Hot Pursuit (37 page)

Maria ended the call, and sat there, as if frozen.

“Is he okay?” Izzy asked quietly.

She met his gaze. “He’s alive,” she said. “But he’s not okay. He’s high. And not like buzzed, but out of his mind high—assuming he was in his right mind to start with. And, God, we all know what a good combination it is to mix drugs with firearms, so … They think it’s possible that he’s the one who killed Maggie and a homeless man, too.”

And with that, her face crumpled and she started to cry.

But she didn’t run away, she just sat there.

So Izzy moved closer. Put his arm around her. It was weird, she was tiny—just a little slip of a thing. It was kind of funny, her personality and presence were so large, he’d thought she was larger.

She reached for him, holding him tightly as she cried on his shoulder, as he rubbed her miniature back with his hand, the way he would’ve comforted Ash, had that been his assignment.

Not that he was complaining. Maria’s hair smelled better, and she was less likely to crap her pants or pee on him, which was a plus.

He could feel the softness of her body against him, the tautness of her thigh against his, and it was remarkable the nothing that he felt. Especially since he was the King of the Comfort Fuck. Women flocked to him for it. It was, in fact, how things had started between Eden and himself. Although he hadn’t actually had sex with Eden. He’d just made her come.

And okay, now he wasn’t feeling
nothing
anymore. Now he was
aching with longing. Although, it had been so many months since he’d last had sex, he wasn’t sure he’d remember how to do it.

But the thing was, he didn’t want Maria, as beautiful and accomplished as she was.

He wanted Eden, and he wanted Pinkie, but mostly he wanted Eden, because together they could make their own Pinkie, but there wasn’t even the remotest chance of that happening if she wouldn’t talk to him.

“It’s okay,” he murmured to Maria. “It’s okay to cry. …”

“Nicely done, by the way,” Jules said as he and Sam jogged back from Jenn’s apartment to the alley behind Maria’s office building. “The not-killing-Mick-Callahan thing.”

“You noticed that, huh?” Sam sidestepped something that looked remarkably like a cow patty but absolutely couldn’t be. Not many cows wandering in this part of New York City. Still, it was uncanny …

“Robin calls them car turds,” Jules said, as he saw where Sam was looking. “Dirty snow gets kicked up by the tires and stashed somewhere, like in the wheel well or up under the fender, where it freezes. When it starts to thaw, it gets knocked loose, and the car takes a dump.”

“And you live in the Northeast by choice?” Sam asked. It was meant to be banter, but he realized even as the words left his mouth that he was unbelievably stupid, and that he wasn’t even close to being funny. Jules and Robin lived in Massachusetts because their marriage was legal there, period, the end. It was
the
main reason why Jules, one of the top FBI agents in the country, wasn’t working where he should have been—out of the D.C. office under counter -terrorist legend Max Bhagat. “Sorry. That was—”

“Are you happy?” Jules interrupted him.

“My side hurts like a bitch,” Sam reported. “My feet are fucking
cold. Our op’s body count is up to two, and someone’s going to have to break the news to the client that her brother is at worst a psycho-killer, at best a drug addict, and that lucky person’s probably going to be my wife, who’ll cry about it after, but only when she’s somewhere no one—including me—will see or hear her. So, no, I’m not particularly happy right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, but I’m talking big-picture happy,” Jules said.

“Big picture,” Sam repeated.

“You, Alyssa, Ashton,” Jules said. “Haley. Making peace with Mary Lou. Owning your own home. Working for Troubleshooters, with Alyssa as your boss. Not being a SEAL until your knees gave out… ?”

“Ah.” Sam got what he was saying. And Jules was right. He hadn’t taken the path he’d expected to take, but the amazing achievements of the past few years—Alyssa had actually fallen in love with him, married him, and borne his child—far outweighed any of the disappointments. “I’m very happy.”

“I am, too,” Jules said. “In Boston. With all of its many car turds.”

“You tell me that a lot, don’t you?” Sam realized. “That you’re happy.”

“Like a broken record,” Jules said. “You can’t seem to grasp that I’m beyond good with what I’ve got, and yet here you are—Alyssa told me—making your own lemonade out of lemons and blithely suggesting that you and Robin and Ash camp out in Italy for a month so that your wife and I can go off without you and save the world.”

Sam shrugged. “It’ll be easier with Robin. You know, helping out with Ash.”

“No,” Jules said, “it won’t.”

“Yes, it will,” Sam said, “Mister Don’t-Tell-Me-I’m-Not-Happy.
You
don’t tell
me
what will or won’t be easier for
me, capisce?”

“Practicing your Italian already?”

“I figured we’d stay at that place where you and I had our romantic
getaway,” Sam said. He’d taken an allegedly easy assignment, setting up security for a richie-rich celebrity wedding, and had gotten damn near attacked by the bridesmaids, as if in a nightmarish
Girls Gone Wild
parody. He’d repeatedly called Alyssa for help, but she was on assignment on the other side of the globe. She’d ended up calling Jules, who’d flown in for the weekend as the weirdest backup ever.

Sam’s continuously flashing his wedding ring and talking ceaselessly about his wife hadn’t slowed down the attacking horde, but Jules, showing up looking fabulous and giving Sam a kiss hello … ?

It had done the trick. Instant respect.

“I was gonna see if Ric and Annie wanted to come to provide extra security for Robin,” Sam said. Ric ran Troubleshooters’ Florida office. He and his wife, Annie, were also good friends with Robin and Jules. “And I thought we should invite Gina and Maxine Junior, too. And their new baby, Piggy-Face. Don’t want to leave him out. As long as Max is going over there, with you.”

Jules was laughing. “Max and Gina’s new baby does
not
have a piggy face. And it’s not Maxine Junior, it’s—”

“Emma,” Sam said. “And Michael, I know. And you’re right. The little dude looks more like Alfred Hitchcock.”

“All babies look like Alfred Hitchcock,” Jules said. “Or Winston Churchill. I got a picture stored in my phone of Ashton, at a few weeks old, looking like he’s ready for the sumo wrestling tryouts. Shit.”

There was a crowd and a gaggle of police cruisers and unmarked vehicles at the entrance to the alley, back behind Maria’s office.

But Alyssa was there, too—standing with Mick Callahan.

How the hell had he gotten here before them?

“I thought he was still in the apartment,” Sam muttered to Jules, who knew immediately to whom he was referring, “talking to Jenn?”

Mick had done quite a good job earlier, calming Jennilyn down
after she’d reluctantly left Dan in the stairwell with Maria’s drugged-out brother.

“Dan’s been over there,” Mick had reminded Jenn, getting her to sit down with him on her sofa and stay out of the way. “He’s enlisted, too—he’s not an officer. Way I understand it, that makes a difference. He’s got more in common with Frank than most of us here. And what little I know about Navy SEALs, he’s a damn good shot, if it comes to that.”

Mick’s sisterly affection for Jenn seemed solid and real. Warm, even.

But now here he was, standing too close to Alyssa as he watched Sam and Jules approach with those cold, flat eyes.

Alyssa was locked down, her mouth tight, her eyes guarded, and Sam knew that she hadn’t waited for them—that she’d talked her way into the crime scene.

She’d seen the bodies, and she nodded at them now.

“It’s Winston,” she confirmed. “And Mick identified the woman as Margaret Thorndyke, although the official ID will wait for a dental match. But… It’s her.”

No doubt the hole in her chest made the ID official enough for Alyssa.

“The murder weapon’s the exact same kind of knife that was stuck in Assemblywoman Bonavita’s door a week ago,” Mick volunteered. “It’s a fucking mess in there. I should’ve listened to my mother and become a dentist the way she wanted me to.”

“What the hell is he doing here?” Sam asked.

Mick, of course, bristled, and Alyssa reached out and took hold of Sam’s arm.

“He’s helping,” she told him, but she also tightened her grip before she released him—clearly sending a message, but what?
Don’t
was solidly in there, Sam did know that.

So he didn’t. Didn’t move, didn’t talk, didn’t even look at the prick.

Jules asked, “Have they moved the bodies?”

“No,” Alyssa said. “I told them to wait for you.”

“Good,” Jules said.

Sam moved to follow him into the basement, half expecting Alyssa to stop him with another hand on his arm and to tell him that he didn’t need to go in there and see the awful things that human beings could do to one another.

But she just looked at him, and he knew she would never say that in front of Mick Callahan.

She also knew that it wasn’t a fear of being unmanned, or a need to accept some kind of double-dare that was making Sam follow Jules. He was going in because, as awful as it was going to be, another pair of eyes might see something differently.

And because a case like this wasn’t over until it was
over
.

Because they still had Frank Bonavita in custody, where he was going to endure some serious detox, saying things like
They said they saw me kill Maria. …

“They” had written him a letter that he’d hidden in his room with his stash of meth. A stash that had, he claimed, just appeared in his bathroom, as if magical meth-making elves had left it there for him.

A team of FBI agents was already on their way out to Long Island to find out if the letter and stash were just another part of Frank’s paranoid delusions.

As Sam stepped through the basement door, he paused, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light and …

Holy fuck.

The smell was awful, the sight even worse.

He made himself look, made himself join Jules, who was standing in the middle of the room.

“Our guy,” Jules said quietly, “is definitely a showman.” He raised his voice. “I want an autopsy on both bodies, and I want it now. Carol!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought I saw you lurking there,” Jules said. “There’s going to be interest from the media, and I don’t want to be the one that gets questions shouted at him. I don’t even want them to know I’m here.”

“I’ll handle it, sir.”

“The statement we’re releasing is that two homeless people froze to death,” Jules ordered. “I don’t want any details leaking out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sam followed them both back out into the metal-grayness of the waning afternoon light, where Alyssa was waiting for him.

Mick, thank God, was gone. But not far.

“He’s upstairs,” Alyssa told him, told Jules, too. “I told him we still wanted to talk to him, because as far as I’m concerned? Winston didn’t kill Maggie. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s victim number two.”

A
s Lopez left, locking the door behind him, Danny poured Jenn a glass of cranberry juice and she took it, meeting his eyes only briefly.

She was embarrassed.

Not because she’d foolishly opened the door without checking to see who was on the other side, but because she’d told Frank that she loved Dan.

At the time, he’d been intent on making sure Frank didn’t kill anyone, and he’d let it roll, completely, off his back and out of his focus.

But now he couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it was making him sweat. It was crazy, but even the idea of talking to her about the way he’d blacked out again was less anxiety-inducing.

Lopez had given him an out before he’d left them alone here in Jenn’s apartment. He’d offered to stay so that Dan could go back to the hotel and take some downtime.

Danny had considered it—just picking up and running away. But he wanted Jenn again, desperately. God, he wanted to lose himself in sex that was so good, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any that was better. And he wanted her badly enough that it
trumped the most awkward of conversations. It even trumped the fact that he knew—he
knew
—that if she truly was falling in love with him, the dead last thing he should do was make love to her again, and risk cementing her feelings.

It would be selfish and cruel to do that.

Not that.
This
.

Because he
was
doing it.

Except maybe she didn’t
really
love him.

Maybe she loved him as a friend. Maybe …

Jenn being Jenn, despite her embarrassment, she led the elephant in the corner into the center of the room, and started the awkward discussion.

“It’s worse than getting called
pookie
, isn’t it?” she said, adjusting her bathrobe more securely around her and pushing her glasses farther up her nose. She’d been shaking so hard after Frank was taken into custody, that her cop friend, Mick, had suggested she take a hot shower, try to use it both to warm up and to wash away what had been a frightening incident. “The we-both-know-it’s-short-term girlfriend dropping the L-bomb on Day Two. It’s not only terrifying, it’s absurd. It’s clearly a very strong signal as to my emotional instability.”

As usual, she’d made him laugh.

“Or maybe it’s more of an emotional immaturity,” she continued. “Either way, alarm bells
are
ringing. I can tell, just from looking at you, that you’ve pushed your own internal panic button. But you’re too gallant to run away.”

“There’re all kinds of love,” he said.

“There are,” she agreed.

“I also think,” Dan told her as he sat down on the other end of the couch, trying to keep his distance, “that it can be easy to mistake certain … biological reactions for strong emotions. You were in serious danger, and I came to your rescue. And your body released all
kinds of hormones and endorphins and God knows what-all into your system, giving you a physical reaction that feels a lot like, you know …”