Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  And that was not just stupid, but freaking stupid.

  That was an irrational, selfish reaction that absolutely, positively didn’t belong to a woman thinking about a man who was only a friend.

  Add in the elevator-ride-like stomach flips that didn’t only happen when the man held a baby in his arms, but instead occurred at nearly all eye contact, and …

  God help her.

  “I am sorry,” Ian said now, quietly. “That you got dragged into this. I seem to be saying that a lot, don’t I?”

  His words broke whatever stupid spell it was that he had the power to cast over her, and Phoebe turned back to her sandwich. “Yeah, well, now that I’m stuck here for some undetermined amount of time, it seems beyond foolish not to let me help.” She took a bite for emphasis. “You could at least let me make you a sandwich,” she added balefully through her mouthful.

  “That was me being respectful of your law degree,” Ian said.

  She gave him a very intentional side-eye and he laughed. God, she liked making him laugh.

  “I can definitely use your help,” he admitted, “sifting through the dump of information I’m about to receive from the FBI. I want you to start your part of the digging with the details of how the mother originally got out of Kazbekistan and the legal standing of her divorce, as well as her custody of those kids. You know anything about international law?”

  “Not much, but I know how to read and research. I’ll find what you need to know.”

  “Good. Because I want to know what the father thinks his rights are. I also want to know exactly who he is. How big of an enemy am I going to be making. Because the Dutchman’s not the only person I’ll be fucking with when I pull off this rescue mission.”

  When, not if. It was possible this man’s vocabulary didn’t include the word if. Once again, Phoebe found herself admiring Ian’s conviction and resolve.

  She took another bite and again spoke through it, pointing with her elbow at the cell phone on the counter. “Francine gave me that to give to you. And she managed to do it without shivving me through the heart, but just barely. You do know she’s in love with you.”

  Ian laughed again at that. “Nah, she’s just messing with you. Trying to make you think that. You scare her, because she hasn’t known you for twenty-five years. She’s hypercautious.” He sighed. “She’s earned the right to be.”

  “How long has she worked with you?” Phoebe asked.

  “A long time,” Ian admitted.

  It was his first acknowledgment that, yes, he had the crack team that she kept asking about. But Phoebe kept her Hah! I knew it! to herself. “It hasn’t occurred to you that the reason she’s stuck around for a long time is that maybe she really is in love with you?” she asked instead.

  “She’s not,” Ian said as he carried his now-empty plate to the sink. Somehow he’d eaten his entire giant sandwich before she’d gotten through half of hers. “But I appreciate the fact that you think she might be. Good friend that you are.” He grabbed his phone off the counter and raised his voice. “I’m ready to see that surveillance video from the safe house.”

  Deb, still on her own phone, pointed to the computer that was out on the table, and Ian headed toward it, glancing back at Phoebe. “You’ll probably want to see this, too.”

  And there it was again, at even that briefest of eye contact. That whoopsie-daisy feeling that she was trying her best to deny.

  Phoebe made her voice businesslike and brisk, as she carried the rest of her sandwich toward the computer. “If Berto really is an ally, he might be a way to get in touch with Manny, and convince Davio to stand down.”

  “I’m pretty sure Manny’s not capable of doing any convincing right now,” Ian said. “I think his condition is worse than the Dellarosas are letting on. As for Davio—he’s completely incapable of negotiation.”

  “So, then, what’s the plan?” Phoebe asked, her heart sinking as she already knew the answer. A declared, mutual truce with the Dellarosas would allow her to return to her regularly scheduled life and job. By not establishing that truce …

  Ian hit play on a video that was on screen and waiting for him. “I’m going to use this feud with the Dellarosas to get me inside the K-stani consulate in Miami,” he said, as a very handsome dark-haired man—Sheldon Dellarosa—sat down on a sofa directly in front of the surveillance cameras. Shel picked up a remote and muted the booming male voices of what had to be a TV sportscast.

  Not establishing that truce would require Phoebe to stick around for her own safety. And Ian knew that.

  He glanced at her, pretending to be extra apologetic. “It’s the quickest way in. Quicker than setting up some bullshit cover story. Vanderzee—the Dutchman—will run a check to verify whatever I tell him. And it won’t take much for him to confirm that I am, absolutely, on the official Dellarosa shit list. You can’t buy that kind of cover.” He added a final volley. “This gets those kids rescued days, possibly an entire week, earlier. I know it’s inconvenient for you, but there you have it.”

  “I’ll live,” Phoebe said shortly as, on the computer screen, another man who was heavier and older but still quite handsome—the family resemblance was obvious—carried a bowl of pretzels and a couple cans of beer into the room.

  “Good.”

  She glanced at Ian, who met her eyes and smiled at her.

  And the world shifted, just a little. Just enough to know that she was in big, big trouble here.

  “She has no idea,” Francine said, after climbing behind the wheel of Martell’s POS.

  She hadn’t asked. She’d just assumed, correctly, that it was okay with Martell if she drove.

  He’d gotten in the passenger side, whereupon she took off west, back toward the city and its harbor. She was heading, he knew, for the Pelican Deck, a tourist bar that was right on the water, where Martell’s task was going to be to keep eyes on Berto Dellarosa while she went over to the YMCA and picked up her brother.

  “She who?” he asked now. “Has no idea of what?”

  “Phoebe,” Francine answered. “Has no idea how freaking crazy it was that Ian risked his life, going after her the way he did.”

  “Was it?” Martell asked. “Really that crazy? Because for all of his reputation as the spawn of Satan, Dunn seems to me to fit more in the tried-and-true former-Navy-SEAL-slash-Boy-Scout mold.”

  Francine laughed at that, heavy on the scorn, complete with trademark eye roll.

  “So what do you care what Phoebe thinks?” Martell asked her.

  “I don’t,” she lied. “I’m just commenting on it.”

  “I don’t,” he imitated her. “You are so full of crap. FYI, I am watching your tension levels rise exponentially with each fraction of a mile we get closer to your old boyfriend.”

  Martell knew right away that he’d pushed it too far, because she practically turned to ice. This woman was cold to start, but now …? He could feel his nose hairs start to freeze in the deadly silence.

  But then Francine surprised him. “My old boyfriend,” she said, in an upbeat, conversational tone that contrasted markedly with her white knuckles on the steering wheel, “let his father rape me.”

  And okay.

  That was so not what Martell had expected her to say, and she laughed—a brittle sound—at his inability to speak. “Nice, right?”

  “Let?” he managed to echo.

  “He saw Davio hit me,” Francie said, “and he just walked away. He knew what would happen. I was being punished, and that’s how Davio punishes women. Or girls. Age pretty much doesn’t matter to him.”

  “I don’t know what to say in response to that,” Martell admitted.

  “Good,” she said. “So shut the fuck up.”

  She was the one who’d started the conversation in the first place, but he chose not to remind her of that.

  But then she looked at him again and whispered, “Don’t tell Shel or Aaron, because they don’t know. They think he just beat me up. Don’
t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t,” Martell promised, thinking Shit.

  They rode the rest of the way in an oddly frigid silence, as he tried to come up with the best way to say Maybe you should talk to someone about this. Like a licensed therapist or a rape crisis center counselor, if you don’t want to tell your family.… But he didn’t dare.

  And it wasn’t until Francine pulled to the side of the road, to drop him about a quarter mile away from the bar, that he ventured to speak again.

  “Are you, um, okay?” he asked.

  She looked at him with those weirdly flat blue eyes. “Text me when you have visual confirmation that he’s sitting at the bar.”

  Martell nodded as he climbed out, turned to lean back into the open window. “You know, Berto might not be working this gig alone.”

  “I’m aware,” she told him. “I’ll make sure we’re not followed.”

  “Followed back here?” he asked. “Or—”

  “No. You’re going to have to find your own way to reconnect with Little Debbie and Team Hero.”

  “That’s my car you’re driving,” he reminded her.

  “So what?”

  Right.

  She pulled away from him, forcing him to jump back to avoid having the rear tire roll over his feet.

  Martell watched the glow of his taillights fading into the night as he walked toward the bar. He was well aware that moments after Sheldon’s return, the entire group—Team Hero, as Francine had called them—would bug out and leave Zebra.

  No doubt they’d head immediately to Miami, where the next phase of this fuck-tastrophe was due to take place. Martell was going to have to get creative in order to find a car in which to make the three-hour-plus drive.

  He made peace with that as he finally reached the Pelican Deck’s pitted gravel parking lot. He went up the wooden boardwalk and through the bar toward the so-called party deck that overlooked the water.

  The party that was happening out there was a sad and lonely one. And it was winding down, despite it still being hours before last call. The partiers were a mix of German tourists on beach vacations, elderly yachters, and sleepy drunks.

  But sure enough, there was Berto, the man from the surveillance tape, nursing a pint of draft beer as he sat alone at the table that was, yes, directly beneath the self-labeled “fun-cam.”

  Whoo-hoo! Whoo! Whoo?

  Berto looked tired and sad and as if that wasn’t the first beer he’d ordered from the laid-back, tattooed waitstaff since he’d gotten here.

  Martell walked past him to verify, pretending he was looking for the men’s, before he typed the text to Francine. He’s here, whatever that’s worth.

  As he hit send, the table next to Berto cleared, its previous occupants heading back to das Beach Condo. Martell perched himself on one of the still-warm stools and settled in, trying not to let his disgust for Berto show as he thumbed through his contact list on his phone to figure out whose car he could beg, borrow, or steal to get his ass to Miami.

  * * *

  “You’ve really never met her?” Francie turned from where she was nestled in the crook of Berto’s arm, her head on his broad shoulder, to look up at his face.

  He kissed her instead of answering, his mouth soft and sweet. As always, when he kissed her, she felt something stir, deep inside. Something hot and heavy and powerful and consuming and …

  She pulled back abruptly, only to find him smiling at her, his brown eyes amused beneath their heavy lids. He murmured, “Would it really be that bad if you just let me—”

  “Yes,” she said, no hesitation, pulling away from him to sit up on the tattered sofa they’d brought into the empty warehouse where they’d been hanging out since Berto had come to live with his father at age sixteen.

  They’d been over and over and over this, countless times. It was the conversation that would not die.

  Francie wanted to wait.

  She wasn’t ready to go all the way.

  She wasn’t willing to end up like her mother—forced to drop out of school and get married to some loser before she was twenty.

  “Hey.” Berto now pushed himself up so that he was sitting next to her. He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You know I’d wait for you forever, right?”

  She looked into his eyes and saw the truth behind his words. “Yeah,” she said on an exhale. “I know.” She also knew how lucky she was. And how unlucky Pauline, her older sister, had been.

  She’d been thinking about that a lot lately. Somewhere, out there in the huge wide world, her sister was getting ready to celebrate another birthday.

  Francine brought the conversation back to the question Berto hadn’t answered. “You really never met Pauline? Not even once?”

  Berto scratched his head through his thick, dark curls. “I don’t think so.”

  “She was at the wedding.” When Davio married Francine and Pauline’s mother, and the world went from tenable to terrifying.

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t. Are you kidding? My mother was bullshit about Davio getting remarried so soon. Your mother was already pregnant with Shelly, which made it even worse. We spent most of that summer in Long Island with my grandparents, getting shit-faced. Well, I didn’t. At least not all the time.”

  He was joking—he’d been a child. Or God, maybe he wasn’t joking.…

  Berto laughed at the expression on her face. “I’m kidding. She was a terrible mother, but she didn’t let me drink.”

  “How about that one Christmas?” Francine asked. “When we went to San Francisco?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been to California.”

  “I know that Pauline was gone before you moved in with us,” she said. It was odd that Berto’s visits before then had never, not even once, lined up with her older sister’s erratic schedule.

  Pauline had hated Davio from the start, and she and Francine were frequently sent to visit their mother’s parents. The year Francie turned six, Pauline’s “bad behavior” got her shipped off to boarding school. And when she finally ran away, the response had been one of weary inevitability.

  But Francie had loved her big sister fiercely.

  “She was … brilliant, and beautiful, and … I wanted to be her,” she told Berto now.

  “You don’t need to be her, because you’re you, and you’re all of those things and more,” he said, catching her mouth with his again.

  “I want to find her,” she said, after he’d kissed her breathless. “I’ve always wanted to. Make sure she’s okay.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Berto reassured her. “Maybe she’s in Paris. Maybe we’ll be neighbors when we finally go to Europe.”

  Francine laughed. “That would be perfect. Really unlikely, but …”

  After Sheldon graduated from high school, their plan was to pack their bags and escape overseas—travel, far from Davio and the Dellarosa family business.

  “We’ll find her,” Berto promised. “Wherever she is. I’ll help you. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” Francie smiled into the warmth of his eyes, and lost herself in the sweetness of his kiss.

  * * *

  As Francine now headed toward the YMCA, where she was certain she’d find her little brother, it was hard not to think about that idyllic afternoon nearly ten years ago—one of the last that she’d spent with Berto before he’d turned on her.

  Francine had spent much of the past decade searching for her long-lost sister. But then, finally, last year, she’d received an anonymous email that had pointed her toward Pauline.

  She’d known it was Berto who’d sent that email—even before today, when he’d confessed as much as she listened in on his conversation with Shel.

  It had to have been Berto. There was no one else who’d known about Francie’s quest.

  And when Francie went into one of the darkest, shadiest parts of Tampa, to some rotting hovel back behind one of the city’s strip clubs, she’d had the unnerving sensation that she was bein
g watched.

  Not in a creepy stalker way. More in an If anything bad happens, I’ll swoop in and save you, Batman way.

  And although she’d been prepared to kick ass to find her sister and pull her out of there, it was clear when she first went inside, that the regulars at this particular crack house—or opium den or whatever the hell it was—were expecting her.

  They were ready for her arrival. Greeting her politely, even calling her ma’am. Happy to help her carry her barely conscious sister out to her car. Defanged and, in fact, scared shitless by whoever had given them the heads-up that she was coming.

  And that had to have been Berto.

  She’s in a bad way, he’d written in that email. But despite that warning, Francie had been unprepared. Pauline was only in her thirties, yet she looked nearly elderly, her hair graying and lifeless, her skin stretched tight across her somehow still-beautiful face. She was bone thin, with a huge bulge of baby in front of her.…

  The email had said Pauline was pregnant, but Francie also hadn’t been prepared for how far along she was.

  As she drove away with her sister unconscious in her backseat, Francine had been swept up by the urgent need to find immediate medical help for both mother and unborn child, and she hadn’t spent much time thinking about the remarkable ease with which she’d pulled off the rescue.

  The next few days had been filled with dealing with the medical emergency—with Shelly, Aaron, and Ian’s help.

  Pauline was put on methadone, with the understanding that the baby would be born addicted, also in need of detox.

  The bad news was that the baby’s first months would be miserable, but the good news was that opiates were less destructive developmentally than alcohol or other drugs. And after he detoxed, with plenty of love and care, he’d be okay.

  Francine had also discovered that, thankfully, her sister had been clean and sober right up until the very end of her pregnancy, which further increased the baby’s chance of survival.

  Pauline, however, had lost all desire to live. She didn’t want the baby, and after she signed custody of Rory over to Shelly and Aaron, she essentially quit. No one was surprised when she drew her final breath.