“If you don’t mind, Ms. del Rio?” Harry came forward, turned so Joey could see the white square bandage at the back of his head. “I’ll give you the nutshell version, Salducci. I switched cars with Nick as a precaution. When I drove to the mansion to get the videotapes, Viper thought I was Nick and took a shot at me. Just a graze, no big deal. But big enough to keep me out of commission for a couple of hours. I was supposed to get a team and meet Nick at Rio’s apartment. She had evidence on Taranto. I didn’t get there. They did and found you. You with me so far?”
Joey nodded, trying to remember. Mostly what he remembered was pain. “Taranto was waiting to see if Nick would help me.” He shook his head gently. “How did he ever get me out of there?”
“He wrapped the girl in a blanket and carried her to the car. Taranto thought it was you and went after him. When the coast was clear, Ms. del Rio here got some help and brought you in…along with all the evidence we’ll need to take Taranto down permanently.”
Joey glanced at Kate and frowned. “I can’t believe Nick would do that—use her as bait that way—”
“He didn’t want to,” Kate said. “Antonia insisted.”
“Where are they now?”
“Holed up in a motel in Jersey. Nick checked in at five-thirty this morning.” Harry twisted his wrist and checked his watch. “He’s due to call again any minute now. I won’t give him the nod to come in until Taranto and Viper are in custody.”
Joey felt his eyes widen. “God, they’re still at large?”
Harry nodded. “We have the evidence and the warrants, but we’re having one hell of a time tracking them down.”
Joey opened his mouth, glanced toward Kate and snapped it closed again. “I—I think some tea. See if you can get them to bring me a slice of toast, too, will you, please?”
She smiled, nodded once. “That will do you a world of good.” Her delicate brows touched. “I only hope you can keep it down this time.” She left the room.
Joey pinned Harry with an angry stare. “You can’t have Nick and Toni out there in a place as insecure as a motel while Taranto and Viper are free. They ought to be…guarded.”
“Look, Salducci, if I had my ideal scenario, they would be. Problem is they aren’t. He’d be liable to get them on the way in.” Harry winced after raising his voice and touched the bandage on his head with probing fingers. “Listen, chances are Taranto is on his way south of the equator by now. He won’t hang around with charges facing him just to try to get even with Nick.”
“You’re wrong. I know the man, I’ve worked with him. He puts loyalty above all else. Look what happened to Vinnie Pascorelli. Lou will want revenge on Nick for this. Beyond that, he’ll be trying to figure a way out of the whole thing. He’ll want to know exactly what we have on him, and knowing him, he’ll come up with a perfect defence. He’s always managed before. He’s not going down without a fight, Harry. He has too much to lose.”
Harry sighed and nodded. “I understand all that. I’m doing everything I can, Joey. We’re systematically searching every piece of real estate Taranto owns. You just have to be patient. We’ll find him.”
The door opened, and Kate came back into the room. “The nurse said she’d bring in a—” Her gaze jumped from one face to the other. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We were just discussing business.” Again Harry glanced at his watch. “I’d better get to that phone. Nick ought to be calling about now.” He nodded once to Kate and left.
She pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. “Don’t bother telling me you both aren’t worried about them,” she said. “Worrying about my headstrong daughter has become a way of life for me.”
Joey shook his head. He’d barely had a clear glimpse of Kate until this morning, when the medications and ice packs had eased his swollen eyelids enough for him to see. “I can’t believe she’s your daughter,” he mumbled, and was immediately embarrassed. “I mean, you, uh, look so…”
Her eyes narrowed. “Caucasian?”
“No! For crying out loud! I meant gorgeous. Too young to be her mother. Ouch!” Raising his voice sent a ringing through his head, and he lifted a palm to his temple. “Damn.”
She came to her feet, one hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Of course you didn’t mean…I’m tense. It’s…been a long night.” She sighed long and low. “I’m afraid for Antonia. When I look at you—at what those horrible men did to you, all I can think of is what would happen if they got their hands on her, and I…”
Her throat seemed to close off in midsentence, and Joey saw the moisture in her sapphire eyes. “Oh, hey, nothing’s going to happen to her. Not with Nick around.” He sat up despite the rush of dizziness. Tears streamed over her flawless cheeks, and Joey could stand no more. He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Come on, sit down.” She did, lowering herself gracefully to the edge of his bed, allowing him to close his arms around her and pull her head to his shoulder. “Nick won’t let anything happen to her. If she were my daughter and in the same situation, I’d want her to be with Nick. He’s the best.”
She sniffed, straightened and looked him in the eye. “Will you tell me about him?”
“About Nick?”
She nodded. “I saw them together at the apartment before. Antonia—well, there was something different about her. And when she looked at him, I thought—”
“She’s nuts about him,” Joey filled in. He saw her eyes widen.
“I thought that might be the case. Do you think that he—”
“Oh, yeah. He’s got it bad. I’ve never seen him like this.”
She sighed hard and made herself more comfortable on the bed. “So, will you tell me about him?”
Joey shrugged. He didn’t feel it would be any sort of betrayal to tell Nick’s future mother-in-law about his painful youth. In fact, it might be good to get it out in the open right from the start. Besides, he had a feeling it would be useless to try not to tell her. If she looked at him with those tear-moistened jewel blue eyes long enough, he’d probably tell her about every top-secret investigation he’d ever worked on.
“Where do you want me to start?”
She opened her eyes and blinked them into focus. The floor where she lay smelled musty. The room exuded chill dampness. She knew it was a basement before she realized the floor was packed earth or the walls, chipped cinder block.
“About time, Manelli. I been waitin’ all damn day.”
The cold voice near the center of the room drew Toni’s gaze. She barely stopped herself from gasping when she saw Nick, in a straight-backed wooden chair beneath a glaring bare light bulb suspended by a frayed cord. A rope lashed around his ankles kept his feet immobile. She thought another must be holding his wrists together behind his back, but she couldn’t see for certain.
Lou Taranto stood a few feet in front of Nick, facing him. Viper was at his side. Nick’s eyes seemed glazed, and Toni vaguely remembered the injections—they’d both been drugged. She had no idea how long ago or where they might be now.
“You disappointed me, Nicky. I trusted you. Like my own son, I trusted you, but you betrayed me.” Lou released a short shot of air. “A Fed! A lousy, freaking Fed—don’t bother denying it. No one fools Lou Taranto for long.”
Nick wasn’t looking at him. His gaze probed the corners of the room, and Toni realized that with the bright light on him and the shadows everywhere else, he couldn’t see her. He searched for her, squinting hard. She wanted to call out to him, but didn’t dare. It might be better to stay quiet for a few minutes. She might get an idea that could help if she could watch them while they thought her unconscious.
Viper lifted a hand, balled it and delivered a shocking blow to the side of Nick’s head. The chair toppled to the floor with Nick in it, and Toni nearly leapt to her feet and charged the little weasel. A small voice warned her it would do more harm than good. What she needed was a weapon.
Viper leaned over, righted the chair with a rough jerk
. “Pay attention when you’re being spoken to, Manelli. Lou has a few things to say to you.” He leaned closer. “And then it’s my turn. You know how your pal Salducci looked when you found him? He looked good compared to what you’ll look like, Nicky boy. You’re gonna die slow.”
“Big talk’s easy when I’m trussed like a goose.” Nick’s voice came out even and low. “Untie me and say it again, weasel.”
“Talk all you want, Manelli. You’re a dead man. I don’t pay much attention to dead men.”
“I’m not dead yet.”
Viper smiled, and it sent a chill right down Toni’s spine. “Yeah, you are.”
Toni reached out in the darkness, patting the damp dirt floor with her hands. They hadn’t tied her as they had Nick. They must not consider her much of a threat. Her eyes strained to see in the darkness. A rickety wooden door hung at one side of the room. An ancient, molding pile of firewood was stacked in a corner. A broken wood crate, with a few dust-covered shapes in its bottom, sat beside a rusted water tank laying on its side. A weapon. She needed a weapon. A length of pipe, a hammer, anything!
“I need to know what they have on me, Nicky.” Lou picked up the conversation again. “The warrant says I’m up on murder one. What are they basing it on?”
Nick shook his head. “My case was narcotics. The murder rap came from a separate investigation.”
Viper hit him again, a straight-on drive of knuckles into his face. The chair rocked backward, hitting the floor hard. Blood spurted from Nick’s nose. Toni heard him cough and spit. Viper yanked the chair upright again by grabbing Nick’s shirt in both fists.
Toni was on her feet, fists clenched so her nails pierced her palms. Frantically now she looked around her, still cloaked in the darkness. She edged slowly along the cool wall, trying to work her way to the woodpile. A length of wood, if she could find one that wasn’t completely rotten, would be good enough to split Viper’s skull, she decided.
“Come on, Nicky. You can do better than that.”
Nick shook his head. “I called the case as soon as I knew you were on to Salducci. We were packing it in.”
“You’re lying!”
Nick shrugged, lifting his chin and glared at Viper. “Isn’t that your cue?”
Viper slugged him in the midsection this time, and Toni wondered how he kept from vomiting. The chair jumped with the force of the blow. Nick dragged air into his lungs.
“How am I going to prepare my defense if I don’t know what the evidence is?” Lou spoke in a smooth, friendly tone. “Come on, Nicky, I can’t let the business I’ve spent my life building go up in smoke like this. I need to know. You’ll talk eventually.” There was the tiniest waver in his voice. Toni heard it and knew it for what it was—desperation. A weapon, at last.
She stepped out of the darkness, forcing her face to appear composed, emotionless. If they knew what it did to her to see them hurting Nick, it would be over in no time. Her heart felt torn wide open and raw at the pain she knew he must be feeling. My God, she loved him. The pure power of the emotion awed her. She’d had no idea how strong her feelings had become until she’d been forced to see him suffer.
She drew on that strength now. She closed off the frightened, trembling part of her mind and focused on the strength. There—in one of those corridors within—she met an old friend. She held her hand, stiffened her spine. Help me through this, Katrina.
Haven’t I always?
Toni blinked away the odd sensation and lifted her chin. “He’s telling you the truth, Taranto. It wasn’t his investigation that turned up the evidence against you. It was mine.”
All eyes turned in her direction. Toni had to force her gaze not to linger on Nick’s bruising, bloodied face. If she looked at him, she’d break down and cry. She’d throw her arms around him and kiss the pain away. She’d claw Viper’s heart out for hurting him.
“Toni, don’t—” Viper hit him again. The skin of his cheek split. Toni whirled quickly to hide her face.
“Fine, you don’t want to listen to me, that’s fine. You finish your little game with Manelli and want to talk, let me know. Of course, by then it could be too late to do anything, anyway.”
“Just a minute, bitch.” Lou’s voice stopped her.
She didn’t face him. She blinked rapidly to erase any trace of moisture from her eyes. She forced her features to relax.
“If you want to deal, you’ll have to address me in some other tone, Mr. Taranto. I don’t answer to ‘bitch.’”
His chuckle filled the damp room, reaching all the way to the wooden two-by-six crosspieces supporting the ceiling and the thick cobwebs that covered it. “Viper,” he said.
The clammy hands were around her body a second later, pinioning her arms to her sides, jerking her around to face Taranto. Nick strained against his bonds. She tried to send him a message with her eyes, but he continued struggling.
Her voice sounding nothing at all like her to her own ears, she said, “You don’t need to pound on my face to get the information you want, Taranto. I’m no cop. I’m in this game for one reason and one reason only. Money.”
Lou’s head came up. “You want to deal?” He laughed again. “This one’s bold as brass, isn’t she?” His gaze shifted from Viper, who held her, to Toni again. “You got nothing to deal with, lady writer. You tell me what I want to know here and now, or I let Viper have an hour alone with you…no, not quite alone. I think I might watch.”
Viper bent his head and closed his teeth on Toni’s earlobe. It was no playful nibble. He bit hard, intending to hurt her, and he did. She sucked air through her clenched teeth and fought the pain. He let her ear go, and it throbbed angrily. He still kept her arms pulled painfully behind her. “I’m gonna like this, Lou. When can we start?”
Toni forced a smile and then laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I thought you were a businessman. You’re going to risk your entire operation just for a few hours of perverted sex?”
“Tell me what you know, sugar.”
“I’ll tell you a little. The murder charges on you are for the deaths of your ex-supplier and the two DEA agents who were escorting him back to the U.S. You remember Juan Perez, don’t you? Your supplier in Colombia? He was the last man who refused the deal I offered. I brought him to his knees and I’ll do the same to you.”
Lou frowned. “You offered Perez a deal?”
“Before the book went to print, I offered to leave certain specifics out if he’d pay me well for my trouble. He refused. He thought I was bluffing.” She met Taranto’s eyes and felt an icy hand close over her heart. “A lot of men make that mistake. My book brought him down.”
“What do you have, lady? Cut the games and spill it.” Viper spoke near her sore ear, his lips moving against it, his breath hot on her throat.
She looked at Lou. “Tell him to let go of me.”
Lou frowned and finally nodded toward Viper. “You’ll have plenty of time to hurt her later on.”
She chanced a glimpse toward Nick. His eyes on her were narrow, and she hoped to God he didn’t think this bravado of hers was the real Toni. It wasn’t. It was Katrina.
She faced Lou squarely. “I have photos of you passing an envelope to a man named Santos. I have documented proof that Santos left you and went directly to an airport in Colombia, where he somehow got a job as a mechanic. I have photos of him tinkering with Perez’s plane moments before takeoff. I have evidence that Santos deposited a large sum of money into his bank account the day he arrived in Colombia.”
Lou shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Circumstantial, at best.”
“I have the envelope.”
Lou’s brows shot up. “Impossible! Santos said he burned—”
“He put a match to it, dropped it in a trash can. A friend of mine pulled it out and doused the flame. It only blackened a bit around the edges.” She saw his eyes narrow with skepticism. “Shall I tell you what was inside? A handwritten note with the name of the little airfi
eld and Perez’s flight number and time of departure. Your handwriting, Lou?” She shook her head. “Sloppy, sloppy. An expert analyst will use that, you know. There was a nice five-by-seven glossy print of Perez, too. The one of him in that tacky floral-print shirt.”
Lou’s eyes showed real fear now. “You gave them all of that?”
She laughed and shook her head. “You think I’m an idiot? What good would my book be if I gave them all of my surprises? It would come out in your trial, and all the juice in the book would be old news by the time it hit the shelves. I’d be lucky if it sold a dozen copies.”
“But the warrants—”
“I gave them an envelope filled with bogus evidence. The photo they have is of my cousin Vito. All the documents are forged, and not very expertly, either. As soon as they realize it, which shouldn’t be too far in the future, the warrants will be revoked. They have nothing.”
Lou turned, paced the room slowly and came to stand close to her. “How could you know you’d need fake evidence?”
“I’m not new to this game, Taranto. The Feds are always leaning on me to give them what I have before it comes out in the book. I make up phony evidence on a regular basis, just in case. This time it paid off.”
“So where’s the real evidence?”
“Now, I’d be dead in a hurry if I told you that, wouldn’t I?”
“Dead, maybe. Not in a hurry. Doesn’t matter. You don’t have a choice.”
“I think I do. A lawyer is holding it for me. I can’t even tell you who he is, because I had the arrangements made by my publishers. If anyone makes any attempt to get that envelope—other than me, of course—it goes straight to the federal prosecutor’s office. If my publisher doesn’t hear from me at least once a day, it goes to them even faster. Understand? Now, let’s talk, Lou. I stand to make a cool million from the book. You want what I have, you’ll have to make me a better offer.”
Reckless Angel Page 19