Hot Pursuit

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Of course. “Could he have hidden behind one of the other dumpsters?” she asked, as she walked back a bit in that direction. There were other access doors in the buildings on both sides of the alley. Some had steps leading down, some had old-fashioned bulkhead entrances. But every door that Alyssa could see had extremely secure-looking locks.

  And it was true that plenty of people could get past even the most secure-seeming lock, but doing so would take even an expert lockpick a longer amount of time than Douglas had described.

  “I suppose he could have,” he mused. “I have to confess, I was somewhat leery of being alone in the alleyway with him. I didn’t look for him too carefully. Do you really think he might be the one who did that awful thing to Maggie?”

  “We’re looking for him for a variety of reasons,” Alyssa said, checking her phone yet again.

  “Which you can’t tell me about,” Douglas said. “Of course. Any word?”

  “Nothing yet,” she said, as what looked like an ambulance joined the two vehicles at the end of the alley. “Thank you for your time. I know you need to get on your way. I’m going to see what’s going on down there.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” he said. “With the one-way streets, it’s actually easier to get a cab going home if I go out this way.”

  As Alyssa got closer, she could see yellow tape, marking the area as a crime scene. A crowd had yet to form, but there were police officers standing by the open door to the basement of the building at the very end of the alley.

  A woman was nearby, her jacket unzipped, her face pale and her eyes bright with tears. Her hands were trembling as she used a tissue to blow her nose.

  “Are you all right?” Alyssa asked her.

  “I never seen nothing like that,” the woman whispered. “Never in my life. They’re dead. They’re both dead.”

  “Two bodies,” Alyssa clarified. “And you found them?”

  She nodded. “Tenant in 1B was complaining of the stink. Something died in the wall, she said. Or maybe in the basement… I knew he’d been living there—the old homeless man. I thought he was harmless, but he wasn’t. I never seen such a thing as what he did to that woman …”

  Alyssa opened her phone and called Jules.

  Who answered on the first ring. “Shit,” he said. “Sorry, Sam asked me to call you, and I totally spaced. Jenn’s fine. Maria’s brother Frank showed up packing heat, but Danny Gillman talked him off his proverbial ledge. Everyone’s okay, but it’s entirely possible that Frank’s our man—”

  Alyssa interrupted him. “You need to get over here. Now. I’m in the alley behind Maria’s office. I haven’t been able to get onto the scene, but I think the police have found Winston—and Maggie’s body. Bodies. I think Winston’s dead, too, Jules.”

  “Holy crap,” Jules said. “When it rains, it pours. I’m on my way. Sam is, too.”

  Good. She could use a little Sam right about now. A little eye contact, a little connection, the briefest touch of his hand … Amazing how something so simple could make the world a significantly better place.

  Alyssa hung up her phone to find Douglas watching her. “Jenn’s all right,” she told him.

  “They’ve found the killer, haven’t they?” he asked, but he was talking about Winston, in the basement.

  “Go home,” she said. “Your parents need you. If we have any additional questions, someone will be in touch.”

  He nodded and turned, and as he walked away, Alyssa saw the intern, what’s his name—Gene—standing in the crowd that was forming. Word was apparently getting out that bodies had been found.

  But when Gene saw that Alyssa had spotted him, he quickly faded back, disappearing from sight.

  And okay, Sam wasn’t even here yet to whisper into her ear about how freaking spooky that was. It was true what they said. Criminals—particularly killers—usually had an overpowering urge to return to the scene of the crime.

  She headed toward the crowd, determined to talk to Gene, but he was gone.

  Which was when her phone rang. It was Carol.

  “I’m so sorry I was delayed,” the FBI agent said, her voice out of breath. “The head of the New York office called and … I’m finally at the dumpster. Where are you?”

  “They’ll call us,” Izzy said, for the four hundredth time, as Maria paced the living room of the hotel suite. “As soon as they get the situation under control.”

  Robin had taken Ash into the bedroom, because he’d surpassed fussy and moved full-bore into weep-monster of doom.

  It was hard to say which was the chicken and which was the egg. Babies were so perceptive, Ash might’ve originally started fussing because Maria’s tension level was off the charts.

  But it was also obvious that his crying made Maria more tense. It had turned into an ugly self-perpetuating cycle that Robin was smart enough to try to break.

  Izzy could hear him in the bedroom, singing to the kid with a voice that made Izzy’s sound like amateur-hour, as—alleluia—Ash brought his diva-worthy outburst down to an occasional mewl or snuffle.

  Maria, however, still paced.

  As far as wrangling went, Robin had definitely left Izzy with the more difficult of the two jobs. Maria wasn’t going to be distracted by funny faces or peek-a-boo, or even the fact that he knew all eighty-seven verses of Don MacLean’s “American Pie.”

  “A long, long time ago,” he sang, testing his theory. “I could still remember … No? I guess a puppet show’s probably out then, too.”

  She looked at him as if he’d spoken to her in Martian, which he had—if he put any faith in the time-honored theories from that book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

  In his entire life, Izzy had met only one woman who came close to speaking his language and getting most of his jokes, and she still wasn’t talking to him, and probably wouldn’t ever talk to him again, even when he flew to Germany to see her, which he was going to do in just a matter of days now.

  Thinking of Eden made him sad—no. It was beyond sad. It was sorrow that tightened his chest, and he had to look away from Maria and out the window at the low-hanging pewter-colored clouds that made the city skyline look simultaneously starkly ugly and timelessly beautiful.

  Maria sat down next to him on the sofa. “You remind me of that Smokey Robinson song,” she said, which doubly surprised him. Not only had she stopped pacing, she was talking about something other than was-Jenn-all-right. And then she completely made him sit back, because she started to sing. “If there’s a smile on my face, it’s only there, trying to fool the public …”

  Her voice was rich and husky and really nice and he found himself smiling at her.

  “Have you thought about American Idol as a way to the White House?” Izzy asked. “Think of how many votes you could get if you went that route.”

  “See, you’re doing it,” she said, unamused. “You’re sitting here, and you’re terribly sad, but you still have to make a joke.”

  “I don’t have to,” he said. “I just like to. I mean, what am I going to do, sit around and cry all day?”

  She pretended to think about that. “Yeah,” she said. “Because that’s what people do when they’re sad. They cry, and cry, and cry, and eventually they’re not so sad anymore. You’re not the only person in the world who’s ever had his heart broken, you know.”

  “Really?” he said, “because I thought I was. I thought everyone except me always got everything they ever wanted.”

  “You want to hear something really sad?” Maria asked him, but didn’t wait for him to respond. She just kept going. “I’m sitting here, scared to death that my baby brother might hurt my best friend, and at the same time, there’s a really dark, ugly part of me that’s not-so-secretly hoping that Frankie finally dies.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Because it’ll be easier for me to achieve my political goals without a drug-addicted, PTSD-suffering brother hanging like an albatross around my neck. How’s that for sad?”

  Iz
zy nodded. “I don’t know if you win,” he said, “but it’s definitely sad. Besides, we don’t know that he’s the one who made Jenn push the panic button.”

  “We know,” she said. “At least I do. It’s got to be Frank. Where else would he go? Stopping first at his dealer’s, of course.”

  Her cell phone rang. It was sitting on the coffee table in front of them and she picked it up. “It’s Jenn.” She answered it. “Are you all right? Oh, thank God.” She closed her eyes, listening to her friend on the other end. “I knew it was,” she said. “Is he … ? Oh, God, Jenni, I’m so sorry. … Damage control? Are you serious?” She looked at Izzy. “She wants to write a statement for the website—as well as a press release. No,” she said into the phone again. “What I want you to do is soul kiss Dan Gillman for me and send him into orbit.” She laughed. “Oh, yes, I did go there,” she added, but she sobered up fast. “All right,” she said. “Yes. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. Love you, too. Yeah. Bye.”

  Maria ended the call, and sat there, as if frozen.

  “Is he okay?” Izzy asked quietly.

  She met his gaze. “He’s alive,” she said. “But he’s not okay. He’s high. And not like buzzed, but out of his mind high—assuming he was in his right mind to start with. And, God, we all know what a good combination it is to mix drugs with firearms, so … They think it’s possible that he’s the one who killed Maggie and a homeless man, too.”

  And with that, her face crumpled and she started to cry.

  But she didn’t run away, she just sat there.

  So Izzy moved closer. Put his arm around her. It was weird, she was tiny—just a little slip of a thing. It was kind of funny, her personality and presence were so large, he’d thought she was larger.

  She reached for him, holding him tightly as she cried on his shoulder, as he rubbed her miniature back with his hand, the way he would’ve comforted Ash, had that been his assignment.

  Not that he was complaining. Maria’s hair smelled better, and she was less likely to crap her pants or pee on him, which was a plus.

  He could feel the softness of her body against him, the tautness of her thigh against his, and it was remarkable the nothing that he felt. Especially since he was the King of the Comfort Fuck. Women flocked to him for it. It was, in fact, how things had started between Eden and himself. Although he hadn’t actually had sex with Eden. He’d just made her come.

  And okay, now he wasn’t feeling nothing anymore. Now he was aching with longing. Although, it had been so many months since he’d last had sex, he wasn’t sure he’d remember how to do it.

  But the thing was, he didn’t want Maria, as beautiful and accomplished as she was.

  He wanted Eden, and he wanted Pinkie, but mostly he wanted Eden, because together they could make their own Pinkie, but there wasn’t even the remotest chance of that happening if she wouldn’t talk to him.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured to Maria. “It’s okay to cry. …”

  “Nicely done, by the way,” Jules said as he and Sam jogged back from Jenn’s apartment to the alley behind Maria’s office building. “The not-killing-Mick-Callahan thing.”

  “You noticed that, huh?” Sam sidestepped something that looked remarkably like a cow patty but absolutely couldn’t be. Not many cows wandering in this part of New York City. Still, it was uncanny …

  “Robin calls them car turds,” Jules said, as he saw where Sam was looking. “Dirty snow gets kicked up by the tires and stashed somewhere, like in the wheel well or up under the fender, where it freezes. When it starts to thaw, it gets knocked loose, and the car takes a dump.”

  “And you live in the Northeast by choice?” Sam asked. It was meant to be banter, but he realized even as the words left his mouth that he was unbelievably stupid, and that he wasn’t even close to being funny. Jules and Robin lived in Massachusetts because their marriage was legal there, period, the end. It was the main reason why Jules, one of the top FBI agents in the country, wasn’t working where he should have been—out of the D.C. office under counter -terrorist legend Max Bhagat. “Sorry. That was—”

  “Are you happy?” Jules interrupted him.

  “My side hurts like a bitch,” Sam reported. “My feet are fucking cold. Our op’s body count is up to two, and someone’s going to have to break the news to the client that her brother is at worst a psycho-killer, at best a drug addict, and that lucky person’s probably going to be my wife, who’ll cry about it after, but only when she’s somewhere no one—including me—will see or hear her. So, no, I’m not particularly happy right now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but I’m talking big-picture happy,” Jules said.

  “Big picture,” Sam repeated.

  “You, Alyssa, Ashton,” Jules said. “Haley. Making peace with Mary Lou. Owning your own home. Working for Troubleshooters, with Alyssa as your boss. Not being a SEAL until your knees gave out… ?”

  “Ah.” Sam got what he was saying. And Jules was right. He hadn’t taken the path he’d expected to take, but the amazing achievements of the past few years—Alyssa had actually fallen in love with him, married him, and borne his child—far outweighed any of the disappointments. “I’m very happy.”

  “I am, too,” Jules said. “In Boston. With all of its many car turds.”

  “You tell me that a lot, don’t you?” Sam realized. “That you’re happy.”

  “Like a broken record,” Jules said. “You can’t seem to grasp that I’m beyond good with what I’ve got, and yet here you are—Alyssa told me—making your own lemonade out of lemons and blithely suggesting that you and Robin and Ash camp out in Italy for a month so that your wife and I can go off without you and save the world.”

  Sam shrugged. “It’ll be easier with Robin. You know, helping out with Ash.”

  “No,” Jules said, “it won’t.”

  “Yes, it will,” Sam said, “Mister Don’t-Tell-Me-I’m-Not-Happy. You don’t tell me what will or won’t be easier for me, capisce?”

  “Practicing your Italian already?”

  “I figured we’d stay at that place where you and I had our romantic getaway,” Sam said. He’d taken an allegedly easy assignment, setting up security for a richie-rich celebrity wedding, and had gotten damn near attacked by the bridesmaids, as if in a nightmarish Girls Gone Wild parody. He’d repeatedly called Alyssa for help, but she was on assignment on the other side of the globe. She’d ended up calling Jules, who’d flown in for the weekend as the weirdest backup ever.

  Sam’s continuously flashing his wedding ring and talking ceaselessly about his wife hadn’t slowed down the attacking horde, but Jules, showing up looking fabulous and giving Sam a kiss hello … ?

  It had done the trick. Instant respect.

  “I was gonna see if Ric and Annie wanted to come to provide extra security for Robin,” Sam said. Ric ran Troubleshooters’ Florida office. He and his wife, Annie, were also good friends with Robin and Jules. “And I thought we should invite Gina and Maxine Junior, too. And their new baby, Piggy-Face. Don’t want to leave him out. As long as Max is going over there, with you.”

  Jules was laughing. “Max and Gina’s new baby does not have a piggy face. And it’s not Maxine Junior, it’s—”

  “Emma,” Sam said. “And Michael, I know. And you’re right. The little dude looks more like Alfred Hitchcock.”

  “All babies look like Alfred Hitchcock,” Jules said. “Or Winston Churchill. I got a picture stored in my phone of Ashton, at a few weeks old, looking like he’s ready for the sumo wrestling tryouts. Shit.”

  There was a crowd and a gaggle of police cruisers and unmarked vehicles at the entrance to the alley, back behind Maria’s office.

  But Alyssa was there, too—standing with Mick Callahan.

  How the hell had he gotten here before them?

  “I thought he was still in the apartment,” Sam muttered to Jules, who knew immediately to whom he was referring, “talking to Jenn?”

  Mick had done quite a good
job earlier, calming Jennilyn down after she’d reluctantly left Dan in the stairwell with Maria’s drugged-out brother.

  “Dan’s been over there,” Mick had reminded Jenn, getting her to sit down with him on her sofa and stay out of the way. “He’s enlisted, too—he’s not an officer. Way I understand it, that makes a difference. He’s got more in common with Frank than most of us here. And what little I know about Navy SEALs, he’s a damn good shot, if it comes to that.”

  Mick’s sisterly affection for Jenn seemed solid and real. Warm, even.

  But now here he was, standing too close to Alyssa as he watched Sam and Jules approach with those cold, flat eyes.

  Alyssa was locked down, her mouth tight, her eyes guarded, and Sam knew that she hadn’t waited for them—that she’d talked her way into the crime scene.

  She’d seen the bodies, and she nodded at them now.

  “It’s Winston,” she confirmed. “And Mick identified the woman as Margaret Thorndyke, although the official ID will wait for a dental match. But… It’s her.”

  No doubt the hole in her chest made the ID official enough for Alyssa.

  “The murder weapon’s the exact same kind of knife that was stuck in Assemblywoman Bonavita’s door a week ago,” Mick volunteered. “It’s a fucking mess in there. I should’ve listened to my mother and become a dentist the way she wanted me to.”

  “What the hell is he doing here?” Sam asked.

  Mick, of course, bristled, and Alyssa reached out and took hold of Sam’s arm.

  “He’s helping,” she told him, but she also tightened her grip before she released him—clearly sending a message, but what? Don’t was solidly in there, Sam did know that.

  So he didn’t. Didn’t move, didn’t talk, didn’t even look at the prick.

  Jules asked, “Have they moved the bodies?”

  “No,” Alyssa said. “I told them to wait for you.”

  “Good,” Jules said.

  Sam moved to follow him into the basement, half expecting Alyssa to stop him with another hand on his arm and to tell him that he didn’t need to go in there and see the awful things that human beings could do to one another.