For the Love of Pete

by Julia Harper

  Then he blinked and straightened. “Okay.”

  He opened the car door and climbed out.

  Zoey watched Dante unbutton his trench coat and reach inside, probably checking his gun. Then he strode toward the purple minivan, the black leather whipping around his ankles in the wind. The look was only a little spoiled by the gray sweatpants and dress shoes he wore underneath.

  She exhaled slowly. What had just happened? Had she imagined that he’d almost kissed her? Or had proximity to a drop-dead-gorgeous guy blown all her intuitive fuses, making her think there was something going on when nothing existed at all? Okay, no. A girl knew what a girl knew. Dante had come very close to kissing her. And she’d analyze that fact in great detail later.

  Right now she had to focus on her niece.

  Dante was still twenty or so feet from the purple minivan when the driver’s door opened. Dante stopped and reached under his long trench coat. The bald guy that they’d seen on Tuesday emerged from the van. He was walking slowly and holding his hands in front of him. Zoey saw his mouth move, but from this distance and inside the Beemer, she couldn’t understand what he said.

  A squeak came from the back seat and Zoey twisted to look. Neil Junior was awake. He caught sight of her and his mouth turned down. Tears shone in his eyes.

  Zoey glanced at the men. Neil Senior was approaching Dante slowly.

  The baby sobbed.

  “Okay, okay,” Zoey whispered as she unbuckled her seat belt. Why she was whispering when the men outside couldn’t possibly hear her, she didn’t know.

  Zoey got out of the car on the side away from the men and opened the back door. Neil Junior kicked impatiently in his car seat as she wrestled with the buckles. She picked him up and held him against her hip. Neil Junior thumped his big baby head against her shoulder, apparently happy now that he was being held. She absently pulled his jacket hood over his head as she watched the men. They’d stopped again, and she could hear Dante’s voice, but not what he was saying.

  A man with two little boys came out of the rest stop. One of the boys pulled at his father’s jacket, halting him. The child gestured at the vending machine area, his mimed plea quite obvious.

  Zoey shifted Neil Junior’s weight, hitching him higher on her hip. She absently patted his rump.

  Neil Senior’s head snapped up as he looked in their direction, and for a horrible timeless moment, Zoey thought she’d somehow blown the trade-off.

  Then Dante turned, too, and she heard a car behind her. She looked. A highway patrol car cruised into the rest-stop parking lot.

  Things happened fast after that. Neil Senior drew a gun and fired at the cop car, blasting a hole high on the windshield.

  “Get down! Get down!” Dante yelled, running for the vending-machine shelter.

  The man with the kids stared, startled, for a moment before comprehension must’ve kicked in. He fell flat to the ground, covering his sons.

  The highway patrol car screeched to a halt, the driver’s door flying open as the officer inside took cover behind the open door and the car.

  Neil Junior had jerked in Zoey’s arms at the sound of the shots, and now he opened his mouth wide, crying in fear.

  “Throw down your weapon!” the patrolman bellowed. “Ma’am, get back in your car!”

  Zoey realized that he was talking to her. She ducked, instinctively holding her hand over Neil Junior’s head.

  Neil Senior crouched behind a row of metal trash cans, his cover barely adequate. He answered the officer’s demand with a flurry of shots. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! echoed off the rest-stop building. Dante was flat on his belly by the vending-machine shelter.

  Zoey flinched against the side of the car with each shot. Neil Junior was shaking in her arms, and Zoey suddenly realized that Pete was still in the purple minivan. All alone. Probably terrified. The patrolman had his weapon pointing in Neil Senior’s direction, but with so many people in the area, he must be afraid to shoot. He was stymied. As soon as Neil Senior had a chance, he’d run back to the minivan and get away.

  And take Pete with him.

  Zoey swallowed. She and Neil Junior were shielded from where Neil Senior hid. There were a few cars parked between them and the purple minivan, but there were more spaces than cars. Spaces that left no cover. Neil Senior wouldn’t fire at a woman carrying his own child, would he? That is, if he knew it was his child.

  Zoey ran behind three cars, sliding to a stop next to the rear end of a blue Ram pickup. She peered around the back bumper, holding Neil Junior’s face against her shoulder. There was a fifteen-foot gap between her and the next car, and she wasn’t sure how to bridge it.

  More shots. She glanced at the rest-stop center. Dante was leaning around the corner of the vending-machine shelter, his gun held in straight arms, shooting toward the row of garbage cans where Neil Senior hid. A bullet hit a can with a BANG! and knocked it over.

  Zoey couldn’t wait any longer. She might not have a better chance. She ran to the next set of cars and kept running behind them. She paused at the last car to glance at the rest stop. Dante had stopped firing, but he and Neil Senior were yelling at each other. She couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, and it didn’t really matter. She took a deep breath and ran to the purple minivan. The sliding side door was unlocked, and she hauled it open, conscious all the time of just how big a target her back made.

  Pete was in a child car seat, screaming at the top of her lungs. The wail became a duet as Zoey shoved Neil Junior into the empty car seat next to her and strapped him in. She climbed through the seats to the front. Only then did it occur to her that she just might’ve made a very big mistake. She hit the auto locks before checking the ignition. Thank God. The keys were dangling from the ignition. Zoey turned on the engine with shaking hands, reversed out of the parking place, and sped away from the rest stop.

  Leaving Dante behind.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Saturday, 7:37 a.m.

  Dante watched helplessly as the purple minivan with the big white daisy accelerated out of the rest stop with Zoey at the wheel.

  “Hey!” Neil Senior yelled from behind a trash can. “Hey! What the fuck’re you doin’?”

  And for once Dante sympathized with the man. What the fuck was Zoey doing? Maybe she was just getting the babies out of the line of fire. Maybe she would turn around at the next exit and come back when things were safe.

  Maybe, but Dante wasn’t betting the house on it.

  Pure, pissed anger shot through him. She’d played him for a fool. He needed to finish this so he could go after Zoey and tell her just exactly what he thought of double-crossing, baby-stealing little jerks.

  “Throw down your weapon!” he bellowed at Neil Senior.

  “Fuck you!” Neil Senior replied. “You set me up, asshole.”

  And he let loose a volley of shots in Dante’s direction to hammer home the point.

  Shit. Dante flattened himself on the freezing concrete floor of the vending-machine shelter. The sad thing was, Neil Senior kind of had a point. It had looked like a setup when the highway patrol had wandered in. Not that that was sufficient reason to start shooting in an area with kids present. Behind him, he heard one of the boys whimper. The kids and their father were out in the open, on the sidewalk leading to the main building. The potential for tragedy was pretty high here.

  Dante peeked around the side of the shelter. The cop was still behind his car door—and probably would stay there if he was smart. Neil Senior had three orange garbage cans to hide behind, even with one having been knocked on its side.

  Dante inhaled deeply to calm his voice. “Look, Neil, I’m freezing my ass off here. Can we go inside where it’s warm, maybe talk this out?”

  Neil snorted explosively behind the trash cans. “Yeah, you wanna try talking calmly with my wife, she finds out her kid is gone? Again?”

  Dante’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh. Didn’t know you were married.”

  “What, you
think Neil Junior appeared outta nowhere?”

  “Good point.”

  There was a pause. A radio squawk came from the highway patrol car.

  “That your partner, took off with Neil Junior and the little girl baby?” Neil asked.

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what is she?” Neil asked as if he really wanted to know.

  “A pain in the ass,” Dante said before he could think.

  Neil chuckled. “Yeah. Them’s the best kind. Take my advice, you find a woman who makes you want to spit nails and at the same time turns your balls blue, that’s the one you want to marry.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Advice on his love life from a criminal kidnapper of babies just seemed like too much on top of everything else.

  Dante bit back a sarcastic reply and went for something a little more neutral. “Huh.”

  Okay, so sue him. It was hard to think of the right thing to say under the circumstances.

  But Neil seemed perfectly happy with monosyllables. “Yeah, once I met my Ash, it turned my whole fucking world around. She’s got me eating a high-fiber diet and exercising, you know? And now I’ve started these anger management classes, which are fucking stupid, but Ash thinks they’ve helped me.”

  Lying on cold concrete, with the feeling beginning to go in his fingers, Dante couldn’t help but wonder what Neil had been like before the anger management classes.

  “Uh, y’know, good for you and all that,” the father said from the rest-stop walkway, “but do you mind if I get my kids inside?”

  “Hey, don’t you—” Neil began in an un-anger-management shout, but he was interrupted.

  A powder pink Caddy drove into the rest stop. The cop got on his mike and boomed, “Pink Cadillac, stop. Stop your car immediately. Do not come any closer. This is a dangerous situation—”

  He was continuing to boom orders because the pink Caddy was meandering through the parking lot, apparently oblivious that it was entering a shootout. A gray puff of hair was just visible over the driver’s side dash, a tweed hat on the passenger side.

  “Ma’am! Please stop your car RIGHT NOW!”

  The car did stop. It pulled sedately into the handicapped parking spot, right smack in front of the rest-stop walkway.

  “Do not get out of the car!” The patrolman boomed hopelessly.

  Dante shook his head. You had to feel for the guy.

  Both car doors creaked open and there was a pause.

  The patrolman tried one more time. “Pink Cadillac! Do not exit your car. Do not—”

  To no avail. A tiny elderly woman in a purple wool coat hopped down from the driver’s side. Opposite her, a man in a tweed hat and overcoat climbed out. The man braced his hand against the car hood for a moment and then started inching toward the rest stop.

  “Every blamed rest stop,” the old man panted. “We’re losing time here, Bernice. We’ll never make Memphis by noon.”

  “I wonder if they have the vending machines with flavored coffee here,” the elderly woman said. “Wouldn’t that be nice? A hot coffee?”

  “Coffee!” The old guy snorted. “Last thing you need is coffee.”

  “Get back in the car!” the patrolman boomed optimistically.

  “And maybe a bun, if they have them,” the old lady was saying as they neared the garbage cans.

  Dante watched with the fatalistic feeling one had when the blond teenager went to investigate the noise in the basement in a horror movie. Neil Senior jumped up, bumped the old lady, grabbing her keys out of her hand, and ran to the Caddy.

  “Hey!” the old guy sputtered.

  Neil got in the Caddy and reversed out of the handicapped parking spot just as a phalanx of highway patrol cars roared into the rest stop, sirens wailing, lights flashing. Backup had finally arrived for the lone patrolman. The Caddy sped away. The patrol cars slowed, then sped up again, chasing Neil.

  Dante stood and brushed off his knees.

  “Thief!” roared the old guy.

  “Careful of your blood pressure, Joe,” the old lady admonished.

  The father helped his two crying kids up. The younger one looked from the parking lot where Neil had fled to the vending-machine shelter. His tears abruptly stopped, and he gazed up at his father.

  “Can I have a candy bar?”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Saturday, 8:26 a.m.

  Neil pressed the accelerator to the floor, but the pink Caddy wouldn’t go any faster than eighty. It was a pure fucking miracle that he’d lost the four highway patrol cars, all things considered. The world was full of black SUVs, yellow Jeeps, and red Porsches, but did he get to steal one? Noooo. The old geezers had to be driving a fucking Caddy, and a pink fucking Caddy at that. He looked like a Mary Kay lady. The only thing worse would be driving around in a neon orange hot-dog truck with a big sign that read, ESCAPING CRIMINAL RIGHT HERE. Jesus Christ!

  The cell phone in his pocket went off, nearly giving him his fifth heart attack of the morning. He fumbled for the crappy little piece of plastic while trying to keep his eyes on the road. A battered pickup chose that moment to pass him on the right, would you believe it, and Neil rolled down the window to give the guy the finger good and proper. Then he looked at his phone, hoping to hell and back that it wasn’t Tony the Rose on the other end. He hadn’t spoken to Tony since yesterday afternoon, before he’d caught up with the Indian ladies. Tony thought he was still headed for Cairo. He hadn’t told Tony that he’d had the Spinoza baby and now had lost her again. He really wasn’t looking forward to having to tell Tony that. But as it turned out, it wasn’t Tony on the other end of the phone. It was worse.

  Neil swallowed hard. He’d’ve ignored the now-shrill ringing of his phone, but he’d already ignored calls from Ashley twice today. She’d notify the cops if he didn’t answer this time. The woman was a pistol.

  Neil thumbed the Answer button. “Hi, honeybuns.”

  “Where are you, Neil Maurice Janiowski?” his wife demanded.

  “Uh, I’m heading down a county highway in southern Illinois.”

  “Toward home, I hope.”

  Neil winced. In fact, he was heading sort of north and west. He’d just decided that probably it’d be better not to tell Ash that fact when the cell crackled in his ear.

  “You’re not heading home, are you, Neil?”

  “See, honeybuns, I had some trouble—”

  “I don’t want to hear about your trouble,” Neil’s bride blasted in his ear. “You want to see trouble, you keep my baby from me one more night, you hear me, Neil?”

  “I—”

  “What were you doing taking Neil Junior on a hit in the first place?”

  Ash had asked the same thing the last time she’d called. It seemed to be a sore point with her. “I had to pick him up from day care, Ash. You know that.”

  “And you didn’t have the time to bring the baby home to his mama before going to shoot it out with the FBI?”

  “No. See, I—”

  “I can’t believe my own husband took my own baby on a hit,” Ash muttered.

  “Well—”

  “And what kind of hit gets this messed up, I ask you?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “You think Uncle Tony was setting you up, Neil? Do you think?”

  Neil blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him that Tony might want him dead. The thought made his mouth all dry, which was pretty fucking uncomfortable.

  But Ash hadn’t waited for his answer. “Uncle Tony sets you up, I’m telling Mama about it. This’s no way to treat family.”

  “Now, don’t get too excited, honeybuns. You know the doctor said—”

  “I want my baby back, Neil!”

  “Just as soon—”

  “I want him back like yesterday!”

  “It’s just that—”

  “I miss him so much, and I want to hold him and know he’s safe. Neil?”

  Neil breat
hed through his mouth, because he thought he’d heard something over the crappy fucking cell line. “Honeybuns?”

  “I want my baby.” Ash’s words ended on a little squeak.

  Neil felt his face go hard. She was crying. His Ash was crying. He hated when Ashley cried.

  “Look, I’m going to bring the baby back. You know I fucking will. Just as soon as I—”

  “Neil, you do have the baby, don’t you?” Ash’s voice was cold. Cold like winter in fucking Siberia.

  One thing Neil had learned in his marriage to this woman: don’t come between Ash and her baby.

  “I’m going to get him just as soon as I can, honey.”

  There was a silence, broken only by Ash’s harsh breathing. Neil felt his blood run cold. Really. Like he had fucking cubes of ice clunking along in his veins and crashing into his heart. Ash’s hormones were kind of berserk at the moment. Neil could’ve gone his whole life without the knowledge of what berserk hormones could do to an otherwise sweet-as-sugar woman.

  Finally, Ash spoke. “You better do that, Mr. Boo. I’m giving you until tonight, and then I’m coming after my baby and I’m coming after you.”

  She hung up.

  And even the knowledge that she’d used her pet name for him couldn’t keep Neil from shivering. He needed to find Neil Junior. He needed to find the Spinoza kid again. And he needed to bring them back to Chicago in the next twelve hours. Or one very angry, very hormonal woman was going to do it for him.

  Neil turned the big pink Caddy onto the next road. He was headed south now, toward I-57. Towards Cairo.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Saturday, 8:31 a.m.

  Zoey pulled off the county road and killed the purple minivan’s engine. Then she just sat, staring at her hands on the steering wheel. They were shaking. She would put it down to over half an hour of stereo baby screaming from the back seat, but she knew it was more than that.

  She’d betrayed Dante.

  It was a stupid thought. She’d known the man for only two days. He was an FBI agent doing a job. This was work for him. He didn’t care about Pete the way she did. To him, her niece was a missing piece he needed in order to bring a mobster to trial. He might care for the baby’s safety, but he didn’t care for Pete herself.