by Nancy Holder
Her hand shook. Love was one thing. Survival was another.
Tonight, she, Tess, and their band of unis—Officers Tanaka, LaRochelle, and Kent—had taken on more gangbangers and street toughs than Cat could count. Her knuckles were bloody and Tess was going to have a shiner. LaRochelle and Tanaka had been totally psyched, loving every second of “World Wrestling New York,” but Kent, who sheepishly confided in Cat that her dream was to retire with nothing but a paper cut, had mostly hung back and offered helpful advice such as “duck!”
Cat had tried to call Vincent dozens of times with no luck—so many, in fact, that her phone battery had died. As soon as she got in the house and plugged her cell in to recharge, she’d tell him about her father.
She turned the knob and pushed open the door with her last vestige of strength. Vincent was standing so close that the opening door missed his nose by a fraction of an inch. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and jeans. He’d gone to his place and changed before returning to her apartment.
“Catherine, what’s this about your father?” he said by way of greeting.
She stepped back, startled, then composed herself and shut the door.
“How did you hear about that?” she asked. She put down her keys and started taking off her hat, gloves, and coat. Buying a little time.
* * *
She knew, Vincent thought. He could hear her heart racing. She was nervous. He had to stay calm, keep the beast side down, but if ever he had a trigger, it was anything to do with Bob Reynolds. Reynolds had turned him into a beast, recaptured him and made him even more dangerous, wiped his memory, and programmed him to kill other beasts. Then Reynolds had planted the heart of one of them, Curt Windsor, in Vincent’s refrigerator to ensure a murder conviction against him. Vincent hated Reynolds as much as he loved Catherine.
Catherine, who, even now, was trying to figure out what to tell him; he could practically see the wheels turning in her mind.
She knew, and she didn’t tell me.
“Don’t spin it,” he warned her. “Just talk to me.”
“Okay, so did you do anything? That’s all I want to know,” she said, searching his face. He saw the worry there. The fear.
“Do?” he repeated.
“Just… did you track him?”
“How?” he demanded. “How can I track him when I don’t know anything about this?” Because you didn’t tell me?
Her heart was beating fast. “How did you find out?”
“There’s an APB,” he said. “J.T. saw it on his computer. Which I only discovered because I stopped by to check on him.” He felt a rush of shame. He had hurt J.T. His best friend. Over Reynolds. His hatred of that man was compromising his self-control. Bringing out the beast in him, literally.
“Yes, okay, yes,” she said. “He is missing.”
“And you were going to tell me when?” That was exactly the wrong tone to take with her but he couldn’t help it. He was afraid for her, and that fear sharpened his tone.
She lifted her chin. “When I had a chance to tell you face-to-face because I couldn’t get through on my phone.”
“You couldn’t find a charger? Or use Tess’s phone?”
“I have to be careful, Vincent. Whoever took him, or helped him escape, left evidence that implicated me. And my boss told me that IA’s all over it.”
From her reaction he knew that his eyes had begun to glow. His fingernails stretched in their nail beds; he gave his head a shake and stared past her at the wall. He was spinning out of control. He knew she was a powerful woman who was more than able to hold her own in fair fight. But this wasn’t fair. None of it was.
I’m going to kill Reynolds, he thought. And in that moment he knew that if her father had been in the room, he would have gone after him.
After promising Catherine repeatedly that he would never take a human life again when there was another choice, he was afraid that he would have broken that promise, and thrown his head back in triumph when Reynolds lay dead at his feet.
“You should have told me as soon as you heard,” he insisted. “I’ve lost so much time—”
“Time for what?” she demanded. “You don’t know where he went. And you can’t get into his cell to gather clues. Don’t even think you’re going to use some stupid false identification to fake your way into Rikers again. You’re as blind as I am.”
Right now I am, he thought. But he would not sit idle. He’d figure out a way and he would run Reynolds to ground like the dog he was.
“How are they tying you to this?” he asked.
“It’s obvious that someone’s trying to frame me,” she said. “There was an envelope with a map on it and words that are supposedly in my handwriting. It says Have him ready.”
He blinked. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Who’d believe that?”
“The same people who believed that you would keep Curt Windsor’s heart in your refrigerator,” she replied. She clasped one of his hands with both of hers. Her fingers were like icicles. “I think this was orchestrated to draw you out, Vincent. Don’t take the bait. Let other people look for him.”
“What other people? The FBI?” He could feel his hand trembling between her palms. “The same organization that has my blood on its hands?”
“People are after him already. He was found guilty on multiple counts of premeditated murder. He betrayed his own agency, reinforced people’s belief that the entire department of justice is corrupt—”
“Because it is!” he shouted. “I can’t believe you’re talking like this! The FBI probably broke him out themselves! They just waited for the right moment and swooped in just like they always do. Took the law into their own hands and paid him back for years of loyal disservice.”
“No—”
“Yes. He got me indicted for murder while he was behind bars, Catherine. Why couldn’t he organize a breakout?” He shook himself free of her. “Why was there a blackout tonight? Oh, I’m going after him, believe me.”
He looked at her face, saw that same sickening despair and disbelief as when he had attacked Reynolds the night Cat had arrested him, and Cat had warned Vincent off. He hadn’t listened, and she had shot him, Vincent. Here, now, she was rocketing back to that horrible moment that had cost them so much. He had come so far…
Have I? Didn’t I just admit to myself that if he were here, I’d kill him?
No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t kill Reynolds. He was in better command of himself than that. I just said that because I was angry.
But was he telling himself the truth? And didn’t I choke J.T. tonight?
“Catherine,” he began, and she choked back a sob.
“I need you to not do this,” she said. “We need you to not do this. Listen to me, please. You’ve come so far. We have. And you know… you know that as awful as it is to stand by and let someone else handle this, you have to.”
He rubbed his forehead, to find it smooth and human. He couldn’t go so far as to feel remorse for his fury, but he could refuse to give into his hatred, for Catherine’s sake. There was a world of difference—a world of hurt—between feeling something and acting on it. He had been raised to be a man of action, someone who took care of things. He had been a firefighter. His medical specialty—ER medicine—required an immediate response. He hadn’t simply joined the army—he had put in the extra blood, sweat, and tears to join the elite ranks of Special Forces. Always eager to take the next bold step, he had volunteered for Muirfield.
To him, doing something to affect any situation he found himself in was as natural as breathing. To sit by passively? That felt exactly the same as holding his breath.
But for Catherine, he would do it.
“Catherine,” he said, and walked toward her. At first she stiffened, but as his arms came around her, she laid her head on his chest.
She said, “I’ve been so afraid that we would wind up back in the past. You know what I did to avoid it.”
You tried to convi
nce yourself that you loved Gabe, he thought. And I tried to be there for Tori Windsor. Poor Tori. She didn’t deserve the terrible things that happened to her.
“What can I do?” Vincent asked. “To make all this easier?”
She relaxed against him and gathered up the fabric of his sweater. Her warmth was like a caress against the chill that had supplanted the heat of his anger.
Then she reached for her purse, pulled out a glossy color photo, and showed it to him. It showed a young man with curly black hair and large, sad eyes. He looked like a figure in an Italian fresco.
“This is Angelo DeMarco. Yes, the DeMarcos. He was abducted last night.”
“That’s weird,” Vincent said. “Two abductions? Was it planned?”
“Yes. Extracting him from his father’s penthouse was probably trickier than getting my father out of Rikers.” Her expression told him that she wasn’t kidding.
“Tess and I haven’t found the link yet between the two cases but there’s got to be one. The kidnappers left a ransom note. And his insulin pump. When they get their money, he’ll get his insulin.” Vincent swore under his breath. “Bastards,” he muttered. His protective instincts kicked in. Part of his mind was already classifying Angelo DeMarco not as a police case, but as a patient.
And someone he had to help.
“So how fast will it get bad?” Cat asked.
Way too fast.
“It depends on the severity of his condition—how much insulin he takes, how often, if he’s brittle. ‘Brittle’ basically means that his disease is difficult to control. Having a pump is one indicator that he is highly dependent. A brittle diagnosis is quite rare, but stressful environments can increase the severity of the disease.”
“His environment is stressful,” Catherine said. “His father has a terrible temper and he has a stepmother he doesn’t like. Their penthouse is guarded like a prison.”
Vincent nodded. “Then you might want to assume the worst. So. He’ll develop DKA. Diabetic ketoacidosis. His body won’t receive enough glucose and it’ll begin attacking itself for energy. He’ll get flushed. He’ll vomit. There will be severe dehydration. He’ll have trouble breathing and his brain will swell. He’ll lapse into a coma. And then…” He blew the air out of his cheeks. “…he’ll die.”
She slumped, dejected.
He regarded her. “I thought the FBI handled kidnappings.”
“We’re assisting. And frankly—and I’m sure this will convince you that there aren’t any good FBI agents—we don’t like the agents we’re assisting. At all. The DeMarcos are treating them like extended family members. Or employees. We think they’re dirty.”
Typical, Vincent thought.
Catherine’s expression went flinty. “They really didn’t want us there. For sure they didn’t personally request an assist. We did find one thing: this poor old homeless man Angelo went to visit. Angelo brought him food and wine, and some kind of medicine. I guess they played music together.”
“Is there a connection? Was he someone Angelo knew?”
“We don’t know. The old man obviously cares about him very much.”
He heard the concern in her voice for this missing young man. He seemed like a good person, even if his family did despicable things.
“Did the FBI agents follow up with you? Fill you in?”
“Not so far. I doubt they will. We got dumped on them. They made it clear they’re not going to share information with us.”
“In other words, this is a waste of your time.” Time that you and I should spend searching for Reynolds.
She smoothed her hair away from her face, a nervous habit of hers. “The whole time I was out there, I kept wondering what my father was doing. If he had known someone was going to break him out. If they hurt him when they took him.” Her hard expression told him that she wasn’t worried about Reynolds for Reynolds’ own sake, and he realized their crisis had passed. For now.
“If they killed him,” he finished. “Exactly,” she said, and he led her to the couch and poured her a glass of water. Then he set the kettle on for tea. He didn’t know if Catherine would last long enough for tea, but he’d get it started just the same.
“Hours have passed since the ransom note,” she said, and he realized she had switched gears. Her mind was racing, and she was too exhausted to control it.
“Considering that the case is a kidnapping of a potentially brittle diabetic, I’d be handing out assignments to anything that moved if I were in charge,” he said.
“Me too,” she said. She made a strange sound, not quite a sob, and when he glanced up from the stove he saw that she had covered her eyes with her hand. She was in torment.
I hate him. I swear I’m going to…
Stop it, he told himself.
“Maybe they’re just giving you some time to rest up before they put you to work.”
She leaned her head back on the couch. “Maybe someone wants to know about beasts.” She raised her head and looked at him. Her face was drawn and pale. When Reynolds had confessed to murder, he had not volunteered that the dead men had all been beasts—and that a brainwashed Vincent had actually killed them on Reynolds’ orders
“As long as we’re in this together, we’ll win,” Vincent said, and the look on her face was his reward. He was tapping into emotions deeper than hatred and rage.
He was drilling down deep, into the firm bedrock of love.
“But in the meantime, tell me what I can do. How I can help.”
“Okay. An off-duty cop working security says it had to be an inside job.” She smiled grimly. “He’s on our suspect list, actually. And the security cameras focused on Angelo’s room weren’t working, the security backup didn’t work, and the extra backup system didn’t work. We were told that Angelo likes to disable the cameras on his room, which must mean he has some computer skills. But the techie in charge of the last line of defense says that the only way to reprogram that system is through directly programming it, and he’s the only one who can do it. It’s password-protected, for starters. Fingerprint and retinal scan.”
“All of which can be beaten.”
“Yes. But if you’re twenty and more interested in collecting guitars, do you really know how to compromise sophisticated computer programs and fool bio-scanners?” She tapped her finger against her lips. “Or maybe you want everyone to think of you that way…”
“If you’re a kid who feels like he’s got no way out, you take desperate measures. You learn things, or you find people who know how to do what you need done. And twenty’s not all that young. It’s not like he’s ten.”
“Exactly.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I’m going to ask Captain Ward to talk to Tony DeMarco directly, explain that we can be a real help in the investigation. But we need a longer leash, you know?”I know about leashes, he thought, as he got out two mugs for their tea and two herbal relaxation tea bags her sister Heather had left behind.
“I’ll go places you can’t. Track. You can feed me information from financials, check phone records, whatever you want me to know. We’ll find Angelo together.”
“That would be great,” she said. Then she caught herself and added, “But you have to be very careful. Promise me.” She leaned her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes. “You have to promise me.”
He held up his hand. “Scout’s honor. Okay? Truce?”
Catherine’s answer was a deep sigh, the closest thing to a little snore he had ever heard her make. She also made the clucking noise that he’d teased her about before. He left the steeping cups of tea beside the stove and gathered her up in his arms. She was feather light… and fast asleep.
He carried her into her bedroom and lay her down gently. He took off her shoes and loosened her clothing. Her knuckles were bloody and he inspected them tenderly. She’d been in an altercation. More than one, by the whisper of a bruise on her jawline. He ghost-kissed every injury he found, and then he made himself leave. He had stayed too long—it w
as daylight out—but he had wanted to talk to her about Reynolds. Talk? He had confronted her. Accused her of hiding the truth from him.
I’m so bullheaded, he thought, and his brain obligingly dredged up proof of that—the image of J.T. dangling from his outstretched arm. One of these days, J.T. was not going to forgive him when he lost control. He understood now that it was important to remain forgivable. Cat and J.T. deserved that.
And so much more.
He went to the roof, keeping to the corners, and blurred away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gabe left Rikers, went to his office and called Cavanaugh Ellison. He was told that Mr. Ellison wasn’t in and his secretary didn’t know when he’d be back—or wouldn’t say—and Gabe decided to drive out to his home, see what he could glean.
He made the drive from Rikers Island to the north shore of Long Island, also known as the Gold Coast, where Gilded Age New York financiers and industrialists such as the Vanderbilts and the Astors had once owned huge mansions. Many of their palaces to greed and excess had burned down or been demolished. Others had become colleges or museums. But some of them were still private homes.
The Ellisons lived in one of them, and it was a huge, stately Tudor. It was so enormous that it could fit two copies of the mansion Gabe had grown up in, and possibly more, since Gabe couldn’t see the sprawling estate in its entirety. Sturdy, leafy trees and formidable stone walls hid much of it from his view. But he could trace the silhouette of turrets and gables, and at least half a dozen brick chimneys. A large weather vane twisted in a building wind. The place was truly magnificent, and he studied it as he pulled over to the side of the road, his engine left idling for warmth. He had stopped to buy himself a croissant and a coffee, and he ate his little breakfast now. After a sleepless night and very little to eat before he’d gone to Rikers, he figured he’d better get some energy before he took on Cavanaugh Ellison.
Gabe had also taken some time to research Ellison. Ellison held several patents for innovations in communications systems, and numerous competitors had sued him for unfair business practices. He was a Page Six society type; his wife had died eight years ago, and his usual companion was his daughter, Celeste. She was twenty-eight, and she was beautiful, with skin the color of mahogany and eyes as shiny and dark as jet.