In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  He’d left his post and had let someone get to Ed Bancroft without signing in. And now it turned out that he had discovered Danny’s purportedly stolen money. “Am I supposed to believe that all this is coincidence?”

  “Pardon me?” Gale asked.

  Molly realized she’d been talking to herself again. She didn’t make excuses this time. She closed the file and handed it back. “Thanks, Gale.”

  “You can have that.”

  “Uh…all things considered, that might not be a good idea.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t log it this time.”

  Molly grinned, gave the woman a little salute, and left the office. She went to her car, peeled out of the parking lot and headed toward the PBA office.

  Chapter 8

  After an hour with Tripician, Molly wasn’t sure if she felt better or worse.

  She’d dropped in unannounced but he cleared his calendar to see her. That belied the fact that he kept telling her not to worry. Obviously, she thought, he was concerned.

  “You’ve got an excellent arrest record and a good conviction rate,” he said. “You’ve always kept your nose clean before. So far, the evidence against you is all gathered from one specific night, not spread out over a calendar year. That minimizes the impact of consortium a great deal.”

  His clear blue eyes had a calming effect, she realized. Molly nodded and let herself breathe. “How many of these IAD things have you handled, anyway?”

  “One or two.”

  Her heart gave a warning kick. “That’s all?”

  “Ben Stone runs a tight ship. Not many of his men—er, women—that is to say, female officers, have stepped out of line.”

  Her confidence level was ebbing. “Were the charges against the others legitimate?” Or had they, too, been good cops who had managed to irritate the hell out of some bad ones?

  “One guy discharged his service weapon in the middle of his own domestic violence incident,” Tripician reported. “There were too many witnesses, and his wife went for his throat. I couldn’t save him. The other gal—”

  “A woman?” Molly was instantly alert. Maybe all this was a gender-bias sort of thing after all.

  “Yes, that’s right. She was accused of using undue force.”

  “Did she?”

  “I don’t think so. And they couldn’t prove it.”

  “Who is she? Where is she now?” She’d like to talk to someone else who’d been through this, Molly thought.

  “She’s relocated to Tulsa. She decided a change of scenery was called for.”

  Molly sat back in her chair again, frowning. Was it possible that Mission Creek’s good ol’ boys just really didn’t like female officers? Even Danny hadn’t seemed very surprised last night when she’d told him they were trying to convince her to leave the task force. He’d just nodded as though, given her sex, it should almost have been expected.

  Molly started to ask another question, then that thought went through her like lightning. It lifted the hairs at her nape. Danny hadn’t been surprised. She was assuming she knew why…but did she? Was there more to it? Did he know something about this through his association with Ricky? Was this more proof that the bad cops had mob ties? She tried to remember if she had ever mentioned her theory to him, but she couldn’t be sure.

  She needed to talk to him. Molly shot to her feet. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Where?” Eli was startled.

  “I just remembered an appointment. I’m sorry.”

  “Is it more important than these charges you’re facing?”

  “You’ll be the next to know.” But Molly paused at the door and looked back at him. “For what it’s worth, Eli, I’m going to bring down every one of them who are doing this to me. And I’m not going to move to Tulsa afterward, either.”

  “Bring them down?” Eli blinked slowly, as though the reflex would buy him time to collect his thoughts. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  Molly shook her head. If he didn’t, then she wasn’t going to enlighten him. “Just tell me one thing—what happens next?”

  Tripician relaxed. He was back on safe ground. “I have an appointment with IAD on Friday to try to convince them that their charges against you are bogus. If I can’t make them see reason, they’ll attempt to grill you in a question-and-answer session.”

  “The interview part,” she clarified.

  Tripician nodded. “We’ll block that, of course. If they push it that far, we’ll hire an attorney and threaten to sue the city if they refuse to desist with this charade.”

  “That makes me look guilty. Maybe I should just talk to them.”

  “How much time on average do you spend with Mr. Gates per day?”

  Molly started to respond, then she shook her head. “I see what you mean. But suing them? That ought to really endear me to the rest of the department.”

  “Do you want your career intact or do you want to win a popularity contest?”

  “Both. I want both.” For the second time in as many days, Molly felt tears stinging at her eyes. She dashed the back of her hand across them, annoyed with herself.

  To have any chance of that, she was going to have to bring them all down, she realized. She was going to have to neutralize the enemy. She’d have to find out who the bad cops were and what they were doing besides harassing innocent cops. She’d have to prove that they’d been involved with the bombing.

  A tall order.

  “Thanks, Eli,” she said quietly. “I’ll call you Friday afternoon.”

  “In the meantime, stay away from the rec center at night.”

  Molly made a growling sound of pure frustration. The war room was off limits during the day; the rec center was off-limits at night. She was getting very tired of these fools dictating where she could go and when she could go there.

  “You didn’t even bat an eye when I told you!” Molly charged ten minutes later.

  Danny leaned back precariously in Ron’s office chair to put his feet on the desk. “You’re magnificent when you’re angry.”

  She showed teeth. “Stop trying to rattle me and change the subject. I want to know why.”

  “Why?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the way your skin gets…sort of translucent with all that blood rushing around under the surface. Your eyes get greener, too. Real shiny.”

  Molly stomped her foot. “Stop it!”

  Danny brought his feet down suddenly. “I can’t answer your question, Molly. Leave it alone.”

  Her heart thumped. What was he saying? “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “Both.” He knew she’d wormed her way onto the task force—and had probably made enemies in the process—because Ricky had told him. And Ricky had told him because the mob was making it their business to know everything there was to know about Molly French. There was no way to explain that. Neither was there any way to explain the sick feeling he got when he thought of what his choice six years ago was now doing to her life. He’d never thought that doing time would hurt anyone else.

  “You know something,” she accused.

  “I know so many somethings it would boggle your mind, and I’m not going to tell you any of them.” And here it came, he thought—the moment when she started hating him. He wasn’t prepared for the way an unseen fist clamped around his stomach and twisted it with savage regret.

  Molly measured him with her eyes for a long time. Then she moved into the office. “Okay. I actually figured you were going to say that. But I had to try. This isn’t just cop stuff now, Danny. I wouldn’t ask you just to break the case. It’s gotten personal for me.”

  The fist twisted harder…because he still couldn’t help her.

  “I’ll just have to figure it out for myself.”

  She dropped down into the chair on the other side of Ron’s desk and put her forehead to the wood, dejected. It snatched the air from his lungs. Her chocolate-brown curls spilled. He half reached out
to touch one when he caught himself.

  He had no right.

  “You said that if you had fought the case against you six years ago, the case would have gotten stronger,” she said finally. Her voice was muffled.

  “Molly, I can’t go there.”

  “I know. I’m just making connections, thinking aloud.”

  “It’s called talking to yourself.”

  She brought her head up again to look at him. “I’ve been going about this all wrong, you know. In fact, I haven’t been going about it at all. I’ve been reading the task-force notes daily, trying to make sense of them, but I haven’t done anything.”

  She got up again to pace. He still hadn’t seen her in a dress, though that robe last night had been nice. Now her legs were clasped in denim again, and that was good, too. They were tight, cupping her rear in a way that almost made him sweat. “What?” he asked hoarsely, aware that she’d said something else but he hadn’t been listening.

  “The hell with the war room,” she repeated. “Joe Gannon called that one—there’s nothing there that they don’t want to be there.”

  “Who’s they?”

  No, she realized, she hadn’t told him before. It eased her mind somewhat. “We’ve got bad cops,” she said flatly.

  Danny’s heart slammed into his chest wall. He could have told her that they certainly did. He knew of at least two who were on the Mercado payroll. Or at least they had been six years ago. Now he couldn’t be sure. That assuaged his guilt somewhat as he firmly closed his mouth. Then Ricky’s voice came back to him. What would she think if she knew you had information she could use to bring down the Mercado empire and you won’t give it to her?

  Danny pushed the question away and watched her pace, running those fine-boned hands of hers—too delicate and pretty for what she did for a living—through her reams of curls.

  “I need to start a list,” she said suddenly, coming back to the desk and snatching up a notepad. “And then I have to find out everything I can about each of the men on it. That’s the way to go about this. If I have to spend a week tailing each and every one of them, I will. Sooner or later one of them will lead me to where I want to go.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “To the bombed-out Men’s Grill.”

  Danny flinched as the hollow echo of Ricky’s voice hit him again. She thinks my family is behind the bombing. You could probably tell her the truth, if you want me to tell it to you.

  “You think bad cops blew up the Men’s Grill?” he asked cautiously.

  “No. I think bad cops work for whoever blew up the Men’s Grill. And in a town like Mission Creek, who could that be?” She didn’t wait for his answer but supplied her own. “Your friends. Your ex-friends,” she corrected herself. “The Mercado gang.”

  She began scribbling things on the notepad, dragging lines from one item to the next. “Look at this. Ed Bancroft and Kyle Malloy were involved with whoever bombed the country club. That’s a given. Otherwise, what reason would they have had to kidnap Jake Anderson?”

  “Okay,” Danny said neutrally. She didn’t seem to hear his vague tone.

  “Beau Maguire allowed someone to get to Bancroft the day he was hung. Was it deliberate or just negligence? If it was deliberate, then he would only have done it because the powers-that-be told him to. He’s also been riding my backside like I’m some kind of pony and he conveniently discovered that money in your apartment six years ago. If not for the other stuff, I could accept that maybe he was just on patrol that day and he caught the call. But add in the rest, and it looks like he’s working for someone. And who might be interested in both framing you and killing off a loose link where the bombing was concerned? I’ll tell you who—the mob.”

  She didn’t look up when she said it, he realized. She didn’t even try to find his eyes to read the truth there. And he knew it was deliberate because she had no qualms whatsoever about asking him about his past for personal reasons. But she’d switched from the personal again. This was cop stuff. This was for her shield.

  In that moment it hit him.

  Her strength of character, he thought. And her stubborn, thorny determination to do what was right. All covered up by a glib tongue—one he had yet to even taste, he reminded himself a little desperately—and an almost zany self-confidence. It was all of that, wrapped up in a tight, trim package with too many curls. The truth punched into his chest with enough force to steal his air.

  Ricky had been right: he was falling in love with her.

  “I have nothing concrete on Hasselman or McCauley,” she continued, “except for the fact that they’re really antagonistic toward me.” She wrote their names on a bottom corner of the notepad. Then, finally, she glanced up at him. “There’s no help for it. I have to get into Maguire’s personnel files and as long as I’m at it, I might as well poke into McCauley and Hasselman as well. Bancroft and Malloy are almost a waste of time given that they’re dead, but there might be something telltale there. Anyway, I really think the answer is in Evie Castelano’s office somewhere. The security on our personal records is just too tight for comprehension. I’ve got to break past it. I need some kind of proof here.”

  Danny dropped back to earth with a thud. “Molly, don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Weren’t you the one who told me that stupid is dying for doing the right thing?”

  “Don’t throw my words back at me. And nobody is trying to kill you.”

  “They’re trying to annihilate the one thing I am. My identity. That comes damned close.”

  “A cop.” It should have made him flinch, but he was still too dazed by his own feelings. “What kind of career do you think you’re going to have left if you break into the personnel office? That’s what you’re thinking of doing, right?”

  Molly hesitated for only a second before she nodded.

  “Ah, jeez,” Danny groaned, then he got up to pace.

  Molly leaned back in her chair and nibbled on her bottom lip thoughtfully. “Joe Gannon says I should stay away from the war room during the day and Eli Tripician wants me to steer clear of this place after hours. So I guess I’ll just nose around the police station after shift.”

  “The police station, hell!” Danny charged. “You’re going straight to personnel! You’re slamming yourself into walls again, Molly.”

  “This one is going to fall down. I’m going to get these guys. I have to.”

  “Then at least let me help.” What the hell was he saying? Visions of Ricky and Carmine and his parole officer flew through Danny’s mind, fierce little winged goblins with each man’s face. He could break into that office for her easily…and it would land his butt right back in jail.

  Molly shook her head, knowing it, too. “There’s nothing you can do. Anyway, I’ve got an idea about how to accomplish this.” She thought of Evie’s keys again. If she swung by the office as soon as she reported into work, there might be a way to lift them. She stood and headed for the door.

  “By the way.” She paused, looking back at him. “Before this is all over, I’ll find out why you weren’t surprised last night.” She shut the door quietly behind her.

  Danny made a move to stop her, then he decided he had to let her go. He sat down again hard.

  What was he supposed to do about this—about wanting her this way? He couldn’t let himself love her. It broke every rule he knew, and all the ones Ricky had given him.

  He hadn’t squealed six years ago because he hadn’t wanted to die. He’d agreed to Ricky’s terms yesterday because it was the only way to protect Mona and Molly. And he’d consigned himself to hell, where constant fear for them would gradually tear the life out of him. They’d so far escaped clean with his visit to her apartment last night, but how many chances like that could he—could they—take?

  And he wanted to take those chances, he thought. He wanted to go back to her blue and red living room again and again and again.

  His stalemate with Ricky wasn’t the answer.<
br />
  He went hollow and cold inside. Carmine’s death wouldn’t matter, he realized. There were always the others—henchmen, deputies, hitmen—who, as Ricky had said, all wanted vengeance against Danny Gates for biting their master’s hand, for taking everything Carmine had given him and walking away. Someone would always be watching him, waiting for any good excuse to make him pay. And someday they would do it. Neither Molly nor his mother would ever breathe an entirely safe breath again for the rest of their days.

  Unless Danny blew the whole thing wide open, after all.

  He had to cough up what he knew and he had to bring the mob to their knees, he realized. He had to dismantle them, cripple their power base here in Texas. It was the only way he could set any of them free. And Ricky had inadvertently pushed him to it with his ultimatum.

  He might have stayed quiet forever if it had only been a matter of his own life.

  “Hold on, Molly, just hold on. Don’t hate me yet.” Danny scrubbed a hand over his eyes. Now she had him talking to himself.

  He didn’t know how to do it. He didn’t know how to strike that fatal blow without any of them being caught in the cross-fire. He didn’t want to destroy Ricky, either. Somehow there had to be a way to get them all out of the line of fire and sweep the Texas mob out of Mission Creek once and for all.

  Hope seized on that idea with a ferocity that would have brought him to his knees had he been standing. Hope. Danny wondered how long it had been since he had experienced that simple emotion.

  Then Molly burst back into the room. “Danny. Hurry.”

  He jolted and looked up. Her voice was a hum of repressed panic. Danny came to his feet, scared by that and by the way the color had drained from her skin in the short time since she’d left him. She was alive, unhurt, not bleeding. No one had made a move on her. What had happened, then?

  “It’s Bobby,” she said. “Our Bobby. Someone’s hurt him.”

  Her entire adult life had been built upon, layered upon, the need to stay calm, Molly thought ten minutes later. First there had been Mickey’s blood sliding through her fingers as she’d bent over him, knowing that if she stopped applying pressure to his wound long enough to scream, she’d lose him. And somewhere between that and watching her mother lay her head down on her pillow for the last time, there had been more blood, the blood of strangers. There’d been shattered flesh and crushed bones, accident scenes and aggravated violence. Through it all, she’d stayed calm.