by R. T. Wolfe
"Are you serious?"
"'Fraid so."
Chapter 18
Nickie should be grateful. They came here. On a day's notice. But they recognized Zheng and instinct took over. Instead of leaving her office so they could have their moment, she leaned back and folded her arms over her chest.
They didn't react but instead stood and walked out the door. She rubbed both hands over her face, then laced them through her hair. They knew something. They knew something about the case that involved her personally, and they were considering what or how much they would share with her.
She should have gone to see Tanner. Would go to see Tanner. At least she could bully and threaten information out of him. If it didn't take all damned day to fly to the federal pen in Terre Haute, she'd go right then and leave Hurst and Goodrich to their moment.
She was still sitting back with her hands folded when they returned. Using her knuckles, she turned her jaw until it cracked.
"We know this is personal to you," Hurst said.
"How. How do you know?"
"Special Agents Strong and Lewis sold out. They're being held at an undisclosed location. We don't know where they are."
Sold out? What? "Define 'sold out.'" This wasn't going where it needed to go.
"They were assigned to this case. Your case." He held up a hand before she could protest. "Somewhere along the line—maybe before it was assigned to them—they sold out to the other side. Both of them. They were working for the bad guys, Nickie." Without looking at it, he tapped her picture of Zheng that still lay on her desk.
She had questions. Questions and wanted answers about Strong and Lewis. But her focus needed to be Zheng. "It makes sense," she explained. "Zheng had connections—corrupt connections. The former Northridge captain of police, the assistant to the governor of New York. He prefers to use middle men. But he's lost his trafficking ring—his source of income—and with it any leverage he may have had to extort whoever Strong and Lewis answered to." She set her elbows on her desk and rubbed her face in her hands. "Strong and Lewis," she repeated. "Were you even going to tell me?"
Goodrich remained expressionless. Hurst sighed. His expression reminded her of Dave.
As if thinking out loud, she said, "They fought me, ignored my advice, my warnings. My pleadings."
"Yeah, they knew," Hurst said dropping his formal articulation. "It ain't right. The only reason they backed you up with SWAT at Moody's white house was because you tapped the security cameras and recorded more still shots than they could ignore and stay out of prison. And the audio? You stuck them in a damned fine corner." His smile was all cop.
Under different circumstances, she might appreciate the grin on his face.
"We didn't know his name," Hurst confessed.
Zheng. A fresh stab of betrayal shot through her gut.
Leaving his face expressionless, Goodrich retorted this time. "We didn't know his name. Only that he was part of this. He's shown up on our radar too many times to be a coincidence."
"I think he is the top man. Or was before we took everything away from him. He seems to have a score to settle with me." She explained about the break-in at her townhouse, about the press conference he crashed. The sighting at Phil's barbershop.
Almost as if Hurst ignored what she just said, he interrupted. "Strong and Lewis kept files on you." She knew this already. What good cop, detective, special agent or frigging rookie wouldn't know to look into the people you're using? Except, his face told her there was more.
"They kept files, organizing the details regarding your childhood. From the time you were abducted to present. The night of your escape. Your transfer to New York foster care. Your time at the academy. All of it."
Goodrich sighed.
So, they knew. She nodded. She'd suspected this, of course. It was why they contacted in her in the first place. For her expertise. It was still disconcerting to hear them speak of it. "Where are the files? Did you bring them?"
The look on Goodrich's face said he wasn't happy where the conversation was leading.
"I want those files."
Without checking his partner for their creepy special agent silent pow wow, Hurst agreed. He closed his eyes and nodded. "We'll ship those overnight insured as soon as we get back."
Her foster home was staged when she was in high school. Her position as Northridge detective fixed. Her former police captain had been involved with the trafficking operation she had been hunting. "How do I know you haven't sold out?" She said the last two words with vengeance.
"We understand your reluctance to put your trust in anyone of legal authority," Goodrich said still expressionless. There were no red flags where these two were concerned, but she hadn't sensed any red flags with Strong or Lewis either and she was an excellent judge of male character.
"Why all the care and share now?"
"There wasn't a tactical reason to tell you," Goodrich said. "You know how this goes."
"Stop talking like the two of you are one person. You." She pointed to Hurst. "I want to know why you decided there is a tactical reason to tell me all of a sudden that the last sixteen years of my life have been a lie. That I've been staged like a string puppet."
"It's what we... I wanted to talk to Goodrich about. You have intel on this man." Hurst pointed to her photo of Zheng. "But mostly, this shit ain't right, Detective. You've done a lot for the department. You deserve to know. We'll send you those files first thing when we get back. And we'll show your picture to people we trust." He lifted her picture of Zheng from her desk and asked, "May I?"
She nodded before countering. "How about for now you show his picture around to people you trust. I'm curious about Phil the bartender. I'd appreciate it if you'd look him up. He's easy to find." Although she had zero trust in them. "Jun Zheng," she continued. "Yes, I know him. I'm sure your files tell you just how personally I know him. He's on the run and has nothing left. He doesn't know what to do with a grown woman trained in defense who carries a Smith and Wesson M&P .45. I'd like to get him in custody before he hurts someone, or worse yet tries to rebuild."
* * *
The longer Nickie tried to sort through her meeting with the feds, the more she needed to get away. A swim. It would do her some good. Duncan's house was twenty minutes away. The gym was closer. Yanking her coat from her rack, she slung it over her shoulders as she headed for the stairs.
Be smart, Savage. You're better than this. A workout in the middle of the afternoon wasn't exactly routine. She spun on her heels and headed for Eddy's office. As she popped her head in, she barked, "I'm taking an hour if anyone asks."
"What's the matter?"
Did she have it written on her forehead? "Nothing's the matter. I'm bringing Duncan in on the Juracek case," she added as a side note. She almost felt bad throwing that one at him, but then, no.
She beat down the stairs on the balls of her feet, then let her heels knock the concrete as she strutted toward her car. The blast of cold air burned her lungs and opened her head. Her town car was a block of ice and took a solid ten minutes to free. The contrast between the sweat forming around her collar and the numbness in her extremities was ridiculous. The pain in her fingers and toes was welcomed.
Sitting in her warmed car, she shook her head. Strong and Lewis were in on it. She smacked her steering wheel with the palm of her frozen hand. Shifting the gear into drive, she pulled out of her spot.
Gravel spun beneath her tires as she turned out of staff parking. She smacked the wheel two more times and let her head scream.
Some asshole pulled in behind her and got close enough to her tail that she couldn't see his headlights. Brake check? Nah, she might scratch the rust on her beloved tank. His was a shiny new Lexus SUV gold edition. She would take the high ground, pick a spot in the lane so he couldn't pass and slow down to ten miles an hour.
Tinted windshield. She could pull him over and ticket him just for that, but she had a workout to get to. And at ten miles an
hour, he was already making her late.
She took the corner into the working class subdivision. It was her short cut to the gym. Hurst and Goodrich came all the way up here to discuss privately whether to tell her about Strong and Lewis. About her file. She hit her steering wheel one more time for good measure.
The muscles in her face fell, and her eyes trained on her rearview mirror. The SUV turned with her into the subdivision. There was nothing in this neighborhood that could possibly interest the owner of a new Lexus. She didn't even know if he was a he. She couldn't see a damned thing through the tinted windshield and the sun reflecting from the fresh snowfall.
She made a random corner. A sunbeam shot through the Lexus as it followed her around it. It was enough for her to see an outline of a person, a man. Short, spiky, dark hair. Jun Zheng.
He waited for her to leave work? Tailed her from a police department?
Bring it.
She tapped her brakes and heard his make a quick screech. The next corner led her back to the main road. She had a plan. Anywhere near the station wasn't going to work. He would be too cautious. But she had him. His cockiness was going to be the end of him. Her heart raced. She pushed back in her seat and gripped the steering wheel.
Purposely, she smiled and trained her eyes on her rearview mirror, hoping he would see the glee on her face. As soon as they neared the outskirts of town, he crept closer. The gold-plated headlights disappeared once again.
Her head jerked forward and whiplashed enough that she hit her forehead against the steering wheel. He rear-ended her doing forty- five? Anticipation raced through her veins. So, it was going to be that way, was it? She was expected to be the scared little girl she once was? Afraid of a little metal on metal? And to think she refrained from her first brake check so she wouldn't hurt his fancy car.
Her foot pressed on the accelerator. She hoped the stink from her ancient engine went right through his air circulation. He sped to catch up, of course. She was nearly bouncing in her seat. The town car was almost on two wheels as she took the last turn onto the highway that led toward Duncan's house. Not that she was going there. She just needed the open road.
This beloved girl was so old that it had no air bag and no ABS. Which also meant metal, thick and unbreakable. Just what the doctor ordered. Tightening her seat belt with one hand, she grabbed hold of the wheel with the other, then locked up her brakes.
The thrust of his car threw her entire face into the steering wheel this time. Deafening sounds of screeching metal and the long burn of tires filled most of her head. The fact that she was rolling filled the rest. Somehow, she knew she landed upside down. Sharp pains shot through her ribs, shoulders and arms. Stars blinded her vision. The smell of burnt rubber and gasoline filled her nostrils just as everything went black.
* * *
It had been an hour since Duncan texted her. Not that they had the kind of relationship that demanded expediency in responses, but under the circumstances, she needed to get the hell back to him. He hadn't had a chance to get the GPS chip secured in her holster and gun belt yet. Damn it. Why hadn't he done that?
Instead, he booted up his laptop and decided on cell phone triangulation. His fingers flew across his keyboard. He hacked into AT&T, then into her phone number. A smile spread across his face as he recognized that she was only a mile down the highway on the way from town.
He'd slept in late that morning and woke with the same drive to work on her painting as he'd had the night before. It nearly killed him to make it into town for his single lunch appointment. The rest he was able to do from home—between working on his painting.
He checked the triangulation again. It hadn't moved. She must have pulled over to use her cell. No. Cops never did that. Text yes, phone no. And no one takes that long to text.
He sprinted for the stairs. It was nothing. It was nothing. He didn't come close to convincing himself. He skipped the last six stairs and his coat, darting for the garage and punching the door opener. His Audi was still warm from his lunch meeting. He took it and burned rubber as he completed a quick three-point turn.
It was then he saw it. The smoke. Tears instantly burned his eyes as his commander yelled to him from the cockpit. "How many are gone, Private?" Heat swirled around him as the fire grew. "All of them, sir," he heard himself say and turned at the end of his drive.
No. He couldn't go there. Not now. Two cars. He saw two cars. Not a helicopter. Not the desert. His Nickie. He clutched a chunk of the hair on top of his head as he skidded next to her car in the ditch. It was upside down. A white Lexus wrapped around a tree and was engulfed in flames.
Without coming to a complete stop, he opened his door, and stepping off the clutch, killed the engine. The deep snow was like wading through quicksand. He could see her. She dangled upside down from her seat belt. No, he begged, but there was no movement.
"Nickie!" he screamed as his hands shook and tugged on the door. It wasn't from the cold. Yanking and heaving, his eyes burned from tears when it didn't budge. He trudged through the snow around the car to the other side. "Nickie," he yelled over and over. She hung lifeless, her arms dangling. A line of blood went from her nose to her eye socket.
"Nickie, please." He hauled on the passenger door. "Not now. You can't. You promised." His arms became like lead as he pulled and pulled, then pounded on the glass. Stepping back, he ran and sank his elbow into the back passenger window. It didn't shatter but broke into long fingers of pointed glass. He knocked a few pieces away, then reached in and lifted the lock on the front passenger door.
His fingers were frozen stiff and barely helped in opening the upside down car door. Crawling along the inside of the roof, he took her face in his hands. She was cold. "No, baby. No. Not cold. Come on." Taking her shoulders, he shook. "Nickie. You can't." He reached for the seat belt release and pushed. His damned fingers wouldn't work. He blew on them and pushed until it felt like his fingers might shatter into pieces.
She fell with a thud to the roof. "Ow!" she moaned.
"Oh hell. Oh bloody hell." He scurried to right her until he had her on her back with her head in his lap. "My Nickie. I thought you were... My Nickie."
"You're brushing my head like you're petting a dog." Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling. "Wait." She opened her eyes. "Zheng. He hit me. Or I hit him." She shifted and struggled, then fell back, winced and held her head.
"There isn't anyone alive in that car."
Together, they craned their heads and watched as the flames around the Lexus exploded into an oval of orange that lifted like an enormous balloon toward the sky.
Distant sirens became barely audible. She was bloody and bruised and had a goose egg the size of a goose egg forming on the middle of her forehead, but she was laughing.
"I see nothing funny about any of this. I thought you were dead."
She laughed harder, coughing and sucking air.
"Did you just snort?" he asked. "That's it. That. Is. It. Marry me, Nickie Savage."
She turned her swollen, tattered face to him. It flickered in the light of the erupting flames. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the velvet bag. Opening it, he took the solitaire, circular diamond ring and held it out to her. "I can't really get on one knee—"
She tackled him, both of them groaning with pain, and showered his face with kisses. Her cold lips ended on his, her icy fingers holding the sides of his face. She pulled back. "The ring. Give."
He held it out of her reach. "No. I do this part, and you haven't said, 'yes.'"
"Yes. Yes, I'll marry you, Duncan. I love you. Now give me the damned ring."
He could feel his smile spread wide. She blinked three times before he lowered the ring to her hand and slipped it on her finger. She held it out like Nickie Savage never would, admiring it as the sirens came closer.
Tucking herself into him like they were home in bed, she whispered as if someone might hear her. "Duncan, you're wearing your house shoes."
Chapter 1
9
Every inch of Nickie's body hurt. Sirens flashed around them like a disco ball from the eight black and whites, three ambulances, one tow truck, three fire trucks, and a handful of unmarkeds. That was what happened when a cop was down. She got that. But she was engaged to Duncan Reed—officially—and she really wanted to go home and celebrate.
There was no sign that Jun Zheng or any other person had ever been in the Lexus—what was left of it. And even sitting in the back of the heated ambulance, she was frozen to the bone.
"If you touch me with that one more time," she barked at the EMT holding the wet swab. "I'm going to kick your ass and see that you work at a desk for the next three months."
Duncan smiled from the other side of the ambulance. It still took her breath away. Regardless, she was able to glare at him in return. A woman had an image to maintain.
Dave and Eddy scoured the area, something she should be doing if not for the fact that she wasn't sure if she'd ever walk again.
"The detective needs her bag from the trunk of her car," Duncan said to the EMT.
The dude started to object. It wasn't his job, but one look at Duncan and he nodded his head and left.
"I don't really need the bag from my car, Duncan."
"You have a bag in your car?"
How could she feel such peace at a time like this?
"Was it worth it?" he asked.
"Was what worth it?"
"You were going how fast on the highway? No car did that much damage by rear-ending a moving vehicle. You slammed on your brakes, didn't you?"
She couldn't help it. She smiled from ear to ear. "Locked 'em up."
His face fell. The expression that replaced it was much like the one he wore at Rossetti's when he gave her that awful proposal. "I've accepted what comes with being married to a cop. I won't accept you putting yourself purposely in danger." His chest rose and fell, and the veins along the sides of his neck turned purple.
"Okay."
"What the hell do you mean, okay?"