Criminal Deception

by Pappano, Marilyn

  He wanted her back.

  Restlessly, he picked up his cell and dialed Natalia’s number. It went to voice mail. “Hey, Nat, it’s Joe. I’m not gonna be home for a while, so can you let Bear and Elizabeth out now, then feed them supper around seven? Thanks.”

  “You named your dog after your girlfriend?” Maricci asked with a grin.

  “You’d be surprised how much they have in common.”

  KiKi snorted. “I’m surprised she didn’t shoot you between the eyes.”

  “She took it as a compliment.” He smiled faintly at the memory. Liz had been wearing a short dress and amazingly sexy heels and drinking a frozen coffee. Watching her lick the whipped cream off the straw had left him so weak in the knees that if he hadn’t been sitting, he would have fallen at her feet.

  Pain slashed, sharp and lethal, through him.

  “We’ll get her back,” Maricci said quietly.

  It was a guess, no better than Joe’s best guess—or his worst—but he grabbed the hope it offered.

  Then his cell phone rang. His fingers spasmed as he reached for it, turning on the speaker, and the rushing in his ears nearly blocked out Decker’s quiet admonition. Stay calm.

  Daniel Wallace sounded as cool and in control as ever. “Mr. Saldana, ask one of those police officers with you for his cell phone number. I want to send you a video.”

  Decker gave his number, and a moment later his phone beeped.

  “We want your brother, Mr. Saldana,” Wallace said.

  Joe’s response was automatic. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Then that’s very unfortunate for Ms. Dalton, because you have only until midnight tonight to gain her release. Ask the officer to show you the video.”

  Decker held out his phone, and everyone gathered to watch over Joe’s shoulder. The room on the small screen was dark except for the light shining on Liz’s face. Her cheek was scraped raw, her left eye swollen shut, her nose and upper lip puffy and dried blood trailed across her skin. She lay motionless, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. She could be unconscious. She could be dead.

  Then, after a mumbled command, a booted foot came into frame, nudging her shoulder. Her lashes fluttered, her forehead wrinkled and a low moan escaped her.

  And the clip ended.

  Tension expanded in Joe’s chest, making it damn near impossible to breathe. “How am I supposed to find Josh and have him here by midnight?”

  “That’s not my problem, Mr. Saldana.”

  “I need more time.”

  “Sorry.” Wallace sounded professional, strictly business. “I operate on the schedule I’m given. Midnight. I’ll call you again to tell you where we’ll make the exchange. Just you and your brother. No one else.”

  Wallace hung up, and Joe did the same, his hand shaking. Across the table, Decker and Maricci were watching the video once more. He didn’t ask to see it again. The image of Liz’s battered face was burned into his brain.

  Please, God, don’t let it be the last picture I have of her.

  It took every bit of strength Liz possessed to open her eyes. Her lids felt heavy and her vision was fuzzy, limited on the left. Her shoulders ached, and her wrists…movement showed they were secured together behind her back with what felt like thick cable ties. Her entire face throbbed, especially around her left eye, which was tender, swollen, probably spectacularly black. Her cheekbones hurt, the inside of her mouth was sore and the taste of blood lingered on her tongue.

  She hoped the jerk who had hit her had at least a few scrapes to show for it.

  She was inside the van, lying on her side, and her head was pounding—from the blow? From being unconscious so long? The sky visible through the van’s windshield was black, dimly broken by distant stars. A long time to stay knocked out from a simple blow. Although, she thought dizzily as she started the painful process of sitting up without the help of her hands, there had been nothing simple about that blow.

  Finally semi-vertical, she sagged against the van wall as voices sounded outside, three, distinct, although their words were little more than murmurs. One was Daniel Wallace, politely menacing. One seemed vaguely familiar, nothing definite that she could point to, just the feeling that she knew it. The other was a stranger.

  Wallace’s voice grew louder as he came nearer the van. An instant after his words stopped, the back door opened, and he appeared, handsome, elegant, dangerous in the dim overhead light. “Our guest is finally awake. I admit, I was starting to wonder if my associate miscalculated the dosage of the sedative he gave you.”

  She looked past him, but both of his associates were hidden from view. All she could see was heavy woods and, to the left, faint light reflected on water. Copper Lake? That was where Joe was supposed to have taken her this afternoon, on Natalia’s borrowed bike. She would much prefer his company to Wallace’s.

  Wallace moved to sit in the open door. “You’ve slept half the day away, Liz. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? Ms. Dalton seems so formal, given the circumstances.”

  “By all means, Danny, go ahead.” Her voice was hoarse, her throat dry.

  His gaze narrowed before he treated her to the predatory smile again. “I’m sorry about your injuries. If you’d just come along nicely, there would have been no need for violence.”

  No need? He intended to kill her. No doubt he’d called Joe, offering to trade her for Josh, but even if Joe could pull that off, Wallace still had to kill her. He and his buddies had kidnapped her, assaulted her and were holding her hostage—all felonies. How much easier to add murder to their list than to leave a victim alive and able to identify them.

  They would kill Joe, too.

  She didn’t want to die, didn’t want him to die, especially thinking so little of her. If she’d just tried harder to explain things to him, if she’d just been more honest about her feelings for him…. She’d told him she’d wanted him. Wanted. Not needed. Not loved.

  The cuts inside her mouth hurt when she smiled, but she forced the action. “Gee, I never have been the type to play well with others.”

  “I thought I knew your type—Saldana’s type. All flash, no substance. Empty-headed, neither bright nor capable, willing to do whatever it takes to catch and hold on to a guy. And yet inside that cute little purse, along with your lipstick, money and debit card, you had a GLOCK .45. That’s a hell of a gun for a pretty woman like you. Why do you carry it?”

  “Because of scum like you.” He waited for more, and she went on after a moment. “You know the kind of people Josh gets mixed up with. Better safe than sorry.”

  “I bet right now you’re sorry you didn’t shoot me in the parking lot.”

  She smiled. “There’s still time.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Not much. I gave Saldana a deadline of midnight. It’s ten till. Either he delivers his brother or…” An eloquent shrug that said so much. Or they would kill her and Joe both, and when Josh found out, he would go into hiding for the rest of his life. The Mulroneys would never have to worry about him again.

  “Come on,” Wallace said, rising, dusting his pants. “Let’s get you out of there.”

  Shrinking away from the hand he offered, she scooted to the open door, lowered her feet to the ground and gingerly stood up, then followed him to the front of the van. They were in a clearing at the lake’s edge, parked next to a picnic pavilion. On the other side were two other vehicles: a black SUV—gee, no surprise there—and, barely visible beyond that, the front end of a compact car. Wallace’s accomplices were standing in the shadow of the pavilion, two dark figures, one tall and stout, the other shorter and thinner. Stout held a rifle and faced the road. Short held a pistol at his side and faced the lake.

  A ripping sound brought her attention back to Wallace. He’d torn a six-inch strip off a roll of duct tape and was coming toward her, smiling. He pressed it across her mouth, gently smoothing the edges, then gestured to the west. “Walk out there to the middle of the field and sit down.”<
br />
  Liz gauged the distance to the center: thirty feet, tops. If she made a break for the woods on either side, a halfway decent shot with a halfway decent rifle would bring her down. She started walking across grass that had recently had its first cut since winter and smelled sweetly of straw, summer and lazy days.

  Before she’d gone fifteen feet, she became aware of an engine in the distance, and her heart seized in her chest. Joe.

  A set of headlights came on, followed by two more, elongating her shadow at odd angles. If she turned back to face them, she would be blinded. Joe would be blinded, too, dealing with disembodied voices, unable to see their weapons.

  “That’s far enough,” Wallace called, and she stopped. “Sit down.”

  She did that, too, awkwardly, settling sideways so she could see both the road and the bad guys, as yet another set of headlights flashed briefly through the trees ahead. The SUV that came slowly around the bend was dark in color and belonged to Tommy Maricci; he’d given her and Joe a ride home in it just a few nights ago.

  The headlights swept across her as the vehicle slowed even more, then turned off the road into the grass. It stopped, the engine still running, the headlights still on, but long moments dragged past before the door finally opened and the driver slid out.

  Liz had to squint to see the still figure beyond. She wanted to scream at Joe to get back in the truck and race away, to demand of him why he’d taken so dangerous a risk, to apologize, to tell him she loved him.

  Of course she couldn’t tell him anything, so it was Wallace who broke the silence. “Turn off those lights and come closer. Show us which Saldana we’ve got.”

  Joe reached inside the truck, and the lights mercifully went dark. He closed the door with a thud and started across the field, so familiar and yet…not. The way he moved, the way he held his head, the smug self-assurance that radiated from him—to say nothing of the way he hardly even glanced at her…if she didn’t know better, she would think he was Josh. But no way Josh was in Georgia, and no way he’d be out here offering to trade himself to the people who wanted him dead.

  Nausea swept over her. It was Joe pretending to be Josh, and he was just good enough at it to get himself killed. For her. With her. Oh, God.

  “So?” Wallace prodded. “Which one are you?”

  Joe stopped alongside her, maybe ten feet away, arms extended in a casual gesture. “Which one you think?” His clothes were different, all in black: jeans, a T-shirt a size too small so it fitted snugly, heavy boots and leather jacket. His voice was different, too, subtly, but in ways a perceptive person would notice.

  “It’s a shame,” Wallace said, his own voice coming from behind the bright lights of the SUV and the car. “Identical twins can be so difficult to tell apart. It would be nice to think that Josh is man enough to take responsibility for himself and save his former girlfriend from death, but when has he ever taken responsibility? The odds of him coming here to rescue Liz are probably about nil. Joe, on the other hand, is the responsible brother. The one who would put his life on the line for the woman he loves. The one who would die in his brother’s place so that she might live.”

  Liz tried to speak in spite of the tape, managing a few shrill sounds that only Joe heard.

  He gave her an insolent look eerily like the looks Josh had given her countless times over the two years they were together, then he turned his attention back to the unseen Wallace. “Yeah, yeah, Joe’s the responsible one, the good one. He never does anything wrong, and I never get anything right. I’ve heard it all before, trust me. But I figure I kind of owe him after your guy shot him instead of me, so here I am. You let her go, and we’ll deal.”

  “Let her go,” Wallace echoed. “You know it’s not that simple. As you mentioned, the last time, our people shot Joe instead of Josh. This time we need to be sure.”

  Liz tried frantically to get Joe’s attention again. The man had just admitted to, at the least, conspiracy to commit murder in Joe’s shooting. He wasn’t planning on letting either of them walk away after that, but Joe could still save himself if he’d just look at her, if he would just think rationally.

  “And how’re you gonna be sure?”

  “Fortunately, I’ve brought someone with me who knows both of you well. She can tell me who you are.”

  Liz looked at the confusion evident on Joe’s face—who did he and Josh have in common these days besides her and their mother?—then twisted to watch as a figure emerged from the darkness of the pavilion. Long stride, graceful, familiar in her quiet wallflower way.

  “Son of a…” Joe murmured as she came closer, separating enough from the brilliance of the lights that they could make out details. Short brown hair. Waifish. Eyes that changed color as easily as her mood. Pistol clasped in one hand as casually as if it were Bear’s leash.

  Dear God. Natalia.

  “Natalia?” The rushing in Joe’s ears was so loud that he wasn’t sure he’d actually spoken her name. What was she doing here? Why was she with Wallace? How the hell did she know Josh?

  Another liar. She’d come to town right after Josh escaped custody, feeding Joe sad stories, playing on his gullibility, earning his trust and his affection, and the whole time she was working for the Mulroneys.

  His stomach heaved, and for a panicked instant, he thought he would puke out his guts there in front of everyone. But he swallowed hard, forcing down the fear, concentrating on the cops who were out there, unseen, doing their best to protect him and Liz.

  “You lied,” he muttered when Natalia drew close enough. No use pretending with her. Like Liz, she knew him too well to fall for the act.

  Her eyes were black tonight—mourning? he wondered sarcastically. Her pale face still looked about fifteen, still looked innocent, although her features seemed locked in an emotionless mask.

  “You work for those guys?” He jerked his head toward Wallace but included everyone all the way back to Chicago.

  “Sometimes.” As she slid the pistol into the holster on her belt, she moved in a slow circle around him, looking him and up down in a measuring manner, as if she hadn’t known he was Joe before she’d left the cover of darkness.

  She circled him again, moving so close that their clothes rubbed, then she rose onto her toes and kissed him. Startled and disgusted, he jerked back, but she simply gripped the back of his neck with iron strength, rose and kissed him again, with her mouth, her tongue, with hunger.

  Fury pounded through Joe with every beat of his heart, holding him rigid. He was hardly aware of her free hand fumbling at his waist, pulling at his shirt. When her fingers slid under the fabric and across his ribcage, he realized she was looking for the scars. She touched one, then the other, then slowly broke the kiss and turned to face Wallace.

  “It’s him. Josh.”

  Joe’s anger drained as he stared at her. She’d lied. Again. The lie would get him killed for sure, but maybe it would give Liz a chance to escape.

  “On your knees,” Natalia ordered, and he numbly obeyed. A few feet away, she was pulling Liz to her feet, steadying her. She unfolded a wicked blade from her pocket and sliced through the plastic securing Liz’s wrists, ripped away the duct tape from her mouth, then gave her a push toward the car.

  “You’re free to go, Ms. Dalton,” Wallace called from his hiding place.

  Liz stood where she was, battered, stunned, as if she hadn’t heard the words. She started to rub one wrist, then looked down numbly at the raw, ragged skin. Even though her voice was little more than a whisper, Joe understood her easily. “Bastard.”

  “Get out of here, Liz,” Joe said. It was too easy to imagine her arguing that she couldn’t go, that deputy U.S. marshals didn’t save themselves by leaving others to die.

  She looked at him then, her injuries somehow worse in the faint light. “I am so sorry.”

  He smiled a little. “So am I.”

  “I don’t suppose you left a weapon in the car.”

  He shook his head—
his own lie. Decker had given him a gun. I don’t know how to use that, Joe had said, and Decker had brushed him off. Liz does.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured again as Natalia took her arm and began pushing her to the car. “I love you.”

  He grinned. “Don’t you think last night would have been a better time to tell me that?” Then none of this would have happened, because they’d still be naked in the back office at the coffee shop.

  “You know, you could have said it then, too.”

  He couldn’t grin now, pardon the expression, to save his life. “I love you, Liz.” First time he’d ever said those words.

  Likely to be the last.

  “Sweet,” Natalia said as she hustled Liz toward the car.

  “How could you—”

  “Shut up and listen to me. Get in the car and drive back the way he came. There’s a sign just after the curve. Go exactly one-tenth mile, and there’s a trail that goes off the road on the left. It comes out at the lake’s edge about twenty feet from the van. Don’t go back to the main road. They’ve set up an ambush at the park entrance. Wallace has no intention of letting you leave here alive.”

  “And you do?” Liz asked skeptically.

  Natalia smiled one of her rare smiles. “I have every intention of you and Joe getting out of here alive.”

  Liz wondered if Natalia was leading her into an ambush, not away from one. She’d trusted Natalia, Joe had trusted her, and she’d fooled them both. “How well do you know Josh?”

  Natalia’s smile faded into bittersweet pain. “I’d die for him.”

  “Yeah, people seem to have that feeling for him,” Liz muttered with a glance at Joe.

  “He wouldn’t die for Josh,” Natalia disagreed. “He’s here for you. Remember—one-tenth mile, then left.”