Dangerous Testimony

by Dana Mentink

  Baxter flinched. “I’ve tried to raise you as best as I could. I’m your only family.”

  Kevin shook his head. “The Pack was my family.”

  “Kev...” Baxter said, reaching out to him.

  “Nah, Bax. Too late.”

  If Rico was dead, it was indeed too late. But if he wasn’t... Marco watched out the window as Kevin Tooley vanished around the corner.

  * * *

  Two weeks passed in slow motion. Candace struggled to adjust, but the passing days didn’t bring to light any word on Rico from police sources or Marco’s ruthless investigation efforts. Her nights were restless, more often than not finding her pacing the house in the wee hours, checking the locks and listening to music to soothe her nerves. The family consensus was that Rico was dead, though they still kept an ear to the ground via PCI channels.

  Dev had deployed and Lon retreated to complete his recovery in solitude, though he still called JeanBeth once a week to discuss Bible study questions. Last Candace had heard, JeanBeth had convinced him to come to Thanksgiving dinner if he wasn’t back to active duty by then. Candace suspected Lon would be receiving care packages from her on a regular basis when he did return to his SEAL duties.

  Finally, she grudgingly allowed Tracy to return to school, though Candace still found herself driving by the campus when her anxiety got too high. She’d park on the street, roll down the window and just listen. The noise of the kids running and shouting on the playground eased her. It was the carefree, joyous cacophony of normal life—life as it should be.

  There had been no further threats of any kind. Marco remained unconvinced, even though Kevin was a free man, his gang father presumed dead and Candace no threat to Rico any longer.

  Though he’d endured Candace’s constant badgering with good grace, Marco had at last agreed that she did not need a full-time bodyguard anymore. After a casual goodbye celebration at Candace’s house on a Friday evening, Marco accepted tearful hugs from all the Gallagher women and a ride to the marina from Candace for him and Bear, since his truck was still being repaired. They pulled up at the parking area and Candace killed the motor. Marco and Bear got out. The water of San Diego Bay sparkled against the white hulls of the moored boats. “Where will you go?”

  “I won’t be too far.”

  He leaned in the passenger window, while Bear did a canine dance in his excitement to be back aboard the Semper Fortis. “Gonna check out some of my old contacts, see if Rico surfaces in Mexico.”

  “But you don’t have to do that. The trial is dismissed. Rico’s not a factor,” she said, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “He will always be a factor for me until I find him dead or alive. The office can’t devote 24/7 to finding him, but I can, and that’s what I’m going to do.” He rubbed a hand across his chin. “I... I haven’t protected you and Tracy, not well enough. Ridley was right about that.”

  “No, he wasn’t. You’ve been our rock.”

  He looked at his feet. “It’s the right time to go.

  The moment stretched long and taut between them. She desperately did not want him to leave, nor did she want to face the constant tension and guilt she would feel if he stayed.

  “Let me walk you to your boat, at least.” She got out and they strolled toward the dock. Waves lapped softly against the wooden piers. They stayed there, wrapped by the sound of the surf and the gulls in search of their last evening meal.

  “Marco...” she started. But what could she say? I will be lost without you. You are the one person who makes me feel whole. And I cannot love you because the guilt of giving my heart to another man would crush my soul... “Tracy is going to miss you around the office,” she said. “And so am I.”

  He nodded. “I’ll come back sometimes.”

  “I hope so.” Her throat grew thick with unshed tears. “Kids grow so fast you might not recognize her the next time you visit.”

  “You have my cell number. Text me pictures.”

  “You are a wreck at using a cell. It took you three months to learn how to text when you got a new phone.”

  He laughed. “Steep learning curve, I know.” He stopped and fished something out of his pocket. “I almost forgot. Can you give this to Tracy?”

  Candace palmed the little pink rabbit with big blue eyes. “She’s going to love it,” she said, her voice wobbling. “It will join the rest of the rabbit family you made her.”

  “If she ever gets tired of rabbits, let me know.”

  “She won’t. You’ve always been so good to her, worked so hard to make her—to make both of us—happy.”

  “It wasn’t work,” he said quietly, still looking out at his boat bobbing on the waves.

  “Marco, if things were different—”

  He cut her off. “You deserve happiness, Candace. I hope you find it.” He moved close and wrapped her in a tight hug, pressing his cheek to her forehead. She held on, holding him, silently pouring out her sadness, her guilt, the fear that she was letting go of a man who meant everything to her and shouldn’t.

  He kissed the top of her head, stepped away and whistled for Bear. While Candace watched with a leaden heart, the two of them made their way to the Semper Fortis and climbed aboard. Bear looked back at her in confusion and barked as if to say, Are we really leaving?

  Are you?

  Candace watched him cast off. The Semper Fortis grew smaller and smaller until it was swallowed up by the growing darkness. It felt to Candace as if her heart was overcome with shadows, too.

  The wind tickled her hair, and a shadow raced along the periphery of her vision as she walked back to her vehicle. She jerked to her right. No one was there except for a car idling at the far end of the parking area. It was dark, nondescript, with tinted rear windows. Was it her imagination, or did she see the driver look in her direction? It was too far away to see his face. She wanted to run to the dock and call Marco back, but she wouldn’t allow paranoia to take over her life.

  Whatever Marco wanted to believe, the most likely scenario was that Rico was dead.

  “Dead,” she repeated to herself. Saying it aloud almost dispelled the residual fear as she jogged to her car, leaped inside and locked the doors.

  * * *

  It was hard to pace the deck of the bobbing boat as he waited to hear from his source about a dark-haired stranger who’d arrived in Tijuana the previous evening with plenty of cash.

  When his pacing finally elicited an irritable bark from Bear, Marco figured he’d walk into town, cell phone in his hand, Bear at his side sniffing every shrub and flower. On the way he made a mental list of what to do if his informant confirmed that the stranger was Rico. Getting into Mexico wasn’t going to be a problem, but he’d have to acquire a weapon once he got there.

  Bear sat at attention outside the entrance to a convenience store while Marco bought a case of water. He stopped to pay at the counter. The news was spooling out over the television. It annoyed him that there seemed to be televisions everywhere now, from gas stations to restaurants.

  “Increased gang hostilities.” The newscaster’s phrase caught his attention. He handed over some bills and focused on the screen.

  “Rival gangs, the Wolf Pack and the Cliffs, are apparently engaged in a turf war after the reported death of Pack leader Jay Rico. Though Rico’s body has not been recovered, it’s believed the altercation at Sand Dune Park on November 10 left him mortally wounded or dead. It is unclear who is second in command to Rico and the current skirmishes, which have left two dead and three wounded, may indicate the death knell of the Pack.”

  Marco shoved the change in his pocket and thanked the clerk, stepping away to hear the rest. There was a shot of some young men standing on a street corner, smoking cigarettes, pants sagging to their hips. The picture of innocence, he thought wryly.

>   The camera panned to one youth wearing Cliffs colors. “Nothing going on here, man,” he said. Marco felt an electric shock go through him. Just behind the speaker, Kevin Tooley leaned against the wall, arms folded, a smirk on his face. So Tooley had left the Pack and joined up with their enemies. It shouldn’t surprise Marco, with the future of the Pack in doubt. Though Tooley might just as likely have decided to jockey for leadership in the wake of his father’s death. Perhaps the hatred he felt for Jay Rico for killing his mother prevented him from wanting anything to do with his old gang family.

  Nothing unexpected there, Marco told himself as he left the shop. It didn’t change a thing. Candace was safe in Coronado, away from the escalating gang violence, and even if Rico had somehow survived, she was no longer a threat to him.

  But there was still no body recovered. That didn’t mean anything, either. There were plenty of places to dispose of a body, especially in a city near the ocean. Or maybe Rico really had survived and was lying in a hospital bed somewhere, or had split town. Still, it didn’t indicate any renewed threats to Candace and Tracy, since Kevin Tooley’s case had been dismissed.

  She’s fine. Tracy’s fine. Don’t imagine trouble as an excuse to return because you miss them more than you could ever have imagined.

  So if everything was fine, why were his nerves on edge?

  His phone rang, and he answered. His contact greeted him in Spanish and cut to the chase. “It’s not your guy here in Mexico.”

  Marco sighed. Another dead end. “Okay, man. Thanks.”

  After a moment, he dialed the number for his snitch at the Iron Works Gym.

  “Yeah,” the kid said. “Rico’s locker was cleaned out sometime in the last week. We didn’t know it happened ’cuz someone came and did it at night. Weird, huh?”

  Marco thanked him and hung up. Unease trickled up his spine. Weird, all right. Maybe it was a janitor or one of Rico’s people who did it. It might mean nothing at all.

  Then again...it just might.

  * * *

  Candace weighed whether or not to eat another of the cookies her mother had made. It wasn’t hunger that drove her to meander around the kitchen and rummage through the cupboards at nine thirty on a rainy November night, but nervous energy. It was too late to call Tracy, and she’d already spoken to her that morning, calling Rick’s parents’ house in Los Angeles, where Tracy was spending the first part of her Thanksgiving vacation.

  “I’m having tons of fun, Mommy,” Tracy had assured her. “Nana and I are building a Lego spaceship, and Grandpa is going to teach me how to make applesauce.”

  Candace had felt a pang then, thinking about Rick wrapped in a Kiss the Cook apron, peeling apples for his family recipe and pretending to be a famous French chef, complete with horrendous imitation accent. She was surprised that the emotion was more happiness than pain, thinking about Tracy carrying forward her father’s tradition. They would make the recipe together after she returned, she decided, remembering Rick together with smiles instead of tears.

  Thanks, God, Candace thought.

  Settling for a glass of water instead of cookies, she carried it to the living room and clicked on the television weather station. The forecaster promised a good drenching, since the incoming storm would intensify in the late evening. Halfway through a round of channel surfing she realized she’d left her cell phone in the bedroom. It wasn’t that she expected a call or text, but she felt naked without it, especially since Rico’s reign of terror. The moment she stood up to get it, the lights went out.

  Fear pricked her spine until she remembered the storm. Electrical outages were not uncommon in Coronado, a peninsula that poked out into the San Diego Bay. Where was the flashlight? “Another good reason not to forget your cell phone,” she grumbled to herself.

  Figuring she had a better chance of not stubbing her toe going for the kitchen flashlight than her cell phone in the bedroom, she headed there, then rummaged through the messy drawer until she found it. The beam was pretty weak, indicating the batteries were old. Marco would have mumbled something about taking care of safety equipment. The thought brought a smile to her face.

  Being in the kitchen also made her remember the grenade that had come sailing through the window. If it hadn’t been for Marco... She shivered and rechecked the locks on the kitchen door and the windows. All securely fastened, as she’d known they would be.

  Blowing out a breath and determined not to succumb to paranoia, she headed to the bedroom, figuring she could at least entertain herself with her phone until the lights came back on. After padding down the hallway, she pushed open the bedroom door—shocked by the moisture that hit her as soon as she stepped inside.

  Droplets of rain splattered through the open window. The window she had left closed and locked. Terror formed slowly, trickling through her senses until her nerves fired to life.

  She turned to run, but the bedroom door slammed shut and a palm crushed her lips. She tried to scratch and bite, but her assailant twisted her arms behind her back, then sealed her mouth with a piece of duct tape. Kicking wildly, she knocked over the standing lamp, but couldn’t shake off his grip. Her captor shoved her, tumbling, onto the carpet. His weight pinned her down as he flipped her on her stomach and looped tape around her wrists.

  “Let me go!” she silently screamed, but lay helpless, trapped, fear tasting like bile in her mouth.

  The pressure of his knees suddenly went away and she was hoisted to her feet and tossed onto the bed. She scuttled backward, her body thrumming with terror, until her spine rammed against the headboard and there was nowhere else to go.

  Her attacker sat in a chair and flicked a flashlight to life.

  Her eyes slowly adjusted.

  Jay Rico settled gingerly back onto the cushion. “Hello, baby,” he said. “Did you miss me? We’ve got some unfinished business.”

  TWENTY

  Marco clicked the wipers onto High, rain slicking the windshield as he drove slowly by Candace’s cottage after picking up his truck from repair shop. The vehicle still needed a paint job, but that would have to wait. All was quiet and still in the watery moonlight. Of course it was. What had he expected? With each moment, he became more convinced that he was losing his mind, falling prey to loneliness or sentimentality or some such drivel.

  Lon and Dan had done some poking around at Marco’s request, and there had been no reports of any victims fitting Rico’s description, with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, admitted into local hospitals. The Pack leader had not surfaced anywhere. Further, Lon informed him, rumor on the street was that the Pack was now being led by a guy nicknamed Big Dog, who Marco recognized from his initial research as one of Rico’s henchmen. Tensions and violence had escalated between the rival clans, two bullies out to seize control of the block. Not his problem.

  But something in his gut, something way down deep, would simply not be calmed since he’d heard about Rico’s cleaned-out locker.

  Marco was operating under a self-imposed reconnaissance-only mandate. Under no circumstances did he intend to admit his nighttime protection detail to the Gallaghers. It would embarrass him to no end if Candace knew he was again docked in the marina, and had been stationed in his truck a block from her house for the past two nights. Just until they find Rico’s body, he told himself. Then I’ll disappear again, and no one needs to be the wiser.

  In the daytime, he was careful to keep out of sight and even catch the occasional nap. It wasn’t as if he needed regular sleep, anyway. During the most rigorous period of his Basic Underwater Demolitions SEAL training, he’d survived on four hours of sleep for the entire week. After that, any sustained slumber seemed luxurious.

  Bear didn’t mind the sleeping arrangements as long as he got an outing to the beach during the day, time to explore the dog park when Candace was safely at work, and the opportu
nity to gnaw on the bones Marco purchased for him. Now he lay in the passenger seat, his front legs dangling over the edge.

  “You’d be more comfortable in the backseat, you know,” Marco said to him.

  The dog opened one eye as if to say Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. Marco couldn’t blame him. He never wanted to be relegated to the rear seat, either. Was he now imagining threats where there were none, to insert himself back into some dreamed-up mission? A manufactured way to get back into the driver’s seat?

  He squirmed, fingering the keys in the ignition. If he slunk away, no one would ever know.

  Just like the past two nights, the street was quiet. Rain glazed the pavement. No lights showed inside her cottage; they’d flicked off a few moments after he’d arrived on watch, probably as Candace made her way to the back of the house. No porch light was on. He shook his head. How many times had he advised her to leave a light on at night, or at least get a sensor to turn the thing on automatically if anyone approached? Basic safety 101.

  “It’s on my to-do list,” she’d told him time after time. He’d have installed the thing himself, but that would have probably been too pushy, he supposed.

  He made the turn around the corner so he could see the back of the house over the fence. Still no lights on. Unusual. He took the night vision binoculars from the glove box. The backyard looked secure, if dark.

  “You’re paranoid,” he muttered aloud. “She’s gone to bed, that’s all.” Bear cracked an eye again to see if his master was showing any signs of exiting the car, or just talking to himself, as was becoming a habit.

  Marco was about to put the binoculars away when he thought he caught a sound of breaking glass. Immediately, he put the binoculars to his eyes again. Still nothing out of the ordinary, but no lights, either. He strained to hear. Had it been the rain? His own imagination?

  Looking closer, he saw the bedroom window was open. His nerves sprang to life.

  Could she have forgotten to close it before the rain started?