In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  “What?” she whispered, and there was something almost like terror in her voice. Yeah, she would figure it out, he thought. His only prayer was in not making her do that. His only hope was in telling her himself. She was a woman who valued honesty. Maybe his own would count for something.

  “If I talk about anything I know from those years with Ricky and Carmine, they’ll kill you.”

  She recoiled as though he had hit her. He knew that, in a respect, he had.

  “Kill me? Someone else wants to kill me now?”

  “Ah, jeez.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “You or Mona. My mother.”

  “The mob is going to kill us?” Her voice was wire thin.

  “No, they are not going to kill you as long as I let them go their merry way and keep my mouth shut. As long as I keep Carmine’s crimes to myself.”

  “That’s the deal you made with Ricky Mercado, why he let you go this time?”

  “It’s half of it.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “I wrote all that stuff down, anyway. Everything I know. I did it before he hit me with that ultimatum.” He waved a hand and was amazed to see that it shook. “The packets are out there. They’re hidden. If anything happens to either one of you—or to me—they’ll be made public. Trust me, the Mercados do not want that to happen.”

  “You’re arm wrestling with him.” He could barely understand her, her voice was so pitched.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Each one of you is pressing against the other with everything he’s got. Who’s stronger, Danny? Who the hell is it?” Her voice went up still another notch. “Who’s going to win this?”

  “It’s not going to matter.”

  “Excuse me, but it matters to me very much!”

  “It’s a moot point. I’m going to break the code.”

  “What code?”

  “Of honor.”

  “You call this honor?” Her voice went to a shriek.

  “Yeah, damn it, in certain circles it is!”

  “I don’t live in those circles!”

  “I don’t want you to! I’m trying to keep you out of it!” Now he was shouting, too. Danny lowered his voice deliberately, painfully. “You’re not getting what I’m saying here. I’m going to go to the FBI and tell them what they want to know. Or I’m going to find a way to leak one of those packages of papers I wrote. But I need time. I need time to figure it out. Because if I don’t do it the right way, someone is going to die for it. I’m making you a promise, Molly. I’ll fix this.”

  “Damn you.” She made a lunging move for her door handle.

  “Get back here.” He was half out of his seat, sliding out from behind the wheel, pinning her into hers, before he knew he was going to do it. “Don’t be a flighty, overemotional female. It’s not your style.”

  She punched him in the gut. He felt his air woof out of him. “How’s that for flighty and overemotional?”

  He gritted his teeth and stayed on her. “I’m not letting you get out of this car, and the Mercados have nothing to do with it. I don’t know where Beau Maguire is at the moment, and I don’t know who else might be out there. Molly, don’t do something stupid.”

  She went suddenly limp beneath him. “I just want to get out of this car, Danny,” she said, quiet again, too quiet. “I need to get away from you.”

  Her words were like a knife to his gut. He eased back from her warily. “Swear you won’t jump out of the car?”

  “No, Danny. When I die, it’s going to be on your head.”

  “All right,” he said, shaken. “I’ll take you home.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. When he pulled up in front of her apartment, he tried again. “I don’t know where Beau Maguire is,” he repeated.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Her jaw was clenched, and her words came out sounding flattened.

  “Molly—”

  “I’m a cop. I can protect myself. I don’t need you.” She leaned her weight against the door, and when it opened, she scrambled out of the car. “I don’t need you,” she said again, and it was almost like a plea.

  “What are you going to do?” He couldn’t let her go like this, without knowing.

  “I’m going to drink the rest of that bottle of wine we started, then I’m going to try to figure out how much I hate you.”

  The door slammed shut hard, sounding like a gunshot. Danny reared back, feeling as though a bullet had hit him.

  Pain, disappointment, anger—all of it seemed to siphon the life, the spine, the bones out of her.

  Molly stood in the middle of her kitchen forty minutes later, clutching the half-finished bottle of wine to her chest. Then she brought it to her mouth and upended it. She choked a little and dragged the back of her hand over her lips shakily. “I’m not an overemotional female. This is just more than I can take.”

  For the first time in all her years of talking to herself, a snide little voice inside her head asked her, Why?

  “Why? Why?” She had no ready answer for that, Molly realized. Her thoughts were too tangled.

  She went to the living room and peered out through the blinds there. Joe Gannon’s car was still parked in front of her apartment. She’d called him as soon as she’d come inside. “See, I’m not flighty. I have sense. I’m not crazy.”

  Joe had promised her he’d stay outside until midnight, then he would contact someone else he could trust.

  “Trust,” she whispered aloud. Her stomach spasmed. That, she thought, was the whole issue these days, wasn’t it? Who could she trust? She was trusting Joe. She had trusted Danny. One of them had already proven her wrong.

  She sank down onto the living room floor, cradling the wine bottle, then she drank from it again. She finally put her head down on her updrawn knees.

  For whole minutes after she’d left him, she’d tried to tell herself that she was bitter because she’d known all along that what she had discovered with Danny was too good to be true. She’d tried to tell herself that she was outraged because he had so blithely offered up her life in negotiations with Ricky Mercado. But it was more than all that. It was deeper.

  It was that she had trusted him, and she had never really trusted anyone before in her life.

  No wonder he had come to her back door that night, she thought almost giddily. He’d been sneaking here behind the mob’s back, but when she had asked him about it, even then he hadn’t found the honesty to tell her.

  Remember the snake story your mom used to tell? asked that wretched inner voice.

  “Oh, shut up,” she snarled.

  You do remember. That’s why you don’t want to hear it.

  Molly brought her head up and swigged more wine. “Go away.”

  What had that story been, anyway? Molly got up again to pace the living room. Something about a little girl crossing the desert. It had been one of her mother’s bitter-ending stories—Linda Lee French had been full of them. “I remember now,” she murmured. The little girl had been walking across the desert and the night had grown so cold. Then she’d come upon a snake. The snake had asked her for a lift, if she would just tuck him inside her cloak so he could be warm and go along with her to his destination.

  But you’re a snake, she’d said. You’ll bite me.

  No, the snake had said. I won’t. I promise.

  So the little girl had taken pity on him. She’d picked him up and tucked him inside her nice warm cloak. And then he had bitten her. She’d cried out that he’d broken his promise. But the snake had felt no guilt.

  Why are you so surprised, little girl? You knew what I was when you picked me up.

  “I knew,” Molly whispered wretchedly. “I have no one to blame but myself.” She’d known what Danny was from the start. She had just desperately wanted him to be more.

  Molly sat on the floor again and finally let herself cry.

  She was nearly asleep when the telephone rang, jarring her. Molly came bolt upright on the so
fa where she’d been indulging her tears with a box of tissues. She parted the blinds quickly to peer out and make sure someone was still there. She didn’t recognize the car, and that made something twist briefly in her gut until she realized that it must be after midnight. Joe had left and one of his buddies had taken his place.

  She went in search of the telephone. The portable was shrilling from somewhere in her bedroom so she went to the kitchen instead and grabbed the one on the wall there, figuring it was Danny.

  “Leave me alone.” Her mouth was dry as dust. Her temples pounded. She actually felt physically ill. It had been a long time since her heart had been broken, at least two years since her mother had died. She’d forgotten how devastating it could be.

  But Danny’s voice didn’t answer her. It was a woman. “Officer French?”

  Molly’s spine went straight. “Speaking.”

  “This is Nurse Myers at Mission Creek Memorial. I’m sorry to bother you but I have your name listed here as someone to contact if Bobby Jansen regained consciousness.”

  Molly’s brain cleared as if lightning had struck it. Yes, she thought, she had left her name and number for that eventuality. “He’s awake?”

  “Yes, he is. There’s a note here on his chart that we should contact either you or a Danny Gates. There’s no answer at the number he gave.”

  Molly’s heart squeezed hard enough to almost double her over. She wondered if he was out carousing with Ricky Mercado.

  That was stupid, she thought in the next moment. Why would he do that? She was being catty, illogical…overemotional. There’d never been any doubt that he was breaking his ties with the mob. The clincher had been that he had used her to do it—without telling her. She wondered if his mother knew the stake she had in Danny’s freedom.

  “I’ll be there shortly,” she said into the telephone. She disconnected. Then, because she was a cop—and she damned well could take care of herself without Danny Gates, she thought again—she hit *69 on the telephone.

  A tinny voice read back to her the number of her last incoming call. Molly pressed another button to have the number recalled.

  “Mission Creek Memorial Hospital,” the same voice responded. “Pediatrics floor.”

  Good enough, Molly thought. She forced herself to relax again. She wasn’t used to being so paranoid. It was wearing—a constant, tight grip on her muscles. She hung up the phone without speaking.

  She felt wretched but she didn’t want to take time for a shower. Who knew how long Bobby would stay awake? She’d heard that coma victims could come to, only to go back under again a short time later. She had so much to ask him. There was so much she needed to know about this Lion’s Den.

  She settled for brushing her teeth and pulling her curls back into a ponytail. She took an under-the-shoulder holster from her closet and grabbed her gun from the coffee table, fixing it into place. Then she threw a bulky jacket over it. She tied on sneakers and jogged out the door, pausing just long enough to knock on the window of the car at her curb.

  The man inside lowered the glass fast. “Is everything all right? What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got to run over to the hospital to check on someone there. Can you follow me?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Just make sure I get safely inside, then you can go.” She figured there was safety in numbers. Hospitals never slept. There would be people all around.

  “Then how are you going to get home again?” he asked.

  Molly thought about it. “Give me your number, if you don’t mind. Depending on what time it is, I’ll either call you or I’ll call Joe again.” If Bobby fell unconscious again, she knew she’d stay there the rest of the night waiting for him to wake up one more time.

  The man took a scrap of paper from his glove compartment and scrawled his name and his phone number, handing it to her. Molly looked at it, then back to him. “Josh Gannon?”

  “I’m Joe’s brother.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “He’s really going out of his way for me on this.”

  “He’s got a thing about cops misusing their badges.”

  “He told you what’s going on?”

  “Enough that I wanted to help.”

  “Thanks. I owe you, too.”

  “A case of beer will do me.” He grinned. Joe had pretty much asked for the same thing, she remembered, when he’d fixed the center’s parking situation for her. “Just figure out what’s going on here so I can go back to sleeping at night,” he continued.

  “I’m trying.” Molly sighed. “My car’s around that corner there in the parking lot. Want to give me a lift to it?”

  “Get in.”

  She went around to the passenger side. He pulled up beside the Camaro and she thanked him again—probably too much, she realized. She felt punchy.

  She kept her eyes on the rearview mirror as she drove to the hospital. Traffic was spare. His headlights never wavered—and there was no other car back there. Molly parked in the hospital lot and, once again, Josh gave her a lift back to the front door.

  She went through the glass doors and waved back at him, then she hurried to the elevator and rode it to the pediatrics floor. The nurse on the desk there looked startled to see her and that made something wary hitch in her stomach all over again.

  “I’m Molly French,” she said, approaching the counter. “You just called me about Bobby Jansen.”

  “No, I didn’t.” The woman frowned before her expression cleared. “Then again, I just got back from break. Janine probably called you. She’s down in the cafeteria now. What’s going on?”

  “She said he woke up.”

  “He did? That’s terrific. Let me page her and get her back up here. I didn’t even think to look at his chart.”

  “I’ll be in his room.”

  Molly set off down the corridor. Something bothered her about this. Her stomach felt tight. But that was ridiculous. She’d traced the phone call back here. The other nurse had simply gone on break and hadn’t thought to mention Bobby’s progress. Everything was copacetic. All the same, she paused at Bobby’s closed door and glanced back at the nurse’s desk. The woman was on the phone, not looking in her direction. Good, Molly thought. She didn’t want to scare her to death. She just wanted to make sure her own death wasn’t imminent.

  She reached inside her jacket and slid her gun free before she leaned on Bobby’s door and pushed it open. But the gun didn’t make a bit of difference.

  The arm that hooked around her throat came from behind the door as soon as she stepped through it. Molly drew in a breath to scream, then a hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Bitch. You think you’re so clever. You got everybody breathing down my neck wondering why I couldn’t get to you. But I guess I’m smarter.”

  She recognized the voice. Beau Maguire.

  Molly fought with the strength of terror. She brought her elbow back fast, as hard as she could, into his gut. She jammed her heel down on his foot. She was rewarded by a grunt. She could do this. She was in shape. Her life depended on it.

  She didn’t count on the shadowy form coming out of the far corner of Bobby’s room. The woman rushed at them.

  “Here, here, use this!” she cried. “You’ve got to get her out of here, Beau, or you’re going to get me in a world of trouble!”

  Then something wet was flattened over her face, her mouth, her nose. It had a strong, cloying smell to it. Molly held her breath, struggling not to take it in. Her mind started blackening at the edges anyway.

  The last thing she remembered was someone twisting her wrist painfully, taking her gun from her hand.

  Chapter 12

  Danny rebounded the basketball off the backboard hard enough to make the thrumming sound of metal vibrate through the gym. That one, he thought, was for Ricky.

  He’d save the most vicious shot for himself.

  He worked at it a few more minutes, pushing himself too hard, going on after his muscles started bur
ning. He was afraid that if he stopped he would do something totally emasculating and staggeringly horrifying…like go to her apartment and beg her not to close the door on them.

  “Leave her alone,” he said aloud, dribbling, pivoting, shooting again. “There’s no reaching a woman when she gets like this.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  The voice, rough and as calloused as a pair of work-worn hands, stopped Danny’s heart. The ball went sailing and missed the basket by a good three feet as he turned in the direction the voice had come from.

  The bleachers. Someone had spoken from the bleachers.

  As Danny watched disbelievingly, a head popped up from between the rows of seats. Even in the dim light, he could see the grizzled beard that covered most of the man’s face. It was Plank Hawkins.

  Danny got a grip on himself. “I guess there’s a good reason why you’re lying on that hard wood in the middle of the night.”

  “Got nowhere else to sleep.” He sat up, dragging a blanket with him. “Most nights its real peaceful in here, too.”

  Danny walked over to the bleachers. It had never occurred to him that the cook might be homeless, that he used what funds he had to feed everyone else. Now he understood why he’d found the kitchen window open so many mornings when he came downstairs.

  He sat beside the old cowboy. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “A few weeks. Used to use your place, then Ron gave it to you. Now I just come here when it gets too cold.”

  Danny swore. How much guilt was he supposed to handle in one night?

  “Get that look off your face,” Plank growled. “You belong here as much as the rest of us, and we all share what we got. Anyone breaks into this place at night, I sure can’t hurt ’em, can I?”

  Danny found a grin. “I’ll bet you could.”

  “You hammer and bounce balls and watch over the place. I cook,” Plank said stubbornly.