“Oh, he’s talented all right.” She stood, slamming the desk drawer and moving toward the door. “He’s a talented bullshit artist, and Michaela was right.”
Alex stood. “Right about what?”
She pointed at the screen, at the image clearly showing Beckett posing for the camera.
“He’s not dumb enough to show his face to the camera unless he wanted to be caught.” She huffed out a sound, not quite a laugh. “He’s reckless, impulsive, and infuriating, but he’s not stupid. They’re all up to something.”
“All who?”
“All those morons he hangs out with that don’t have the good sense to talk him out of doing something so epically stupid.”
She needed to go see Beckett and confirm what her gut told her was true. He wasn’t foolish enough to risk his career, his freedom, his life for nothing. But for those kids? To get Danny Vega off the street?
He would do it for them.
Her breath caught painfully in her chest as she remembered what he’d said that day. “I’m not safe enough for you.”
He would do it for her.
She didn’t know if it was wishful thinking, but she couldn’t drown out the whisper in her ear that he’d pushed her away for her own safety. He’d done it before, determined to protect her from himself, and no matter how idiotic she knew it had been she also knew he still thought it had been the right thing to do. If he’d done it once, he’d do it again. No matter how much he knew she resented being “handled”.
Virginia made her way around the desk to leave. She was going over to Beckett’s place to get the truth. Her hand was on the knob when the door opened, and Mr. Bent stuck his head into the opening, his grin wide and not a little bit full of himself. He saw Alex and his smile got even wider and her stomach clenched with what she knew was coming.
“Good! You’re both here.”
“I’m sorry.” She tried to squeeze past him but he blocked her with his bulk. Virginia glanced over at Alex who only shrugged and resigned himself to his immediate fate. “I’ve got a personal emergency.”
Bent ignored her comment and opened the door wider, blocking her exit with his body. She’d have to actually elbow him in the gut to get him to move. Not a good move to bodily injure your boss, so she stopped and desperately resisted the urge to tap her foot.
“With Dr. Sutherland’s arrest I think we need to go ahead and pick the new team leader.”
Of course he did.
She stifled the sigh of frustration and the less-than-ladylike word she wanted to hurl at his head. She opened her mouth to say something, but Alex cut her off.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but the last time I looked someone is still innocent until proven guilty. Beckett is still on staff—”
“He’s suspended,” Bent said as he cut him off.
“Fine. But we have no idea how this is going to turn out. All the charges could be dropped in an hour,” Alex said.
“Or it could take weeks, months,” Bent countered. “We cannot wait that long.”
She decided to jump into the fray. “But it’s only been less than a day. Can’t we hold off for a couple of days to see how it goes?”
“We can’t wait forever.” Bent was decided, his mouth a hard line of obstinacy, and she knew that he was going to take this chance while Beckett was down to make it happen the way he’d always wanted.
She’d have to take a stand and hope she wasn’t backing the wrong horse…or jackass, in Beckett’s case.
“Fine. I vote for Dr. Sutherland,” she said, closing her eyes against the sudden rush of ice water over her skin and through her veins. Goosebumps all over. She itched to cut and run but stayed in her spot, opening her eyes to face down her opponent. Just like her father’s daughter would. “While his methods and behavior are sometimes controversial, he is the most qualified to lead the rest of the team and teach the newest doctors on staff. His commitment to this hospital and the community are well known and only inure to our benefit.”
“Ms. Crawford, are you seriously voting for a man who was arrested for having an illegal narcotic in his possession with the intent to sell?” Bent asked, his cheeks very red with his upset.
She took a deep breath, feeling the world sink away from beneath her as she decided to jump. Even metaphorically the free fall was terrifying, but she had a gut feeling that there was a safety net below her. Even if she couldn’t see it.
“Yes. I am.” As she said it, she could see her career blowing up right in front of her eyes. She was a probationary employee and this wasn’t going to help her. She really hoped that Beckett was the man she thought he was and that she hadn’t thrown her heart and her paycheck under the bus. “We’d be lucky to have more doctors on staff like Dr. Sutherland.”
“I see.” Bent paused, considering his next words carefully. “And I presume that your vote has nothing to do with your after-hours relationship with Dr. Sutherland.”
A direct hit. Not unexpected.
“I have no problem separating my personal feelings for anyone from the job.” She didn’t have to say anything more, her tone made it clear that she was referring to him and his obvious animus toward Beckett.
“You made your point, Ms. Crawford.”
“Excellent. I have to go take care of a personal emergency, if you’ll excuse me,” she said as she pushed past him. He moved, the shock making him pliable and she flashed a quick glance at Alex who looked like he wavered between giving her the slow clap or throwing up.
Virginia bypassed the elevator and took the stairs, too anxious to wait for it to function. Something in her gut was telling her that Beckett was walking into trouble, Danny Vega sized trouble, and she had to stop him. Or at least convince him to let her help.
She dug in her purse, dragging out her keys and her phone, and quickly hit the speed dial for Beckett’s phone. It rang, diverted her to his voicemail, and she bit back a curse. Of course he would have turned his phone off with all the people trying to get in touch with him. It’s what she would do.
The phone went back in her purse as she stepped up her pace across the lot, hitting her key fob to unlock her car. It bleeped. Lights flashed.
Then the whole world went wonky as a strong hand covered her mouth, and she was lifted from the ground and spun around. She twisted and kicked and struggled, but her captor was stronger and bigger and took full advantage of his element of surprise. Without much effort, she was dumped into the trunk of a car and the last thing she saw was a man she didn’t know and the blue sky disappearing as the lid was slammed down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Danny, this place is a shithole,” Beck said.
The meet-n-greet was set up in a crappy row house on Mills Street, the same location Eddie Wilkes had led his gang’s criminal activities in the many years before he’d gotten himself killed. Beck knew that Danny had a nicer place, downtown, where he showed off his money, but he was sending a message with this choice of location—making sure that Beck knew how unimportant he was in the grand scheme that existed only in the mind of Danny Vega.
“Be nice, Beck,” Lucky growled in his wireless earpiece from his backup location in the car a short distance away. “Don’t give him any more reasons to shoot you.”
“At least not before he tells us what we want to know,” Jack murmured over the same earpiece.
Beck almost laughed. He figured he was here so that Danny could shoot him. The idiot had to know that Beck wasn’t going to go along with his plan. This was a showdown, a test of wills, and Danny never intended Beck to leave. He knew it in his bones. The plan was to get him so pissed that he gave something away, then it would be recorded on his hidden microphone and all of the big guys with guns would swoop in and grab Vega before he blew Beck’s head off.
That was the plan, at least.
Since he could count on one hand how many of his plans ever went right, he wasn’t running out and placing any bets on this one.
“You�
��re still an asshole, Beck,” Danny said from behind his desk. It was a nice play, trying to pull the power thing, but Beck wasn’t letting him get away with that crap. With a grin, he took two steps forward and pushed aside one of those weird desktop puzzle things and perched his butt on the edge of the desk. Danny’s body went rigid, his glance moving to Ace Rodriguez posted at his side, his jacket doing a piss-poor job of hiding his gun.
“Is this one of those things you buy from those airplane catalogs?” He pushed at the metal mechanism and the balls clacked together steadily, like a metronome. “Who buys this crap?”
Jack hissed something in his ear but he couldn’t make it out so he ignored them.
“It was a gift,” Danny said, his eyes glowing with that crazy look mean dogs got just before they took your throat out. Good. He was already pissed off. This might not take too long.
“What? Were they out of Chia pets?”
Danny stood abruptly, his chair sliding back with the impetus of his anger. They faced off, Danny glaring and Beck making sure his shit-eating grin stayed in place. Inside he was a mess of nerves, the wrongness of this entire scenario turning his usually strong backbone into Jell-O. But he knew the more he pushed it, the more mistakes Danny would make, and he would give them something they could use. At least he hoped so.
“You need to show some respect,” Vega finally ground out in a voice that betrayed his emotions. This was the key to bringing him down. Danny had always been an emotional kid, quick to anger and let everything show on his face, in his eyes. “You need me.”
Beck stood, taking a slow walk around the space, picking up a miniature globe made of some ugly chunks of stone and turning it over in his hand. Another airplane catalog knickknack. It was poor-kid syndrome. When you grew up with nothing, you thought this kind of stuff was classy and worth having, and you hoarded it like it was gold.
The door opened and Alison Chase entered, making a beeline for Beck and stopping just at his side. She wrapped her arms around his neck and mouth covered his mouth with her own. She was the only DEA agent they could realistically get in the room to give Beck immediate backup so they attempted a believable job of acting like they were lovers.
“Hey, baby,” she purred, keeping her body plastered against his own as Beck stole a glance at Vega. The man observed them, his expression curious, suspended in between skeptical and prurient. Alison turned to look in his direction, her tone saying that her attention to him was an afterthought. “Hey, Mr. Vega.”
Danny’s eyes hardened with what he clearly took as a slight to his prominence in the room. He dismissed her, turning his gaze back to Beck. “What happened to your woman?”
“Who?”
“The black girl. The one at the hospital.”
“She wasn’t my woman.” He glanced down at Alison, giving her a wink before looking back at Danny. “I’m not the one woman kind of man.” He patted Alison on the ass before pushing her away. “But I’m not here to talk about my sex life.”
“What are you here to talk about?” Danny asked, settling back into his chair, not even trying to hide his feral grin.
“I’m here to talk about why you planted those fucking drugs in my car.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
“Right,” Beck said. “It must have been one of the other drugs dealers in town.”
“I’m a businessman. Rental property. Loans. Car washes. Totally legitimate.”
“Yeah, you’re the member of the month at the Chamber of Commerce. Let’s cut the bullshit,” Beck let his anger bleed through his words. It would help if Danny thought he was off kilter. The pissed off tone was easy to portray since he was beyond furious with the crap Vega had been shoveling into their town. He gestured toward his father standing on the opposite side of the room. “You sent Sandy to my house to threaten me, to get me to come work for you.”
“This is a really funny story. Keep going.”
He advanced on him, raising his voice. “You probably cost me my job you son-of-a-bitch.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny said, his voice calm but there was an edge to it that wasn’t there before. Ace heard it, too, his body going rigid. Beck kept an eye on him and his hands as he purposefully lit the fuse.
“Danny, you always were a petty, snot-nosed punk who couldn’t own up to your shit.” When Vega sat up in his chair, perched on the edge, he knew he had him. “You couldn’t keep the corner when we were kids, and you’re just barely hanging onto what Eddie Wilkes’s left behind.”
“You don’t know shit,” Vega huffed, his face turning red. Beck counted on him being a hothead just like when he was a kid, and he knew just what buttons to push.
“I kicked your ass when we were younger. Left you lying on the sidewalk crying like a baby for your mama. You couldn’t keep your shit then, and you can’t keep it now.” He laughed, disgusted and angered by the fact that this guy had stayed in this hellhole and also wanted to drag innocent kids into it. He gestured around the room to the men flanking him for protection. “You’ve got guns and muscle, and you’re letting punk kids fight your fight on the street. Men are coming in from other territories to take what should be yours, and you still can’t hold on to it.”
“You need to shut the fuck up, Beck.” Danny stood, his hands shaking with his anger. His skin was flushed crimson underneath his tan skin, lips pulled so tight in a grimace they were white. “I own these streets. I own everybody on them. You keep getting in my way and I will end you.”
“Really? What are you going to do? Rob one of my medical vans again? Threaten harmless women who drive around to give kids their check-ups?” He took two more steps closer to the desk and leaned over it to eyeball him, letting all of his rage and disgust and disrespect roll off him in waves. “You’re going to have to do more than that to get rid of me. Do you even have the balls to do what needs to be done? Do you even have what it takes to ‘end’ me?”
Danny stared at him, his eyes unblinking, pupils blown with his rage for a few long seconds. Then he reached down and pulled out a drawer, withdrawing a gun and pointing it right at Beck.
He would have been a fucking liar if he’d told anyone that the sight of that matte black hunk of metal pointed at his chest didn’t chill his balls.
He didn’t want to die. He’d known it was a possibility, that this plan was crazy and dangerous, but he wasn’t marching silently into the light with no regrets.
But he was here now and he had to take this as far as he could because he might still have a chance to give the people listening on the other end of his wire enough to get Danny off these streets for good. So he pushed. One. More. Time.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me?”
Two quick knocks on the door made everybody jump, and Beck was grateful that Danny still had the safety on the gun in his hand. The door behind him swung open, but he didn’t dare look over his shoulder. He watched as Danny’s eyes quickly flickered to whoever had entered and then back to Beck, an ugly smile twisting his mouth.
“No. I’m going to shoot her.”
Beck watched the gun swivel to his left. Watched as Danny’s finger released the safety and moved to the trigger.
He knew who it was before he spun around and bolted for her. Ginger’s face was ashen, eyes wide with horror. His worst nightmare was coming true, she was smack dab in the middle of the craptastic convergence of his present and his past, his own sins and the transgressions of his father.
Gingerthe woman he loved with every part of his being and the only one he would ever lovewas in danger.Every instinct he’d developed kicked in, and he operated on auto-pilot as he barreled toward her. She struggled against the hold of the man behind her and screamed something he could not hear over the alarm bells in his head. Adrenaline and terror propelled him forward as he dove for her, dragging her out of the man’s grip as he pulled her to the ground. Her grunt of pain and alarm was muffled in the blast
of gunfire behind him.
He’d been shot before as a kid and time had definitely dulled his memory of the pain because it hurt like a mother fucker. Fire lanced through his shoulder where the bullet tore through his flesh, and he cried out, unable to hold back the initial shout of pain. Ginger was underneath him on the ground, splattered with his blood as he maneuvered to cover her as much as possible. Just behind him Danny still had the gun aimed at him, and Beck knew he’d take another shot. It was just a matter of time.
This had never been about drugs. It was about grudges, pride, ego, anger, and murder.
Beck’s eyes met Danny’s as he aimed the gun again, and Beck braced for impact. He was a sitting duck where he was but he wasn’t going to move. This way he could protect Ginger until the cavalry arrived. Jack and Lucky were yelling in his ear that they were on their way along with the rest of the agents outside. They might not be able to save him, but she would be safe.
She gasped underneath him, pushed at his body. “Beckett, let me up. You’re hurt.”
“No.” He couldn’t even spare her a glance, it was too important to keep Vega in his sights. The pang of regret deep in his chest was worse than the ache from the bullet lodged in his shoulder. If there was anything in the world he’d want to look at as he took his last breath was her face. “Ginger stay down. Please.”
Beck choked on the last word, not caring if everyone heard the pain, heard the anguish. He didn’t care if they heard the love. He wanted Ginger to hear it.
Danny rounded the desk,took a few steps forward, and raised the gun, squaring Beck in his sights. Beck braced himself, staring back, refusing to close his eyes.
“Vega. Put the gun down.”
The voice of Sandy Sutherland broke their focus on each other, and Beck could only assume that Danny was as shocked to see what he saw: his father standing with a gun aimed at his boss. The room was in chaos with Danny’s men either protecting the entrance from the DEA agents banging at the door or covering their boss. Alison was right there with them, only slightly holding back to protect her cover. But they all halted when they realized what was going down.
Southerin Nights and Secrets (Boys are Back in Town) Page 18