Mike’s lips curled back in a snarl. “The hell I will. I’m going to hold on the line while you do the following. First, you contact your pals in the New York office. Second, you have them run a GPS trace on Danville’s mobile phone. Third, you tell me where the bastard is.”
“We warned you this morning to stay out of this, Brennan. We’ll handle it.”
“Call your pals, Havers. Now!”
Twelve
Zia just had to wait him out.
She’d stopped kicking herself for agreeing to meet Danville at his office. Gotten past the surprise of finding him in the lobby and ushering her into the elevator, only to send it down to the parking garage instead of up to his office. She’d also worked through her shock when he’d pulled out a small, lethal-looking pistol and aimed it at her heart.
Once her stunned mind reengaged, she’d recognized the signs. The fever-bright eyes. The agitation. The desperation. She’d seen it in patients, read about it in hundreds of case studies. Danville was in the panic stage. It usually set in several hours after the user’s last hit. He would feel himself coming down and go frantic with the need to make sure he could score another hit.
If he didn’t have a supply on hand, he’d beg, borrow or steal for it. Patients had reported pawing through their own and their parents’ houses for something, anything, to pawn or sell. Others had robbed convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, even busy mall stores. The withdrawal is so intense, the craving so frantic, that they work themselves into a frenzy of need.
Danville was there. Jerky. Desperate. Paranoid. As he forced her to get behind the wheel of the flashy red Porsche parked in his assigned slot, he kept mumbling they would kill him.
“Who, Tom? Who’s going to kill you?”
“Drive! Just drive!”
She did. Up Madison Avenue, across 106th, down 2nd Avenue, with the pistol jammed into her side the entire time. She’d tried to talk him down. Tried to calm and soothe and assure him she’d get him help, but he was still locked in that hard, panicky shell. Checking his watch constantly. Flinching at every sound, every distant siren or screech of tires. And phones. Zia’s. His. The buzzing must have ricocheted around in his mind like a loose ball bearing.
She’d considered crashing the Porsche into a street sign or traffic light, but she couldn’t take the chance the airbags would explode in Danville’s face before he pulled the trigger. So she’d followed his instructions until her shoulders ached with tension and her mind screamed with the need to do something, anything, to end the situation.
“There! Turn in there!”
She had to brake to take the ticket from the automatic dispenser at the entrance to the underground garage. Two lanes over, a bored attendant sat in his booth with his back turned so he could service exiting vehicles. Zia willed him to turn around, begged him to send just one glance her way. When he remained facing the other direction, she calculated her chances of yanking the door open and throwing herself out. Not very good with Danville’s pistol bruising her ribs.
“Go down to the bottom level,” he rasped at her.
She followed the winding ramp down five increasingly less crowded levels. The last was almost deserted.
“Pull into that space. The one beside the pillar.”
The concrete column was square and fat but not difficult to maneuver around with so many empty spaces. Zia barely had time to wonder why he’d chosen that particular slot before she realized the pillar screened them from the security camera mounted in the corner.
Danville had been here before. Used this same parking slot. The realization hit like a balled fist to her chest. Fighting for calm, she cut the engine and angled toward him. He twisted in his seat, too, planting his back against the door, pulling the gun back with him. The bruising pressure on her ribs eased, but the barrel was still terrifyingly close.
“What now, Tom?”
“We wait.”
She let her hand drop to her thigh, clenching and unclenching her fist as though driven by nerves. Which she was! But if she could keep him talking, keep his eyes on her face, she might be able to inch her hand into her tote, finger her iPhone, tap 911. The bag was in the space between their seats, just behind the gearshift console. So damned close.
“What do we wait for?”
“Not what. Who.” He shot another look at his expensive watch. “They’ll come,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “Now that I can pay, they’ll call off the dogs and deliver.”
His suppliers, she guessed as the knot in her chest pressed hard against her sternum. She flattened her palm, eased it over the outside of her thigh.
“You cannot do this.” She spoke evenly, slowly, but she could hear the American accent she’d acquired over the past two and a half years slipping away. “You cannot kidnap me, make me drive to this place, and think to get away with it.”
Anger and a smirking bravado leaped into his face. Not a good mix with the desperation.
“Shows what you know! I’ve been getting away with it for years. Five thousand from one client, ten K from another. Eighty, a hundred thousand a year funneled into a special account the auditors never got a whiff of until that bitch started sniffing around it.”
“Are you...? Are you speaking of Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Elizabeth.” His lips curled back in a sneer that didn’t quite match the fear and paranoia behind it. “She sicced the FBI on me. My...my associates found out about it. I don’t know how. But they took care of her and now I have to cut and run. Today. Tonight.”
Zia’s stomach heaved. She’d ascribed his frenetic mood and barely controlled panic to crack. Now she knew it was due to something much worse, much uglier.
“How do you mean, they ‘took care of her’?”
“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t matter. That’s what matters.”
His gaze dropped like a stone and locked on the hand she’d slipped closer to her bag. For a frozen instant Zia thought he’d detected her cautious moves. Then she realized he’d focused on her engagement ring.
“I can’t go back to my place. The FBI is probably watching it. I don’t dare use my laptop or phone or credit card to withdraw the cash I need to pay my associates. But I can use that.” He made a short, choppy motion with the gun. “Take it off.”
“This is all you want from me?” she asked incredulously. “The ring?”
“Take it off.”
She played the fingers of her right hand over the pear-shaped diamond. The faceted stone sat high in its mount. The surface was smooth, the tip sharp against her nervous fingers.
“You can have it, Tom. It is only a stone. Then will you let me go?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes, wouldn’t answer her question. She knew then he would feed her to the dogs as cold-bloodedly as he had Elizabeth.
He had not the courage to do it himself, Zia thought on a burst of contempt. The men he waited for. They came not just to bring him the cocaine he craved. They would dispose of yet another problem female for him.
She twisted the band, tugged it toward her knuckle, pretended to have trouble getting it over the joint. “It’s too tight. I...I meant to have it sized but have not had time.”
“You’d damned well better get it off,” he snarled, “or my friends will do it the hard way.”
“So they are now your friends?” She couldn’t keep the disgust from her voice as she twisted the band again. “A moment ago they were merely associates.”
“It’s none of your business wh—”
He broke off, his head cocking. Above the jackhammering of her heart, Zia caught the rumble of an engine. A vehicle was descending from the level right above them. A large, heavy vehicle.
“About damned time,” Danville muttered, glancing over his shoulder at the ramp.
This
was her chance! Her only chance! She didn’t stop to think. Didn’t weigh the odds. Fired by fear and utter desperation, she flayed out her arm and knocked the gun barrel aside. The violent action triggered an equally violent response. Shots exploded inside the sports car. One. Two. With blinding flashes. Concussive waves of sound. The searing burn of nitrate and the nauseous stink of sulfur.
Even before the shock waves died, Zia whipped her arm back. Ears ringing, eyes streaming, she curled her fist and put every ounce of her strength into a blow aimed for Danville’s face. The force of it sank the sharp tip of her diamond deep into his left eye.
His eyeball exploded almost as violently as the shots had. Vitreous solution spewed in a clear arc. Blood gushed as Zia wrenched her wrist down and ripped through the lower lid. Howling, Danville dropped the pistol and slapped both hands to his eye.
She scrabbled for the gun with her bloody hand, but it had fallen behind her seat. Not daring to wait another second, she shoved her door open and lunged out onto the oil-stained concrete. Her ears screaming, her cheek burning, she took a dizzy second or two to reorient herself. God help her if she ran up the down ramp and met Danville’s associates head-on.
The brief hesitation proved a fatal mistake. A huge black SUV with darkened windows careened off the ramp less than thirty yards away. Zia whirled, then felt a scream rise in her throat when she saw Danville had crawled out of his car. Using the roof of the Porsche, he dragged himself upright. One hand still covered his oozing eye. The other gripped the pistol he’d recovered from the floor of the car.
Then everything happened in a blur. The SUV streaked by. Zia jumped back, barely avoiding its fender. It fishtailed to a screeching halt, and she dodged for the concrete pillar. Before she reached it, the SUV’s passenger door flew open and Mike launched himself at the Porsche.
Danville whirled to meet this new threat, but the eye injury threw off his aim. The bullet hit the pillar just inches from Zia’s head. Vicious bits of concrete bit into her still-burning cheek as the two men went down on the far side of the Porsche.
When Zia raced around the rear of the car, Mike was slamming his fist into Danville’s already bloody face. She couldn’t hear a thing above the screaming in her ears, but she saw his nose flatten and more blood gush through the shattered cartilage. Then a big, bull-like man rushed up and kicked the pistol away.
“Brennan! Enough.”
He caught Mike’s arm and hauled him off the now-unconscious Danville. Chest heaving, Mike shoved to his feet and spun around.
“Zia! Jesus!”
She saw his lips move but heard only a muted echo of his words. She clung to him, her heart pumping fear and relief in equal measures until he caught her arms and gently eased her away. An oozy mix of blood and vitreous fluid now splotched the front of his saddle-tan leather jacket.
“Are you hurt?” His gaze raked her, searching for injuries. “Zia, tell me where you’re hurt.”
She saw his lips moving again, heard the words as a tinny echo this time and shook her head. “I’m okay. This....” She had to gasp for breath. “This is Danville’s blood.”
And some of her own, she realized as she fingered the bits of concrete embedded in her cheek. Her hand came away filthy with body fluids and gunpowder residue.
The hulking man next to Mike said something. He was huge, with a loud, rumbling voice that was completely drowned out by the squeal of tires as what looked like an entire fleet of black-and-white patrol cars screeched down the ramp and onto their level.
She grabbed Mike’s lapels and shouted to make herself heard. “Danville was expecting his...his suppliers. Here. Any moment.”
“Hell!”
The next thing she knew she was being bundled into the back of a squad car.
“Get her out of here,” the big man barked at the uniformed officer behind the wheel, then shouted to two others. “And get this bastard to a hospital. Then the rest of you disperse. Now! Tune to my frequency for additional instructions.”
The ringing in Zia’s ears had subsided enough for her to distinguish his roared commands. She also heard the one he threw at Mike.
“You go with the doc, Brennan. This is our operation.”
“It was.” His mouth grim, Mike scooped up Danville’s pistol. In one smooth move, he hit the release, popped out the magazine and snapped it back in. “It’s mine now.”
* * *
The squad car Zia had been thrust into sped past the openmouthed booth attendant and took up a position a block away. Then they waited.
The ringing in her ears had lessened in volume but now had a sharp, shrill pitch. Tinnitus, she diagnosed. Not a concern in and by itself, but the accompanying numbness and tingling could signal a possible perforation of the middle ear. She fisted her hands and tried to ignore the metallic pinging while she waited. It couldn’t have been more than a half hour but it felt like five before the radio squawked.
“Operations terminated. Four men in custody. All other units will be back in service.”
“It’s over?” she asked the uniformed officer.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please, take me back to the garage.”
He put the car in Park at the entrance and Zia waited anxiously for Mike to emerge from the dark tunnel. The moment she spotted him, she hammered on the Plexiglas partition.
“Let me out!”
Light-headed with relief, she threw herself at Mike for the second time that afternoon. As before, he held her gently. Too gently. She ached for the feel of his arms around her, but he eased her away and frowned at her cuts and powder burns.
“We need to get you to the ER.”
“I’m...I’m supposed to wait and give a statement.”
“The authorities can come find you.”
* * *
By the time they reached the hospital her tinnitus had subsided to a bearable level. Enough, anyway, that she could hear the ER physician’s diagnosis when he confirmed her own.
“You’ve sustained sensorineural damage in both ears. The numbness and tingling in your right ear indicate moderate to severe nerve irritation. The ringing in your left may be temporary, but you should consult an audiologist as soon as possible.”
“I will.”
He rolled his stool back, looking as tired at the end of his long shift as Zia had so often felt. “We need to clean the debris from your cheek and swab it. Then, I’m told, the FBI wants to talk to you. There’s an agent waiting outside.”
She nodded but turned a surprised face to Mike after the door to the exam room closed behind the ER physician. “Did he say FBI?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“How did the FBI get involved?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.”
* * *
The big, burly man from the SUV identified himself as Special Agent Dan Havers. He spent a good forty minutes walking Zia through her ordeal, from Danville’s call to his gut-wrenching admission in the garage.
“He said that?” Havers demanded. “He said his friends had ‘taken care’ of Elizabeth Hamilton-Hobbs?”
Sick at heart, she could only nod. The FBI agent gestured for her to go on. She related the rest of the conversation, the momentary distraction of the vehicle on the floor above, her frantic swipe at Danville’s arm, the ring she’d stabbed into his eye.
“Jesus!”
Havers shot Mike a quick glance but he didn’t see it. His face was set in savage lines and his gaze had dropped to the gore still staining Zia’s left hand. She couldn’t tell whether he was pleased the engagement ring had proved so lethal or shocked she’d used it as a weapon.
She got her answer when he reached for her hand and eased the ring over her knuckle. Face grim, he tossed it into the plastic-lined trash can beside the gurney.
>
“Hey!” Havers grabbed a glove from the box mounted on the near cabinet and shoved his beefy fist into it. “That’s evidence. We need to preserv—”
“Preserve whatever you want. Then you can toss the thing in the East River, for all I care. Come on, Zia. I’m taking you home.”
After a brief stop at the front desk to sign the necessary paperwork, he hustled her into a cab. Her ears were still tinny and every street sound seemed magnified a hundred times over. Still, she tried to dissuade him from calling ahead to alert the duchess.
When he insisted, the call resulted in exactly the chain reaction Zia feared. Charlotte alerted Dominic and Natalie, who arrived at the Dakota mere moments after Zia and Mike. Gina and her husband had been en route to a black-tie charity event and showed at almost the same time, Jack in his tux and Gina dripping sapphires. The duchess had even called Sarah, who’d begged for an update as soon as Zia and Jack explained everything.
The concern, the questions, the straining to separate their voices from the high-pitched ringing in her ear proved too much for Zia. With a pleading look, she turned to Mike.
“I need to wash and change. You tell them what happened.”
Her departure left a stark silence in the sitting room. Mike squared his shoulders and faced her family. They were arrayed in a semicircle, Dom and Jack standing, Gina on the sofa holding Natalie’s hand, the duchess in a high-backed chair gripping the head of her cane. Even Maria had come in from the kitchen to hear the details. All wore almost identical expressions of shock and concern.
Mike debated briefly where to start, then jumped right to the heart of the issue that concerned them most—Zia’s abduction.
“I don’t know if Zia told you that she was working with a consultant to secure and manage the funding for her grant.”
“Yes,” Dom said shortly. “We know about that.”
“Turns out this consultant—Thomas Danville—was skimming from his clients’ accounts to support a cocaine habit. Evidently Danville was obtaining his coke from thugs working for a drug cartel with direct links to a known terrorist organization.”
The Texan's Royal M.D. Page 15
