Driven

by Rebecca Zanetti

  “I have good sources,” Angus admitted. “This is my colleague, Jethro, and he has a couple of new angles on the case. Do you mind if we just ask you a couple of questions?” He didn’t like playing good cop, but this guy didn’t have to talk to them at all.

  Jeremy sighed and pulled the door open. “Come on inside.” He gestured them into a living room covered with fast-food wrappers, red cups, and old newspapers. Definitely a bachelor pad. A beer pong table was set up just beyond the sofa. He looked around. “I had a party Saturday night and am still hung over, so try to keep your voices low, would you?” Shoving papers off his sofa, he dropped onto it, emitting a soft sigh. “Beer is bad. Really bad. Although not as bad as Jäger.” He shuddered.

  “Amen to that, bloke,” Jethro said, lifting a pizza box from a chair and sitting. “Would you please run me through what you remember about the day Henry Wayne Lassiter died in your ambulance?”

  Jeremy scrubbed both hands down his whiskered face. “Why do serial killers always have three names?”

  “It’s one of the great mysteries of life,” Angus said, sitting on the other chair and ignoring the laundry littering the floor. “Did he say anything to you before he died?”

  “He’d been shot in the face, the chest, and the leg,” Jeremy said. “People don’t usually talk while bleeding from multiple wounds.” He looked around and grabbed an open Pepsi, then peered inside. Shrugging, he took a deep drink. “He died right before we got to the hospital.”

  Jethro nodded. “I’m aware. Then you transferred to Dr. Shelman and she called time of death?”

  “Yep. She’s a hot one, isn’t she? I saw her last week when we caught a pileup on North Fifth Bridge. All business and bossy, she is.” He grinned. “One of these days she’s going to say yes when I ask her out.”

  Not if he didn’t learn to clean up his place and stop playing beer pong on Saturday nights. “Good luck with that,” Angus said. “Is your partner still living over on Green Street?”

  The amusement fled Jeremy’s olive-colored eyes. “No. I figured you knew. Janice died almost six months ago. Traffic accident after work.” He rubbed his hands down his sweats, his pain nearly palpable as he looked around the room. “The place didn’t look like this when she stayed over.” He shrugged and rubbed his gut.

  Alertness danced down Angus’s back. He’d met with Janice about eight months ago. Was her death a coincidence? “What happened in the accident?” he asked.

  “She got hit by a truck. Hit-and-run,” Jeremy said. “Never found the guy.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jethro said quietly.

  Jeremy shrugged. “What are you gonna do?” He shook himself. “Why is all this being brought up again? And don’t you guys all coordinate?”

  Angus sat up, his body going on full alert. “What do you mean?”

  “I already told all this to the other detective yesterday. He said it was the last time you guys would bug me.” Jeremy drank more of the old Pepsi.

  Angus shared a look with Jethro. “Tall guy, big shoulders, African American? Works for Metro PD?” Maybe Tate really was on his side here.

  “No. White guy, big shoulders, pretty tall,” Jeremy said. “Works for the FBI. He had brown hair and a mustache with a beard, and his suit was expensive-looking. Like seriously expensive.” He rubbed his chin again. “Even his shoes were something. Italian and shiny.”

  “How dark was his hair?” Angus asked. The description kind of fit Special Agent Rutherford from the HDD, but he had blond hair.

  “Pretty dark,” Jeremy said.

  “What did you tell him?” Angus leaned forward, adrenaline shooting through his veins. “Start at the beginning and tell us everything.”

  * * *

  Angus drummed his fingers on his jeans-clad thigh as Jethro broke numerous speed limits to reach the hospital.

  Jethro parked at the end of the parking area, away from other vehicles. “You know, it’s entirely possible it was somebody from the FBI who interviewed Jeremy yesterday.”

  Angus nodded. “I’m aware.” He twisted his phone in his other hand, waiting for Brigid to send the accident report concerning the paramedic who’d died months ago. She’d seemed like a nice woman—bubbly and earnest.

  Jethro cut the engine. “Take a minute here, mate. Lassiter is a killer and he enjoys getting close and personal, right? So, there can’t be any connection between him and the paramedic’s death. It doesn’t make sense. If he wanted her dead because she knew something that you didn’t pull out of her before, he wouldn’t cause an accident, would he?”

  Angus slipped his phone in his pocket. “He’d much rather kidnap and torture her, I know.” Yet it might have been even more important to keep her quiet. Six months ago Lassiter hadn’t wanted to make his presence known. “He’d have the patience to just arrange an accident if he had a bigger plan in mind.” One that started with the killing of victims who looked like the members of Angus’s team. “We need to talk to the doctor.”

  “The long-legged one.” Jethro stepped out of his car and scouted the area. “Don’t see any guns pointed at us. It’s probably safe for now.” Sarcasm uttered in a British accent still sounded classy.

  Angus stood and shut his door. “We have to find the person who keeps trying to kill me.”

  Jethro looked at him over the car. “You make it sound like a nuisance case. Somebody wants you dead, mate.”

  “It is a nuisance,” Angus muttered, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and striding across the long expanse of parking area toward the emergency door entrance. “I can’t be chasing Lassiter and have somebody keep trying to shoot me or blow up my homes.” They had to figure out who the team had pissed off the most, so he could concentrate on the more important case, damn it. He entered the doorway and walked to the receptionist, a sixtysomething woman with long, gray hair styled in one of those fancy braids. “Hello,” he said, wishing for his badge.

  “Hi.” She looked up behind thick glasses and smiled. “How can I help you?”

  He put on his most charming smile. “We’re looking for Dr. Emily Shelman. Do you know how we could find her in this big hospital?”

  The woman reached for her telephone. “Can I tell her who’s looking for her?”

  “Of course.” Angus kept his casual smile in place. “Please tell her that Angus Force, from the FBI, and Jethro Hanson, from British Intelligence, just have a couple of quick questions for her about a patient. Nothing scary.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, my.” She twittered and looked toward the mostly vacant waiting room. “I feel like I’m in a James Bond movie.”

  “Wouldn’t that be fun?” Jethro asked, the accent in full force.

  She blushed a beet red. “Oh, that’s perfect.” She dialed and spoke for several seconds to somebody named Nancy. Then she frowned and hung up the phone. “Well, this is odd.”

  Oh, shit. Angus took a step toward her. “What’s odd?”

  “Dr. Shelman has been off work since Friday morning and she didn’t show up for her shift this morning. Nancy is quite worried. They’ve called the doctor’s apartment several times but haven’t heard anything.” Before the woman finished speaking, Angus was already halfway out the door.

  He sped into a full-out run for the car with Jethro on his heels. “We have to get to her place. Now.” Angus pushed his bulk inside the car and flipped through the file folder for an address. He knew how to get there but couldn’t remember the apartment number. Then he barked out the address while Jethro sped out of the lot.

  Jethro wove in and out of traffic, pushing the pedal and breaking the law. Finally they screeched to a stop in front of a modest brick apartment building.

  Angus was out of the car before the engine had silenced, running up two flights of stairs to door number six. The memory of the tall blonde with the intelligent eyes flashed across his mind, spurring him on. He knocked on the door while trying to peer through a break in the curtains on the front win
dow. The room beyond was dark.

  He tried the knob.

  Locked.

  “Hold on, Jethro.” Angus turned around and back-kicked the door. It flew open with a crash and collided with the wall on the other side. Angus drew his weapon from beneath his jacket and went in low, while Jethro went high.

  Silence. The cold and dusty kind.

  He flipped on a light with his elbow and motioned Jethro to the left, toward a living room and an open doorway. Jethro nodded, his movements silent and his gun out.

  Angus continued along the wall toward the open kitchen, where he turned right down another hallway to search a master bedroom and bathroom. He returned to the living room. “Clear.”

  Jethro emerged from the other doorway. “Office and guest bathroom are clear.”

  Angus looked over the kitchen counter to see a clean floor. There were two dishes in the sink: a plate and a coffee mug.

  Jethro studied the room. “Nothing is out of place and I don’t see any sign of a struggle.”

  Angus forced his breathing to remain calm so he could think. “The receptionist said that the doctor had taken the weekend off. Maybe she stayed away longer.” He wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Jethro or himself. “We need to search the place. Look for any sort of travel plans and a contact list, if she has one.” These days, everybody kept lists in their phones. He reached for his and texted Brigid to start a search for the doctor.

  “I don’t have gloves,” Jethro said, looking at him. “Do you?”

  “No,” Angus said, eyeing the coat closet near the door. “Maybe she has some mittens we can borrow.”

  Jethro sighed. “Wonderful.”

  Sirens echoed in the distance.

  Somebody had heard them force entry and had called the police. Angus headed toward the door. “New plan. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Morning brought fresh rain. After organizing the timeline the day before, Nari felt nicely relaxed as she sipped her first cup of coffee of the day. Angus and Jethro had been gone most of the day before, but once Angus had returned to the apartment, he’d spent the night showing her his own attention to detail. She smiled as she sipped, her heart feeling all warm and gushy.

  She had to knock that off because this was casual for now. Even so, a night with the hard body of Angus Force should be celebrated at least a little.

  Roscoe whined over by Jethro’s bedroom door.

  Nari glanced at the clock. It was after nine, and Jethro didn’t seem to be a guy who slept in. Didn’t he have classes today anyway? She wandered over and peeked into the room, drawing back at seeing the neatly made bed. “Angus?”

  “What?” He emerged from their bedroom, finger combing his wet hair.

  “Jethro didn’t come back last night.” The professor had said he was meeting friends for a late dinner but would return early to prepare for classes. She frowned and tried not to overreact. “Didn’t he say he’d be back?”

  Angus reached for his phone on the table. “Yeah.” He dialed and waited before he spoke. “Jet? Give me a call.” Then he hung up.

  Nari bit her lip. “He’s an adult, and ordinarily I wouldn’t worry, but somebody has been killing people around us lately.” She paced over to the murder board and then back, looking at her color-coded files. “Why wouldn’t he answer his phone?”

  Angus dialed another line. “Brigid? Do a GPS search on Jethro’s phone, would you?” He winced. “I know you’re at work at HDD. Sorry about this. Please do it, though.” He hung up. “I’m probably going to get her fired.”

  Nari looked at her coffee, which was no longer appetizing. “He has to be okay. Right?”

  Angus didn’t answer. “He can take care of himself.” He looked around, as if trying to solve a mystery. “I didn’t realize he hadn’t come back.”

  Heat slipped into Nari’s face. They had been rather preoccupied getting naked together.

  Angus’s burner phone beeped and he pressed the Speaker button. “Hey, Bridge. Where’s the Brit?”

  “His phone tracks to his apartment building,” Brigid said, just as the front door opened and Jethro walked in. “I have to go back to work.” She clicked off.

  Angus took a menacing step toward Jethro. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  Jethro shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed mail onto the counter, both of his eyebrows rising. “Gee, Dad. I’m sorry I missed curfew.” He looked at Nari, his gaze full of questions.

  Oh, she wasn’t in the mood. “You said you’d be home after meeting friends for dinner and you didn’t come back. At the very least you could’ve called. People have been shooting at us lately, you know.” She tapped her foot on the concrete.

  His lip ticked up, but he wisely refrained from calling her his mom. “Dinner went well, I got on with a visiting professor, and we went to her place for a nightcap.” He did look relaxed this morning and, with his hair rumpled, more like a James Bond than ever. “I stayed for breakfast.” He paused. “Do I need to add any more details?”

  “No,” Angus bit out. “We get the picture.”

  “Excellent,” Jethro said, patting Roscoe on the head and walking toward his bedroom. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to shower and get to class by one this afternoon.” He whistled a jaunty tune and disappeared into the bedroom.

  “What an ass,” Angus muttered, then turned to stare at the murder board.

  Nari laughed. “Well, I guess he’s all grown up now.” Angus’s responding smile warmed her heart. Shared moments like that made her like him even more. “I have to go to HDD and do an exit interview as well as fill out some HR forms. Do you need the rental car?”

  He studied her. “Yes. I’ll drop you off at HDD and then pick you up afterward. You’ll be safe at the agency so long as you remain there. Promise me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “It should only take a few hours, from what I understand.” She needed to keep her COBRA insurance.

  Angus dialed a number and left the phone on speaker.

  “What?” Brigid’s Irish accent emerged with her exasperation.

  Angus grimaced. “Sorry to keep bugging you, but do you have any leads on the missing doctor?”

  “No,” Brigid said. “I have a computer running a search, but I’m up to my Gaelic ears on three other cases, being monitored by the administrator, and I’d prefer Opal Clemonte didn’t fire me on my first week in the new computer headquarters. I will call you if I get a hit on your doctor.” She clicked off again, and somehow it was louder this time.

  Nari sipped her coffee. “We have to stop relying on Brigid so much. Her plate is too full right now.”

  “Agreed,” Angus said, rubbing the back of his corded neck. “I don’t have another computer expert, though.”

  The man didn’t have a team at all, but why bring that up? More importantly, she would not ask what his plans were after this case had concluded. Why breach the tenuous peace they’d found between them?

  His phone buzzed and he clicked the Speaker button. “Force.”

  “Hey, Angus, it’s Raider,” Raider said. “I’m at work right now, at the DHS, and I’ve gotten called into my boss’s office. The Metro PD is trying to find you and you’re not answering your cell phone. Thought I’d pass on the message.”

  Nari chewed on the inside of her lip, a bad habit she’d had in college but had thought she’d conquered. Metro couldn’t find Angus because he’d left his phone at her apartment and was using a burner.

  Angus sighed. “Thanks, Raid. I’ll call Tate.” He disengaged the call and then quickly dialed another number.

  “Tate Bianchi,” Tate answered absently.

  “Hi Tate, it’s Angus,” Angus said calmly. “I heard through the grapevine that you’re looking for me.”

  Silence pounded for the briefest of moments. “Angus? Where are you?” the detective asked, papers shuffling in the background.

  Angus paused and then looked at the phone. �
��I’m at a friend’s place, hanging out. What do you need?”

  “I need you to come down to the station and talk to me,” Tate said evenly. “Like right now. In fact, because your truck was crashed, I’m happy to send a car to pick you up. How does that sound?”

  Nari shuffled her feet. Were they going to arrest him? She wasn’t sure who to call as a lawyer now.

  Angus lifted his gaze to her face, no expression in his eyes. “I don’t need a ride. I’ll see you in an hour.” Then he ended the call. “I might need another lawyer.”

  * * *

  Angus sat once again in the interrogation room of Metro PD, facing Tate and Detective Buckle. He wondered what Buckle’s first name was. Probably something tough like Margaret or Bernadette. Maybe Hayden. Yeah. She looked like a Hayden Buckle. Tough and savvy.

  “Angus?” Tate asked. “Did I lose you?”

  Angus sighed. “No. I’m just getting bored. We’ve gone over all this before and my timeline and alibis haven’t changed.” The empty seat next to him served as a reminder that he’d gotten Scott shot. The lawyer was still in the Intensive Care Unit and hadn’t awakened after his surgery. “Maybe we should wait until my attorney is up to working again.”

  “We don’t have that kind of time,” Buckle said, her eyes sparking. “Speaking of lawyers, it turns out the gun that shot Scott has your fingerprints on it.”

  Angus nodded. “No shit. I mean, no kidding. Pardon my language.” He was close to losing it and needed to get a grip. “I grabbed the weapon out of the shooter’s hand and then shot him with it, so no doubt my fingerprints are on it.”

  “Only yours,” Tate said helpfully.

  Angus lifted a shoulder. “The guy was wearing gloves. I already told you that.” He looked back at Buckle. “Did you check the clip and bullets?”

  “Yep. No fingerprints on those at all,” she said.

  Angus leaned forward. “There you have it, then. If I was dumb enough to leave my prints on the gun, do you really think I was smart enough to wipe the clip and bullets? No. Somebody else had that gun and I think you know it.”