For the Love of Pete

by Julia Harper

  As he walked back to the BMW, two college-age guys came out of the drugstore, carrying a case of beer. They climbed in the Buick and screeched out of the parking lot.

  Dante got back into the BMW and started the car.

  “Now are we going after Pete?” Zoey asked.

  “Yes. Now we’re going after Pete.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thursday, 10:08 p.m.

  It turned out that Dante’s big plan to find Pete involved driving to the residential address he’d gotten from the papers in the restaurant office and staking out the little bungalow there. In the BMW. With the heat turned off.

  “Why would someone living in Chicago buy a convertible?” Zoey grumbled. “There’s snow on the ground seven months out of the year.”

  “I wasn’t assigned to Chicago when I bought this car,” Dante murmured.

  She looked at him. The interior of the BMW was dark, but she could make out that he was staring at the fifties cottage across the street. There was a bright streetlamp in front of the house next door that illuminated the cottage pretty well. It was a red brick one-story with green aluminum awnings over the front windows. The house was nearly identical to every other one on the block. Dante didn’t seem cold, even though he still wasn’t wearing a hat. He appeared perfectly happy to sit all night in a freezing car, in fact.

  “Where were you assigned?” she asked. “Before?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  She squinted at him, but as far as she could make out he wasn’t smiling. She sighed. “So why aren’t we at the address from the car the Indian ladies left at the BP station?”

  “Because I got that address from Kevin, which means the rest of the FBI office knows about it, as well. We show up there and I’ll get shot at again.”

  “But what if the Indian ladies went there?”

  “Then we’re wasting our time sitting here.”

  She squinted at him again. He didn’t look put out by the thought. Maybe he spent a lot of time on useless stakeouts. Maybe he’d entered a Zen stakeout zone.

  Well, she hadn’t.

  “Have you ever thought about bringing along a Game Boy on a stakeout?” She tried to discreetly shift in her seat, because it felt like her ass had gone to sleep. “Or one of those mini TVs that run off the battery of your car. That way you could keep up with Desperate Housewives.”

  “Battlestar Galactica.”

  “Huh?”

  “Desperate Housewives is a chick show,” he said with his gaze still on the little bungalow. “All melodrama and who’s banging who.”

  “Oh, like Battlestar Galactica isn’t a soap opera.”

  “At least the writing’s good. And the science.”

  “Science?” She stared. He had to be pulling her leg. “It’s science fiction. The science is made up.”

  “That’s—”

  “And I bet it isn’t the science that you watch the show for anyway.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  He glanced at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “That girl.” She nodded, her own eyes on the house now. “The one that wears that red dress. Or nothing. That’s why you’re watching it.”

  If the car wasn’t so dark she might’ve sworn that his cheeks got ruddier. “And you’re not watching Housewives for that guy who does the yards?”

  “Nothing wrong with admiring a fine actor.” She tried not to laugh. He sounded so disgruntled. Did he really think he was watching Battlestar for the science? What a geek! The thought of Dante’s suave exterior hiding the heart of a geek hit a tender chord within her. She had a weird urge to lean over and kiss him.

  Of course, she didn’t. “The point is, you could use a TV or something to keep you awake out here.”

  “Not having a problem staying awake at the moment.” His eyes were back on the little cottage. “Besides, the whole point of being out here is to watch the house.”

  Zoey shifted again. They’d been sitting here for over an hour with that hole in the ceiling letting in the freezing night air. She glared at it and then turned back to Dante, unable to keep her nagging concerns to herself.

  “Shouldn’t the old ladies have come home before now if they were going to come home?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I mean, what if the address you copied down from that bill at the restaurant belonged to someone else? One of the old ladies’ relatives or friends. Heck, we don’t even know if the car they were driving originally belonged to them. Maybe they stole it, too, and that address isn’t theirs, either.”

  “Doesn’t get us anywhere.”

  “What?”

  “Speculating. This is the lead we have. We follow it until it goes somewhere or it peters out. Either way, second-guessing doesn’t help.”

  Zoey bit her lip, staring out of the dark windows into the equally dark neighborhood street. “It’s just that I’m wondering where she is.”

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “Pete.” She picked at a piece of yarn coming undone from her left mitten, blinking hard to hold back tears. “She must be scared without Nikki—without her mommy. And how do we know that the old ladies are taking care of her? If she’s warm and if they fed her? What if—”

  His hand covered hers, large and warm. His voice was quiet in the near-dark. “They looked like someone’s grandmas. I’m sure they’re taking care of the baby. She’s safe, she’s warm, and she’s fed.”

  He had no way of knowing that. He was just telling her these things to comfort her, they both knew it. But the strange thing was it worked. She did feel a tiny bit better at his words. Or perhaps it was the touch of his hand.

  “I hope so,” she whispered, “oh, I hope so.”

  She was on the verge of tears, but she couldn’t help it. It had been hours now since the kidnapping. Would she ever see Pete again?

  Zoey sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep it quiet. Time to regain some control. Dante had withdrawn his hand, and now hers felt cold again. She rubbed her hands together, hoping the friction would heat them. It didn’t work, so she stuck them in her pockets.

  “Do you need to call someone?” Dante asked suddenly. His face was still half turned away, watching the house, so she couldn’t make out his expression.

  “I told you, there isn’t anyone I can stay with.”

  He turned fully to look at her, his face thoughtful. “I remember. But is there someone who might be worried? Besides Nikki, that is. The kidnapping and shooting is probably all over the news by now. Do you have friends who might see it?”

  She tucked her chin into the collar of her coat. “People I work with at the co-op. But I’m not that, uh . . .”

  “Close to anyone,” he said softly.

  Well, yeah, but he didn’t have to say it out loud. He was looking at her with a sympathetic expression, his mouth softened at the edges as if in pity, and she couldn’t take it.

  “What about you?” she shot back. “Got anyone to call?”

  “I’ve got family, but they’re all on the East Coast.”

  “Anyone here?”

  “No.”

  She’d scored a point, but the knowledge that he was just as lonely as she didn’t make her feel any better.

  “You’re not married?”

  “Nope.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  He smiled. “No. Nosy, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged, covering a shiver. “Not much else to do in here but talk, is there?”

  “Good point.” He was back to watching the house.

  “Where on the East Coast?”

  “My family? New York.”

  “New York City? Really? I’ve never met anyone who actually came from New York. Usually it’s the other way around.”

  “Other way around?”

  She shrugged even though he couldn’t see the movement. “You know, everyone wants to move to New York.”

  “Huh.”

  She twisted to a new position. “And you gre
w up in the city?”

  “Sure. Until I went to a boys’ boarding school.”

  “A boarding school?” She’d never met anyone who’d been to a boarding school either. It sounded like something out of Dickens. Totally Victorian. Totally alien. “How old were you when you went?”

  “Twelve.”

  “What was that like?”

  He turned his head slightly in the darkened BMW so that he was silhouetted against the window. “It was a boarding school.”

  She studied his profile. It seemed aloof. Too elegant. Out of her league. But it had once belonged to a little boy. “Boarding schools always sound so impersonal.”

  He shrugged. “They teach you independence. How to look after yourself, how to be neat. It was a good school. The teachers were first-rate.”

  “Didn’t you miss your family?”

  “Everyone misses their family at first.”

  She was silent, listening to their combined breathing in the dark car.

  “Sometimes . . .” He shifted. “Sometimes it was lonely.”

  His voice was reluctant, as if she’d dragged a shameful admission out of him.

  He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t real outgoing as a kid.”

  She imagined him, a beautiful dark boy. A boy she somehow knew would be more sensitive and shy than the other boys. That boy moving to a strange place on his own. A place where he didn’t know anyone. That single word—lonely—probably didn’t begin to describe his experience. Her heart contracted, holding in sympathetic tears for a little boy who no longer existed.

  Dante shifted again. Coughed. “So, what about you? Boyfriend?”

  She inhaled. He obviously didn’t want her sympathy. “Not since Brick the Bastard.”

  Even with his face half turned away, she could see his eyebrows shoot up. “You dated a guy named Brick?”

  She sighed. “I think his mother watched a lot of daytime TV.”

  “Must’ve.”

  She scrunched lower in the seat, trying to conserve what body heat she had left, and yawned. “He was all right except for the fishnet-stocking thing.”

  He reached to turn the keys in the ignition. “Dare I ask?”

  Air blew out of the vents, but it was cool still. “He was a part-time actor—during the day he worked in a boring office. But he was always taking these drag roles that he needed to wear stilettos and fishnet stockings for, and I think he liked it too much, if you know what I mean. God, that feels good.”

  The heat had finally kicked in, and hot air was blowing in her face. Zoey leaned forward, closing her eyes, feeling the warmth wash over her.

  Beside her, she heard Dante clear his throat. “So you dumped him?”

  “I wouldn’t call it dumping,” she said lazily, her eyes still closed. “I just didn’t catch him when he started sliding away, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  His tone was a little dark.

  She opened her eyes and turned to look at him. What she could see of his mouth was straight and thin. “Suffered some flesh wounds in the dating wars?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Do tell.”

  He shrugged.

  “Oh, come on. We’ve got all night, we’re stuck in this car. You got anything better to do than to spill your guts to me?”

  “Put like that, how could I resist?” He turned the car engine off.

  “Awww.” All the lovely hot air went away.

  “We have to conserve the gas. It’s got to last us until morning.”

  “Humph.” She huddled into her down jacket, already feeling the heat leaking from her body.

  “Here.” Dante twisted and leaned over the back seat, coming back up with a tasseled tartan throw. He draped it over her and then began tucking it in all along her body, his hands sure and firm. He pulled the edge of the blanket up around her chin, and she felt his fingers brush tenderly against her skin.

  “Better?”

  She nodded, mesmerized by his care.

  He took his hands away and sat back in his own seat. “Good. Then you’re all set to hear the sorry tale of Psychotic Shayna.”

  “Psychotic Shayna?”

  “Fifty-four messages on my answering machine over one weekend.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Not only that, but she was convinced I was seeing another woman.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “Swear to God.” She saw a shadowed movement as he held up his hand. “Besides, we didn’t date all that long. The fifty-four messages were only three weeks in.”

  “Ouch.” She winced.

  “After that I backed away fast and she latched on to another FBI agent. I heard later that she was kind of a federal agent groupie.”

  “Huh.” She stared into the dark for a moment, thinking. “I bet Psychotic Shayna was a babe.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Was the other agent she hooked up with smart?”

  “I didn’t know him that well, but he never struck me as dumb.”

  She nodded wisely. “Good-looking, otherwise intelligent FBI agents falling for a crazy woman? You all were blinded by her boobs or butt or both.”

  “Huh.”

  “Am I right?”

  “I’m gonna take the fifth on that one,” he muttered.

  “Thought so.” Zoey snuggled into her blanket, feeling oddly happy. “Where do you think Baldy the kidnapper is right now?”

  Beside her, Dante snorted. “If he’s smart he’s holed up somewhere warm.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thursday, 11:21 p.m.

  Neil was halfway to freezing his fucking nuts off.

  As it turned out, the red SUV he’d nabbed at the BP station had a defective heater. What kind of a dumb fuck didn’t fix his heater in Chicago in winter? This just went to show how little people took care of their stuff anymore. Slobs, all of them.

  Neil hunched into himself and slapped his hands against his upper arms. He was parked in an apartment complex on the north side of Chicago. He was sitting here like an idiot because some guy named Sujay Agrawal lived here. Sujay was the nephew or maybe great-nephew of the crazy little old Indian ladies. When he’d tossed the Indian restaurant, Neil had found the guy’s name on a piece of paper and pocketed it in case he might need it later, which, as it turned out, he did. Neil intended to brace Sujay, should he ever decide to come home. What the fucker was doing out late on a Thursday night was anybody’s guess.

  Neil should be home at this very moment, warm under his electric blanket, but truth was, as much as he loved Ash, he wasn’t about to face her without Neil Junior. Even spending the night in a fucking freezing SUV with no heat was better than going home and telling Ash he didn’t have their baby. He shuddered at just the thought.

  Another thing that was bothering Neil: what had those old bats done with his Hummer? He couldn’t help but imagine the Hummer on the fucking South Side maybe near Cabrini Green, in which case there wouldn’t be anything left of his ride except the grill and maybe not even that. And where the hell had they taken Neil Junior? What were they going to do, sell him to a baby black marketer? He hadn’t thought the old ladies were that cold, but then on the other hand, he hadn’t thought they’d have the balls to steal his fucking Hummer, either.

  And right then Neil made a decision. After he braced the nephew, after he went and found the Indian ladies and got Neil Junior back and got the Spinoza kid back, too, after this whole thing blew over and Ash was talking to him again, after all that, he was finding a new line of work. Maybe see if Tony had a place for him in middle management, something less to do with street work. His anger management teacher droned on about “life reassessment,” which, near as Neil could figure, meant thinking about getting either a new wife or a new job or both. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t going to ditch Ash, but since he’d just turned forty-five, reassessing his career choice as muscle might not be a fucking bad idea. Too bad his skills mostly ran to breaking legs and inti
midating old ladies. Only lately he couldn’t even intimidate old ladies.

  Neil slumped farther in the seat. Yeah, getting a new job was a priority. But first he had to find Neil Junior and Ricky Spinoza’s kid, or the life reassessment wouldn’t matter. Because Tony the Rose would kill him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday, 6:03 a.m.

  It was dark when Dante woke. He opened his eyes without moving, assessing his position and his surroundings. It was cold, he was in his own car, and he heard soft breathing coming from the passenger seat beside him. Zoey. He remembered her smooth skin beneath his fingers as he’d tucked her into his blanket. Remembered her husky laughter in the dark as he’d told her stories of his dating mishaps. Remembered the perfume she wore, which he still couldn’t place.

  He turned his head, wincing as the muscles in his neck protested the awkward angle he’d slept in. Zoey had pulled the blanket up over her nose. Her eyelashes trembled as she slept, the blanket slowly rising and falling with each breath she took. She seemed smaller in sleep, more delicate, more feminine.

  Or maybe he was just projecting what he wanted to see. He’d been surprised—pleasantly surprised—by her sense of humor last night. He would’ve thought the organic, co-op-food type would be humorless in her strict convictions. Except she wasn’t strict in her convictions, either, was she? Not if she ate red licorice and craved Culver’s ButterBurgers. He shook his head. She was more complicated than he’d first thought.

  More familiar.

  His eyes narrowed. He was getting too close to her. It was becoming harder to be objective, to see her as a witness to a crime, nothing more. Bottom line, he couldn’t afford to trust her, even if a primitive, mindless part of him was telling him just the opposite. Trusting the wrong person at this point could get him killed.

  He glanced to the small house across the street. It was silent and dark, the occupants, if there were any, still abed. Dante stretched and yawned. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the adrenaline crash must’ve caught up with him. It didn’t matter anyway. He was pretty sure that his unconscious cop brain would’ve waked him up if anyone had shown last night. No one had.