making sure it worked. The snow wasn’t much more than scattered flurries, but the gray slush on the sides of the highway hadn’t changed. The bright lights of downtown came into view, and Jason felt himself starting to get tense. Then, as the convoy got off the expressway and started rolling through the backstreets toward the restaurant, Mick reminded them about her father.

  Wheeler tried to protest, but Mick was having none of that, and a few minutes later the convoy rolled to a halt in a parking lot at Twenty-ninth and Kennedy.

  A blue Chrysler Sebring with smoke coming out of its tailpipe was sitting in a dark corner near the Dumpster. Mick got out of the van and walked toward it, her hair blowing in the wind, which was cold but not nearly as arctic as it had been the other night. Jason followed. She hadn’t said he could, because he hadn’t asked. But no way was he letting her go alone. At this juncture, father or not, he wasn’t making the mistake of trusting anybody.

  She acknowledged his presence with a glance over her shoulder, but she didn’t say anything.

  The Sebring’s window rolled down as she approached the car. Leaning in, she engaged in conversation with the driver. From where he stopped a few feet behind her, he couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Jason saw a florid-faced, beefy, sixty-something man with hair a little redder and a lot thinner than Mick’s. He was good looking in a former football player or boxer gone to seed kind of way. Jason wouldn’t have known instantly that he was Mick’s father, but since he did know, he could see the resemblance.

  When she straightened and turned away from the car, she was looking grim.

  He gave her an inquiring look.

  “I’m going to ride the rest of the way in with my father. The motorcade deal we have going on here is too conspicuous.” She was telling, not asking, and she was already walking toward the van to tell Wheeler of her decision by the time she finished talking. Jason was reminded once again that she was a cop. He trailed her to the van, watched Wheeler’s face as she told him the same thing.

  “You think they’re not going to spot two identical panel vans parked anywhere near the restaurant?” she asked when he started to argue.

  Wheeler opened his mouth to say something, appeared to think better of it, and said to Rice, “We need some cars.”

  Jason couldn’t hear the reply, but he assumed it wasn’t exactly affirmative by the way Wheeler smacked his forehead with his hand before turning back to Mick.

  “The surveillance van is already in place,” Wheeler told her, just like there hadn’t been that little moment. “We can track you from it, plus we have a mobile unit with us. We’ve got a ton of agents mobilized for this. As soon as you arrive at your destination, we’ll be knocking at the door.” He smiled briefly. “Or knocking it down, as the case may be.”

  Mick nodded and turned back toward the Sebring.

  “I’m going with her,” Jason said to Wheeler, who nodded. Jason was just heading off after Mick when Wheeler called after him, “Davis!”

  Jason looked back. Wheeler tossed him a handheld radio. “Official communication device. This is what we’ll be using. From one agent to another.”

  Jason caught it, nodded his thanks, and put it in his pocket as he jogged after Mick.

  “I’m going with you,” he told her when he caught up with her at the car. She was already opening the front passenger door, getting ready to slide in.

  She didn’t argue, and he got into the back.

  “Who’re you?” Mick’s father said, looking at him through the rearview mirror.

  “Jason Davis,” Mick introduced him. “This is my father, Charlie Lange. Drive, Dad.”

  Lange drove slowly out of the parking lot, turning left on Twenty-ninth. As they moved off down the street, the vans pulled out after them. There was a reasonable amount of vehicular traffic, and they were maintaining a safe distance, but Jason had to admit they were a little conspicuous.

  “He FBI?” Lange asked, glancing at Mick.

  �
��No,” Mick answered.

  “PD?”

  “No.”

  “CIA? DOD? ATF?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “He’s a friend.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “I’m armed,” Jason volunteered, mildly amused despite the circumstances.

  “Just don’t shoot me in the back,” Lange said with another glance in the rearview mirror.

  “You didn’t forget what I told you about not contacting Uncle Nicco, did you?” Mick asked. “No putting the word out you were looking for him or anything?”

  “Not even a phone call,” Lange replied virtuously. “Are you kidding? With my daughters’ and my granddaughters’ lives at stake? I’m going to cut the fat bastard’s balls off when they’re safe, but that’s later. I did find out—just innocent asking around!—that he’s back in the city.”

  “I was pretty sure he would be. This is close enough, Dad. Pull over. I’ll walk the last block.”

  “Mick—” Jason and Lange spoke simultaneously as he pulled over, then looked at each other through the rearview mirror.

  “You got a gun?” Lange asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “They’ll search her. They’ll find it,” Jason said.

  “It’ll give them something to find,” Mick replied. Which Jason couldn’t argue with. In any search, if there was something you wanted to hide, like the tracking device, it was always better to have another item on you for them to find as a distraction.

  “What about a cell phone? You got your cell phone?” Lange persisted.

  “I have a disposable, but I’m about out of minutes.”

  “Take mine.” Lange handed it over.

  “Where am I going to put that?”

  “Stick it in your shoe. Loosen up the laces, stick it on top of the tongue, and tighten ’em up again. I busted a guy once carrying a gun like that. Pretty impressive. We didn’t find it until he was strip-searched down at the jail.”

  Mick made a face, but she did it. “There, okay?” she asked.

  “Be careful,” Jason said as Mick opened the door.