Heart of a Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

  “The hell you did, grandma. Go find someone your own age.”

  It was a catfight in the making. Rusty put a stop to it. “I want to talk to her.” He nodded at the girl he’d photographed.

  The other two withdrew, sullen at being passed over and glaring at the girl. The next moment they were calling to another driver.

  Smug, the girl looked at him. “So where do you want to go to ‘talk’?” Her hand on the door, she started to open it, but he stopped her.

  “Right here,” he answered.

  Annoyance creased her young face. “You crazy? I’m not doing nothin’ out in the open. Some things aren’t legal anywhere. They’d throw my butt in jail.”

  He wondered if she’d been there yet, and what the experience had done to her if she had. “What’s your name?”

  She tossed her hair, trying to look seductive. “Lisa.”

  He could see that she was about to tell him her last name before she stopped herself. Damn, she was even younger than he first thought. Close up, she looked more like fourteen. She should be thinking about her first prom, not about doing tricks in an alley for morally depraved men.

  “How old are you?”

  Her eyes turned into slits as she raised her chin defiantly. “Old enough to know how.”

  And that was the crime of it, he thought. “How about old enough to have any sense?”

  The girl stiffened and started to back away. She looked around, as if expecting to see squad cars. “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  She began to relax a little and took a tentative step toward his car. “A preacher? Because I’ve got nothin’ against preachers, but you can’t pray over me while we’re doing it.”

  A preacher. Megan would have laughed herself silly if she’d heard that one. And then grabbed the girl by one ear, dunking her head in a sinkful of water until the two inches of makeup dissolved.

  “No, I’m not a preacher. Just someone who knows what you’re up against.”

  Bright red lipstick pulled back into a mocking smile that was far too old for the young face beneath it.

  “What I’m up against, mister, is your car, but I could be up against you if you just stop talking and let me get in.”

  Rusty had tracked down a runaway just last month. A girl not much older than the one he was talking to. She’d tried to run away three times on the trip back, but when she and her mother were finally together, the girl had dissolved into tears. Mother and daughter had embraced long and hard. Resolving to make a new start.

  Rusty thought about that now, about his vivid recollection of the reunion, as he looked at the streetwalker leaning into his car. “It’s almost Christmas. Why don’t you call home and talk to them?”

  The inviting look disappeared, replaced by anger and contempt.

  “Talk to them? Hey, dumb-ass, if I could have talked to them, I wouldn’t be here.” The desert wind was picking up. She pulled her jacket closer to her, but it did little to protect her from the cold she really felt. “Look, if you’re not interested…”

  He took out his wallet. “How much?”

  At the sight of the wallet, Lisa became all smiles again.

  “Now that’s more like it.” She squinted, trying to make out how much he was carrying. “A hundred.”

  His hand in the wallet, Rusty looked at her long and hard until she finally flinched.

  “All right, all right, twenty-five. But for that you’re not getting—”

  He didn’t want to hear a litany of what she would or wouldn’t do for specified amounts of money. It was too degrading for both of them.

  “I’m not getting anything,” he told her. “But you’re getting to a telephone.” She looked at him, confused. “I want you to take the twenty-five and call home.” He handed her the money.

  Her hand closed around the money quickly, pocketing it. “What are you, some guy off his nut?”

  “No, some guy who wants to see you off the street and home where you belong.”

  “Fat chance.” She was already backing away from the car.

  “You’ll never know unless you try,” he called after her. “Your family might surprise you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The girl disappeared around the corner. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to call. Rusty stepped on the gas just as the other two prostitutes began to approach his vehicle.

  The thermostat in the motel room said the temperature was a warm seventy-eight degrees, but Dakota felt cold as she fought to stave off the icy hand of fear. Pacing, glancing at her watch with a frequency that was making her crazy, she wondered if she was being a fool again. Andreini had seemed as if he was on the level, but had he set her up? By leaving her here alone, was he effectively turning her into a sitting duck?

  Was the next person to come in through the door going to have a concealed weapon beneath his jacket?

  Twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five damn minutes since he’d left. She could have cooked a dinner in that amount of time. Where was he?

  Something was wrong.

  And she wasn’t going to just hang around, waiting to find out what. She’d been too fidgety to unpack anything. Dakota grabbed her suitcase from the floor where she’d left it and hurried to the door.

  It opened just as she put her hand on the knob.

  Her heart slammed into her rib cage. It took her a second to catch her breath and calm herself. She found herself staring at the side of a carryout paper bag that was already growing translucent. The words China Heaven were embossed in red on the side.

  “Room not to your liking?” he speculated mildly as he walked in. Rusty figured it was best not to comment on the wild look in her eyes.

  She slammed the door behind him and swung around. “Where the hell have you been? Did they make you kill your own food?”

  He made no response to her question, only indicated the bag he set down on the small, wobbly table that barely seated two. “I thought you might like Chinese.”

  She loved Chinese. That he had gone out of his way to get it took the edge off her concern and made her feel foolish.

  Dragging a hand through her hair, she blew out a breath. When she spoke again, her voice was several octaves lower. “Then you were gone all this time because you were looking for a Chinese restaurant?”

  He unpacked four cartons, two sets of plastic utensils and the two sets of chopsticks the cashier had thrown in. “Something like that.”

  He was keeping something back. Dakota studied his face. “Want to be more specific?”

  “Why don’t you eat?” He nodded at the table as he took off his jacket and tossed it over the back of the chair closest to him. “And while you’re at it, work on your trusting skills.”

  She wasn’t about to apologize, although maybe she shouldn’t have snapped at him. “I would if I had something to trust.”

  He looked at her pointedly just before he placed his suitcase on the bed. “Me.” With that, he turned his attention to the suitcase he was unlocking.

  Curiosity nudged at her and she moved a little closer to peek at what he’d packed for the trip. From what she could see, the suitcase was stuffed with hardware. She looked up at him, puzzled.

  “Don’t you believe in clothes?”

  “Change of underwear, different shirt, different socks.” He enumerated what was inside the case by way of clothing. He’d packed them beneath the things he considered essential. “Anything else, I can always buy.”

  What he couldn’t buy was the high-tech equipment he’d carefully placed into the suitcase. He’d brought a notebook computer, a small printer and a few surveillance gadgets that Megan had deemed appropriate and helpful for the kind of work they did. When it came to technology, Megan was never wrong.

  “I feel like I’ve hooked up with Inspector Gadget,” Dakota muttered incredulously, watching as he took one thing and then another out and placed it on the bed.

  “No ‘Go-Go Gadget Copter,’ I promise,” he murmured, refe
rring to a famous line uttered by the cartoon character, a grin lifting the corners of his mouth.

  The familiar reference made her smile. “Is there a gun anywhere in that collection?”

  He glanced at her. “I don’t believe in guns.”

  She frowned. She was hooked up with a Boy Scout. “It’s not a matter of belief. This isn’t Santa Claus we’re dealing with.”

  “If we need a gun, one’ll turn up,” was all he said.

  She didn’t care for the vague answer. As she watched, absently eating a serving of chicken lo mein, Rusty hooked up the notebook computer to his cell phone and to the digital camera he produced from his pocket.

  Within a couple of minutes, he was e-mailing the photographs he’d taken of the young streetwalker to the office with a note directed to Savannah’s attention. He knew she’d long since gone home to Sam and the girls, but she would see his message first thing in the morning when she came in.

  See if you can pull a match from the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children’s Web site. Somebody might have reported her missing. She looks familiar. If you find a match, let them know that she was last seen tonight on Eighth and Broadway in Las Vegas. And let me know what you find out. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.

  Rusty.

  Dakota wasn’t good at containing her curiosity. “Who’s that?”

  He glanced up and saw that she was standing practically at his elbow. The close proximity, sitting the way he was on the bed, stirred him. He directed his thoughts elsewhere. “Savannah?”

  “No, the girl in the picture.”

  She was about to tap the screen, then stopped at the last minute. At first glance, Dakota thought, the girl on the screen might have been her when she was younger and had thought that her looks were her ticket out of loneliness and the dangerous foster home she’d found herself imprisoned in.

  But she’d never had to sell herself that way. Still, there but for the grace of God…

  He pressed the send button and the message disappeared. “Just someone I saw on the way to the restaurant. I think she might be a runaway.”

  Dakota cocked her head, trying to understand what he was telling her. He hadn’t mentioned working on a second case while taking hers on. “No one’s paying you to find her?”

  He disconnected his cell phone from the telephone jack and placed the phone on the bureau beside the one that came with the room. “No.”

  “So you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart?” she said sarcastically.

  Shutting down his computer, he waited for the screen to go blank. “Yeah.”

  Dakota put down the chopsticks and looked at him for a moment. The cynical look on her face faded. “The men I know wouldn’t.”

  His gaze met hers. “Maybe you know the wrong kind of men.”

  Something shifted inside her, something that she knew if she let it, would be her undoing. She was determined to ignore it.

  “Maybe,” she allowed. She sat on the edge of the bed, covertly watching him. Pretending to be completely engrossed with the contents of her take-out carton. “So, did you have any time while being the Good Samaritan to think about what we’re going to do tomorrow morning?”

  He’d spent most of his time thinking over their best course of action.

  “Yes, I did.” She worked those chopsticks pretty well, he observed, wondering who’d taught her. He’d learned how to maneuver his through the combined efforts of Tommy Liu and his mother, Amy. He picked up a set of chopsticks himself and proceeded to make short work of a serving of sesame chicken. “We’re going to get in contact with Detective Graham Redhawk.” Sitting beside her on the bed, he offered her the contents of his container. “Want to try some?”

  About to decline, she changed her mind. Dakota deftly popped what amounted to a nugget of chicken into her mouth. It was good.

  The smile on her face as she savored the taste almost made him envious of the piece of chicken.

  “Another private investigator?” she finally asked.

  Rusty shook his head. He took a little of the white rice and, tilting yet another container, sprinkled some onto his sesame chicken. “Police.”

  The feeling of camaraderie instantly vanished. Dakota rose from the bed. “I told you—”

  He stopped her before she could repeat her mantra. “This is someone we can trust,” he assured her. “We’ve used him before on other cases. He came highly recommended. Nothing Gray hates worse than a kidnapper. And this’ll be off the record.” She still looked unconvinced so he explained his reasoning. “I figure the locals might know Del Greco’s comings and goings enough to help.”

  Forcing herself to calm down, Dakota resumed eating tentatively. “I’m listening.”

  “We need to somehow get a bug inside the Del Greco compound.”

  That was the word for it, she thought. Compound. A prison. With excellent architecture and beautiful grounds, a prison nonetheless. “Okay. How?”

  He held up a hand as he swallowed the helping he’d just taken. “I figure the best way is to just walk right in and plant it myself.”

  Was he out of his mind? “The best way if you want your wife to collect on your insurance policy.” She snorted, clearly disappointed even as her sweeping glance criticized him. “I thought you were smart.”

  “I am,” he said unselfconsciously. “And I don’t have a wife.” The correction was left-handed. “We find out where Del Greco gets his groceries from, I can buy off the delivery truck driver, make the delivery myself.” She still looked skeptical. But it was simple. The best plans usually were. “Man’s got to eat, right?”

  Reluctantly she nodded. He had a point and it might work. But she was uneasy about his calling the police in the first place. “But why do you need this Redhawk guy?”

  That explanation was even simpler. “Why spin wheels needlessly? The police probably have that kind of information on Del Greco on file.”

  That sounded pretty far-fetched to her. “His grocery store?”

  Obviously she didn’t have a healthy dose of paranoia. “You’d be surprised what kind of information they gather in hopes of finding something to pin on him that won’t slide off. Don’t forget, they got Al Capone on income tax evasion, not bootlegging or any of the countless murders he was responsible for.”

  Maybe it was time to start trusting him, she thought. After all, so far he’d given her no reason to not trust him. “I’ve got something they can pin on him.”

  He stopped eating. Had she been privy to some crime organization execution and was willing to testify now to put her baby’s grandfather away? “What?”

  She pressed her lips together, watching his face. “I have a diary.”

  None of the main members in the Del Greco organization struck him as the type to put pen to paper. “Yours?”

  She shook her head. “Vincent’s.” She could see Andreini was taken aback by the information. “He made it a point to stay on top of what has happening. The trade deals, the protections and eliminations. Said it was his insurance policy to get out.” Losing her appetite, she put down her carton and retired her chopsticks. “Except he never got to use it. He was gunned down by a rival gang before he had the chance.”

  “And you have the diary?”

  She nodded. “He gave it to me for safekeeping.”

  “Where?”

  Rising, she crossed to where her large purse lay on the floor. Pulling out a thick, black-covered book, she tossed it onto the bed. Heavily marked blue pages rustled as they landed.

  “Here.”

  Food forgotten, Rusty stared at the tome. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  The shrug was vague, evasive. “I wasn’t sure if you were on their side or mine.”

  Had they made that much progress in the last few hours? Hours, hell, in the last few minutes? “And now you are?”

  “Enough to show you the diary.” She opened another carton and saw that he had bought egg rolls, too. “I thought i
f worse came to worst, I could trade it for Vinny.”

  “If they knew you had this, your life would be in serious jeopardy.”

  He’d surprised her. Anyone else would have leaped on the possibilities that possession of the diary opened. He saw that if Del Greco knew she had this, she wouldn’t live to see another day.

  Dakota barely nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  Picking up the diary, Rusty began to thumb through it. From what he saw, the handwriting inside was surprisingly neat. It was as though Vincent had been preparing to have it read by someone.

  He glanced at Dakota. “Looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of reading tonight.”

  Chapter 9

  Dakota approached the large queen-size bed that suddenly seemed to dominate the room and paused. Slowly she turned toward Rusty, wariness and defiance in her every movement, her every syllable.

  “You don’t mind taking the couch?” Quietly holding her breath, she waited for him to renege on the agreement about the boundaries of their relationship.

  Rusty raised one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Couch, floor, it’s all the same to me. I can sleep anywhere if need be. I’ve been known to sleep hanging on a hook in a closet.” He was describing his brother-in-law’s ability, not his own, to put her at ease. But he didn’t see a smile on her face in response, just the same wary look. “That’s a joke.”

  She was trying to decide whether or not she believed his disclaimer. Whether or not she’d find him beside her in the middle of the night, a different man once he was concealed by the cloak of darkness. Still, she brazened it out. “I had a feeling.”

  She was nervous, he thought. He could see it in her eyes, if not in her expression. Was she actually afraid of him? “You didn’t smile.”

  Crossing back to the table with its empty containers, crumpled napkins and discarded chopsticks, her expression remained impassive. “I’ll smile after we get my son back.”

  Maybe she wasn’t afraid, maybe it was just unhappiness he saw in her eyes. “Then I guess I’ve got some reading to do.”