by Nancy Holder
Hendricks had confided to Gabe that he would catch Chandler one of these days. The IA agent would never know that Gabe had been the one who had taken the evidence bag containing Catherine’s actual bullet and replaced it with a facsimile in order to destroy his case. Had Gabe not committed that felony, Catherine would have been charged as an accessory to her father’s confessed multitude of crimes.
But there were many more atrocities Reynolds kept hidden. The secret Muirfield organization and the beasts they had created remained secrets that Reynolds, Catherine, Vincent, and Gabe shared, binding them together.
Clearly, whoever had snatched Reynolds tonight had taken advantage of Hendricks’s vendetta against Catherine. Gabe felt a frisson of trepidation on his own behalf.
I was a beast, too. If the world ever finds out about beasts, my life will turn upside down.
He could tell that the two members of the FBI ERU finishing up Reynolds’ cell were surprised to see him, but they recognized him from TV and somehow that gave him permission to be there. Considering he was an assistant district attorney and not an investigator, he wound up at an awful lot of crime scenes. For some months he had literally run the 125th precinct, tasked with cleaning up the mess that the previous captain, Joe Bishop, had left behind when he’d been ousted over his obsession with avenging his brother’s murder.
Obsessions were dangerous, and not just to one’s career. There were no limits to the lengths Gabe would go to protect Catherine from her obsession with Vincent. If Catherine hated him to her dying day for forcing Vincent to go back on the run, it would be worth it if it kept Vincent out of her life.
“Whatever it takes,” he muttered; and then, as the two techs started brushing the bars of the cell for prints, he caught the glitter of something beneath Reynolds’ cot. As casually as he could, he extended his leg and swept an arc, bringing the object within his reach as he bent down and pretended to tie his shoelace. He palmed it, then glanced quickly at it, and what he saw made his heart hammer against his ribcage: it was a round pin decorated with eight small gold stars and a diamond.
This was the pin worn by members of a super-secret society of the ultra-rich and extremely powerful—magnates, tycoons, dictators—manipulating world events to a far greater extent than conspiracy theorists could ever dream of. Funding the Muirfield beast experiments had been their primary strategy for world domination, but they had fingers in hundreds of pies. They had not known each other’s identities. These pins were the only way they could recognize each other.
He had taken many of those powerbrokers and kingmakers into custody at a clandestine emergency meeting during a New York City charity fundraiser—a masked ball. Hiding behind masks, their pins had been their entrée, prominently worn on gowns and tux lapels. Catherine and Vincent had assisted, saving many of their lives when a man named Sam Landon turned one of the guests, Andrew Martin, into his own beast assassin and commanded him to rip them apart.
On that victorious night, Gabe had believed the entire organization would be brought to justice. J.T. Forbes had succeeded in decrypting the database containing their names and addresses, and that would give Gabe the first tool to build his cases.
However, the decrypted file had cannibalized itself within seconds, releasing a crippling virus. J.T.’s entire computer was wiped clean, just as Catherine’s work computer had been when she’d begun her investigation into Muirfield. There was no cloud, there were no backup files, nothing, and no one had taken the time to print out a hard copy of the data during the crisis. An investigation of the few names and addresses J.T. could remember led to a mere two arrests and convictions. The secret society vanished back into the shadows.
Except… here was one of their pins. Gabe tried to follow a train of logic to a proper conclusion. Was this pin left behind on purpose to implicate the secret society? To warn off those who would know what the pin signified? Maybe it had been shown to Reynolds to assure him that he was among friends… or that he had better do as these ruthless people said, and leave with them voluntarily.
Who took Reynolds, and why?
If the so-called “Masters of the Universe” wanted to create more beasts, it would make sense for them to spring Reynolds. Or maybe they wanted to make sure that no one else had acquired beast serum, and that the beast experiments were truly over. Reynolds would be the obvious choice to consult for those end games, too.
Gabe closed his hand over the pin. Forensics would not be receiving this into evidence.
He put it in his pocket and said casually, “Finding anything interesting?”
“Prisons are tough.” The female technician gestured to the residue of black powder on the cell bars. “They’re dirty and there’s an amazing amount of traffic. We have a jillion prints here.”
Gabe glanced around the cell one more time. He said, “Be sure to let me know if you come up with anything significant.”
“Like the envelope,” the tech said proudly. “I collected that. It was hidden under his blanket.”
I’ ll bet you’re the one who missed the pin, Gabe thought, smiling at her. “Good for you,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
2.57 A.M.
After Tess and Cat had climbed twenty-six flights of stairs, an emergency elevator generator kicked in and Tess swore an oath that she would go on a run every single morning until the day she retired, because she never wanted to feel this winded and sore again in her life. Lack of sleep and fairly Olympic sex were not sufficient excuses for her spasming muscles.
She and Cat wobbled from the stair landing to the blessed elevator as it arrived. Inside was Lizzani, the pig-eyed man from the lobby. The doors closed and the elevator shot upward toward the penthouse.
It took Tess a minute to place him: he was a uni from the 123rd precinct. The 125th had played baseball against the 123rd —and won. This guy was an infielder.
“Hey,” Tess said. “One-twenty-three, right? We kicked your butts a couple of weeks ago. Is this your side job?”
“No butt-kicking was accomplished,” he countered. “The ump was blind. And yeah, I do private security for Mr. DeMarco.”
It wasn’t unusual for cops to have side jobs. Firefighters did, too. A common reason for a side job was to keep their alimony and child support payments regular. The life was tough on families. It hadn’t surprised Tess that Joe, her ex-boss as well as her ex-lover, had been having marriage problems when he had turned to her. What had surprised her was that she had fallen for him and snuck around with him. She’d grown up in a big family of cops and her world pre-Joe had been very black and white. There were lots of lines you didn’t cross, but she had just hopped right over that one like it wasn’t even there.
After his little brother Marius’s death, Joe’s seemingly dead marriage had revived. She wondered if it was surviving Joe’s termination with the NYPD. But that wasn’t for her to wonder about. She and Joe were done. She didn’t even miss him any more, and it was great not to be carrying so much guilt around.
It was often said that things happen for a reason. Her relationship with Joe had definitely made it easier for her to understand why Cat had risked everything to be with Vincent. And for Tess to realize that her Mr. Right, as opposed to Mr. Right Now, was Vincent Keller’s geeky best friend, J.T. Forbes.
Impossible. I have lost my friggin’ mind. But the mere thought of him gave her a nice, warm tingle.
She compartmentalized J.T. and focused. She was on the job.
“So did you notice anything unusual before the blackout?” she asked Officer Lizzani. Beside her, Cat regarded the off-duty cop with a neutral expression, but Tess knew that behind Cat’s nonthreatening façade lurked a bulldog of a detective eager to leap on any detail that would help them develop a lead.
“This place is a fortress and I’m sure it’s no surprise to you to that people do not cross the DeMarcos ever. Not people like us, anyway. I can’t see someone on the inside having a hand in this.”
Tess took note o
f the man’s healthy fear of his employer. That made it less likely that Lizzani had taken part in the crime.
“Can you walk us through the security system?” Cat requested.
“I’ll show you as much as I can.” He pulled a plastic rectangle from his shirt pocket and tapped the elevator control pad with it. “First thing is a key card and a retinal scan.”
“Wow, really?” Tess said, impressed. “Do your retinas work on it?”
“You’re in this elevator, right? I’m in the database,” he confirmed.
“We’ll need the list of names on that database,” Cat said, and Tess braced herself for the inevitable stonewall. Which they got:
“Above my pay grade, and I’m betting Mr. DeMarco will require a warrant. Which the FBI, not NYPD, will ask for.”
“We’re trying to recover his son for him,” Cat pointed out, but all three of them knew that a man like Tony DeMarco would guard the secrets of his customized security layout like a fire-breathing dragon.
“Man like him takes the long view, know what I’m saying?” Lizzani said. “He would go to the ends of the earth to get his son back… but he’s gonna make sure he doesn’t jump out of a plane without a parachute.”
And there’s our mixed metaphor of the day, Tess thought, amused.
She inspected the fisheye lens to the side of the door at the same time as Cat. Great partners thought alike. “You looked in there, right?”
He nodded. “Yes. I looked into the scanner to make the doors open. Then I looked again to make them close.”
Cat said, “So it would be possible for the kidnappers to get in and force you to look—”
“Hey, wait a sec.” His brows shot up and he held his arms in front of himself. “I wasn’t even on duty when this happened.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean you personally,” Cat said smoothly, and Tess knew that until that very second, Cat hadn’t meant him personally. But his defensive reaction was the stuff of a detective’s dreams. There was more going on with Lizzani than met the eye. Could be something as minor as cheating on his time card or even on his diet, could be conspiracy to commit a major crime. Something had caused that guilty reaction, though. Now they had something to look into. It was fuel for their case. That was how detectives worked—looking for something that didn’t fit, or something they could question. That was exactly how Cat had found Vincent, despite J.T.’s success at keeping him hidden for nine years.
And that was how Tess had busted Cat and Vincent’s secret wide open a year later.
“This is a flawed system,” Tess observed. “If all it requires is one person who’s been cleared to ride the elevator, anybody could force—”
Then the doors opened, and a trio of men in black suits faced them with weapons drawn. As soon as their eyes darted toward Tess and Cat’s badges, they holstered their guns and stepped out of the way. The middle one spoke into a radiophone.
“You were saying, detective?” Lizzani pointed downward and lifted his foot. A small black button was revealed. Then he gestured to the handrail that ran the perimeter of the elevator. “I step on this, I make contact with this”—he pressed the black button with the toe of his shoe and circled his thumb and forefinger on the rail—“and security is summoned.”
“What if you do it by mistake?” Tess asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Better safe than sorry. Mr. DeMarco doesn’t have a problem with mistakes like that. Only with the kind we’ve got now, with his son snatched in his own home. We run drills for every possible emergency. Blackout was on the list. So was home invasion. This shouldn’t have happened.”
“Does the FBI have any working theories about how it went down?” Cat asked.
“You really need to talk to Mr. DeMarco about that,” Lizzani said.
A man who looked like a professional wrestler approached. “He’s ready,” he told Lizzani. “Detectives, this way, please.”
She and Cat stepped out of the elevator and Lizzani followed closely behind, almost like he was tailing them. Maybe he was. Judging from the expression on the faces of the security guards they passed, NYPD on the job wasn’t all that welcome here. Wasn’t the first time.
Wouldn’t be the last.
CHAPTER SEVEN
3.10 A.M.
“This is like a Godfather movie,” Tess murmured to Cat as a phalanx of even more security guys gave them the once-over before they were escorted into the DeMarco family penthouse. “Look over there. Doesn’t that guy look like Al Pacino?”
The front door opened, revealing the ostentatious heights that alleged corruption could lift one to. The two detectives were treated to a vast panorama of white marble floors veined with gold, gilt furniture cradling mountains of black velvet upholstery, and a forest of fluted gold columns. It was blinding: gold picture frames and mirrors, gold vases containing chunky yellow flowers, and copies of classical statues—including Michelangelo’s David adorned with a jewel-encrusted golden fig leaf.
“No way,” Tess murmured, and Cat could feel her partner trembling to keep from bursting into laughter. Cat had the same dilemma. The room looked a cross between an over-decorated casino and their favorite intimate lingerie boutique, Easy Pickin’s.
Among the scatter of statues and profusion of furniture, Evidence Recovery Unit techs were out in force, their dark blue windbreakers stamped with FBI in two-foot-tall letters on the back. A young dark-skinned woman took one look at the detectives, grinned slyly, and made a point of taking a close-up of the fig leaf with her camera.
“Happy to email it to you, detectives,” she said.
Tess handed her a business card. “Appreciate the help.”
“Do you know where Special Agents Robertson and Gonzales are?” Cat asked her. Those were their FBI contacts.
“They’re with Mr. DeMarco.” The tech couldn’t keep her distaste from flashing across her features. Then she hit a button. “Picture’s on its way.”
“Hey, Lizzani,” someone called, poking his head out of an enormous kitchen shimmering with gold fixtures as Cat and Tess passed by. He had a receipt in his hand. “You owe ten from the pizza run.”
Cat and Tess both eyeballed the receipt as Lizzani pulled out his wallet. The pizza delivery had occurred at 11.52 a.m. That was just a little over three hours ago. They shared a tiny but significant look. Lizzani had told them that he hadn’t been here when the kidnapping had occurred, but midnight pizza suggested otherwise. The FBI contact on the phone had placed the crime at around one-thirty a.m. They’d have to do a timeline on Lizzani.
The two detectives were ushered into a room twice as spacious as the penthouse’s foyer, which was fortunate because at least twice as many men in suits surrounded an ornate gold and ebony desk. Behind the desk, an older but very buff man with jet-black hair sat in a beautifully cut charcoal-gray suit and dark blue tie. He wore a Rolex and a large gold-and-onyx ring on his left pinkie. No wedding ring.
His face was that of a soulful Italian, with dark, deep-set eyes and an aquiline nose. His mouth was turned down sharply, and as Cat and Tess held up their badges, he burst into tears. At that moment, his tough-guy image was shattered, and Cat found herself confronted with a frantic parent.
“Oh, my God, Angelo,” he said, and his shoulders heaved.
Cat and Tess remained impassive, their faces blank as Cat glanced into the mirror behind the distraught man. It was a two-way mirror. For all she knew, he was recording this meeting. A glance into the mirror at Tess, who moved her chin less than an inch. She had noticed it, too. They must tread very cautiously, dotting all their Is and crossing their Ts. Men like Tony DeMarco ate sloppy cops for breakfast if they didn’t obtain the results they desired.
“Sir, NYPD will do everything in our power to get your son back,” Tess said, while Cat caught sight of two men in the back row, wearing white dress shirts and nearly identical dark blue suits. They moved in concert toward her and Tess.
“Detectives,” the older, paler one said, holding o
ut his hand. His mouth was turned down and he had a purple birthmark in the hollow of his left cheek. His eyes were hooded and cold. “I’m Special Agent Robertson. Glad you could make it.”
He had a snide tone that Cat didn’t appreciate, as if he were insinuating that they had taken too long to get there. She didn’t react and neither did Tess, just politely shook his hand.
“I’m Special Agent Gonzales,” the second man said, in a friendlier tone. Black eyebrows accentuated chestnut eyes, and black stubble burnished a slightly rounded chin.
“I’m Detective Chandler and this is Detective Vargas,” Cat said. “Would you mind bringing us up to date?”
“My son is missing. What more do you need to know?” DeMarco half-shouted, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his eyes.
“Mr. DeMarco, please try to remain as calm as you can. We know this is a nightmare and we’re sorry that it happened. But Detective Vargas and I have worked cases like this before and we’ve gotten results,” Cat assured him.
“There has never been a case like this. This is about my son,” DeMarco snapped, and suddenly the grieving parent was nowhere to be seen. The man was seething like lava, once more the most dangerous crime boss in all of New York City, if even one-tenth of the stories about him were true. Not someone you wanted to get on the bad side of. But Tess and Cat were officers of the law, not to be trifled with. If they were working on his case, that meant they couldn’t work someone else’s case. And the workload of a police force always exceeded manpower. So he had obligations too—to keep himself together in order to help them.