The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  Her husband, Kit decided, watching the way Ray’s eyes clouded over. Because Barbara had eventually married Sal . . . and Gina—the longtime nanny and Barbara’s cousin—was the link.

  It was the smoking gun that Grif and she had been searching for. She couldn’t wait to tell him.

  “So what happened?”

  Huffing, Ray rocked in his seat. “You think they’re going to tell a seven-year-old anything? I don’t see Barbara again after ’fifty-five or so. Then Mary Margaret gets kidnapped a few years later in revenge for stolen jewels. Old man Shaw rescues her, then he gets knocked off. That’s when Gina disappears. Barbara comes back, though. After my mother died.”

  Back in ’sixty-one, then, Kit thought. Back for the one thing she really wanted. Sal DiMartino.

  “So fast-forward thirty-seven years,” Kit prodded.

  Ray nodded. “And Gina shows up at my dad’s place out of the blue. Whatever she says has Barbara both hopping mad and running scared. And if you didn’t notice, Barbara doesn’t scare easily. The police get called because some do-gooder heard a ‘domestic disturbance’ and that’s when your dad shows up. His partner takes on Barbara. Your dad gets Gina.”

  Kit’s instinct kicked in again, and she wrapped her fingers more tightly around the .22, trying to both work out what Ray was hiding and keep him talking. “What did Gina say to my father that was worth killing him for, Ray?”

  “She tells him that Barbara isn’t who she seems. That she took on the name of an infant who’d died back in ’forty, one named Barbara McCoy.”

  Kit blinked. “You mean . . .”

  “Barbara didn’t get remarried again after my father died, she hadn’t gone from DiMartino to McCoy, she went back to being Barbara McCoy.”

  The truth hit Kit hard enough to make her gasp. And hope, too. Now she and Grif had a name to work with. Barbara had been around when Grif was killed in 1960.

  It wasn’t everything Kit had come here for, but it was a start. She blinked at Ray, who was still watching her closely.

  “So why’d you tell Grif that you never spoke to Barbara anymore?”

  “Hand to God, I hadn’t spoken to her since the day my father died.”

  “Yet you called her after Grif and I came to see you.” She wasn’t sure of it, but how else would Barbara know? Why else would she return?

  “Some reporter comes poking around, asking to see my dad’s files? Why wouldn’t I?” Ray scowled. “Didn’t matter, though. All she cared about was Griffin Shaw. Wanted to know when he’d gotten back in town, what he wanted, who he was with.” He jerked his head at Kit. “She went crazy when I told her about you. That you two were a couple. I tried to tell her that it was a different Griffin Shaw, younger, the grandson, but she didn’t believe me. She Googled you, pulled up all your articles. Your photos. She became . . . obsessed.”

  You’re not like the other girls, are you . . .

  But Barbara had already known all about Kit when they first met.

  “I asked her why she cared so much,” Ray said, shrugging one naked shoulder, “but she just said not to talk to you. That Griffin Shaw had some sort of sway over women, a magnetism that made them do what he wanted. Whatever the hell that means.”

  Kit knew exactly what that meant. But how did Barbara?

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else. I gave Barbara your contact information,” Ray said. “She took it from there.”

  The only sound in the office was the hum of the heater and Kit’s own thoughts, screaming, Liar.

  “Then why’d you call her last Saturday, Ray? You asked if ‘it was done.’ ”

  It was another gut instinct, but her gut was rarely wrong. “Were you asking about me? Was I the one who was supposed to die up in that suite?”

  Ray leaned forward, staring intently like he was about to tell her something that would change her life. He waited until Kit leaned forward, too.

  “Honey,” he finally said, dark gaze unblinking. “You’re still the one who is supposed to die.”

  And he rose with a sawed-off shotgun primed in his hands.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tossing three IDs onto the table, Dennis grinned down at Grif. “You gotta love free Wi-Fi,” he said, pulling up a chair. It meant he hadn’t needed to use his police contacts.

  “Eric and Larry Ritter, twins, ages twenty-eight, though Larry is the elder by two minutes. Their friend, Justin Allen, is thirty-six and a Gemini.”

  “You’re showing off,” Grif said admiringly. He couldn’t help liking Dennis. He would have even liked him for Kit . . . if he didn’t still want her for himself.

  Dennis wiggled his eyebrows like an actor in some old silent flicker. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  “Impress us.” Grif folded his arms and grinned at Larry and Eric. They remained unsmiling, though Larry did give a perfunctory jerk on his cuff. The table jolted. Grif’s smile widened.

  “Turns out Larry here used to be Metro. Ditto Justin. This one was suspended and eventually fired due to disciplinary problems. Do you know how hard it is to get fired from the force for minor infractions?”

  “You guys are so dead,” Larry said again.

  Grif just nodded. “What else?”

  “Files are sealed,” Dennis said, eliciting a smile from Larry. “But I did find out that he used to work gang crimes, intelligence unit. I got a contact there. It’s only a matter of time before I know more.”

  Grif took up smiling as Larry’s smile fell. “And Eric?”

  “Ah yes. Quite the IT guy before joining Sunset. Got scholarship offers to MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Made a pretty penny in the private sector until he all but disappeared off the tech radar a few years back. Climbed to the top of his field and just . . . poof. Quit.”

  “You must have had a very compelling reason,” Grif said to Eric, who only glared.

  “So two disgraced cops and a rogue tech nerd working at Sunset.” Grif tapped a finger on the table. They hadn’t been lying. They did keep it tight.

  But they’d have to, especially with the possibility of family and guardians checking in on their charges’ accounts and trusts. Still, Grif was surprised that they hadn’t been caught before now. More often than not, greed and pride would loosen the stays on such a long-term scam. Look what I bought . . . look how much I have . . . look, look, look at me.

  “There had to be someone in charge,” he muttered, rubbing his chin.

  “What’s that?” said Dennis.

  “There’s someone else,” Grif said louder, and leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Someone bigger than Justin, smarter than Eric. Meaner than Larry.”

  Someone who could hold a whole group of criminals to a vow of silence for months on end.

  “So who’s running you guys?” Dennis asked, crossing his arms. The mugs, of course, were quiet and still in his presence, but the animation had been a one-trick pony, and not one Grif needed now that Larry and Eric were rattled. They knew Grif and Dennis had enough information to nail them all. Larry was trying not to show it, but Grif recognized panic disguised by steely silence.

  “We don’t know him,” Eric finally blurted, and his brother turned and glared.

  “What?” Eric asked, knocking into Larry’s shoulder. “You think he’s going to stick his neck out for us? Fuck that. They already know our names.”

  “Justin has the flash drives,” Larry countered. “And the old man.”

  “And we have copies,” Grif said, and kept his shrug easy. It wouldn’t do Zicaro any good to let these guys know how worried Grif was about him. “Of the flash drives, not the old man. But we’ll get back to him shortly. Tell us more about this other guy.”

  “I’ve never seen him. Justin has, though. They’re thick as thieves.”

  The men were unraveling, and turning on each other as they did.

  Larry was now nodding. “I’ve talked to him on the phone, but that’s all.”

  “No idea at all what he
looks like?” Grif asked.

  “Sure,” Larry said, then smiled coolly as he leaned back. “He looks like you. He looks like me. He looks like anyone you’ve ever seen walking down the street. He just blends, and you never see him coming.”

  “Sounds like a ghost,” Dennis said.

  “Which is what you’ll be if you cross him. He’ll turn on you in an instant, and I have seen that before.”

  “Trevor.” Eric nodded, a movement Larry took up as they recalled some shared memory.

  “I don’t want that shit bearing down on me,” Larry said, shaking his head. “And believe me, as soon as he finds out what’s going on, he’s gonna come looking for you. Both of you.”

  “I hope he does,” Grif said evenly. “I’d like to see this ghost in person.”

  “You’ll get that chance. Guaranteed.”

  Larry’s confidence was real enough, but there was also something off about it. Grif couldn’t put his finger on it, and Larry’s mug was silent, its contents now splashed over the floor. Still, something nagged at Grif, like a needle poking at the base of his spine. He felt suddenly like he’d been asking the wrong questions and now it was too late.

  “Don’t go nowhere,” he told Larry and Eric, then looked over at Dennis and jerked his head.

  They congregated by the front door, using the center tiki god to block them from the bartender’s view but still keep the two men in sight.

  “What the hell have you guys gotten into?” Dennis muttered. He ran a hand over his head, causing his tight pomp to flare. “First Barbara DiMartino’s death. Now this. Some unnamed criminal mastermind?”

  “And it’s all related somehow.” Grif could feel it. Zicaro had been questioned about Barbara right before she’d visited him, right before her death. “Has anyone notified Barbara’s next of kin yet?”

  Dennis inclined his head. “There’s a stepson. Ray DiMartino.”

  “Yeah, I know him,” Grif muttered darkly.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Dennis said.

  Ignoring that, Grif dug out the digital recorder Kit had let them borrow, turned it off, and handed it to Dennis.

  “None of this is admissible in court,” Dennis said, but took the device anyway. “Sounds like Justin’s the one we need. If we can get an admission on record, we can set a formal inquiry into motion.”

  But that wasn’t going to be easy at all.

  “I hope the old man’s okay,” Dennis finally said, expression shifting into one of worry.

  “They didn’t hurt him in all the time he was out at Sunset,” Grif said. “I get the feeling they want something from him, too. That old newshound probably knows things he doesn’t even know he knows.”

  “Old ghosts,” Dennis said, nodding.

  Grif tilted his head. “What’s that?”

  “What Zicaro was saying at the steakhouse last night. About old ghosts rearing their heads. New ones, too . . . like Barbara DiMartino.”

  “You think this has something to do with some fifty-year-old mobster turf war?”

  “I think it has to do with the diamonds he was talking about. I looked it up when I got home, Shaw. These things were the size of silver dollars. Three of them. Perfect cuts.”

  Grif didn’t remember. When he took on the job of locating little Mary Margaret, he was very clear with Sal DiMartino that he didn’t want to know anything about their business or lifestyle. He was there to help find the little girl, and that was all. He thought if he kept his nose clean, he could keep his hide safe, and Sal—though amused—had agreed.

  A lot of good it’d done him. A cache of diamonds had disappeared, and now these pikers thought Grif had the map to locate them.

  So then why had Justin just taken off with Zicaro? Why not make a play for Grif?

  “Hostage,” Dennis guessed, when he asked him the same thing. “Watch. They’ll want to trade Zicaro for the map.”

  The map he didn’t have. The map that probably didn’t even exist.

  “Sure you don’t know anything about it?” Dennis prodded, holding up his hands when Grif glared.

  “Get bent, Carlisle. You should know better than to ask that of me. I’m a good man.”

  “Yeah? So am I, Shaw,” Dennis said, leaning too close. “And I don’t like working this way. It straddles the line, and I’m a good cop, too.”

  He was. The aura around him glowed in a healthy ring. He was fully recovered, and it looked like he was destined to stay that way. Grif realized he was glad. So he put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and nodded once. “I appreciate it.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Dennis snapped, still hot.

  And there it was, finally out between them. Grif tucked his hands in his pockets. “I know that, too.”

  Turning away, Dennis stared with clenched jaw at the video screens behind the bar. Whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t topless hula girls, swinging hips.

  “You broke her, you know,” he finally said, causing Grif to jolt. He hadn’t been expecting that . . . or the quiver in Dennis’s voice. He shook his head, still not looking at Grif. “I don’t know how she’s walking by your side, and talking to you now—she couldn’t even move at all a couple of months ago. She was a ghost.”

  Grif found he was unable to defend himself. “She’s very strong,” he said instead.

  “She’s more than that, Shaw,” Dennis shot back, and now he did look at him, his honed gaze finding Grif’s. “She’s honest and good. She’s beautiful and pure and you don’t often find that in this world. Not all in one person. And you . . . you just broke her.”

  “Can you please stop saying that?”

  “No,” Dennis said sharply, nostrils flaring. “Because you need to know. This obsession you have with the past? This Evelyn Shaw you keep mentioning? It’s costing you the kindest person I’ve ever known. Like I said, I don’t like to work this way, but I’d damned well cross the line for her. She’s worth it, and you’re an idiot if you don’t know it.”

  “I do know she’s worth it.” Grif swallowed hard. “I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought,” Dennis said immediately, then shook his head before Grif could answer. “Forget it. I’m gonna pull the car ’round. Bring those assholes back through the kitchen. I’ll tell the bartender that we need some discretion.”

  Then he was gone. Grif took a minute to breathe. He rubbed his jaw and realized his hand was shaking. He stopped it with effort, but couldn’t halt the sense that despite trying, he was doing nothing right.

  Taking a deep breath, he headed back to the two men waiting on tenterhooks in the corner, determined to change that.

  Kit dropped behind the leather sofa, falling more than dodging the shot that rang across the room. She couldn’t find air; there suddenly seemed to be so little of it, and none within reach of her lungs. And while she was also shaking, she instinctively knew that she had to move. So she fought through the scent of gunpowder shocking the air to remember how to work her legs.

  The door leading to the club banged open, and Kit’s head swung around. The woman who’d led her into the room took one look at her trembling on the ground, then at Ray, still on the other side of the room and still, apparently, holding a shotgun in lieu of his towel. The hostess then swallowed hard, backed out of the room, and closed the door behind her.

  Ray’s footsteps resumed and Kit tried to inch back, but her skirt kept hampering her. She was climbing up into it, getting caught in the voluminous folds, and while one part of her was screaming to make her shaking hands work, to reach for the gun in her skirt pocket, another part was already anticipating a second shotgun blast through her head. At least I’ll spend eternity in fabulous clothes.

  Jesus.

  “I liked you, Craig,” Ray said, voice closer. Kit knew he could shoot her right through the sofa, but he didn’t. Not yet. “But Barbara was right. You’re just as dangerous as Shaw is, in your own way. All those questions bubbling up beh
ind that pretty little face.”

  Kit didn’t answer. She was too focused on those footsteps, which were a metronome of aggression, and frighteningly calm compared to the calamitous beat of her heart.

  “But right now what I want from you is an answer. Where’s the map?”

  The map. The mystery. The diamonds.

  “I don’t—”

  “I know Gina gave it to your father. I saw her. So where is it?”

  Kit would give it to him if she knew. She realized in that moment that she would give him anything if it meant she would live. Then, suddenly, the answer was there, like it suddenly crystallized in the shocked air. “Marin has it.”

  That was what she was withholding from Kit. The information her father had died for . . . that Grif had died for . . . and that Kit was going to die for, too.

  “Does Barbara know that?” Ray asked, and appeared around the sofa’s edge, naked as the day he was born, if heavier and hairier and holding a shotgun in front of him. Kit kept her eyes on his face, because when he decided to shoot her, she’d see it there first.

  Barbara’s dead, Kit was about to say, but Ray knew that. He was just on a rant.

  “Because Barbara has no right to those diamonds. That necklace was made for my mother, by my father. Barbara took everything else from my family. Those diamonds are mine.”

  Kit needed to buy time to find something with which to distract him. Struggling not to move, to scream—fighting just to think—she managed, “I— I thought you were working with her.”

  “I thought you were,” he answered immediately. He sounded calm, but too calm. Like a receded shoreline right before a tsunami. “It would be just like her to enlist someone else. She never got her hands dirty. She liked to say she had people for that.”

  For some reason, that made him sneer and pump the slide on the shotgun.

  “We— We’re not,” Kit said quickly, and she was unable to help herself now. She shoved herself backward on her palms, but got caught up in her skirt again. Reaching down, she pulled the folds free. Ray’s eyes flickered, lighting on her legs.