Ten minutes. A lot could happen in ten minutes.
Ten minutes turned into fifteen, as a heavily-laden farm truck pulled out in front of me and promptly slowed down to twenty miles an hour. I peered at it. Rhubarb. The fucking thing was full of rhubarb, possibly destined to be made into freaky ice-cream flavors.
Christ, I really hoped I’d get the chance to buy Gabe another round of inedibly weird ice cream.
The truck finally, finally took another turn, and I screeched past in a way that’d probably have the driver throwing curses at my back—or would have in New York, anyway. Who knew in Vermont.
At last I pulled up to the factory, parking by the side of the road just outside the parking lot. A large tree would hopefully screen me from the windows of the upstairs offices, and I’d stopped far enough away that the sound of the engine wouldn’t have penetrated the building.
I shut the door silently and jogged into the lot, hugging the edge where more trees offered some cover. Three cars sat in the lot, all parked by the main building.
And that changed things. I paused, considering, and then pulled up my email to look at the background check I’d run on Whipley.
And my hunch panned out. Yeah. That license plate was registered to Adam Whipley. One of the cars was Gabe’s; I hadn’t been in it, but I’d seen it in his assigned spot at his building. That left the other for Dave. To be sure, I checked the plate on that one against the info I had for him, and confirmed it.
Dave had called Gabe, but Gabe hadn’t mentioned Whipley.
Which meant nearly anything could be happening in there—and it wasn’t likely to be good.
I pulled out my phone and shot off a quick text to Brickell, telling him to upgrade my backup to four units instead of two, and that my suspect was confirmed to be here along with two possible hostages.
And then I pulled my weapon and double-timed it along the edge of the lot. Maybe Adam was the type of criminal to whine and argue when confronted; maybe Dave had found out what he’d been doing and they were negotiating terms for Adam resigning and walking away without police involvement.
Fuck, I hoped so, but I doubted it. The amount of product someone—Whipley—had moved over the past few months pushed him from hobbyist dealer to full-on international felon. He’d be aware what kind of hard time he’d be looking at, and in a federal prison. A gust of breeze gave the front door a push, making it swing slightly.
Unlocked. So they’d gone in that way—or someone had. I could follow.
But I heard a motor running, and it sounded like it was coming from the back. It had to be; there wasn’t anything else around for a few hundred yards at least, and I could see the front and sides of the place.
I slipped around the side of the main factory building, along the service driveway. It probably led to a loading dock. A truck engine, or a boat engine? Whipley might be planning to escape in either, but my money was on his yacht. He could get to Canada and disappear, and if he’d been smart and stashed most of what he’d made in cash somewhere, he could get out of North America completely and kiss the consequences of his crimes goodbye.
And he might not have wanted to leave any witnesses.
I couldn’t think like that.
Heart pounding, I crept up to the corner of the factory, pressing myself against the rough bricks and listening. An engine, footsteps—and voices. Shouting. “…take me instead, you asshole! Leave Gabe alone!”
Dave’s voice.
I peeked around the corner. Whipley’s yacht was moored about twenty yards down the dock between two other boats, with a boarding ramp laid out from the deck down to the dock. Two men on the ramp. Gabe, his bright purple hair fluttering in the breeze and waving around his face, with his hands in front of him. Something silver around his wrists: duct tape, it looked like.
And behind him marched Whipley, a gun in his hand pointed right at Gabe’s back.
For a moment, time slowed down, and my blood felt like it went viscous in my veins. If he got Gabe on that boat and took off, Gabe wouldn’t make it. The Shelburne PD had to be right behind me; they’d surely arrive any minute. And we’d call out the Coast Guard, and we’d almost certainly catch Whipley, but he might kill Gabe in the meantime. Even if he didn’t, the chances of getting Gabe back safely in some kind of marine standoff were basically nil.
I had to stop him from leaving, bottom line. No matter what.
Without a tac vest, which I’d left in the hotel like a fucking moron, I’d be vulnerable as hell when I stepped out of cover. I doubted Whipley had the skills to make a head shot at this distance, but if he hit me at all, I’d go down.
So I had one try at this. At the very least, I could buy enough time for the locals to get here and pin him down, hopefully.
Gabe looked around wildly as Adam prodded him in the back, forcing him onto the boat. I caught the glint of his eyes in the sunlight, the pallor of his face.
I stepped out. “Whipley!” I shouted, taking aim. I could make the shot from this distance, but I had the sun half in my eyes. If I miscalculated even a little, he’d shoot Gabe too. “Drop the gun, hands over your head. You’re surrounded!”
His head jerked around, but the gun didn’t waver. His mouth dropped open in something between shock and the snarl of a cornered animal. My finger tightened on the trigger.
And then he grabbed Gabe by the hip, hustling him off the ramp and down into the boat. I broke into a run, booking it flat-out toward the dock. If he popped up over the side and took a shot at me, I’d be a moving target, but I had no cover at all.
A thump, and a cry, and then he did pop up, both arms outstretched, his gun pointed right at me.
He fired, and I dived to the side, and the bullet pinged off the concrete a couple of feet from me. Whipley shouted something I didn’t catch with the echo of the report in my ears, aimed again—and something bright neon green came out of nowhere and clocked him upside the head. Whipley staggered, shouted, and turned. Almost there. I clattered up the ramp just in time to see Gabe, bound hands wrapped around a rolled-up green yoga mat, whack Whipley in the face again, hard.
I leaped from the top of the ramp and landed on Whipley’s back, flattening him onto the deck with a crack and a thump that half knocked the wind out of me. He writhed under me, shouting, trying to buck me off. I grabbed his wrist, twisting it and beating it into the deck. His gun went flying, skittering across the deck.
I shoved my own gun back in its holster, caught both of his arms, and wrestled them behind him, sitting up and pinning him with my weight.
Whipley fought hard and nearly knocked me off, but once I got a knee in the small of his back, that was it. He subsided under me, his face pressed to the deck, a little blood seeping out from under it. I’d probably broken his nose when I slammed him down face-first, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel even the tiniest bit bad about it.
“You’re under arrest,” I panted. “FBI. I’ll show you my badge once you’re tied up. Fucker.”
Not exactly the official line, but close enough. Whipley tried one last buck, but I ground my knee down, and he grunted in pain and went still.
I looked up. Gabe stood a few feet away, still pale but upright and not cowed at all, still holding the yoga mat like a bludgeon. He’d been held at gunpoint, tied up, and kidnapped, and he’d still come up fighting. With a yoga mat.
Christ, I wanted to kiss him.
Except that he had his pretty lips drawn back in a look ferocious enough to have me wary. I hoped that was all for Whipley.
But I doubted it.
I’d caught my smuggler and saved the day. I’d probably lost the only good thing I’d found in years in the process.
“Are you okay?” He blinked at me, but didn’t answer. “Did he hurt you? Or Dave?”
“No,” Gabe said after a second. “Pulling the tape off is going to hurt, though.” He let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. Okay, so maybe he was a little bit in shock after all. He dropped the
yoga mat at last, and it fell right by Whipley’s head. A little bit of something poked out the end of the roll and glinted in the sunlight. Plastic wrap.
The fucker had been smuggling drugs in yoga mats all along, just like we’d thought. Fuck, Jenna was going to kill herself laughing over Gabe knocking the smuggler down with a yoga mat full of drugs.
Although it was a good thing the mat had been wrapped around contraband. That had probably given it enough heft to be a viable weapon.
“Okay,” I said gently. “We’ll get the tape off carefully.” I wanted to say, Please, please forgive me. We should talk. I wanted to take him in my arms and kiss him better. I wanted him to take me in his arms and kiss me better, because I’d banged my knee on the deck when I took Whipley down, and it throbbed like a bitch. “Right now, I need you to stay back while I get him off the boat. The Shelburne police are on their way.”
Not just on their way—they’d arrived, it sounded like. Renewed shouting from Dave and answering voices carried across the dock.
I called out to them, heavy booted feet thumped over the dock and up the ramp, and I handed Whipley off to an enthusiastic young officer with a pair of handcuffs and a big grin, who’d obviously never had anything this exciting happen since he’d joined the Shelburne PD.
At least we’d made his day.
His older counterpart followed him up the ramp and gave me a nod. “Agent Kaminsky? Officer Brown. Everyone okay? We have officers taking care of Mr. Middleton, and an ambulance on the way.”
I staggered to my feet, and Brown offered me a hand up.
“Get Mr. Whipley into custody and secure the scene. I’ll be calling in my own team in a minute. I’ll take care of this Mr. Middleton,” I gestured at Gabe, “and bring him down to the paramedics in a minute.”
Brown and his partner got Whipley up and off the boat. He cursed and complained the whole way, his broken nose making him sound like a foul-mouthed cartoon character.
Too damn bad.
And that left me and Gabe, who’d gone still and silent, watching as Whipley got dragged away.
I needed to call the field office. I had a busy day ahead of me still, and a busy night. Reams of paperwork. A forensic team to supervise, evidence to gather and organize. More phone calls than I wanted to think about.
And Gabe stood there, looking at me, his eyes narrowed. The bright midday sun highlighted the blue streaks in his hair and made his blond eyelashes gleam like gold. He had a few freckles scattered over his nose and cheeks. Gabe was so beautiful it made me ache.
He didn’t move as I approached him. He definitely didn’t throw himself into my arms and thank me for rescuing him. Maybe I should be doing that, come to think of it. His quick thinking with the yoga mat might’ve saved me a gunshot wound, honestly.
“Get the tape off so I can go check on Dave,” Gabe said tightly. He held out his arms. Whipley had put the tape on tightly, but some of it had wrapped around Gabe’s hoodie sleeves, so only a little of it had gone on the skin of his wrists. Still, his hands had turned red, and as I started to work the tape off, he winced.
“Sorry. Let me try cutting it.” I had a pocketknife, and I whipped it out and started to carefully saw at the tape in the gap between his wrists. I had to hold his hands steady, and I couldn’t resist wrapping my fingers around his. The need to hold him felt like a tug under my breastbone, a physical longing, like being sucked into a gravity well. Irresistible.
I had to resist. The tape sliced through cleanly enough, and I peeled it back on either side. Gabe worked his hands free and pulled away from me, rubbing at his wrists.
“Gabe,” I said hoarsely. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to lie to you.”
He looked up from his examination of his reddened hands. His eyes gleamed with something that could have been tears, but he lifted his chin and held himself straight. Vulnerable and determined all at once. “But you did. I can’t—I can’t do this right now. Maybe not at all. I need to see Dave now, please.”
And what could I say to that? No, you can’t go and see your traumatized brother and get checked out by the paramedics yourself, because I need you to listen to my excuses first? I nodded, and Gabe headed down the ramp. I reached out to take his elbow, and he dodged me.
EMTs and cops swarmed over the dock as we stepped down, and I let them whisk Gabe away in a flurry of questions and blankets and stethoscopes and friendly encouragement.
He had the right to walk away from me.
I’d done this to myself, and I’d known that from the beginning.
That didn’t make it any easier to take. It hurt, a throbbing pain in my chest that I doubted I’d be free of for a long time, if ever.
15
Gabe
It turned out that being kidnapped by a drug smuggler was kind of a big deal.
I didn’t see why, particularly. I was fine. I didn’t know any more about Adam’s criminal activity than what I’d seen and heard that day, and giving a statement about it shouldn’t have taken longer than the events themselves, right? I needed some ointment for my wrists, and then maybe half an hour at the police station. Easy peasy.
Eight hours after Adam had been arrested, I was still drinking shitty coffee—albeit out of Officer Brown’s personal coffee mug, rather than the paper cups visitors usually got—and sitting in a little conference room, bored out of my mind, waiting for someone to come and tell me I could finally go home. My parents were off somewhere harassing judges or police chiefs or whichever officials were important enough for them to bother personally. They hadn’t bothered to keep me company, although they’d definitely made a scene, showing up and throwing their weight around.
Dave had ended up at the hospital, to be observed after showing the signs of going into shock. I’d ridden along in the ambulance and then spent a few hours there sitting at his bedside and listening to him rant woozily about all the ways he was going to ruin Adam’s life and career.
I just nodded along, knowing arguing with Dave didn’t get me anywhere at the best of times.
But personally, I figured Adam would be in prison for long enough that Dave’s efforts would be totally redundant.
Eventually, Officer Brown had come to bring me down to the station to give my statement, and I’d been here ever since, shuffled from one desk to another, waiting in various uncomfortable chairs, and signing things. They’d been super nice to me, but I’d had it.
I hadn’t seen Alec except in passing.
Sitting in a conference room alone gave me more than enough time to brood about him, but he’d been a lot busier. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about me at all. He’d solved his case, caught the bad guy, recovered who knew how many pounds of illegal drugs and tainted yoga mats.
I’d at least expected a pat on the back for clubbing Adam with one of said yoga mats, but I hadn’t even gotten that. I’d thought it was pretty badass, in a totally absurd kind of way.
But no. Alec couldn’t even be bothered to stick his head in, ask if I needed more coffee, and tell me I’d done a good job helping him not get shot.
I’m sorry. I never wanted to lie to you.
“Yeah, well then, maybe you shouldn’t have. No one put a gun to your head.” The words fell flat in the empty room. I blinked and shifted in my latest unergonomic chair. The faintly flickering overhead fluorescents, and their reflections on the conference table, had started to give me a major headache. It’d been half an hour since anyone needed anything from me.
God, now I’d started talking to myself.
Why wouldn’t they let me leave already?
The answer finally came fifteen minutes later, right as the wall clock ticked its irritating, fussy way past eleven.
The door opened, and Alec stepped in. Even after getting shot at, rescuing me and Dave, tackling Adam and wrestling him to the ground, and spending a full work-day’s worth of hours after that supervising the crime scene and doing God only knew what else, he looked like he had it together. Yeah, his five o’c
lock shadow had its own five o’clock shadow, and maybe he could’ve used a cup of coffee himself.
But he strode into the room as confidently as I’d seen him striding by hours earlier, on the phone and still directing three or four people in person.
That energy dissipated a little once he’d shut the door behind him, though. He leaned against it, his arms folded, the pose making him look nearly as menacing, with his arms and shoulders set off by his leather jacket, as he had in the park the first time we’d met.
The first time we’d kissed.
The first time he’d lied to me.
The first of many.
“Can I go home now?” My voice sounded as rusty as it had talking to myself. I cleared my throat, and Alec’s jaw tightened a little. He had his eyes fixed on me, dark and inscrutable. “I think I’ve given all the statements I need to give, right? Why am I still here?”
He pushed off from the wall and started to cross the room to me. “I’m sorry—”
And I’d had it. Completely. “You’re sorry?” I burst out of my chair so abruptly it spun away from the table and clattered into the wall. “You’re sorry? That’s just fucking great. I’ve been sitting here waiting to be able to go home to my own shower and my own bed—” My voice wobbled, and I couldn’t meet his eyes, dropping my gaze to the scratched table. My bed. Where I’d been with Alec—fuck, that morning. It felt like something that’d happened twenty years ago, waking up with him wrapped around me. I hadn’t even changed the sheets yet. It’d still be rumpled from our last round.
“Gabe, please. I needed to see you, and I thought I’d be done the same time as you. I got a phone call I couldn’t wait to take.”
My hands were shaking. I shoved them in the front pocket of my hoodie, hoping he wouldn’t see. I still couldn’t look up to find out what might be in his expression, in his eyes. I might crack if I did. “I don’t give a fuck about your phone call. I want to go home. And I don’t want to see you. You used me. I kind of even understand why. But I can’t—”
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 15
