by Fiona Quinn
Deep pressed the button on his fob to unlock the car and without waiting, Lacey popped in. She flung the clothes in their thin plastic covering onto the back seat and laid the coin purse on her lap while she pulled her buckle into place. Deep climbed in and in a flash, had the motor humming and the car tangling into the DC traffic.
As they pulled up to a stoplight, Deep bent over, popped the glove compartment, and pulled two nitrile gloves from a box he had stored in there, and laid them on Lacey’s lap. “You okay?”
“This feels like a present on Christmas morning. Like I was just handed a gift.” This time, Lacey’s smile was broad and bright and believable.
Deep smiled in return, then crept forward with the traffic, trying to get them to a place that was safe and quiet so they could look at what was left behind.
Lacey pulled on the gloves and sent a questioning glance toward Deep. “Should I?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Lacey licked her lips and pulled the zipper. Into Lacey’s lap tumbled a pocket comb, a tube of lipstick, an ID card with Lacey’s name, and a Metro card. Lacey looked down at the stuff and then looked out the window.
Disappointment seemed to wrap around Lacey, but also confusion. Deep let it sit. Sometimes the mind latches onto something that is unconscious – something that needs a moment of quiet to bubble up. He recognized that look from his brothers in combat. They’d stop at a doorway, stall. A sense of something — the mind needed a moment to filter the right piece of information into the right portion of the brain for a thought to form. If it was interrupted, it might never take the required path. And as he knew from battle, that could be deadly. So he moved as little as possible as he got them to a parking garage and waited at the ticket machine with the window still up until she was back in action.
Deep collected their parking ticket and waited for the security arm to rise, allowing them through. Lacey rubbed her thumbs around the insides of the coin purse. She turned it inside out as Deep backed into one of the better-lit spaces. Then she held it out to him so he could see that the lining had been carefully cut and sewn back together. Deep slid his knife from the concealed sleeve pocket in his coat and severed the threads.
He handed it back to Lacey so she could be the one to pull the paper out. She unfolded the sheet and smoothed it over her knee. “Superior Pawn Shop. That’s my name, but not my address.” Lacey picked up the ID card and flipped it over. “Same address, 2759 East McKinley Avenue. Apartment 511. She lives – lived — directly across the street from me.” Lacey held the ID out for Deep.
Deep reached past her and grabbed his own set of gloves from the glove compartment before he took the DMV card. “This is either an official driver’s license, or an expert forgery. I’m guessing it’s a forgery.”
“Why is that?” Lacey twisted around in her seat so she was facing him.
“This card says Lacey Elizabeth Stuart is five-foot five. If your lookalike had gone into the DMV and said her license was lost or stolen, they would have used the characteristic information from the computer. Your height being one of those attributes. She wouldn’t have been able to ask them to update the height.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, whoever’s running this con is sophisticated for sure, but we knew that already. What’s your home address?” Deep pulled out his phone to do a Google search.
“2760 East McKinley Avenue. Apartment 520,” Lacey replied.
Deep turned his phone toward her. “She had an apartment right across the street. With a telescope or binoculars, she could probably have seen right into your window. I wonder how long she’s been renting there.”
Tears filled Lacey’s eyes, and she pulled her turtleneck up to cover her mouth. “Someone’s been watching me in my place? That’s so violating. They could have seen everything, me walking around naked, having sex, eating a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV. I never shut the drapes. I assumed everyone was minding their own business.”
Deep’s brows suddenly pulled together. He picked up the lipstick case and fiddled with it until the bottom popped off and a button battery and wire slid out.
“Shit.” He rolled down his window and tossed the lipstick across the garage. Jammed the car into drive and drove steadily out into traffic, his eye scanning. He felt his awareness expanding, as adrenaline shot through his system.
Lacey trembled beside him. “What’s happening, Deep?” Her question came like an oscillating breeze as her words stuttered out from her turning head as she mimicked his movements.
“The lipstick had a tracker. If anyone’s watching it, they’ll know that it moved.”
“What if it’s the FBI? Surely the garage has security cameras, and they’d have caught your license plate. They could track your name down.”
“Not this car, they can’t. This car belongs to an offshore corporation. It can’t be traced to me.”
“I can’t believe I’m running from the FBI. Maybe I shouldn’t be.”
“That’s your call. I’ll help you do whatever it is you want to do.” Deep’s muscles tightened at the thought. He wasn’t sure that the FBI was a good choice until they had a better grasp on what was going on.
“If you thought it was a smart move though, you would have told me that. Shouldn’t we trust them? I mean – you hear such bad things about the police on TV these days, all of the problems in Chicago and such. People who misuse their jobs. Is that what happens with the FBI, too?”
Deep’s muscles became less armor-like and his eyes softened from their predatory sharpness the farther away they drove from the garage. “I’ve worked hand in hand with the FBI for a long time now. And I only know of two incidents where the agents went bad. I absolutely believe in and depend on the integrity of the special agents.”
Lacey frowned. “I can hear a big but dangling in your words.”
“But something really screwy is happening here. I think they lost control of a mission. Things got out of hand, and somehow you’re looking like collateral damage to them. I’ll do everything I can to not let that be the case. Bottom line, though, I’ll help you go whatever direction it is you want to go. If you think talking to the FBI is in your best interest, then I’d suggest we do it through Iniquus. My company is highly respected, and they’d make sure that no one was playing fast and loose with your safety.”
They had driven in silence almost all the way to Maryland when Lacey finally spoke. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep my head down and try to figure out a little more of what’s happening before I make that kind of decision.”
“Alright, if you look back at the photos, they started at the end of September after you were back at work, following your accident. Let’s say the accident was the starting point. This is speculation – I’m throwing out an idea, okay?”
“Okay.” Lacey gave a vigorous nod.
“Steve seems to be the connector. Something had to start the con off. Steve saved you at the car accident for reasons we don’t understand, but there can only be two possibilities. He had no idea who you were, or he had an idea who you were. Right?”
“Yes, I guess.”
“If he had no idea who you were, he was trying to stop your murder for a reason that had nothing to do with you personally. In that case, it might be that he saw a resemblance and got some con under way. You were out of work for ten days. That’s enough time to get a new ID made and rent an apartment, set things up and move forward.”
“And if he did know me?”
“That gets a little more confusing. If he knew you, and he’s FBI, say, then he would have saved you because that’s his job. Add to that you might have been an asset, someone who somehow played into something that was already underway. When did you get the letters from the people pulling out of the show?”
“My uncle emailed the file to me from Bali.”
“They didn’t come to you at all?”
“No, to my uncle,” she replied.
Deep did a
U-turn.
“Where are we going now?”
“I think we need to go pick up whatever our mystery girl left at the pawn shop.”
C
hapter Twenty-Seven
Lacey
Tuesday
Deep parked the car in Lynx’s garage and popped his door open. Lacey had tilted her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the pawn shop.
Deep leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Lacey, we’re here.”
Lacey didn’t want to move. She was exhausted. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she felt like the plug on her cells’ energy had been pulled, and she was so thoroughly depleted. Since she had arrived at Lynx’s house, she was sleeping at odd intervals and waking up only long enough to discover some other awful new truth, and then she’d be back to sleep again. Asleep, awake, asleep, awake—her body was so confused. She was so confused.
“Come on, Lacey, you’ll freeze sitting here in the car.”
Lacey doubted she even had the power to drag herself across the tiny backyard into the house.
“I’ll fix you a cup of tea and make some sandwiches. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
Lacey peeked through her eyelashes at him. “Why do you always try to make things better with food?”
“I’m Italian.” Deep winked. He pushed the button on her seat belt, and it retracted. “Come on, up and at ‘em.” He walked around and opened her door, reaching for her hand. “What you’re experiencing now is typical. Your body can only handle so much stress before it says it needs to hibernate. So sandwich, tea, and nap.”
Lacey responded with a wide-mouthed yawn that she hid behind her elbow. “How about nap, then sandwich. I’m not sure I have the energy to chew.” She let Deep guide her body into the house and up the stairs, where she flopped across the guestroom bed. Deep chuckled as he pulled off her boots and socks and worked at her coat. “You’re going to have to help a little bit.”
“Alright,” Lacey said, not helping at all. Finally, Deep scooped her legs further onto the bed and threw a blanket over the top of her before he quietly shut the door. Lacey was already delicately snoring.
Lacey woke from her nap discombobulated. She lay there staring at the ceiling, filtering through all of the things that had been happening over the last few days. Everything seemed new and terrifying. Not the least of which were her feelings for Deep. They were much too sudden. Much too profound. And yet, he was the only thing that felt solid around her – everything was spinning like a carnival ride, throwing her center of gravity off with its centrifugal force.
Lacey’s bladder was what had woken her up, and was now forcing her out of bed. She shuffled to the bathroom. As she was washing her hands, she looked into the mirror, trying to see what Deep saw when he called her beautiful. She wasn’t even wearing makeup. Hadn’t used a blow dryer or products since the bar scene. Even her gel manicure was giving out. She was a mess. Yet the way he looked at her, well—his eyes called her beautiful as much as his words did. She believed his eyes more than his lips. Well, no. That wasn’t true; his lips were reverent as they moved over her body. She felt cherished in his hands. This was a really horrible place to be, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like she was facing things alone. Someone stood by her side. And it felt . . . strange. Part of her scoffed at the idea and part of her—a small part of her—had hope. Maybe after everything got cleared up, and she was safe . . . If, she reminded herself, maybe if things got cleared up, and she was safe . . .
Lacey picked up the comb and pulled it through her hair, then started down the stairs to check out their newest piece of information. Now they had a black fur coat from a pawn shop that meant enough to the mystery woman that she sewed the ticket into her coin purse to hide it. Lacey wondered why.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Steve
Tuesday Evening
Steve sat in Lacey’s apartment gripping a tumbler from the bourbon he’d knocked back in one gulp. He punched a fist into his chest to get his lungs going again. He liked the alcoholic flames engulfing his esophagus; he welcomed the pain. Steve reached for the bottle and poured two more fingers, appreciating for a moment the deep amber color magnified by the prisms of Lacey’s Waterford crystal. He swirled it twice, then tipped it back. He wanted to get drunk – badly. But this was all he was going to allow himself. A couple belts of whiskey and a shower. Then he’d hit the streets again.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing, driving around like he was. But Monroe had told him no contact with the case, and that meant he couldn’t tap any of his informants or show his face in any of the places where people might know him as Steve Adamic. And that made tracking Lacey’s movements after the press conference all but impossible.
Today, though, something happened. Someone had gone by the cleaners. His computer had pinged, letting him know one of his trackers was on the move. This was the first ping he’d picked up from either woman since the day Lacey disappeared. He grabbed Higgins, and they hauled it over to a parking garage four blocks from the women’s apartments. It could have been either of them. Whichever one of them was still alive. Higgins found the lipstick, with the tracker exposed, thrown in the corner.
The garage was right near the dry-cleaners he had used to pass Lacey’s clothes to Danika so she could pose for the pictures. It was a long shot, but he and Higgins went by the cleaners on the off-chance that it was indeed Lacey or Danika who made the tracker move from Point A to Point B.
Yes, the cashier had said, recognizing Steve right away. Lacey Stuart had been there that morning. She had gone into the store alone to pick up her suit. But he and Higgins both knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. If someone had made either woman go in under duress, their handler could have been waiting outside.
“She seemed fine,” the cleaner said. “No, not stressed or upset or hurt in any way . . . No not in a hurry. As a matter of fact, she was the nicest she’s ever been . . . She was smiling and gave me a tip; told me lunch was on her today.”
This whole lipstick thing was nuts. Why the heck would either Lacey or Danika go pick up that suit? It made absolutely no sense to him. His fingers drummed against his glass. He knew the lipstick was at the dry-cleaners because that’s where the GPS had positioned it on his map for the last few days. Okay, they search your pockets before they put the clothes into the machines. So they must have handed it back to the woman when she picked up her suit, and then there was movement as the person went from where the cleaners was located to the garage. And someone obviously discovered it. Would Lacey think to look for a tracker? Would Danika?
The color of lipstick didn’t tell him if Lacey had left it in the clothes or if Danika had, since both had the exact same lipstick manufacturer and color, and he had wired them with the exact same tracker unit. He was such an idiot. Of course, they had to wear the same color to pull off the photos. But with the trackers floating back and forth between the two women, Steve should have found a way to mark the lipsticks as different. Twenty-twenty hindsight wasn’t helpful.
Someone was alive and not visibly hurt. Could it possibly be Lacey? Did he have a chance to right his wrongs? To find her, explain, apologize, and tell her he had never lied about his feelings? He was willing to spend the rest of his life making this up to her. Nothing would make him happier.
Who was alive? The medical examiner was working on it. They didn’t have a fingerprint match in the system. They were doing some math to try to estimate the person’s height, but that would be unreliable in that people’s bone structure was sometimes longer in the torso and sometimes longer in the leg. It was pretty hard to tell with certainty. They still hadn’t found her legs. Steve pushed his imagination away from the visual of the hunt and discovery that popped up like a horror flick.
Higgins had told Steve that they had warrants for Lacey’s dental records. Steve had brought Lacey’s toothbrush to the lab for DNA samp
les, but if they ended up relying on DNA, that could take months. Years, even. He had also brought a few items that Lacey might have been the only one to have touched. But honestly, it was unlikely they’d find prints. Lacey had hired a housekeeper with OCD because of her thoroughness. This woman attacked Lacey’s apartment twice a week like she was in an out-and-out assault against an invading bacterial army. There was nothing that didn’t get lifted, scrubbed, and disinfected within an inch of its life. Lacey thought she had hit the jackpot of all housekeepers, and Steve had actually taken a cue from the maid. He claimed to have a little OCD issue of his own, one that had to do with anxiety around germs on clothing. Pavle had thought the move was brilliant. He’d won kudos and deeper entrée with the Zoric family. And sucked Lacey deeper into the world of crime.
Steve tipped back his glass to swallow the very last drop, then carried it to the kitchen sink and rinsed it before putting it, still wet, back on the shelf. Not knowing if Lacey was alive or not was killing him. He lived in a constant state of panic. And he couldn’t let it show. If Monroe thought he couldn’t handle his emotions, Steve would, rightfully, be completely pulled from the case, even the little he was allowed to do now.
The Zorics were moving forward according to schedule. Higgins was watching them and reporting in as the family set up the rented gallery space, prepping to hang the paintings, and adjusting the lighting. They had already moved in the catering tables and the all-important open bar where Musclav Zoric would be doctoring the drinks. With the addition of a little powder, the arts agents would be pliable and uninterested in the details of the evening, especially when it came to whether the paintings were the originals or not.
Yup, the Zorics acted as if everything that had happened was part of the con and all was going along as planned. If that were true, there was still a chance that the FBI could round them up as one big fat family, and the good guys could stop at least one path that allowed so many people to get hurt. Honestly, it felt like turning off the faucet in the kitchen when Steve knew well enough that under the streets there was a whole piping system with gallons flowing freely and unseen. What was the use of turning off a single faucet? Especially if someone he loved died in the process?
