Deadly Pursuit

by Ann Christopher

  Very civilized, were these drug dealers.

  Everyone froze. The low murmur stopped. Absolute silence fell.

  The first gorilla went right to Jack, three hundred pounds of menace stitched into a thousand-dollar suit with enough firepower strapped to his side under his jacket to blow Jack to Kingdom Come six or seven times.

  “Name’s Yogi,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you. Back here.”

  They waded through the goons to what seemed to be the main table. Jack kept his shoulders squared and made eye contact with every one of those punks. They all returned the hard-ass stare.

  Jack also kept one eye on the table. Two men were there, the first one standing, the second one sitting. Both waiting. As soon as Jack and Ray came into sight, the second man stood, too, like he was an underling same as everyone else, but it was too late for blending in with little Spartacus moves like that and Jack already knew that he was the one—the top dog.

  What was the giveaway? Not the dark suits they both wore. Not their looks or age, because both seemed to be thirty-something-ish with the kind of dark appeal that women creamed for on sight.

  No. In this case, as in most cases, body language told the whole story. The first guy was no joke and had the shrewd eyes of a man capable of causing more than his fair share of trouble for the DEA, and not the Yogi sort of brute force kind of trouble, either.

  The first guy was a player, but the second guy was the boss.

  There’d been something in his relaxed posture, with his arm resting across the back of his chair and his legs crossed. When everyone else was hopped-up and nervous, this guy was relaxed—probably because he knew any of his men would protect him with their own sorry lives before they let anything happen to a single hair on his head.

  He was the one.

  The other guy nodded a curt greeting. “I hear you run a discreet bank. We might be able to use you.”

  Jack, who was sweating bullets and well aware that either of these guys, boss or underling, could kill him for what he was about to do, huffed out an irritated breath and tried to look pissed off.

  “Uh-uh,” he said.

  Dismissing this guy, Jack looked to the kingpin and felt the unwelcome shock of recognition, the can’t-prove-it-in-court-but-know-it-in-my-gut thrill of realizing that he was right. Training had nothing to do with this certainty; instincts did.

  This man, out of all the assorted thugs and killers in the room, was the one he needed to keep his eye on.

  “I gave the word that I would only deal with the top guy,” Jack continued. “If we can’t agree on that, then we have nothing to talk about.”

  Wheeling around, Jack headed back toward the door and half expected a bullet between the shoulder blades with each step he took, public place or no. It never came. Four steps out, someone called, “Wait,” and, after taking another step, just to make it look good, Jack turned back around.

  The kingpin was smiling at him.

  It was a relief and a horror, as though a dragon had taken a liking to him and wanted to be his special friend. That smile had power, menace, respect and brilliance all rolled up into one flashing white package. That smile chilled his blood.

  “Let’s talk.” The kingpin jerked his head. “You and me. Over here.”

  Jack exchanged a quick glance with Ray and then met up at the table with the kingpin. The man, to Jack’s fascinated surprise, put his arm around Jack’s shoulders in a brotherly gesture and leaned close, as though they had secrets to tell and could understand each other in a way no one else ever could.

  Up close, his eagle eyes were brown, his skin smooth, his breath minty fresh. His magnetic energy ran down his arm, across Jack’s shoulders and permeated the entire restaurant and, probably, the night sky.

  Against all odds Jack found himself wondering if he could be wrong about this guy and wanting to like him, to be the friend of a brother this cool. But then that smile flashed brighter and Jack knew he might just as well climb in bed with Satan himself as fall under this guy’s spell.

  “I like you.” The kingpin had a perfect voice for giving speeches and commands.

  “Really?”

  “We can do business.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Jack told him.

  “I think we can come to terms. I’ve got a little cash I need some help with.”

  Jack snorted and shot him his best who the fuck do you think you’re messing with? glare. “I’m not real anxious to do business with someone who plays me for a fool, pretends he’s not in charge and then still doesn’t bother to tell me his name. Doesn’t put me in a trusting mood, you feel me?”

  The kingpin’s grin was wry, his shrug nonchalant. Watching him, you’d almost think they were negotiating the price of a used car rather than the laundering of millions of dollars. “A man has to protect himself.”

  “I’d say you’ve got that part nailed.”

  The kingpin dropped his arm and his smile and walked, head down, several paces away. Jack waited. They all waited. No one spoke while the kingpin studied the polished tips of his shoes. Finally he meandered back, taking all the time in the world, and when he caught Jack’s gaze again it was with eyes so malevolent and flat it was as though he’d had his soul surgically removed and replaced with a black hole.

  Jack had served with distinction in the Gulf and been trained by some of DEA’s finest. He’d faced down thugs of all descriptions and even a Russian drug lord, no problem. Fear was part of the deal. If you didn’t have a healthy fear of the people you were dealing with, you most likely had a short life expectancy.

  No biggie.

  Staring into this man’s face now, though, Jack didn’t feel the garden-variety fear that got him through each day. He felt the sharp edge of terror. It ashamed him, but he did. In the second before he wrestled it back and mastered it, Jack felt the screaming, middle-of-the-night terror of a kid who’s had a boogeyman-under-the-bed nightmare.

  Then it got worse.

  “Here’s the thing.” The kingpin stepped closer, stopping only when he was all up in Jack’s grille and aiming for maximum intimidation factor.

  It worked. Jack, calling on all his years of training, every ounce of self-control and borrowing against his future reserves, stood firm and didn’t back away.

  The kingpin’s voice was low and rough now, as though someone had taken sandpaper to it. “If you’re a fed, or a snitch, or even just a guy who forgets what he promised to do and doesn’t keep his word, here’s what you need to know.” The man’s unblinking eyes glittered with ice and his voice dropped. “I will kill you. I don’t give a fuck who you are. I will kill you. And before I kill you, I will kill your mama and your daddy, your kids and your dog and your old woman. If you have a goldfish and a houseplant, I’ll kill those motherfuckers, too. I don’t care if I go to jail for it. If someone betrays me, he pays with his life. That’s how it works if you do business with me. Period.”

  Jack’s knotted gut was a screaming warning: tell him thanks, but no thanks, shithead. Do what you can to get out of here alive and never face this monster again.

  But all of a sudden, the arrogance in the man’s face pissed Jack off. So did his utter lack of regard for human life and Jack’s own fear. Who the fuck did this bitch think he was? God? Jack was the motherfucking DEA. A federal agent doing his job. And this SOB thought he could intimidate him?

  Fuck that.

  Squaring his shoulders and planting his feet wide, Jack smirked. “Fascinating. Now what the fuck is your name?”

  The kingpin grinned, all animosity forgotten, and extended his hand. “Kareem Gregory.”

  Holy shit. They had a name at last. Jack, who had no hopes that it was his real name, shook hands with the man who was about to ruin his life.

  “Did you subsequently receive money from Kareem Gregory?” asked Jayne.

  Jack didn’t look at the judge or the jurors as he answered, didn’t even register their presence. All his attention focused on Karee
m and he wished, with all his heart and soul, that he could vault out of the witness box, lunge across the desk, and rip the man’s heart out with his bare hands. The world would be a better place.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “He arranged for us to pick up four-point-nine million from a couple of his lieutenants. Part of the task force completed the transaction and executed a raid of the warehouse where the money was.”

  “You had a search warrant?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Drugs. Additional money. Weapons. Records.”

  “Did you find any?”

  Even now the bitter disappointment sat on the back of Jack’s tongue, thick and nasty. All that time and energy wasted, a huge opportunity lost. “No.”

  Twenty feet away, amusement lit Gregory’s eyes as he listened to Jack’s testimony.

  “Did anything else happen that night?”

  “I participated in a simultaneous raid of Kareem Gregory’s house. We were there to arrest him and execute another search warrant looking for the same things.”

  “How did that raid proceed?”

  “Like clockwork.”

  “And it turned up …?”

  “Some money in a wall safe.”

  “Was the defendant home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have any interaction with him at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack paused and tried to steel himself.

  The dark memories, which he’d stored so neatly away and locked in a secure location inside his mind—not unlike the endless storage facility at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the incompetent government bureaucrats dump the precious relic in with millions of other unmarked boxes—climbed out, one after the other.

  “He was home, having dinner with his wife.”

  Jack’s unwilling gaze flickered to the gallery, where Kira Gregory sat listening intently, as a good drug lord’s wife should. She had the young face, cool beauty, drop-dead body and designer suit and purse for the role. She also had the quiet look, caged and desperate, of a woman dying to escape; a woman who might die if she tried to escape.

  “What happened?”

  What happened? His life changed forever, that’s what happened.

  They struck just after dark, at a time when neighborhood traffic was low and the likelihood of bystanders being caught in the potential crossfire was minimal. The team moved with the synchronicity of fingers on a hand, lining up in single file outside the massive front door of the Gregorys’ mansion without so much as the scuff of a pebble to give them away. Two blocks over, the backup van waited, just in case. Air Wing circled a couple thousand feet overhead, providing aerial surveillance.

  Jack, his adrenaline spiked and his pulse thundering, watched as their team leader, Dexter Brady, gave the signal, and it was all over in ten seconds.

  The first agent in line used a fireman’s Hallagan to work on the front door’s brass dead bolt. The second agent attacked it with a battering ram. Agents three and four entered the impressive foyer with a shotgun and an assault rifle, sweeping the area for any signs of life, which weren’t hard to find. They all yelled.

  “Police!”

  “DEA!”

  “Search warrant!”

  Jack and the rest swarmed inside to see the remnants of a touching scene in the dining room, which was right out of Architectural Digest in terms of over-the-top expensive furniture—no roach-infested, filth-strewn crack house here, no siree.

  Candles flickered on the mantel and table. Flutes filled with still-fizzing champagne sat waiting. Half-eaten food filled the fine china plates, a nice roast of some kind, by the smell of it.

  And leaping up from the chair, where she’d been straddling her husband, was a flushed, terrified and mostly uncovered Kira Gregory, her black dress falling from where it had been bunched up around her waist to cover her bare ass in the back and gaping open on some small but glorious dark-nippled tits in the front.

  Kareem, whose shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, stood, shoved her behind him, and worked his rapidly deflating erection back into his pants.

  “Oh, my God. You can’t just break into our house! Who do you think you are?”

  Kira Gregory’s shouts seemed to go on forever as she faced the federal agents invading her dining room, and Jack had to admire her guts for facing down this occupying army, which was pretty much what they were.

  Everyone was in full regalia, with dark jackets with DEA emblazoned on the back in huge yellow letters, badges pinned to waistbands, helmets, goggles, gloves, Kevlar vests and assault weapons, but her righteous anger outweighed any intimidation that she might have been feeling.

  Jack would bet his right nut that this was the first concrete encounter she’d had with her husband’s real line of work. Maybe she’d had suspicions, but she didn’t have any firm knowledge. Not before this.

  Welcome to the real world, Mrs. Gregory.

  “You’re under arrest, Mr. Gregory.”

  Dexter stepped forward with the handcuffs. If Gregory had any thoughts of running, the agent standing in his face with the rifle locked, loaded and pointing right at Gregory’s bare chest persuaded him otherwise. He put his hands on his head and submitted to a pat-down, docile and cooperative as a newborn lamb. He showed zero surprise and absolute composure, as though dessert, fucking his wife and being arrested were what he’d planned all along for his evening.

  “You have the right to remain silent. If you—”

  Kira Gregory now had her dress tied in front and was decent, although Jack was willing to bet that no one present would forget the sight of her delicious and nearly naked body anytime soon. She watched the handcuffing of her husband with growing horror.

  “What’s this about?”

  “It’s okay, baby,” Kareem murmured. “A big misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  “But why is the DEA here?” Jack heard the rising hysteria in Kira’s voice and saw the growing comprehension in her wide eyes. “You run an auto-customizing business. Why is the DEA doing this?”

  Dexter tightened the handcuffs around Gregory’s wrists and spoke to Kira with respect and sympathy in his tone. “Your husband did this, ma’am.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “Money laundering. Conspiracy.”

  “No.” Kira’s gaze locked with Dexter’s over the top of Kareem’s head. “The DEA is for drug dealers and—”

  “Your husband is a drug dealer, ma’am,” said Dexter. “His money is dirty.”

  “No.” Kira shook her head but the righteous conviction was leaching away now, leaving only a bewildered young wife in its place, one who wanted to have faith but was finding it increasingly difficult. “You’re wrong. Tell him he’s wrong, Kareem.”

  Kareem, who had his shirt and pants more open than closed and his arms restrained behind him, wasn’t in much of a position to tell anyone anything, but he gave it the old college effort.

  “They set me up. We’ll get this straightened out, baby, okay? Right now I need you to call my lawyer and—”

  “You don’t sell drugs, though, right, Kareem?” Reaching out, she tried to touch Kareem’s face, but Dexter held up an arm, forcing her back. “You told me you don’t sell drugs. You told me—”

  “I don’t sell drugs.” Kareem’s voice was low now, tinged with frustration and desperation, and even Jack, standing ten feet away, could see how the man’s gaze skittered away from his wife’s. “I don’t—”

  But Kira was backing away from him now, shaking her head and whispering no, and it couldn’t have been more obvious that this woman’s innocence was yet another casualty of Kareem Gregory.

  “Let’s go,” Dexter said. He frog-marched Kareem toward the front door, through which the flashing lights of several blue and whites could now be seen, along with the craning necks of neighbors lining the street.