by Unknown
“No one’s gonna kill me for this,” Aaron interrupted. “Ian knows. Really. I know you don’t believe that, but he’s always known. I’m me, and he knows me and he loves me. But we both know your father’s a fucking lunatic. God knows what he’ll do, where he’ll send you. No. Shel, you’ve gotta let me do it.” He stepped forward then, his hand warm against the side of Shelly’s face, his thumb gentle as he brushed it across Shelly’s lips. “It’s only a few months before you graduate, a few months after that until you go to MIT. I’ll meet you there. We’ll make it work. I borrowed your car that night,” he repeated. “Say it.”
And suddenly Shelly knew. What Aaron could say. How they could fix this—for both of them. “You borrowed my car,” he repeated, stepping back, away from Aaron’s hypnotizing touch. “To spend the day with your girlfriend.”
Aaron was already shaking his head. “Have you seen that video?”
“It could be a girl.”
“With short hair?” Aaron scoffed. “About your height and weight?”
“That’s the story we’re going with,” Shel insisted. If you don’t … He didn’t say the words, but they hung in the cold night air, between them. He felt his eyes well with tears. “Please, Air. At least try to save yourself.”
“Save myself,” Aaron repeated, as the moonlight made his eyes glisten, too. “By hiding. By lying. By making it be only about the sex, when the truth is I would die for you.”
Sheldon kissed him. He couldn’t not. “Please,” he whispered.
And Aaron nodded as he wiped his face. God forbid anyone ever see him cry, not even Shel. But he said, “This world? It’s fucked up.” He gestured with his head, toward town, in a move that was pure Aaron Dunn. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
“You don’t have to,” Shel said. “I’m perfectly capable of—” taking care of myself.
“I know,” Aaron cut him off. “It’s not about that. It’s about me being scared that this bullshit’s gonna backfire, that this could be the last time I see you for a while.”
It won’t be, Shel wanted to say, to reassure him. And if it is … Whatever happens, I’ll find you again. Somehow. Some way. Count on that. But he couldn’t speak.
“Come on,” Aaron said, and he started down the road toward town, glancing back to make sure Shelly was following.
Shel jogged a little to catch up, to keep up, and when he did, Aaron smiled at him and sang in a purposely funny falsetto, “Ain’t no mountain high enough …”
To keep me away from you, babe.
Their eyes met and caught, and Sheldon knew they were both thinking the exact same thing.
Always you. Only you. Always and forever.
Aaron’s hands were back in his jeans pockets, and Shel had tucked his own into his jacket. He wanted to reach out and hold hands as they took this, their potential final walk together.
But he didn’t dare.
* * *
Once Ian agreed to sell his soul to Martell’s government overlord, things moved quickly.
Mostly because their answer to nearly all of his demands was no.
No, he couldn’t have the additional manpower he’d requested.
No, he couldn’t have the limitless equipment, vehicles, and weaponry he’d asked for in order to properly surveil the consulate and perform the rescue op. There wasn’t enough time to get him sanitized materials—that is, equipment that couldn’t be traced back to the U.S. government.
Instead, he was going to get a suitcase—a small suitcase—of cash, from which to outfit, arm, and hire his support team. He’d also have access to an FBI undercover operative to assist him in making untraceable cash purchases. But heads up, because that suitcase would not be bottomless. And if he failed to rescue the kids? He’d have to pay the money back.
All of it.
Another no came in response to Ian’s request for full autonomy. What he wanted was to drive off with Aaron and Phoebe in an unmarked car, into the darkness of the night. He’d do what he had to do to rescue the kids and not reappear until he had them safely in hand.
Martell had laughed in his face.
Oh, the FBI got Ian an unmarked car. And it was fine with them if Phoebe drove it. But one of their agents—Deb Erlanger, the hot goth dominatrix—was going to be sitting securely in the back with Aaron, while Martell trailed behind them in a second vehicle.
And Phoebe was going to drive them not to Ian’s choice of a securely hidden location from which to prep for his mission-from-hell, but rather to a so-called government safe house that another FBI agent was currently setting up—first here in Sarasota, then down in Miami.
So Martell, Deb, and one of her FBI buddies were going to be Ian’s babysitters. Or prison guards. Or personal shoppers. Whatever their official titles were, they’d be on hand to meddle and get in his way but would be completely unavailable to help him out with the actual rescue—when he’d most need their assistance.
Thanks, Uncle Sam.
It was the worst of both worlds. No real support or top-of-the-line equipment, but constant eyes on him, watching and micromanaging his every move.
As if that weren’t enough, there was one more, great, big, screaming no that won the honor of pissing Ian off the most. It was attached to the only yes that he’d gotten—and Ian had to admit that was, really, the only yes he’d needed—the yes to his request for amnesty and/or immunity for Aaron, Shelly, and Francine. For himself, too.
If Ian could pull this off and successfully rescue these kids from their kidnappers, they were all going to get a fresh start. A clean slate.
It was exactly what his brother needed. It would allow Aaron and Shel and their baby to leave the country, if they wanted to.
Still, of course, this being the FBI with whom Ian was negotiating, there was a catch.
The amnesty and immunity wouldn’t be granted until after the mission was over and those kids were safe.
So that meant Ian would be attempting a very high risk, highly dangerous job with not only the Dellarosas’ private army trying to find and kill both him and Aaron, but an entire cadre of law enforcement—local, state, and federal—chasing them down as well.
Hoo-yah.
During part of the conversation, Phoebe had put Martell on speakerphone, because he’d wanted specifics as to how Ian was intending to pull off the children’s rescue.
Ian had laughed when Martell asked, but then he realized that the lawyer was dead serious. So Ian had made some noise about having to see the FBI’s intelligence as well as their files and reports on the consulate, because he knew that saying Frankly, bro, I haven’t yet given it a single fucking thought would not be well received.
But the truth was, he hadn’t given it a single fucking thought since he’d left Northport prison. His complete focus had been to make sure Aaron and his family were safe. Also? He had no intention of taking on a no-win scenario. No, thanks. No way in hell was he going to let himself get pressured or blackmailed into running this mission. He had his own battles to fight. The FBI was going to have to find someone else—someone more capable.
Or so Ian had told himself, even while knowing that—after he’d gotten Aaron and his family to safety—he was probably going to volunteer to help.
Just help. A little. Because, after all, he did know the alleged kidnapper, the douchebag known as the Dutchman.
Thinking about the Dutchman, AKA Georg Vanderzee, always brought back the sudden, sharp, and extremely unwanted memory of the ornate wallpaper in the man’s palace dining room, high in the mountains of northern Kazbekistan. That wallpaper had been a mix of textures—some kind of velvet forest green pattern, backed with a metallic, shiny gold. It was far too baroquely self-indulgent for Ian’s taste, even to start with. But it became sickening when sprayed with bright red blood …
Ian pushed the images away, along with the heaviness of the guilt he carried for not killing the bastard when he’d had the chance.
Away. Away. There’d be plenty of
time to think about the Dutchman, and to figure out how best to save those kids, after he got Aaron the hell out of here, and after he then—somehow—figured out a way to extract Shel from whatever Dellarosa dungeon he was currently languishing in.
More info to keep secret from his new FBI bosses.
Of course, right after Ian had agreed to the FBI’s deal, the universe gave him one last bitchslap when the local TV station ran footage from a news copter circling this house.
It showed the massive destruction, and all of the police and emergency vehicles in the street.
It looked bad—really bad.
So bad that Ian had had to break radio silence. He’d had to call Francine, who’d gone, with little Rory, to Contact Point Charlie. She was the only one who’d actually followed his protocol and checked into the Ocean Breeze motel, up by the airport, under the alias of Charles.
Ian called the motel and got patched through to Ms. Charles’s room. She answered, and yes, she’d seen the news footage and was preparing to return to the neighborhood, to see if she couldn’t somehow help. And wouldn’t that have been grand, if she and the baby got their asses grabbed by Davio Dellarosa’s men, who were no doubt still lurking in the area despite the heavy police presence.
Since the negotiating was over and done, Martell won the short-straw assignment of going to meet Francine. His task was to escort her to the FBI safe house where they’d regroup under Uncle Sam’s watchful eye.
Yeah, this was going to suck.
Phoebe was looking at Ian as he got off the phone with Francine, so he said, “Yes?” because she clearly had a burning question for him.
“I’m sorry this isn’t working out the way we’d hoped it would,” she said, as the phone immediately rang again.
Aaron picked it up. It was probably the call announcing that their car had finally arrived.
“Yeah, well,” Ian said to Phoebe, because really, what else could he say? Dressed as she was in too-big borrowed jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair still damp from the pool, makeup rinsed from her face, those clunky glasses on her nose, she looked impossibly young and sweet.
“If you want,” she said, “after I drive you to wherever you’re going, I could attempt to contact the Dellarosas. I know I said I couldn’t, but I’ve been thinking about it and … Jerry Bryant’s not really your uncle.”
Ian shook his head and answered, even though she’d made it a statement instead of a question. “No.”
“It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Bryant was hired by Manny Dellarosa, to be your contact while you were …” She glanced over at Aaron, who was on the phone, but still, discreetly, didn’t say while you were in jail. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, someone at the law firm might know how to get it touch with him. Manny, that is. If I can reach him—when I reach him—I can explain what’s going on. With you. Without going into any breach-of-national-security details, of course.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.”
“It might,” she countered.
“No,” Ian said, “it won’t.”
“Car’s here,” Aaron announced, interrupting them. “It’s time to go.”
Ian’s brother’s desire to find Shelly trumped his fear that he was going to be arrested the moment that the panic room door was opened.
“I’m going to have to give you a crash course in mobster ethics—clearly your law school didn’t offer Dellarosa Douchebaggery one-oh-one,” Ian told Phoebe as he shouldered Shelly’s go-bag. “Manny’s a bad guy. His brother Davio’s worse. He’s a freaking crazy bad guy. If Manny’s in the hospital, and we know he is, you’ll be dealing with Davio, who is—say it with me—a freaking crazy bad guy.”
“I’m talking about making a simple phone call,” Phoebe said with exasperation as she gathered up her own still-soggy purse and clothes. “At worst, a meeting in the office conference room.”
Jesus, she really had no clue. She believed that she lived in a world where lawyers were considered to be a sacrosanct part of the court system, where they were respected as such by all.
Or maybe she was just pretending to believe that—it was a nice embellishment to her role as the wide-eyed, innocent young lawyer—when in fact she was a hardcore Agency operative.
“Let’s play out that conference room meeting,” Ian said. “Davio will walk in and say, Where’s Dunn? And you’ll say, I assure you he’s no danger to you, Mr. Dellarosa, blah blah blah-blah-blah.” He made his voice high and squeaky in an intentionally terrible imitation.
Phoebe laughed her disdain. “I don’t even remotely sound like that.”
“Towel,” Aaron said, handing one to Ian as he draped another over his head.
Ian wasn’t done with his story. “And then he’ll leave, and you’ll pin a little star on your shirt for being such a crackerjack negotiator, except his thugs will be in the parking lot, waiting for you to go home. They’ll follow you around for a few hours, but if you don’t lead them to me or Aaron, they’ll get more aggressive—see if maybe you’ll divulge my location if they beat the crap out of you.” He put the towel over his head, hiding his face, as punctuation.
But Phoebe made another dismissive sound. “I’ve worked as a criminal defense attorney for quite a few years,” she told him. “And one thing I’ve learned is that even freaking crazy bad guys”—she imitated him this time, pitching her voice low and adding a generous helping of stupid to her tone—“need lawyers. In fact, they need lawyers more than the completely sane good guys do. And if they went around beating the crap out of their legal team on a regular basis, they would find it impossible to get anyone to represent them.”
Jesus. “Great,” Ian said. “Fine. You believe whatever myths or fairytales you want to believe, so you can sleep at night. But I’m telling you, no. Thank you, but no. I’ve changed my mind. I no longer want you attempting to contact any of the Dellarosas. At least not at this time. I’ll be sure to let you know if that changes.”
“Can we please do this?” Aaron asked.
“Yes,” Ian told him, and together they threw back the bolts on the door and stepped back to let it swing open.
At that point, the entire situation could have gone drastically south. A SWAT team could’ve rushed in, arresting them both and dragging Phoebe to safety.
Instead there was only silence and stillness.
Phoebe led the way out of the closet and into the ruins of Aaron’s living room, and no one stopped them. Aaron carried his go-bag, inside of which he’d put his handgun. Pheebs had stashed her Glock in her still-dripping giant-sized lady-purse-thing. Ian carried Shel’s bag, which was huge and heavy as hell.
A group of uniformed officers kept their hands securely atop the weapons in their belts, but other than that aggressive posturing … Nothing. No one so much as spoke a word to them. It was true, the identity-concealing towels that he and D.A. both wore over their heads weren’t a fashion statement that screamed stop and chat.
Agent Goth was silently waiting for them inside of Aaron’s attached garage where a nondescript, dark-colored sedan had been pulled inside, bay door closed.
It was dim in there, although light filtered in through an array of bullet holes.
“Son of a bitch,” Aaron muttered, disgusted by the damage as Ian loaded Shelly’s heavy luggage into the trunk. Aaron kept his grip on his own bag—good man—as he got into the backseat.
The car was an older model that no one would look at twice.
Ian climbed into the front passenger side as Phoebe arranged herself behind the wheel. The FBI agent got in, too, and with a shudder and a rattle of its chain, the garage door started to go up.
“Towels, gentlemen,” Phoebe said as she started the car.
Ian adjusted his towel as the door ended its journey with a kachunk, and Phoebe backed carefully out of the garage and down the driveway.
She sighed—just the smallest of ohs—as she saw the damage done to her car.
“I’ll make sure it gets fixed,” Ian told
her.
Her voice was bemused. “In your copious free time.”
He smiled wryly at that. “Good point.”
“I’ve already called to have it towed,” she told him briskly. “After we get to the safe house, I’ll take this car, since you don’t want to keep it and—”
“Sorry, no,” he said.
“Left on Clark,” Goth ordered from the backseat, and Ian heard the signal clicker go on.
Phoebe misunderstood. “So you do want to keep this car.”
“No, this car’s gotta go. We’ll get another. One that fifty cops haven’t seen.” Ian aimed his voice toward the back. “You’re making sure we’re not being followed, right?”
“I’m on it,” Goth said. “So far so good.”
Meanwhile, for Phoebe, light dawned. “No, no,” she said. “Oh, no. Ian. You said you needed me to drive, not—”
“Honey, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t leave. I know you think otherwise, but it’s not safe. Plus, your work here has just begun,” he said.
He heard her bristle. “There is so much wrong with what you just said.”
“Phoebe,” he corrected himself. “I hate to break it to you—”
“What, you need me as part of the crack team that’s going to rescue Sheldon from the Dellarosas, before going in after those kids?” she asked.
Agent Goth sat forward, her voice suddenly louder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What?”
“Of course not,” Ian told Phoebe and ignored Goth. “I was however, thinking about what you suggested—that someone at your firm knows how to get in touch with the Dellarosas. And it occurred to me that in the event I can’t contact Manny, it might be a good option to have you make that call—but from the safe house—and pretend to negotiate with freaking crazy Davio, distracting him—”
Phoebe was already speaking over him. “Because of my incredible ability to … to … climb the outside of a twelve-story building or—”
“—while I break Shelly out,” Ian finished.
“Rescue who?” Goth asked, clearly pained.
“—grapple,” Phoebe continued, still just talking right over them both. “Although, really, I’m not all that sure what grappling is, so there’s that.”
