In Too Deep (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  “You didn’t mention an accent before,” Deep said. “What. . .”

  Lacey’s brow pulled tightly together, and she stared at the floor. Anything Deep was saying to her were simply vibrations in the air, indistinguishable from smell or light, just fumes and waves oscillating the atmosphere. Finally, her head came up until she was focused on Deep. “Radovan. I’m fairly sure he was Slovakian.”

  Her hands were shaking uncontrollably and the creamy beverage sloshed over the rim. Deep took the plate from her hands and put it on the floor.

  Lacey pinched her nose and turned her head to the wall, tucking her other hand under the elbow. She felt like someone poised to jump off the high board. Terrified of the trip down.

  She went quiet again, her eyes shifting along the floorboards left then right like she was trying to read the cracks. Then she sank onto the sofa and looked at Deep, her lips rolled in tightly.

  “I want to hear what you started to tell me. Bardman had a heavy accent . . .”

  “I didn’t think about his accent. With everything that was going on, the blood and the bubbles, the screaming and the camera flashes, black cars, scary men . . . I didn’t realize until I just said it that he had an accent.”

  Deep waited with what seemed to Lacey like infinite patience as her confetti thoughts came to rest. She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she told the floor. “It seems. . .” She searched out Deep’s eyes. She was lost and looking for a speck of land on the horizon—some dot of hope she could navigate toward.

  Deep shifted over and took her hands. “Don’t try to put it all together. You don’t need everything to connect. Let your thoughts come up.” He pulled her over to sit against him and wrapped one arm around her, then put his notebook and pen on the side table. “Close your eyes, and when you’re ready, say the thing that comes to mind.”

  Lacey rested her head back, shutting her eyes the way Deep had asked her to. Her mind was jangling with impressions. She tried to grasp at just one. A single thought that she could pull like a thread from the tangle. “I met Steve when I killed a deer,” Lacey said. “I’ve never killed anything before. I feel terrible for killing the deer.”

  Lacey could feel the wiggle of Deep’s arm as he put those words on paper.

  “At the bar, there were two sets of men. The guy with the black car who grabbed my ankle—he was right outside the door. The news said he was a special agent with the FBI. You said you recognized him. His name is Higgins, and he fights gangs and sometimes human traffickers.” Lacy reached up and pushed her hair behind her ears. “You said you thought Steve was trained. If Steve were trained and lying to me, and if your friend Lynx says he looks too clean, then Steve Adamic probably isn’t his name. Just like Leo Bardman wasn’t that guy’s name, either. I thought that Steve being trained meant that he was a good guy – maybe even an FBI agent. But he didn’t have to be. He could be a bad guy. He could be a criminal. In my mind, you know, I thought that Steve might have been undercover, like you were saying last night, and somehow protecting me while he figured out a crime. But that’s really weird that he happened to be driving down the road behind me when I killed the deer. And right after that, he started showing up in those pictures.”

  Her eyes blinked open, and she looked at Deep.

  “Please tell me you’re a good guy.”

  “I’m a good guy,” he said. “But you’re not going to believe that until everything shakes out. I understand that. It’s smart. You’re smart not to trust me because I say you should.”

  “It’s not completely that I don’t trust you. You’re right, though. I spent months trusting a guy who said he wanted to marry me. He acted like he believed that. It felt awfully real to me. It’s not so much that I don’t trust you as much as it is that I don’t trust myself. I obviously have been showing poor judgment.” Lacey pushed to sitting. Her thoughts were too angst-filled to allow her to be comfortable. “And that doesn’t reflect on you. It’s my deficit. I don’t want my lack of judgment to get you killed.” Her voice was crawling up an octave with each word out of her mouth. “I can’t let that even be a possibility.”

  “Wait. Woah.” Deep twisted away from the notepad, turning so they were almost nose to nose. “How did we get there? That’s what Lynx would call a ‘ginormous synaptic leap’. What canyon did you cross? Getting me killed isn’t a function of you not believing that I’m a good guy, which is what I thought we were talking about. Now you’re saying that my being in danger is a function of my associating with you? There’s a big hole in this story if you think that’s the case.”

  Lacey sat mute.

  “That isn’t the first time you’ve made this reference. Way back when this whole thing was unfolding, I said, ‘All those months — you didn’t call me until you were in danger.’ And you responded, ‘I didn’t call you all those months because I was in danger, I didn’t want you involved.’ What danger, Lacey?”

  Lacey swallowed and stared. Finally, she forced herself to blink. Just one blink. Then another. Blink.

  Deep put his hand on her knee, and it pulled her out of her lost place. “Start with one thing. Something small that doesn’t scare you,” Deep said.

  Lacey swallowed and nodded. “Sometimes as part of my job, I go to people’s houses to hang their art and make sure that it’s properly positioned. An investment piece could become damaged by sunlight or room traffic. I offer to do that as a concierge service when we sell a piece.”

  “Okay, good. Has anyone taken you up on that offer lately?”

  “Yes, Radovan did.” Lacey’s muscles banded, pulling her limbs in tightly, making her stiff. Even her lips became tight and thin. “Radovan Krokov has bought several pieces from us. He likes male nudes.”

  “Good,” Deep encouraged. “When did he buy his last painting?”

  “September.” Lacey was able to push out the words with what little air her lungs would hold. She tried to focus on her breathing rather than the fear tingling up her spine. The more she said, the more dangerous things became for Deep.

  “And you went to his house to hang the painting.”

  Lacey squeezed her eyes and nodded.

  “Were you coming home from his house when you had the car accident?”

  Lacey nodded again.

  “You’re having a traumatic response right now. Go as slowly as you need to. Is this a reaction to the accident?”

  Lacey twitched her head.

  “Something that happened in the house?”

  Lacey sat still as if petrified; she stopped breathing. She was the beat of her heart and nothing more.

  Deep took her icy hands in his. “Did someone hurt you, baby? Or did someone do something that wasn’t alright with you back at the house?” Lacey could tell that Deep tried to modulate his voice to the same tone he had used for his other questions, but she sensed the wolf-snarl running under his words.

  “No one hurt me there that day,” she managed.

  “But somewhere?”

  “On a different day,” Lacey said.

  “Let’s start with the house. Did something happen at the house that made you feel that you needed to get away fast?”

  “Something was happening at the house. I don’t fully understand what I was seeing, but I believe it was part of a murder.”

  “You saw a body?”

  “No, but I know that Radovan died.” She took in a faltering breath and screamed in her head to get herself together. Lives were at stake, children’s lives. “This is what happened. My uncle gave me a key to Radovan’s house. Radovan was supposed to be away on business. But when I got there, the door was already unlocked and the stove was on. At that point, I assumed that it was the help.”

  Deep pulled the notebook into his lap and quietly took notes.

  “I called out, but no one answered me. I went in the kitchen, looked in the pot, and wondered if I should turn off the element. I decided to leave things be and if no one was there when I left, I’d turn the
stove off and leave a note.”

  “Okay, pot on the stove, no one home.”

  “Radovan’s painting had been delivered but hadn’t been hung. I was there to find a good place for the piece, taking into consideration the aesthetics and any environmental issues. The only constraint was that the piece had to go in a public room. So I was downstairs looking around when I saw two men coming up to the door, which was fine. My first instinct was that they were the gardeners—that’s how they were dressed. They wore green coveralls, and they had masks over their faces. Dust masks. No, not dust masks. You know—the kind of masks that gardeners wear when they’re spraying pesticides. It goes over the face and has a motor for purifying air that clips to their back belt. And they were wearing goggles like they were spraying for weeds.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, nothing at first. The door was still unlocked. They didn’t jiggle the handle or anything. They walked in like they knew it would open.”

  “Were they wearing gloves?”

  “Yes, gardening gloves. So they came in and weirdly, that’s when they turned on their respiratory machines. They had buttons on their throats and when they pressed them, you could hear what they were saying to each other despite the masks on their faces. Something about those buttons frightened me — didn’t seem right for a gardener. I moved back into the corner by the buffet table. I could see a little of what they were doing because Radovan has an antique hall mirror in there that’s at least twelve feet high.”

  “Okay, so you’re hiding in the dining room. What did the men do?”

  “The guy said, ‘Check the birds.’ And the other guy said, ‘Canaries in the coalmine.’ And they both laughed.

  “Does Radovan have birds?”

  “Yes, he had a pair of peach-faced love birds. They’re beautiful. I wonder what happened to them after his death.” Lacey paused for a moment stuck on that thought, then she continued on. “Radovan had a tree in his gaming room, and the birdcage hung there. Usually he left the cage door open, and the birds were allowed to fly around. I was trying to convince myself that that was a normal thing to say. “canaries in the coalmine.’ See, when guests come to the house, we have to be careful not to let the birds fly outside.”

  “What happened next?”

  “One guy says to the other, ‘I’m going to go upstairs and make sure everything’s good. Why don’t you clear that stuff out of here?’ Then someone was on the stairs and someone was making a lot of noise in the games room.”

  “Okay, good. Then what?”

  “Nothing much. Really, still simply odd. But I was very scared. I had never felt that way before.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Like my lungs were filling with air, but not. And like my heart was beating, but not. I was having trouble keeping myself focused. I was praying really hard. I wanted these people to leave, because I didn’t know what was going on.” Lacey remembered that her fear had tasted like a bright copper penny, metallic on her tongue.

  “And what did they do next?”

  “The guy came down the stairs, and he’s laughing. He said something like, ‘The maid’s going to have a nasty surprise.’ And the other guy responded, ‘So a done deal?’ ‘Good and done,’ the first guy said, and they laughed again. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, whatever was going on. Then the one guy says ‘Make sure to vacuum that whole area. I’m taking the rocks out.’”

  “’I’m taking the rocks out?’”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He took the pot off the stove and went out the Florida room door to the side garden. I was having a hard time. I was getting dizzy. All I could think was I had to get out of there right then. I stood up and pulled my keys from my pocket. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I got as far as the front door when I heard the guy right behind me, shouting, ‘Hey!’”

  Lacey watched Deep swallow hard. His jaw had set, and that combat focus returned to his gaze.

  “I turned around and the guy was right there in front of me. I could see his eyes, even with the goggles. They weren’t angry or menacing or anything. They were confused. He looked at me and said, ‘Danika? What are you doing here?’ And I inexplicably smiled and waved and went out the front door.”

  “He let you go?”

  “At first. I ran to my car, which I had left out front so I could get to my tools. I jumped in and took off. And that’s all I remember. I was in the car, struggling to calm myself and catch my breath, and then Steve was there, calling my name.”

  “But that’s not the end of this story.”

  “No.” She shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lacey

  Wednesday

  “Go back,” Deep said. “Danika? He called you Danika?” The name had slipped out and hung there in the air like a fly ball, and Deep was directly underneath it, waiting for its slow descent into his glove.

  A lie formed on the tip of Lacey’s tongue, but she stopped it before it dripped out. Deep told her she could unfold her story at her own pace as she grew to trust him – but not to lie. It seemed to her in that moment that Deep would never forgive her if she broke that covenant. She also thought about her other pledge—that she wouldn’t be putting her life alone in danger by revealing it, but Deep’s too.

  “This is why you scare the hell out of me, Lacey. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’ve done in your life. Who you are. All I know is that I’m in it like quicksand. I’m not going to pull myself free from how I feel about you. I don’t even want to. But it sure would be nice if I knew what the heck I’ve stepped into.”

  Lacey pressed her clenched hands to her forehead.

  “There—tell me that thought,” Deep said.

  “Maybe it’s time for me to go to the FBI.”

  “I agree. Maybe it is. That’s your call,” Deep said. “The men and women over at the FBI are stellar. You can trust them.”

  “That’s not really true, is it? I mean, if I’m one of the pieces in some ongoing game, I can’t really walk up to their office and say – hey, I want my life back the way it was. They couldn’t do that, could they? They can’t unwind what they were doing. So what would they do with me?”

  “Depends. If they thought you were in danger, they’d probably put you into the witness protection program.”

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “They’d give you a new identity. Move you to a new location. You’d have a handler as a contact point. And you’d have to keep your head down. No communication with anyone who’s been in your life up until this point.”

  Lacey brought her hands to her throat. “For how long?”

  “Could be for always. I don’t know what’s going on here. If they catch the criminals, put them on trial and send them to prison, it could take a few years to get to that point. Or it could be forever.”

  “And I’d be nearby, so I could help figure everything out?”

  “I imagine if the FBI covered up the accident and had eyes on you in the bar and a waiting car outside, they have a darned good picture of what’s going on. They’re getting all of the evidence together to bring everyone in. Crime solving on TV looks like a bullet train, but in reality, it’s more like a battleship in the ocean. It takes a long time to maneuver around and to get from Point A to Point B.”

  “And I couldn’t contact anyone from my life – not even you?”

  “I’d be out of the picture until things got resolved.”

  Lacey bit off one nail after the other until Deep covered her hand and brought it down to her lap, wrapping it gently in his. “If Steve is working for the FBI undercover, and his name is even really Steve—wow, this is a lot for me to wrap my brain around—then he was making up our relationship. I mean, I was sleeping with him, thinking I was in a maybe-forever kind of relationship with him. We were making plans, talking about children. What kind of good guy would do th
at? That seems like psychological rape. He was sleeping with me as part of his job? He was screwing me as a pretense to get me to cooperate or get some evidence or something? Do you think he has a wife and family that he went home to when I thought he was travelling for his job? ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. . .’” She cupped her hands over her mouth and swallowed hard. “I think I need to vomit.” She twitched her head to the left then the right, looking for the closest trash bin. Her stomach reseated, and her gaze settled on Deep. “Oh dear, do they do that? Is it possible?” she whispered.

  “It’s possible. But you can’t jump to conclusions. We’re only speculating.”

  “Seems like it fits together.” Lacey’s eyes had lost their focus as she churned the ideas around.

  “It does,” Deep agreed.

  Lacey stood up and paced, angry tears forming in her eyes, and she swiped at them. Back and forth, back and forth, she moved across the living room.

  “Lacey . . . “

  “I need you to not talk to me right now. I need to be alone.” Lacey stormed up the stairs and burst through the bathroom door. Hot water—that’s what she needed. That had helped her so much last night. Maybe it would work its magic again. Yes. Lots and lots of hot water. She pulled off her nightclothes and stepped under the stream, twisting back at first from the searing heat of the shower. First one arm, then the other, one leg, then the other. As her skin warmed and she acclimated to the temperature, Lacey finally moved to stand under the shower head. She reached for the washcloth and soap and began to rub her skin. She tried to scrub away the memories of Steve’s hands on her. He was one hell of an actor—or probably it was more like she was one hell of an easy target. So desperate. So desperate to be loved. How was it that she had missed that she was being used for some damn reason or another? A pawn in a chess game. It felt awful to have been used. Manipulated. Endangered.