Identify

by Denise Wells

The girl is pretty, in a very natural way. She wears her dishwater blond hair long and wavy, a flower tucked behind her ear on one side, a long skirt with a flat sandal, and a billowy shirt that falls off her shoulders. Despite the loose fit of her clothing, it’s obvious she’s got a rocking body underneath.

  David, as instructed, is sitting at a table on the edge of the patio where Reed and I can see him clearly from our parked SUV.

  “He’s not that attractive, right?” Reed motions to David while asking me the question. “I mean, how does he get these chicks?”

  “Beats the fuck outta me. We read his profile; it was lame as shit. And no, he’s not that attractive.”

  “Yes, he is,” Daria says as she passes by the open car window on her way to the restaurant. Quinn waves her fingers at us as she trails behind.

  “Holy shit.” Reed throws his hands in the air, hitting the roof of the car. “This is a fucking joke, Mack, with the talking and waving. How did she even hear us?”

  “Eagle fucking ears, man. The woman has eagle fucking ears.”

  I watch Daria and Quinn find a table on the patio, within view of David’s, but not too close. He hasn’t seen them yet; I can tell by the way he’s still talking to his date. His posture is relaxed and his tone is even, not at all excited or nervous. Which is what I’m betting it will be once he sees Daria.

  She looks amazing, but then to me she always does. Dressed in low riding jeans that hug her hips and ass, a belt with a big buckle, and a low-cut, loose T-shirt, tucked in at the front. With, of course, a heeled boot. The look is sexy as fuck but still casual. She’s wearing her hair down and it falls in waves beyond her shoulders. Looking so soft I want to run my fingers through it.

  Reed groans from his side of the car. “My god, how was I ever friends with this guy? Do these lines really work on women?”

  I tune back in to hear David telling his date that she should be a model in one of those fitness magazines since she’s so effortlessly beautiful.

  “Should we take notes, try some of them out?”

  Reed rolls his eyes at me.

  David and the woman continue to make small talk, each ordering a cocktail and sharing an appetizer. To his credit, David is a decent and complimentary date. If you don’t count the fact that he plans to drug her and sell her into the sex slave trade later.

  33

  Daria

  “Do you think it would piss Mack off if I shoot David?”

  “Well, I think it would probably mess their whole thing up. But who could blame you, really? I mean, we’re fairly sure he’s involved in your sister’s disappearance. We know he’s involved in other women disappearing, and he’s a lousy kisser.” Quinn giggles as she says the last part. We are on our second cocktail each since David and his date seem to be taking their sweet ass time with their evening together.

  What Quinn did not add, and if I have anything to do with she’ll never even know about, is that David was originally planning to sell her as well. Even if he had nothing to do with my sister, I want to hurt him for that. And by hurt, I mean torture. In ways that would take days for him to die.

  I order a third cocktail as well as an appetizer. Quinn is only halfway through her second drink, but she’ll need something to help soak the alcohol up.

  “Is it because you own a bar?” she asks. I wait for her to continue the question as it’s very much like Quinn to ask the second half of a question first, thinking you’ll either wait for her to clarify, or you’ll magically know what she’s talking about.

  “That you have such a high tolerance for booze?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s because I’m Russian. We start drinking vodka before we are even off the tit.”

  We both laugh, even though I’m hardly exaggerating. Much.

  I look over to David’s table, the smile still stuck on my face. Which is when he looks over and our eyes meet. His own light up for a minute, until recognition hits and he realizes who I am and who I’m with. Giving me more than enough time to replace the mirth on my face with fury. If I could kill him with my stare, I would be doing so right now. Instead, I raise my right hand, point my thumb and index finger into the shape of a gun, and mouth the word, “POW” as I pretend to shoot.

  His face pales as he turns his attention back to his date.

  “Did you just finger shoot David?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You’re such a badass, Daria.” Quinn giggles again as the server drops off my cocktail and the appetizer that I ordered. My phone vibrates from inside my pocket. I smile a thanks at the server at the same time as I pull it out to see who’s calling.

  Mack.

  I push the button to answer, bringing it up to my ear.

  “Why are you calling me?” I ask at the same time he says, “What in the fuck are you doing?”

  So, I say, “Having cocktails.” While he says, “Because you’re really close to fucking shit up. Do not engage.”

  “I have to go.” I hang up on Mack. Which I know will piss him off even further. But there’s nothing he can do about it now. He’s in the middle of an operation and does not have time to deal with me and David Tremblay. Who appears to be getting up and leaving with his date. I look at the time, it’s only been forty-five minutes. Where could they be going so soon?

  “Let’s go,” I tell Quinn.

  “Go where?”

  “He’s leaving. We’re following.” I find our server in the restaurant and slip her a one-hundred-dollar bill. “This should cover it. Keep the change. We have an emergency. Everything was great.”

  Our total wasn’t more than thirty dollars, it’s happy hour pricing. But I will always, always over tip waitstaff no matter what. I know from owning a bar the job is shitty, the tips can be even worse, it’s hard to be on your feet all day schlepping around hot food and dirty plates, listening to people bitch about their order. It’s got to be one of the most thankless industries around. So, whenever I can, I try to take care of them.

  I wind through the cars in the lot and across the street to where I parked. My Audi purrs to life as I push the button to start it, the seats rumbling beneath us.

  “God, how do you not orgasm every time you drive this beautiful beast?” Quinn asks.

  “Who says I don’t?” I wink at her, then turn up the music and fall in behind the near convoy now following David Tremblay and his date.

  The plan I have for David has nothing to do with Mack and his strategy. Or even the safety of the girl. All I’m doing tonight is making sure David realizes his days are numbered. Maybe he’ll make it to his wedding, maybe he won’t. I just want to put a little fear into him while I still can. Before he’s arrested or someone else takes him out.

  I already know, from everything I’ve read, that he’ll drug the girl at a stoplight or stop sign, then head in another direction toward the drop house. All of which seems to take a lot longer than I expected it to.

  Finally, David starts to head into a seedy part of town. Not so bad that you worry about your car being stolen, but bad enough there’s no neighborhood watch either. He pulls his car up in front of a nondescript beige house with a blue door. Mack and Reed stop their SUV about half a block back. I circle around the next block and park where I’m sure the house behind this one is. I pull my Ruger from under my seat. My girly gun. It’s small, pink, and fits seamlessly in my pocket.

  “Stay here,” I tell Quinn as I pull the lever for the trunk.

  “I want to go too,” she whines.

  “No, I may need you to drive the getaway car in a hurry.”

  “Oh, okay!” She scrambles out of the passenger seat and over to the driver’s side.

  “I’ll call you,” I tell her as I grab a rifle from my trunk and tuck it flush under my arm, so the gun’s mostly hidden beneath my flesh. I’m perched in the tree, diagonal to the house David is headed to, before he’s out of his car.

  My god, he moves slow.

  I watch as Mack motions to Reed and they fl
ank the front of the house. David leaves the girl in the car and disappears inside. Mack and Reed follow silently behind a moment later. I wait to hear gunfire and yelling, the cries of scared women, and the thuds of bodies falling.

  I get nothing.

  I climb down from the tree and make my way toward the house and hear Mack and Reed talking to David inside.

  “Where the fuck is everyone, Tremblay?” Mack’s deep voice echoes through the empty room.

  “I don’t know, man. I swear this is the address they gave me.”

  “David, I warned you about this. I told you that you must cooperate in order for me to protect you. If you don’t, I can’t help,” Reed says.

  “I am cooperating, this is the address they gave me. Look.”

  He must show them his phone or something, because I hear murmurs of concession followed by footsteps nearing the front door. I tuck back into the shadows on the side of the house and wait for the men to appear.

  Mack.

  Reed.

  David.

  I raise my gun, the small one, no need for the rifle at this distance, and aim for the dirt near David’s left foot.

  BAM!

  A gunshot cracks through the air.

  But it’s not mine.

  The dirt in front of David spits up, blanketing him in dust. Mack tackles him to the ground, covering him. Reed flattens to his stomach, returning fire in the same general direction the gunshot came from. Three more shots sprinkle around the area where Mack and David lay.

  “Where the fuck is it coming from, Reed?” Mack yells. “Can you cover?”

  “No.” Reed runs to a nearby street scanning the area around the house and across the street.

  “It’s that crazy bitch, I know it,” David yells from beneath Mack. “Get me the fuck out of here!”

  I’m quite sure David means me. I’m disappointed that I didn’t fire the warning shots. Which is clearly what they were or else the guy is a shit shot. But with that gun—a .300 Win Mag by the sound of it—I don’t think that is the case. Regardless, I’m still tickled that David thinks it is me.

  I turn and run back through the houses to my car.

  “Your gun is loud,” Quinn says as she gets out of the driver’s seat and returns to the passenger side.

  “That wasn’t my gun,” I say as I stash the rifle back in the trunk and tuck the Ruger under my seat.

  “Who’s was it?”

  “Someone else who doesn’t like your ex-boyfriend. And I have a feeling it’s a lengthy list,” I tell her as I pull away from the curb and we disappear into the night.

  I’m not surprised to get a call from Mack a few hours later.

  “What,” I answer, not in the mood for a lecture from Mack right now.

  “Why you gotta shoot at my guy, beautiful?”

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You and I both know I don’t miss.”

  He’s silent for a moment as that sinks in.

  “Well, fuck me. Someone was either scaring him or trying to kill him.”

  “I was there, though.”

  “Daria! What in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you? Are you trying to get caught?”

  “No, I was planning to scare him a little bit, fire a warning shot. Like what the guy did tonight.”

  “One of those bullets grazed me, beautiful. I think the shooter tried to hit him and just didn’t have the skills.”

  “And you wonder how my family has made so much money as hired guns.”

  He laughs at that, making my insides warm.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Just a little scratch. Why, you wanna come over and take care of me? Kiss my boo-boo?”

  “Good night, Mack.”

  “Good night, beautiful.”

  I disconnect the call with a sigh. I want so badly to be with him, sometimes I just ache. Like today. Right now. When the warmth of hearing him call me beautiful is still coursing through me and I know, if I said the word, I could have that every day. We could be going over his day together, and I could kiss his boo-boo. We would make love and he would look into my eyes and tell me how much he loves me.

  “Suck it the fuck up, Daria,” I say aloud. “Make love? Kiss his boo-boo? Who the fuck are you and what have you done with the badass?”

  I’m right.

  I have no business thinking such thoughts about Mack. Especially not when everything I stand for, everything I am, would annihilate his world if we were ever found out.

  34

  Reed

  Mack and I agreed, after the failed attempt on David’s life, that we would assign a protective duty to him as well as surveillance. I don’t know why the surveilling team can’t also protect, but hey, I don’t run the FBI, so what the fuck do I know?

  David begged for a personal bodyguard, but he didn’t get one. There is extra security here at the wedding though, both the ceremony and the reception. Local law enforcement as well as the FBI. A metal detector had already been arranged even before David’s “brush with death,” as he called it, due to the makeup of the guest list and the number of “important” people included on it. Which made it easy for agents to use one and go so far as to check pockets and bags without raising suspicion.

  As for me, I’ve been here in this anteroom at the church most of the morning. The idea being that all us groomsmen will relax and hang out before the ceremony, as though everything is normal. How David can carry on as though I’m not aware of his illicit and reprehensible activities is mind-boggling to me. At the same time, I’m not surprised because how else would he be able to carry on every day like he’s an upstanding citizen who doesn’t kidnap women and help sell them into a lifetime of sexual slavery or worse.

  Part of me wishes they’d been successful the other night. Whoever it was that tried to shoot him. If they had, I wouldn’t have to be here now sharing fake as fuck smiles with these guys I haven’t seen since college, pretending to care about the one who used to be my best friend. All the while knowing that as soon as he leads us to the guy in charge, I’m throwing his ass in jail and sending word to all the butt-fuckers that he’s up for grabs.

  Frustration fills me anew. It does me no good to think about this today. One, I have no outlet for my anger. Two, I’m supposed to be smiling, not frowning. And three, I can’t do a goddamn thing about anything when I’m unarmed and in a church.

  The room we’re in is what you would expect: dark wood paneling on the walls with ornate crown molding giving way to a once white ceiling that has dulled with age. Artfully crafted sconces spaced evenly along the walls to bring in what little light there is. But the furnishings are comfortable, large leather couches and armchairs, almost like what I would expect in a gentleman’s lounge for cigar smoking or something similar. So much so, I’m surprised there isn’t a bar cart off in the corner with crystal decanters of scotch and rye.

  David sits across from me, his custom tuxedo pristine, a smug look on his face as though he’s getting away with something he shouldn’t be. And he is. We haven’t arrested him yet. And if he makes a decent enough deal with my bosses, we never will. He still gets his girl, Laurel. And he’s got the okay to leave the country after the wedding to go on his honeymoon.

  It’s like the FBI has zero capacity to think things through. By all means, let’s give a guy who’s just married into millions, with access to a private jet, the leeway to leave the country and go wherever the fuck he wants for however long he wants. You know, as long as he promises to be a good boy and come back to lead us to the other bad boys.

  Mother fucking mother fucker.

  If I was him, I’d look smug too.

  What gets me, even more so than that, is his attitude toward me today. How he’s able to pretend that we’re still friends. Best friends. That I’m here standing by his side as his best man voluntarily and out of loyalty to him. Not that I’m here because it’s my job and we have him under constant surveillance and I’
m forced to keep up pretenses until we are able to arrest someone.

  There are four other guys in the room with us, the rest of David’s groomsmen. They are all guys that David and I went to college with and all from our same fraternity. He stayed close to them after we graduated, I didn’t. The only thing we’d all had in common in college was college, because these guys are all idiots. Since David and I had been friends since we were kids, even though he could be an idiot sometimes too, he was the only one I stayed in touch with. After seeing them again these past few weeks for the wedding, that’s not a decision I regret. At all.

  Even now, they are standing off to the side discussing bridesmaid conquests and passing a flask amongst them. As though this were high school prom night and not the biggest, most elegant wedding event of the year.

  Though, I must admit, right about now the flask doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. If it weren’t filled with Goldschlager or Fireball or whatever fucking bullshit thing they’ve got in it.

  “David,” one of the guys calls from across the room. “You gotta help us figure out which of the single bridesmaids are down to fuck. Come here, man.”

  David stands to go join them, pausing by my chair as he passes. He places his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Means a lot to me that you’re here, buddy. Thank you.” He’s across the room before I have a chance to respond.

  I hate that he’s done that, because he knows the real reason I’m here. He is fully aware that I would have nothing to do with him if it weren’t for my job. And that the only reason he’s free to attend his own wedding is because he’s still valuable, no matter how much, to the FBI.

  I grunt in response even though no one is around to hear it. Then pull my cell phone from the inside breast pocket of my jacket to check in with Mack and see how things are developing outside the microcosm I’ve sunk myself into here.

  ME: All ok?

  MACK: SFSG.

  Mack-speak for so far so good. He’s on the security detail in the main area of the church, dressed as a guest to blend, but still carrying and wired. Somehow, he was able to secure a position for Daria on the security team as well, even though she’s not law enforcement. And she’s posing as his date.