Deadly Little Secrets

by Jeanne Adams

  “Get down!” he shouted. “Damon, get us out of here!”

  They both ducked below window level, and the driver, caught off guard, swerved out of the parking place he’d been aiming for and peeled out of the parking lot. Gates and Ana were both already both on their respective phones.

  “Yes,” Gates answered the dispatcher, rattling off Ana’s address, all thoughts of passion dismissed, transmuted into adrenaline. “Shots fired, that address. No, we’re not there. No, we’d be sitting ducks. Contact Detective Baxter, with the county, he’ll know what to do. Yes, I know.” He answered the woman’s question about making a statement, being available. “You can send someone here.” He rattled off the address of the estate.

  Meanwhile, Ana had Pretzky on the phone. “We’ve got another incident. Shots fired, my address.”

  “What’s the situation? Report, Agent.”

  Ana laid it out. Pretzky snapped orders for her to come in, but Ana cut her off. “Bromley’s driver is taking us to Mr. Gianikopolis’s estate. Locals are meeting us there, since there was an incident at the estate last night as well.”

  “Incident? What incident?” When Ana laid it out, Pretzky demanded the address and said she would meet them there. She hung up before Ana could deter her.

  “My boss is meeting us at the estate,” Ana said, rising from her crouch as they got farther away from the city. They wound into the hills and pulled up to the hyper-lit front of the estate. There was a police cruiser under the portico when they pulled up.

  “Good, Bax is here. We’ll talk it through.”

  Alexia, Gates’s ultra-perky assistant, led them to a cozy living room. A fire burned in the fireplace where Dav and a detective waited for them.

  “Hey Baxter,” Gates called, his tone weary. “We’ve got another one for you.”

  The detective gave him a sharp look, then took in Ana’s appearance. His eyes narrowed, and she wondered if she had some kind of I’M A LAW ENFORCEMENT GEEK sign over her head.

  “This is Agent Burton with the CIA.” Gates seemed to relish the look of shock on the detective’s face, but Detective Baxter masked it quickly and shook Ana’s extended hand. “We’ve been working together on another matter, and she was with me tonight when we were fired on. I was just getting ready to drop her off.” He gave the address. “We called City dispatch, but I gave them your name. If they send CSI over there, they’ll find at least one casing since the shot impacted on the bulletproof glass.”

  “You think it’s related?” The detective was writing things down, and didn’t even look up as he asked the question.

  “Don’t know,” Gates said, without leaving Ana’s side. “Agent Burton was targeted yesterday on her own. Could be separate. Her SA’s coming up to the house.”

  “We’re going to need to step up our patrols here, while Dav’s in town this time,” Bax said, still writing. “Someone’s going to get hurt with this going on, even if it’s not Dav.”

  “I agree.”

  “Ana,” Dav finally spoke. “It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  “And you, Dav,” Ana replied. “I’m sorry you had trouble as well.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “It comes and goes. However, I’m thinking that you aren’t usually one to be fired upon. This is not good. Either you are being targeted for being here, or something in your case is the reason,” he said, tucking his hands behind his back and rocking from his heels to his toes, and back.

  “Special Agent Pretzky, my superior, is on the way,” Ana offered. “She tends to agree and would like us to work together on this if you have no objections. If checking these old leads gets this kind of response, it’s likely that there’s a whole heck of a lot more to this case than meets the eye.”

  “We thought that at the time,” Dav replied, shooting Gates a glance. “It was prior to Gates coming to work for me, as you know, but he reviewed everything. It was agreed that something about the entire affair was skewed. We were not sure if, at the heart of it, it was about the art or not.”

  “Really?” Ana was surprised. Neither of the agents she’d talked to had commented on that; they had obviously still considered it to be mainly an art-fraud case, even with the violence of the deaths. Then again, McGuire and Hines were not in total accord on that, a point that was becoming more obvious each time she talked with McGuire. “Why would you think that?”

  “It was too random,” Gates interjected, pouring himself a cup of coffee from what she now presumed to be ever-ready carafes. “The way two of the dealer’s employees were killed was way over the top.” Ana watched him closely. He’d made the statement with calm detachment, but there was something in his posture, his demeanor that clued her in to his anger. He was offended by those deaths; incensed. Then again, she reflected, so was she. The details were messy, the torture overkill if they were simple revenge or cover-your-tracks killings.

  “The money was never recovered.” Ana offered another point. “Nor were there any other art thefts of this nature, or none connected to subsequent fraud.”

  “That we know of,” Dav smiled grimly.

  “True, but it would have been dangerous to do any other similar crimes with the investigation under way.”

  “Ah, but variations on the theme,” Dav offered, with a wink at Gates for some reason, “slip under the radar. This is how we recovered the piece I mentioned. We won’t discuss that with your Special Agent, I think, but it is, nevertheless, true.”

  So they wanted to play it that way? It was odd that they’d been open with her so far, despite her deception at the gallery, and yet they didn’t want to deal openly with Pretzky.

  Baxter stepped out to take a call as they moved to the office they’d met in the previous morning. It seemed like a hundred years ago. The conference table they’d used had been expanded, with several leaves added, and additional chairs were now posted around its expanse. “We will meet here, utilizing the knowledge of your SA and Detective Baxter, who has been our liaison with the local police. He is quite good, but as with all departments these days, especially in California, his options are limited.”

  “I understand that.” Ana felt she had to make some kind of response. “We’ve all felt the pinch of budget cuts.”

  Obviously Dav’s organization hadn’t, since both men made noncommittal noises. When you’ve got billions, what’s a drop of a few million on the market? Or on a painting or five, for that matter?

  “Got a team over at your place, Agent,” Baxter said to Ana, as he came back in. “Found the bullet, where it bounced off the car. Your man’s taken the car back to your garage, now that we have pictures.”

  He sat down on a heavy sigh. “So, what the hell’s this all about? And you got shot at too, Agent, yesterday I hear?”

  “Yes,” Ana confirmed. “Missed me, but it was a near thing.”

  “You think it’s connected?”

  “No idea,” she replied instantly. “I have to consider, though.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t make any immediate sense. You have anything on all this that might tie into a nine-year-old art fraud case? ’Cause that’s my only connection to Mr. Gianikopolis and Mr. Bromley.”

  “So the shot at you might be something else?”

  “Maybe, but then the shot at Mr. Bromley might be something else too,” she said.

  “Doubtful.” Another voice joined the conversation as Pretzky came in. The men stood, and she nodded to each of them, shook hands, and sat down, pulling out a file as she did. It was a neat maneuver, and Ana admired the smoothness of it. “Agent Burton hasn’t been on this case long, but we’ve had two incidents since she began making her calls and nothing prior to that on other cases she worked on. I’m thinking it’s related to this case.” She turned to the detective. “If your people could send me the data on the bullet you found, that would be helpful.”

  “Done,” he stated, with seemingly no rancor. “I already cleared it with the city police. You hav
e any leads on this, Agent Burton?”

  “Nothing solid that would lead me to believe I’d hit a nerve with anyone. You know what I mean.”

  Gates scowled at them, then said, “Your computers got hit, then you got shot at, then we got shot at when we were together. It’s all connected somehow. We didn’t know you till you reopened the case. I think you’ve turned up something someone doesn’t want unearthed.”

  Pretzky looked a bit uncomfortable, but laid it out on the table. “We need to work together on this. I’d like to keep everyone alive. I have to tell you gentlemen, my agent was very lucky yesterday. No bulletproof glass in her car.” She leaned back, looking everywhere but at Ana. “One second later or earlier, a different angle, and we’d be having this discussion without Agent Burton.”

  Gates cut his eyes sharply to Ana. “It was that close?”

  Pretzky nodded, saving Ana from answering. It gave her the willies to think about the bullet in the headrest, without discussing just how close it had been. She still hadn’t processed the whole incident, and obviously, based on her breakdown yesterday with Gates, she wasn’t going to deal with it well.

  “Bullet lodged in the headrest, but only because Agent Burton inadvertently rolled forward.” The image of that obviously shocked everyone, since the silence was profound.

  “Well, I made it through,” Ana said, breaking the tense moment.

  “Holy crap,” the detective said. “And you’re here? Hell, I’d still be out getting drunk to celebrate being alive.”

  She had to grin at that. “Considered it, but got busy when someone hit our computers with a bug before I could even process the whole shots-fired thing. I got through today okay, then…” She paused, processing it as she said it. “Round two.”

  “Very dedicated, our Agent Burton.” Pretzky smiled tightly. “None of us realized she’d nearly been hit until after she’d jumped in and helped shut down the virus. We have a very talented resource in Agent Burton, and I, for one, want to make sure we figure this out so we don’t lose her to someone else’s stupidity.”

  You could have knocked Ana over with a feather at the words, and it was a struggle not to let her mouth drop open in surprise. Pretzky’d been better, more friendly in the last two days, but that kind of approbation wasn’t what Ana expected.

  “Thank you, Special Agent,” she finally managed.

  “Very commendable,” Dav interjected, and Ana could have kissed him, she was so grateful for the diversion. “I have to confess, I would like to quit getting shot at as well.”

  “Third incident this month,” the detective growled, shifting restlessly in his seat. “Gettin’ annoying.”

  “Tell me about it.” Gates’s reply was just as much a growl. “Not to mention how irritating it is to get the glass out of your shirt.”

  “Don’t be such a fashion priss, Bromley,” the detective complained. “You’re gonna give us a bad rap.”

  The exchange broke the tension. By the time they were done hashing things through, it was after ten.

  Pretzky stepped out to make calls and came back to the room to say, “Agent Burton, your apartment’s been checked and cleared. A security detail’s on standby over there.”

  Great. More people to feel responsible for. “Thanks. That’s good.” It wasn’t, but she had to express some gratitude.

  “Agents.” Baxter shook hands all around. “I’ll forward you my files on these incidents. We’ll compare notes.” He headed out, and Pretzky left as well. The three of them, Gates, Dav, and Ana, stood looking at one another for a heartbeat.

  “This has gotten a great deal more complicated than we could have thought when we chatted about this yesterday,” Dav said on a sigh. “Gates, you’ll see Ana home?”

  “Of course,” Gates replied, and Dav smiled. He kissed Ana good night, an airy touch on both cheeks. “Take care, Ana-aki.”

  They rode in silence through the dark miles back to the city. As they pulled into the entrance to her complex, they saw a marked police car sitting near her building.

  “I should go speak to them,” she said, turning to thank Gates. “I want to—” she began

  Before she could get the words out, he’d drawn her close, kissing her with a pent-up passion that rocked her to the depths of her body, to the very center of her soul.

  Holy cow.

  Holy cow.

  Then she had no thoughts as her mind spun and she responded to his kisses, to the power of his embrace. She never wanted to stop kissing him. She wanted to drag him into her apartment and have him. All of him. Now.

  “Ana,” he said, smoothing the damp hair curling around her face. She was overheated, ready for more. “You make me crazy.” He kissed her as he said the words. “But I don’t want to take advantage. It’s been another roller coaster of a day,” he said, pressing kisses to her cheeks now, easing away, letting the cool night air slide between them.

  “You’re right, you’re right,” she agreed, hating every bit of it, from her own conscience, and ethical issues because he was part of a case, to the irritating, wonderful, crazy buzz of sexual frustration that jangled her nerves. “I’m going to get out, go say hello to the officers before I go in.” She didn’t look at him as she added, “Before we go in.”

  She opened the door, stood for a moment so the uniforms could see her. She recognized the instant they noticed her standing by a stationary vehicle and went on alert.

  Still, Ana didn’t move. She didn’t look back at Gates, sitting behind her on the seat, waiting. She hesitated, then said, “Gates? Is it just because…” She waved her hand, used it to encompass the whole crappy couple of days.

  “No,” he said, simply. “It’s you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “You missed, Jurgens,” he said, still in a state of disbelief.

  “Ja.” Jurgens’s anger was burning through the phone line, cold and dangerous. “Luck only, for her. I will not be missing again.”

  “No, don’t kill her. I think we were about to make a strategic error there. Maybe this will work in our favor. She’s involved with Gianikopolis now, and his security expert, Bromley. Did you know someone took a shot at him the other night? After your miss this evening, and the attempt on him, they are quite distracted. I hear as well that there’s been gunfire up at Mr. G’s estate. With all these attempts, anything we do will be washed away in the larger effect. Also, I believe our former rivals weighed in yesterday.”

  The surprised silence on the other end of the phone made him chuckle. Jurgens was far more manageable when he wasn’t furious. It was always a balancing act utilizing something like family history and college bonds to keep his hired killer leashed.

  “Yes, yes, someone else took a shot at our girl.” He laughed when Jurgens responded with only a growl. “Now, now. We may have competed for the lovely works that we craved nine years ago, and we obviously had different methods of disposing of loose ends, but when it came down to the finale, our New York rival worked with us to avoid detection. Since Perkins hacked into Agent Burton’s files—” he began.

  “Foolish,” Jurgens interrupted.

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it? However, stupid as it was, I’m grateful. It’s going to be useful when it comes to covering our tracks. So, as I said, it’s a nice cover that our rival shot at the lovely agent.”

  “Hmmmmm.” The hum of interest and, perhaps, satisfaction erased the last of the fury he’d heard in Jurgens’s voice. “Possibly.”

  “So, what we must do now is discover who is targeting Mr. G. Only by understanding that can we use it. I do believe we’re going to have to more carefully monitor our rival as well. Do you have someone who can take that task on? I’m not having much luck in that department, you know.” He grimaced in annoyance. “My last attempt in that area obviously was a serious fail.”

  “Perkins.”

  “Exactly,” he said on a sigh. “He wasn’t any use unraveling our New York rival’s new name or status. So, thoughts?”
/>   “I have a man for one job. I’ll find another.”

  “Excellent. Good work. I’ve put half the deposit in the account.”

  “Neh, job isn’t done.”

  “But it’s started. Consider it a good faith advance. I know you’ll find me what I need, so,” he shrugged, even though Jurgens couldn’t see it. “It’ll be there.”

  “Ja, gut. Same number?”

  “Sure. We don’t have to dispose of these phones quite yet. Tomorrow?”

  “Next day.”

  “That works. I don’t want too much time to pass before we finish this up; however, we do need to work our efforts into the overall scheme. It is nice of them to be so conveniently shooting at all our targets,” he said facetiously. “So thoughtful.”

  Jurgens gave a short barking laugh and hung up.

  Where was she?

  Agent TJ Michaels paced the room. This wasn’t working the way he’d planned it. Nothing had. He’d really screwed up in Rome, and both Miller and Stanley had paid for it with their lives. Had he gotten what he wanted? Sure. He never expected the cost to be that high, though.

  He was trying to make it right, wasn’t he? Trying to be sure that no one else took a dive for his stupidity. At the same time, he had to be sure that Ana continued to help him. She was his only hope of getting out of this tangle alive. She’d known something was wrong in Rome, but the data had said otherwise. She’d gone with the data, just like he knew she would. She trusted it more than her gut. It was her one flaw.

  “Facts don’t lie, right, Ana?” he asked the computer screen, wishing he had an e-mail from her. “Where are you, gorgeous? Don’t let me down.”

  He paced some more. It wasn’t like her not to return his e-mails promptly. He had to know what was going on, and these phrases were key to it. He had a hunch that there was more to the scenario than met the eye, but all this stuff, stuff that didn’t translate word for word, was making him crazy.

  His inbox pinged, and he clicked it open immediately, sagging with relief when he saw that it was her.