by Dale Mayer
“Did he have any place to go to give you some privacy?”
“Not without letting me know,” he said. “Something’s happened.”
“Hold on,” she said, and then she snapped out a hard groan. “Yes, he was picked off the street right from behind you. He stopped and bent down to pick something up off the street and was literally conked on the head and dragged off to the corner.”
“Do you have a vehicle?”
“Yep, I do,” she said. “We’re bringing it up right now. We’re also tracking it on radar.” As it headed down the street, she asked, “Have you got wheels?”
“I’ve got the same wheels Fallon and I brought. We parked around the corner.”
“Head back over, get in, and I’ll give you directions.”
“I’m less than a minute away.”
“Make that thirty seconds,” she said.
“I’m actually here now,” he said, controlling his breathing from his mad sprint. As he looked up though, he saw Catherine at his side.
“Hell, no,” he snapped. “You stay here.”
“You’re wasting time,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He swore. He heard Ice’s confusion on the other side. “Who are you talking to?”
“Catherine followed me back to the car.”
“Good, because I’m not sure just yet, but this might be one of her mother’s vehicles.”
“That won’t save Fallon. DeeDee already warned Catherine that I wasn’t safe from DeeDee either.”
“What does she possibly want with us?”
“She does this. She kidnaps people and then, in order to get out, you have to do something that she really wants from you. And it’s usually illegal and will get you in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Nice woman.”
“I know,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing involved with her daughter then?”
“I’m not,” he said, “I used to be years ago.”
“Not smart,” she said.
“No, but you can yell at me later. Where am I going?” She quickly gave him directions that led him through town and headed off onto a backstreet.
Just then Catherine said, “I know where we’re going. My mom has a warehouse up here.”
He shot her a hard look. “You sure you want to come?”
“I have to,” she said. “It might be the only thing that keeps Fallon alive.”
“Your mother has never yet been caught for any of these killings,” he said.
“And you can bet she will have her hands completely clean on this one too.”
He frowned at that.
She continued, “You know how she operates. This is just part of it.”
“You have grown up,” he said.
“Some people insisted,” she said, with more bitterness than he expected.
He looked at her and said, “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she said. “That’s the last thing you are.”
Just then Ice spoke on the phone. “Take a left.”
And he realized she’d been privy to their conversation. “Sorry, you shouldn’t be getting some of our ugly history.”
“Everybody’s history is ugly, depending on who’s telling it,” she said. “If you’re still speaking, you’re doing a lot better than most people.”
“We’re hardly talking,” Catherine said. “We’re at a warehouse, where his friend is likely being held by my mother.”
“Sorry about that,” Ice said. “Families are a bitch, aren’t they?”
Chapter 10
At that, Catherine burst out laughing. “Oh, God, yes!” she said. “Some people have better families than mine though.”
“Sounds like most families are better than yours, until they get handed the kind of cards you were dealt.”
“I guess. Being treated that way, I now understand those issues better, can relate to my clients easier,” Catherine said.
“Just because she is your mother,” Ice said, “doesn’t mean she has to continue to influence you.”
“And yet any psychologist would tell you that our formative years have a huge effect on who we are.”
“Once you become an adult, you can effect the change you want,” Ice said calmly. “You don’t have to be held hostage to who your mother is.”
“I like the idea of that,” she said quietly.
“Obviously Kano had something to do with your awakening, regarding what was going on in your mother’s world, but you can’t blame the messenger for something like this. You would have found out eventually.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but still it tends to be the messenger who gets blamed, isn’t it?”
“Only because he’s an easy scapegoat,” she said cheerfully. “Kano, take a sharp left and then a hard right.”
“It’s okay,” Catherine said. “This is definitely the warehouse my mother was using.”
“Was?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s hers or not anymore.”
“We’re running a check on that,” Ice said. “We have it as a Kingdom Securities’ property that’s currently being leased out to … Gosh, a French word.”
“Lovineaux?” Catherine asked. “That’s one of my mother’s companies.”
“That’s it,” Ice said, “and that puts her in the thick of this.”
“You know she’ll want you, Kano,” Catherine said.
“Yep, so I’ll trade myself for Fallon.”
“Why would you do that?” Catherine asked, looking at him in horror. “She really doesn’t like you.”
“That’s why she took Fallon. Because she wants her chunk out of my hide.”
“What for?” Ice said.
“I dared to awaken her daughter to the pleasures of the flesh,” he said drily. “DeeDee has never forgiven me for what that awakening also brought upon her. From that moment on, her daughter was never quite so gullible to DeeDee’s wiles.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ice said, “you’ll pay for that one.”
“Unless I can get in there and figure a way out first.”
“I’m going with you,” Catherine said.
“That’s not a good idea,” he replied.
“Doesn’t matter if it is or it isn’t,” Catherine snapped back. “I get that you probably want to go in there and just shoot her. But I can’t imagine that she would show up here.”
“No, I don’t imagine she will. She’s got something else in mind. She doesn’t have to do her killing herself,” he said, “and prefers to get other people to do her dirty work.”
“So why would you walk into the trap?” Catherine snapped.
“Because I do have emotions,” he said, “and my emotions are telling me to keep Fallon alive. This wasn’t his fight. It’s all about my problem.”
“You mean, my problem,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “If I hadn’t hooked up with you, we wouldn’t be in this situation. DeeDee wouldn’t still be waiting to roast my testicles on an open fire.”
Catherine added, “I think she was hurt badly way back when. I don’t know what the story is or if she would ever let us find out, but I think that’s what’s behind it all.”
“It makes sense,” Ice said, still on the call. “Everybody has a point of no return. The question is whether she has hit that point or not. We’re still holding out hope that Terk connects in time to find Bullard, before anyone else does. I don’t know what DeeDee might have done, as she’s so unpredictable.”
“What about Bullard’s stepbrother—how’s he holding?” Kano asked.
“Holding but not well. He’s been fragile since his rescue years ago. This is one more straw he may or may not recover from. Keep safe.” And, with that, she hung up.
“That’s not much help.”
“Oh, she’s helping,” he said. “She’ll have people on standby, and she’ll be running as much information about this building as she can.”
“Maybe,” she said. “B
ut I can probably get it for you faster. I used to work here.”
“In that case,” he said, “tell me everything you know about the building.”
She started with the floors and then the entrances and exits. “There used to be locks on the windows, but the building is old, and I don’t know if she ever upgraded things.”
“With her insecurity? I wouldn’t imagine anything else,” he said.
“Yes, but I don’t know if you actually understand that she’s now the one behind Kingdom Securities. After Freddie was badly injured a year ago, she took over and hasn’t let go again.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
“He’s pretty bad. He’s been in a coma ever since.”
“Do we know how he got that way?”
“You’re wondering if my mom did it?”
“It seems possible,” he said.
“I have no clue.”
“Your mother seeks power,” he said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised either way.” He got out of the vehicle and said, “I really wish you would stay here. Actually I’d like you to take the vehicle if you want and go on home.”
“You don’t get to just proclaim what you want anymore,” she said, “because it’s not just about you. This is about you and me.”
“Says you,” he said.
“You can’t just snap at me and get me to run away anymore,” she said, getting riled up. “We’re going in this exit.”
“I liked it better when you would listen,” Kano said.
“It’s been a long time,” she said. “I don’t listen to Mom, and I don’t listen to you.”
“You should,” he said, irritated.
“Well, it won’t happen, so you better learn to deal with it.” When she walked up to the exit, she turned to look at him asked, “Are you ready or not?”
Frustrated, he walked up beside her and said, “We could both end up dead.”
“We’ll both end up dead at some point anyway,” she said. “It could be right now, or it could be in a few hours. And it might not be for another fifty years.”
“You don’t care?”
“I do care,” she said. “I care about standing idly by while Mom destroys someone I care about.”
He stopped, looked at her, and said, “Pardon?”
“You heard me,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Even if you hadn’t come back for work, you would have come back sooner or later to see where I was at.”
“You’re delusional,” he said.
“No,” she said, “I’m not. I’m finally awake, aware, and ready to live life again,” she said. “The problem is, you just don’t understand what I know.”
“That sounds like more games to me,” he said, and this time his tone was weary.
She shook her head. “No games in my world. Remember?” He didn’t look like he quite believed her, but she smiled and said, “Come on. Let’s go deal with this, so we can move on to the next stage of our lives.”
“It’s not that easy,” he said.
“Nope, it isn’t. But you’re no longer in the driver’s seat on this one.” With that, she pulled open the door. Alarms went off like crazy, and she stepped inside, completely ignoring them. She didn’t know what else to do.
*
With nothing else to do but follow, as Catherine headed inside on this crazy kamikaze visit, Kano asked, “Did you really have to announce our presence?”
“We’ve already been on video for the last ten minutes,” she said. “Not like they didn’t know.”
“I knew that,” he said, “but I was hoping to go in a little more quietly.”
“Not going to happen,” she said, with a smile. “Down here is the open warehouse, and I suspect Fallon is there.” As they walked into the big section of the warehouse, Kano kept looking around. It was a trap alright; he just didn’t know when it would get sprung. And, the fact of the matter was, he didn’t think anybody here had been prepared for Catherine’s arrival. He wondered to what extent DeeDee was prepared to let her daughter screw up her plans.
As they walked farther inside, Catherine called out a cheery greeting, but she got no answer. She kept walking forward with confidence, as if fully prepared for whatever they were coming up against. Kano didn’t have a clue what that was, but he knew without a doubt that it wasn’t the easy walk in the park that Catherine acted like it was. When they came around the corner, she stepped forward and said, “Hello, Michael. How are you?”
A hell of a lot of French was spoken, which Kano heard and listened to intently, and Michael was clearly unhappy with her presence. She shrugged and said, “I’m here because I need to be here.” She looked around and said, “Now, about Fallon, is he here?”
At that, Kano stepped forward. Michael looked at him, but he didn’t look surprised in any way, so obviously they had been watched on the video feed.
“Why would you think that? And who is this Fallon?”
But he’d already slipped up.
“Because we followed him here,” she said cheerfully. “So where is he?”
“I don’t know,” he said, obviously frustrated and unsure of what to do.
“You better get Mom on the phone then,” she said. At that, he pulled out his phone and made a call. As soon as they connected, she reached over and snatched it from his hand. “What are you doing, Mom? I’m here with Michael. Where’s Fallon?”
“What are you doing at the warehouse?” her mom snapped.
“I made it clear that you’re not allowed to hurt these men.”
“And I told you that they weren’t safe and that you needed to get the hell away from them.”
“Not going to happen,” she said, “and, if you hurt them, you’re going down.”
“No, I’m not,” her mom said, laughing.
“Then you’re losing me,” she said, “because it will come to that.”
“And what makes you think I care,” her mom said lightly.
“I don’t think you do,” she said, “which is also why I’m here, because we’ll prove it. You keep telling me that you care and want some kind of relationship with me and that you’re not to be trifled with. Mother, I’m here to tell you that, if you really want what you said, you’ll have to step up and face my terms. I have no intention of letting you hurt these two men.”
“So you do still care for that man?”
“Of course I still care for Kano,” she said, “but I wasn’t prepared to do anything about it before. But now you’ve pushed me in that direction.”
“I didn’t push you in any direction,” her mom snapped in outrage. “How dare you blame me for that. You should be a long way away from that man. He’ll hurt you.”
“Like you’ll hurt him?”
“He deserves it,” she snapped.
“Nope. Call off your dogs,” she said. “Tell Michael that he can go home and go back to sleep. He doesn’t want to be here anyway.”
“You don’t get to tell Michael anything. He works for me.”
“That may be true, but he doesn’t want to be here killing American citizens or any of Bullard’s men on your say so.”
“It’s not me killing anybody. We would just rough him up a bit.”
At that, Catherine looked at Michael and raised an eyebrow. He just shrugged.
“Tell Michael to go home. And I want to know where Fallon is, and I want to know now,” Catherine said. Her mother grumbled on the phone. “Stop it, Mother!” she said. “That’s enough! All of this stops this minute.”
“Because you said so? We’ll have to talk about this.”
“It doesn’t matter what we’ll talk about. I want to know what the hell’s going on with Bullard. I want to know what the hell’s going on with Fallon, and you need to get the hell out of this situation,” she said, “before we decide that you are the problem, and we need to be coming after you.”
“We?” her mother asked in outrage. “Are you telling me that now you’re coming after m
e and that you’re listening to that slimy piece of shit instead of your own mother?”
“So far as I know, this one hasn’t lied to me,” she said in a bored tone. “You, on the other hand, are a psychopath.”
“If that were the case, I wouldn’t give a shit if Michael killed you.”
“Yeah, but the thing is, you weren’t born that way. I think you chose it because of whoever it was who hurt you. So you need to make a decision right now.”
“We’re not done,” she said. “Give the phone back to Michael.”
Catherine returned the phone to Michael and waited. The exchange was rapid-fire, but she heard most of it.
When he was done, he hung up the phone. “Your mother is very dangerous. You need to be wary.” He stared at her pensively. “You’ve really done it now.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve really tweaked the dragon’s tail. So where is Fallon?” He pointed to the far corner of the warehouse. “Did you hurt him?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head. “No, we were waiting for him.” He looked at Kano, who stood beside her. “But I don’t know why.”
“Because I dared to love him,” she said, with a smile. “My mother doesn’t have a loving bone in her body.”
He raised his eyebrows at that. “No, she doesn’t. And that makes a sick kind of sense.”
“What makes sense?” Kano asked.
“She doesn’t take competition well,” he explained to Kano, “but she needs it. So she will never be your friend, but she will respect you.”
“Is that how she and Bullard are?” Kano asked.
“She admires Bullard for what he does, but she doesn’t like the fact that he won’t bend to her will,” he said, with a smile.
“And what about the two ex-employees of hers who tried to kidnap me?” Catherine asked Michael.
“I heard about that,” he said. “That’s bad business.”
“Is that competition?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I think that is somebody wanting to take over her business.”
“The same guys we’ve run into or some different guys?” Kano asked Michael.
Michael shook his head. “These are much more dangerous because they’ll use you, Catherine, as a pawn against DeeDee.”
