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

by Fiona Quinn

  Steve

  Friday

  “Danika.” Steve came to his feet and shook his head. “She is a tragic figure and a criminal mastermind. She was an abused child who came to realize that the only way to survive was to serve the Zoric family and serve them well.” He stopped to clear his throat. “Why she was killed, I don’t know. Who killed her? I don’t know. What I can tell you is that Danika’s con was always blackmail.” Steve spread his fingers wide on the table, and turned his head at an odd angle to look at the glass wall. His eyes closed, and he frowned deeply.

  “Danika had, early in her teens, started visiting with Radovan Krokov. He loved her in his own way, they got along very well. By visiting with him, I mean she was sent to him for sex. Radovan was a bisexual man who, while he enjoyed Danika’s youth and beauty, preferred the intellectual relationship he had with Bartholomew Winslow, Lacey Stuart’s uncle. The two men were lovers for several years. Officially, though, Danika Zoric was engaged to Radovan in June. She knew and was fine with the idea of Winslow being in her relationship picture. But she also shared the information of the two men’s affair with Pavle Zoric, and the Zoric family began to exploit it. After she shared that information, she started calling herself Lacey Stuart. Radovan had a staffing change, and Danika was introduced to the staff as Ms. Stuart.”

  “Why did Danika play the role of Lacey with Radovan’s help and obvious approval? Was Radovan involved in the arts con? Another con?” Sy asked.

  “Since both players are dead, we may never know. As far as we can tell,” Steve replied, “Radovan had nothing to do with the Zoric cons. Danika was a peace offering between warring families.”

  “Huh,” Lynx said. “John Black was sending off definite shut-your-mouth vibes when it came to mentioning warring families. I wonder what that was about.”

  “However,” Steve said. “Danika calling herself Lacey Stuart outside of that relationship is knowable. It all had to do with her procuring art for the Zoric family. While we’re not sure why Radovan went along with her Danika using a new name. We do know why Winslow went along. He was being blackmailed and would do whatever he was told to do.”

  Deep stepped in. “We know that Winslow was supposed to gather art for the art heist beginning last summer in preparation for a show tomorrow, but after the car accident—when you jumped in to save the day, Steve. Some new con got under way.” Deep’s derision was an undercurrent. Not exactly blatant – he was still professional—but there was a wolf-growl undertone that made every single man in the room shift warily. Lacey didn’t need Lynx to interpret that. Deep leaned his weight onto his fists on the table. “Was it Danika Zoric who masterminded that?”

  Steve cleared his throat. The glance he cast toward the window begged Lacey to listen and forgive. “No. It was mine,” he said quietly.

  “You must have had a good reason—in your own mind, at least.” This time it was Lacey’s lawyer, Sy Covington, who spoke.

  “We were going after the Zorics for funding terrorist groups.”

  “And trafficking children,” Monroe added.

  Steve sniffed. “Our goal was to take out the East Coast Zoric family. To get to that end, I helped Danika develop a bigger con, one that pulled in a greater number of the family members. Danika’s goal was to steal the art for the family. I helped her figure out a way to get a million dollar-plus payday from the insurance to both support the family and give to the groups that they sponsor, and to place all of the blame elsewhere.”

  “On Lacey Stuart,” Sy said.

  “Yes.” Steve pointed toward the evidence bag. “If those are the photos of Danika wearing Lacey clothes, then you’ll see how the plan worked. We staged Danika in pictures that would place Lacey in the right place right time to be culpable. “Things were moving along just fine, until they weren’t. Danika and Leo Bardman, were doing something on the side. Pavle Zoric decided to get the women, Lacey and Danika, under his thumb in advance of tomorrow’s opening. The plan was that Lacey would be charged and be found culpable. And of course, we’d step in and protect Lacey.”

  “The Zoric’s plan changed,” Monroe said. “They didn’t want to take any chances that there would be a big investigation, so they decided to remove Lacey from the equation all together.”

  “By that you mean she’d be killed,” Sy said.

  “As soon as I realized she was in danger. . . well, imminent danger, I moved forward to pull Lacey out.”

  “And what exactly was this plan?” Sy asked.

  Steve could feel the strength of Deep’s anger like a blaze of heat from where he stood at the top of the table, though to look at him, he was perfectly contained and participating in a business meeting. Steve swallowed. “The Thursday night that Bardman was killed, something triggered Bardman to act. Bardman wanted Danika to run away with him and leave that life. He believed, and I agreed with him, that Danika’s life was as disposable as Lacey’s. Pavle Zoric saw Danika as a liability and didn’t want her around. She had been skating on thin ice ever since she had found out that the family had murdered Radovan. You see, Danika actually loved Radovan in her own way. And here I will digress to explain that the whole point of murdering Radovan, by whatever means they did, was to ensure that it looked like a natural death and no one would know it was a murder. Danika knew it was a murder. And Danika was acting disloyal. She was a threat.” Steve focused on the rock. His mind whirled, trying to understand how that could possibly have had anything to do with Radovan’s murder. “The Zoric family and Krokov families are in opposition, and a murder would create a war between the families.”

  Monroe added, “Pavle Zoric came up with some scheme to threaten Danika into submission and to take Lacey hostage until after the arts con was over and then both women would be killed. We know bits and pieces. You know bits and pieces. The end result was that Bardman went to the bar to save Danika and warn her that the family had decided to kill her. But it was Lacey at the bar. Danika was with Steve. Bardman warned the wrong woman.”

  “You were telling us how you planned to remove Lacey from the environment,” Sy said.

  “Yes,” Steve cleared his throat. “I invited her to dinner at a nice restaurant in Alexandria. I planned to drug her drink so she’d pass out. I’d call an ambulance, which was actually the FBI’s transport. We’d remove her in a very public way. I needed to stay involved in the con. I was going to say that she suffered a stroke and was in a coma. That her relatives took her back to Georgia. Lacey would be in the witness protection program.”

  “But things went bad,” Monroe said.

  “That’s a gross understatement,” Deep replied. He gave Sy a significant look then let his gaze scan the other men. “I think we need to take a break.”

  “Can I talk to Lacey, please?” Steve asked.

  No one responded.

  “Please,” Steven said, again. His voice had taken on a plaintive tone.

  “You understand that Lacey Stuart is a free agent. She will leave here freely. She will go where she wants and do what she wants,” Sy said.

  Steve’s brow came together. “Yes, I . . .” He looked over at Monroe, confused. Monroe shrugged and shook his head. Steve turned to Mr. Black.

  John Black’s face was hard as stone. “We’ll need to discuss this.”

  “No. We won’t,” Sy said.

  Steve watched Deep send a text message. After a moment, the phone buzzed in reply. Deep’s lower jaw extended in a snarl, but he said, “Follow me.”

  ***

  “Lacey.” Steve was visibly shaking. He had been waiting for her in a small meeting room down the hall. It was big enough for two chairs and a table, and a little standing and maneuvering room.

  Lacey walked in and stood against the opened door with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Lacey,” he stammered. He felt like his world was imploding. Lacey’s eyes were so cold and distant. His Lacey was not in the room with him. He needed to find her and bring her back.

 
Lacey leaned her head against the door, and Steve felt too tall. He needed to be eye to eye with her. He pulled out a chair and sat down. Fell into the seat.

  Lacey leveled her gaze on his. “You’re a good guy, doing what he thought was the right thing for America. Thank you for that.”

  Hope sparked in his chest. He opened his mouth to say something, anything that would right this, but she held up her hand to stop him.

  “But you’re also a bad guy who used me to get where you wanted to go. You endangered my life. And my life is every bit as precious as any of the other lives you were trying to save.” She stopped and pulled her brow together. “The biggest hurdle for me to jump is that I really do believe you loved me, Steve Finley.”

  “Love you. I love you. Everything I ever said to you about my feelings was the absolute truth.”

  “And yet you thought you could simultaneously love me and endanger my life? Not just my reputation or my job, but my actual existence. Who would accept that kind of love in their life? I want to feel safe. I want to feel cherished. I want to feel like I belong. I don’t want to ever wonder if I’m the trade-off in some kind of con.”

  “Lacey, please, I’ll make this up to you. I will make this better. I love you. I want to marry you and raise a family. I will do whatever it takes. Whatever you want.” He realized his hands were gripped as if in supplication, and he knew that he was a drowning man who had risen from the depths of the water and taken his last breath of air.

  “If you think I ever want to see you or speak to you again,” Lacey raised a derisive brow. “You are seriously mistaken. I can’t even stand here next to you. I’m breaking out in hives. Do you see this?” Lacey showed him how her arms above the bandages were covered in welts.

  “Lacey, please,” he whispered.

  “I’m going to say this as clearly and plainly as I can.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You saved my life, and for that, thank you. But from that point on, you’ve endangered me. For months, you treated me as someone who was disposable, someone who didn’t matter. I was a castaway to be used in a con. But I do matter.” Her gaze sizzled with angry sparks. “I don’t ever want to see you or speak to you again. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Lacey, you have to understand. These people are dangerous.”

  She turned on her heels and started walking away.

  “You can’t go back to your life the way you were living it,” he yelled after her in desperation.

  “Oh yeah?” She threw over her shoulder. “Watch me.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Deep

  Friday Evening

  The hotel room was luxurious. Deep had decided to take Lacey to the Jefferson Hotel for “the first night of the rest of my life,” as she called it. Tonight, it felt like they needed a celebration. A beautiful setting and a sense of pampering.

  Lynx had brought Lacey over earlier and stayed with her. They watched movies and ordered room service. Deep had stayed in the war room, where he laid out everything they knew about the palytoxins, the arts con, and the children. While the pictures of the children were vile, Monroe was ecstatic—they had the evidence they had so desperately needed to keep the kids safe and put the children’s handlers in jail for a very long time.

  While Deep moved through the evidence trails back at headquarters, Panther Force had deployed to the businesses that shared walls with the gallery annex. The Iniquus operatives and K9 Zorro found an explosive attached to a gas line with a dial-in detonator.

  With Deep’s tasks complete, General Elliot pat him on the back and told him to go finish up his R and R. He had two days left before his next mission.

  When Deep arrived at the hotel room door, Lynx opened it with her coat and purse in her hands. “Thought that was you in the elevator,” she said. “I’ll check in with you later.” And before he could say a word, she was off down the hall.

  Deep walked into the room and softly shut the door. Lacey was curled around a pillow on the bed. She glanced up at him. He had the same reaction he had the moment she slipped her hand into his way back last November at the gallery. He had been thrown end over end. His whole world had shifted. His perspective and purpose. He’d found his heart, and she was everything brave and good and wholesome.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  “Hi.” Lacey smiled at him with sleepy happiness. “What happened?”

  “Things are blowing up for the Zoric family.” Deep bent to take off his boots. He removed his weapons and laid them on the top of the highboy, then crawled onto the bed.

  Lacey pushed herself up to sit cross-legged, hugging the pillow to her chest. “The children?”

  “The FBI is sending out a team tonight.” Deep checked his watch. “Another hour, and they’ll start the arrests. The children have a group home ready for them, complete with psychological help and medical attention.” As he said that, Lacey’s face crumpled.

  Fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she shook her head back and forth. “Thank, God for that.”

  Deep reached out and cradled her face in his hands, using his thumbs to wipe her tears. “You’re so amazing to me, Lacey. So smart, so brave; you have such a loving heart.” He set his jaw and looked her straight in the eyes. “I have to keep you safe, sweetheart.”

  Lacey’s eyes popped wide as she jerked herself from one emotion to another. She settled on one that he read as fear. “What does that mean? Are you sending me away to the protection program?”

  “I would never do something that involves you without your permission. You understand that, don’t you?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were focused and intelligent.

  “Iniquus would like to develop a new identity for you. Name, birthdate, social security numbers—a whole new identity. If they do this, you will have to give up who you were before and not go back to it. It will be a legal change.”

  “I think that’s okay. Just some new numbers to memorize, right?”

  “Yes. New address, too. New bank accounts, credit cards. New job. We have a department that handles the changes, and Sy Covington can help you maneuver through your finances.”

  “I just need to give them the go-ahead?”

  “They already started on an alias package for the time being. While you make your decision and the slow government machines turn their wheels, we need to keep your identity hidden.”

  “New identity? A new name. Who came up with my alias? Do I get to choose?”

  “I came up with the temporary one. You will come up with the permanent one.”

  “What did you call me? Helga Longbottom?” She smiled and tipped her head.

  Deep nodded. “Yes, do you like it?”

  Lacey swatted him with the pillow, which he easily plucked from her hands. He rolled into a ball and settled back, tucking it under his head. He reached out and pulled Lacey into his arms and stroked a hand through her hair. “What do you think of Grace Elizabeth Del Toro?”

  She lifted herself to look him in the eye.

  “Grace sounds a lot like Lacey. You can say Gracey, for example.”

  She knotted her brow and mouthed the names. “I prefer Grace. I like Grace very much.”

  Deep gently brushed her hair from her face. “I picked Grace because it describes you so well, and then Del Toro, because I thought you might like to try it on and see how it fits.”

  She smiled self-consciously.

  “I called my mom in New York, Long Island. She’s inviting you to go stay with her as long as it takes until it’s safe for you to be back in DC. I thought we could fly up on tomorrow. If you wanted.”

  “How long are they thinking it will be until I’m safe?”

  “The FBI believes it’ll be a number of months. My mom is thrilled because she knows I’ll be up there seeing you all the time, so she’ll get to see me, too.” He stalled. “I’m a little worried, though.”

  Lacey frowned.

  “My mom is a mom. A full-throttle mom, if you know what I mean.”

>   Lacey shook her head.

  No, how could she know what I mean? “Let’s just say that you’ll get twenty-five years of normal mothering in a few short months. And, every time I see you, you’ll have gained at least ten pounds. She equates love with eating.”

  Lacey whispered, “What did you tell her about why I was coming?”

  “That I wanted her to get to know you.”

  “Because . . .”

  “I plan to marry you.” Deep came up on his elbow so they were eye to eye.

  “I see.” She tilted her head with a funny little confused look on her face.

  He reached out to plant a kiss on the tip of her perfect little nose. “I’m going to wait to ask, though, because I have a strict ‘no means no’ rule.” He laced their fingers together. “If you were to say no, well, I’d have to go and mope my life away.”

  She smiled. “What if I were to say yes?”

  “Then I’d be the happiest man in the world. But Lacey . . .” He paused a beat to make absolutely sure she heard and understood what he was saying. “This is my role to play. I know you like control – but not about this. I get to make it all sappy and romantic. I want to surprise you, so you’ll cry.”

  “You want me to cry?”

  “Only with happiness. And that’s not where you are right now. Right now, you’re in shock. Traumatized. And scared. I’m going to ask you to marry me. But everything in its right time. Right now, it’s time for you to get a little mothering. It’s a time for healing, and pasta.”

  Lacey curled around him. “That sounds really, really nice.” Her contented sigh made him smile.

  Deep leaned down and kissed Lacey with the conviction he had always felt when it came to loving her. In his arms, she was exactly where she belonged.

  This is not

  THE END

  Please follow Deep Del Toro and the Iniquus family

  as they continue their fight for the greater good.