by Alison Kent
“Even though he’d been dealing drugs,” King said, pushing out of his chair and crossing to the room’s window.
“Even though,” Fitz said, his gaze following King.
The Kowalski murder. God, she hated the sound of that. “Was Kevin the first person he killed? Did watching my brother die give him a taste for that? For taking life?”
“He was the first to die by Tuzzi’s hand, yes. But then his taste…grew. Pulling a trigger was no longer enough.”
And this Cady really didn’t want to hear.
“He graduated to things like bloodbaths in the prison showers. Dismemberment. There was a fire in one cell where the inmate had been rendered unconscious.”
Cady shuddered, and King stoically said, “Except you can’t tie him to any of this. You can’t prove he was involved.”
“That’s where Cady comes in.”
Cady, who knew a guilt trip when she saw one unrolling at her feet like a long red carpet. Cady, who was no VIP. “How do I come in? That’s the part that’s still eluding me here. I want to help. You have no idea how badly I want to help. But I haven’t heard details. I’ve only seen…gloss.”
“You, Cady Kowalski, are Nathan Tuzzi’s weakest link.”
King dropped the drapes into place and came to sit on the bed beside her. “We running a game show here, McKie? Or are you going to give Cady what she wants?”
Cady ignored King’s interruption and addressed what McKie had said. “I don’t get it. Why am I a link of any kind? And why the weakest one if I am?”
“What you are, Cady, is Nathan Tuzzi’s obsession. The one single person unrelated to his illegal activities who he’s got it in for. You’re not business. You’re personal. And personal means getting careless, making mistakes.”
Fitz paused as if he wanted to be sure both of them were listening, his face somber as his gaze swung from hers to King’s, then dropped to a spot on the bed between where they sat.
Her gaze followed the same direction, and she realized not only had she crumbled what was left of her biscuit all over the unmade bed, but that King was now holding her fingers, his thumb stroking the back of her hand.
“Wow. That’s a mess,” she said, not even sure if she was talking about the biscuit or being the center of a psychopath’s attention. King didn’t say anything, just continued rubbing her skin. Funny how she didn’t seem to feel it.
Fitz reached for his coffee cup and dropped his gaze to the contents. “When it comes to business, no one is more exacting than Nathan Tuzzi. He guards his contacts and informants more jealously than I imagine he ever did that girlfriend who sent him after her cat.”
“But he’s not that careful when it comes to Cady,” King said.
“He’s gotten away with so much for so long that I’d be surprised to find he thinks he’s anything but infallible. His information flow in and out of the prison never seems to hit a snag. And that’s our biggest problem.”
“You can’t snag him,” King said, pulling Cady’s hand into his lap.
Fitz shook his head. “Not him, not his people. We have no timetable. His deals are too sporadic, and we haven’t been able to catch a break intercepting his orders going out or the news coming back in. But if we know Malling is going to be reporting to Tuzzi, we can be ready.”
Something had been bugging Cady and she finally spoke up. “What day was Malling paroled? What day did he get out exactly? It was yesterday, right? The same day Tyler finally crawled into bed with me?”
“Not yesterday, but the day before, yeah.” Fitz tossed the cup he’d picked up earlier into the trash.
“I knew it! That’s what he’d been waiting for. He wasn’t there for Alice at all. He was there for me.” She stopped, puffed out a breath as every fucking thing fell into place, and looked from Fitz to King and back as it did and as she realized that if not for Fitzwilliam McKie, she would never have been able to connect the pieces.
She bounded off the bed. She couldn’t sit still. “He knew when Malling was getting out and that Tuzzi would be getting more aggressive. Tyler was planted there to make the first strike. To let me know the psychological war was over. That with Tuzzi’s man back on the streets, the time had come to get physical.”
She threaded her fingers into her hair and tugged as she paced, working it out, one puzzle piece tucking into a second, a third fitting tightly with a fourth, a fifth over there snapping precisely and turning a jumbled mess into a whole that was supposed to mean something…
That’s when she stopped. When the picture began to come into view. It was so simple, she should’ve seen it before. “I don’t have a choice, do I? I fight back, or I run for the rest of my life.”
“You always have a choice,” King told her, his voice gruff but soft, and Fitz nodded, both men on her side. She wasn’t in this alone. And that made it easier to face the horizon, the unknown, and her personal Armageddon.
Even if she did have a choice, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she said no. So ID or no ID, she gave McKie her yes—adding one caveat, and pinning him with a look that told him her terms were not negotiable.
“If I find out you’re not who you say you are, what I’ll do to you is nothing compared to what Tuzzi has done or plans to do to me.”
Twenty
King had only been without his Hummer for thirty-six hours, but damn was it good to have it back. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t the same vehicle he’d been driving before, but if this upgraded version wasn’t the sweetest thing he’d ever laid a hand on, then he’d never eat a crawfish again.
Uh, the sweetest thing besides Cady.
Fitz had taken care of the VIN change with the state and the insurance company who had no idea that they’d skated on a huge replacement payout. How he’d done it, what strings he’d had to pull…those things were part of the mystery that was Fitzwilliam McKie.
King was pretty damn sure there was more to the story of who McKie was, what he did, who he worked for, and who funded their gig, but there was no question that the man made things happen—and did so at a level that required either a lot of connections or a lot of cash.
Having fallen into a fortune of Civil War gold this last year, King was well aware of the strings money could pull, the people it could buy, the things it could provide, and how it kept machines well oiled and running. McKie could be using it to do all of the above, hoping to deprive Nathan Tuzzi of being able to do the same.
The thought of Tuzzi had King glancing at the woman tucked into his passenger seat, looking out her window at the Pennsylvania landscape rolling by. They’d crossed the state line and left New Jersey only a few minutes ago. He’d pointed it out, but she hadn’t said a thing.
Then again, she hadn’t said much of anything since taking on McKie over breakfast. She’d been particularly silent while loading up the replacement Hummer after Fitz had run them through the plan. The government man’s plan wasn’t much of one, to King’s way of thinking, and was no doubt giving Cady an assload of grief.
Hell, he was only an ancillary target, the bull’s-eye on his back small in comparison to hers, and he wasn’t happy. He couldn’t imagine what Cady was going through, knowing she was wearing a big red circle like a crosshair, pointing her out to the thugs.
Since Fitz was certain that Tuzzi had sent Malling to hurt Cady over and over again, the plan was simply to let it happen—or at least to let Malling get close enough to try.
For that, she and King had to be available, on the move, and in the open. McKie would then follow Malling’s reports back to Tuzzi, looking for the hub of his information flow in order to plug it up.
It seemed simple enough on the surface—as long as Malling didn’t succeed and as long as McKie had his plugging mechanism ready to rock and roll.
King admitted he was curious. What exactly was McKie’s mechanism? How was it activated? Who did the activating? What would happen to Tuzzi when he realized he was constipated and had nowhere to go?
What would happen to Cady when all was said and done?
Though he wouldn’t wish any of this crap to befall anyone, King grudgingly admitted he was glad he was here to help her through. That didn’t make a spit lick of sense; he might know her situation and her very fine body, but he didn’t know more than a few piddly things about her.
During the photo shoot for Ferrer, she’d dusted his Cajun country sun-baked skin with makeup, and foofed his hair this way and that so that he looked less like himself and more like the metrosexual population of Manhattan.
They’d talked. He’d enjoyed her tits pressed against him, her hands in his hair. He’d also enjoyed her fiery spunk without realizing how much of it was anger.
She was mad at the world, and with every right. She’d played an innocuously small part in a practical joke gone sour, and had lost everything including her freedom.
It left a damn bad taste in his mouth, and the more he thought about it, the tighter his grip on the steering wheel grew, the stiffer his thighs and his spine. At this rate and another ten miles, he’d be in no shape to drive.
Time to break the seal of silence.
“You look better. Your face. Your lip.”
She turned her head, rolling it from right to left on the seat, meeting his gaze with eyes that appeared tired. “I still ache, and everything twinges if I move the wrong way, but your ice packs helped.”
“I didn’t hurt you last night, did I? Or make anything worse?” After the fact and way too late, but better than never. He hoped.
“Are we going to talk about it? The sex?”
Damn, but if that didn’t feel like he’d been put in his place. Might help if he knew where his place was. “Do you want to?”
“Not really,” she said, her lower lip protruding as she shook her head. “Tell me about your tattoo.”
Hmph. So that was that. They could have sex, they just couldn’t talk about having sex. Fine-o-dandy with him. “What about it?”
She sat up straighter, shifting her whole body so that she faced him instead of the road. She looked comfortable in the seat, and way too good in the Hummer. He was afraid he was going to get used to having her there then miss her when she was gone. A dog. He’d have to get a dog.
“I get what it is.” She reached over and popped the snaps of his chambray shirt, pulling the fabric aside to get a better look at his ink. “The Mardi Gras colors, the beads, and doubloons. And the crown is obvious, you being King and all. But it’s not faded, so it has to be fairly new.”
He nodded, liking the way she didn’t ask but took what she wanted. Liking, too, the feel of her fingers on his skin, and liking that part too much. “It is. I got it last year.”
She traced the lower edge of the crown, lingering and staring for an eternal moment, before sitting back. “After finding the treasure?”
He’d told her about the treasure one day at Ferrer. How he and his cousin had been sitting on the buried gold their whole lives and never had a clue.
She’d wondered how it had felt, to have that luxury, to realize he could do anything with his life, go anywhere, never want for money again—unless he was a stupid shit and blew it all.
She’d said that. A stupid shit. He remembered frowning at her, wondering who the hell she thought she was to be giving him a financial responsibility lecture.
He had a much better understanding of the root of her name calling now than he’d had then. “I had the old ugly ass prison tats lasered away, and this one inked in their place. When I see it in the mirror every morning, I’m reminded about my good fortune. And I’m not talking about the gold.”
“What was it like?”
“Prison?” When she nodded, he considered how much of the hell to reveal, how much to keep back, how much he wanted to revisit. How much he wanted her to know. “It was prison. You sit with your back to the wall to eat. You sleep with your eyes open. You stay to yourself, and stay in shape in case doing the first becomes a problem.”
“And you did that for four years?”
“Four years inside, then a lot of years after. Old habits are hard to break.” There were a lot he still battled, chalking up his losses to being a dick at heart. Whether or not it was true didn’t matter.
Blaming nature was easier than being a failure, and continuing to fuck up. He’d fathered a kid and not known it until the boy was on his deathbed.
He’d remained estranged from Simon, his only family, for nearly twenty years. He hadn’t known what a good woman he’d had in Chelle Sonnier until he’d let her go.
Money might not buy happiness, but it had certainly bought him a new perspective, which in turn had done a lot for his state of mind.
He supposed that was why he was here now with Cady. Not for the sex, not for her company, but to stop himself from another fuck up and failing someone who needed him.
Then again, that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Did Cady need him?
“You don’t sleep with your eyes open now.”
He cut her a quick look. “You said you didn’t want to talk about the sex.”
“How was that talking about sex? I said you don’t sleep with your eyes open. That was all.” She huffed, sputtered. “I swear. Men. Everything for you is about sex.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, and she slapped the shit out of his shoulder. “Ow.”
“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not. Though I should have asked how your head is feeling, and I am sorry about that.”
He reached back with one hand to find the bald spot and the stitches, found her hand there doing the same thing. “Tender, but bearable. My vanity, on the other hand, not so good. I was hoping to keep my hair for ten years at least.”
She laughed. Not just a giggle or a snicker, but a laugh that filled the cabin of the SUV with a lightness that lifted his spirits.
Surprising, because he hadn’t known they’d been down. Or maybe it was hearing Cady sounding so carefree that did it. Whichever it was, he smiled.
“You goon,” she said, still laughing. “Your hair will grow back. If anything, I’d worry that some of your brains escaped when the doctor pulled out the glass.”
He liked hearing her laugh. Even if it was at his expense, he admitted grimly, yelping when her probing fingers got too close to his wound. “Get me a bottle of juice or a soft drink, will ya? All this heat I’m takin’s dryin’ out my throat.”
Cady snorted, but popped her seat belt and squirreled around, digging in the cooler behind them and giving King the pleasure of seeing her ass up close as she did.
“I still can’t believe all the supplies Fitz laid in back here. Malling could follow us all the way to Alaska and we wouldn’t have to restock.”
Driving to Alaska with Cady Kowalski. Funny the appeal the idea held, though making a sharp south turn and taking her to Louisiana held even more.
And that thought he cut off right there.
“Did he ever show you any ID?” she asked, handing him the bottle of orange juice she’d come up with, and twisting off the top of her own once she’d belted herself back into her seat. “Or is he still holding out on proving who he is?”
“He showed me something, but it didn’t say a lot, or look like any government badge I’ve ever seen,” he said, then brought his bottle to his mouth.
He’d downed half of the contents and driven several more miles before Cady spoke. And this time, she spoke softly, her earlier spunk squashed flat. “Do you think he’s who he says he is?”
“McKie?” King shrugged. “I don’t know, chère. I really don’t know. Whoever he is, he makes things happen. Not a lot of people have the connections that can.”
“What if the ID is fake? What if he’s part of Tuzzi’s gang?”
“I’m not going to say that either possibility isn’t viable, but my gut tells me that whoever he is, he’s okay.” It was an eyes in the back of his head thing. Something he wasn’t sure she could understand even if he could explain.
Holding h
er bottle against her bottom lip, she caught his gaze, then asked, “Is this the same gut that got you out of prison in one piece except for those ugly ass tats?”
“They really were ugly,” was all he could come up with to say. Oh, he tried. He tried to figure out when he’d become an open book, or when his mind had become so simple that any waif off the street could read it.
But there was nothing there, nothing left to do but assure her when he wasn’t sure of anything at all. “The ID being fake doesn’t bother me—”
“But McKie being part of Tuzzi’s gang does.”
“It would if it made any sense, but it doesn’t.” And now that he’d said that, he was going to have to come up with a platform she couldn’t refute. And sound like he knew something about Nathan Tuzzi while doing so.
Couldn’t be too hard. All he had to do was sub one of the prison thugs he’d known for the one hounding Cady to hell. “What reason would Tuzzi have for coming after you this way? Through someone posing as a Fed?”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, I can’t see him having a soft spot for government agents, so to get at you through someone posing as one, well, there’s a dastardly twist of irony there, yeah, but I still think his pride would call foul.”
“He’s never struck me as someone to let his pride go before a fall.”
Now she was getting biblical on him, and other than taking the name of the Lord God in vain on a regular basis, religion was not his arena. “He’s had you looking over your shoulder for years. If his goal’s been to see you suffer, I’d say he’s been damn successful.
“And from everything you’ve told me,” he went on, pausing because he realized there was a very good chance she had not told him everything, that she’d kept something from him and Fitz both, something vital to keeping her safe.
“What if he has a new goal?” she asked before he could grill her about the secrets she wasn’t telling. “What if seeing me suffer isn’t enough anymore?”
He steeled himself before finishing her thought. “What if he wants you dead, you mean?”
