Code Name: Willow

by Paula Graves

  I have Marguerite. In Picayune. Call ASAP.

  Behind Jack, Remy gasped. "What the—"

  Jack punched in Laura's cell phone number, his pulse pounding in his ears.

  She answered on the first ring. "Hi, Jack."

  Nearby, Maggie's voice rang out. "Don't tell her anything, Jack!"

  "I want to talk to Maggie," Jack told Laura.

  "Sure."

  There was a brief pause, then Maggie's voice greeted him. "Don't do anything she tells you to do."

  "If you think I'm going to abandon you—"

  "Please, Jack, I'll be okay. Don't listen to her!"

  There was the sound of a brief tussle on the other line before Laura spoke. "I would suggest you ignore Marguerite's histrionics, Jack. I'm here to help you. All of you."

  "Where are you?"

  "Lowry's Pawn Shop in Picayune."

  "Pawn shop?" Jack frowned. Why in the world was Maggie at a pawn shop?

  Then all the little discrepancies that had been nagging at him all morning fell into place. The trip to the "Laundromat" the day before. The missing ring.

  He knew the answer before Laura said it aloud.

  "It seems Marguerite pawned a thirty-thousand dollar ring here yesterday for a measly four grand. Today, she came back to redeem it."

  Jack sank into one of the dining room chairs. "What's the name of the pawn shop again?"

  Maggie stared at Laura, sick with anger and shame. Of all the ways for Jack to find out what she'd done . . .

  "Lowry's Pawn Shop," Laura repeated into the phone, apparently answering a question from Jack. "Just off the main highway. You'll see it from the road." She cut her eyes toward Maggie as if to make certain she hadn't made a run for it.

  God knows, Maggie was tempted. She didn't know what she dreaded the most-finding out just what Laura had planned for them all or facing Jack now that he knew she'd lied to him. She leaned against the counter, fighting a bitter rush of tears.

  Laura disconnected the phone and slipped it into her pocket. She cocked her head slightly as she looked at Maggie. "You know, I'm really not the bad guy here."

  "Oh, please."

  "I'm not holdin' you in custody, am I? I haven't done anything to hurt you."

  Nothing physical, anyway. Maggie glanced over her shoulder. The pawnbroker was watching them, his brow wrinkled with concern. "Not while there's a witness," she murmured.

  Laura shook her head, her expression betraying her exasperation. "Don't be such a drama queen. I'm trying to help you out here, believe it or not. As soon as Jack gets here—"

  "You know he won't let you do anything to me."

  Laura actually flinched. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked toward the pawnbroker's front counter, her brow furrowed. "I know that."

  "Why are you here alone? Why no cops?" Maggie took a step away from Laura, trying to keep an avenue of escape open in case she needed one.

  "I'd rather handle things my way without gettin' anyone else involved."

  Maggie cocked her head. "I can't say that sounds very reassuring."

  A flicker of amusement lightened Laura's dark eyes. She stepped toward Maggie, closing the distance Maggie had just put between them. "I guess not. So how about this? I think Remy Chauvin is tellin' the God's honest truth about Mark Blevins."

  Chapter 14

  The Beretta could do over a hundred, and Jack was tempted to give it a try, but good sense prevailed. Nevertheless, he kept his speed above seventy, not particularly worried about being chased down by a speed cop. Compared to leaving Maggie alone with Laura Sandoval one moment longer than necessary, a high speed chase seemed like the lesser evil.

  "Do you think she'll hurt Doc?" Remy clutched the dashboard with one hand, his knuckles white. His eyes were large and dark in his anxious face.

  "I don't think so." He didn't, really. Even if Laura was part of the mess Remy had gotten himself into, it was in her best interests to keep Maggie alive until he and Remy arrived. Laura surely knew that he wouldn't step foot into whatever trap she was setting until he saw Maggie alive and well.

  "There it is!" Remy pointed.

  Jack followed his gaze and found the sign. "Lowry's Title and Pawn" in large red letters, just like Laura said. He took the next turn and followed the winding access road, pulling into a gas station a few businesses up from the pawn shop.

  "What are you doing?" Remy asked.

  "Playing it smart." Jack pulled up behind a large pick-up truck and shut down the engine. From this vantage point, he had a pretty good view of the pawn shop, but someone at the shop couldn't easily spot him.

  He dialed Laura's number again. "Are you inside the pawn shop?" he asked when she answered.

  There was a brief pause, and then Laura said, "Yes."

  "I want you to send Maggie outside."

  "Or what?" Laura's voice was tight with anger.

  "Or I'll come get her. You don't want me to do that."

  Laura laughed. "For God's sake, Jack. Marguerite's drama queen complex must be contagious. We'll both come out. Okay?"

  There was a murmured exchange; Maggie seemed to be resisting. "Let me talk to her," Jack said.

  Maggie came on the phone. "She wants me to go with her."

  "Do it. It's okay."

  Jack held his breath, waiting to see what she decided. Obviously she still didn't trust him, or she wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Maybe he really wasn't anything more than a notch in her bedpost.

  After a long moment, the door of the pawn shop opened and Maggie walked out, Laura behind her. Laura was holding her cell phone but didn't seem to be armed.

  Jack scanned the road with watchful eyes for any sign that Laura had set a trap. At ten a.m. on a Thursday, traffic on the access road was light. A handful of businesses lined the road, but there was no obvious place for an ambusher to hide.

  "Jack?" Laura's voice sounded impatient.

  "See the Chevron station up the road?"

  Laura peered toward the gas station. "Yeah.

  "Walk to that station. Go inside the food mart and wait."

  As he watched, Laura told Maggie what to do. Maggie grew tense. Over the phone line, he heard Laura say, "Look, Jack said do it, not me. Don't tell me you don't trust him, either."

  Maggie's shoulders slumped. Then she straightened, lifted her chin and started walking toward the Chevron station.

  Jack lost sight of them briefly when they crossed in front of the pickup truck in front of the Beretta. "Get down where you can't be seen," he told Remy, opening the driver's door as quietly as he could. Rounding the car, he padded up behind the two women. He watched their reflections in the food mart windows the food mart, waiting for one of them to notice him.

  Maggie saw him first. Her eyes widened, and her steps faltered as she stepped up on the curb, almost making her trip. He shook his head, and she caught herself, turning to Laura as she reached for the door handle. "What now, we grab a Slurpee and chill out waiting for Jack's next move?" she asked Laura.

  Laura spoke into the cell phone. "Now what, Jack?"

  Jack slid in the door behind them before it closed. "Now you tell me what the hell kind of game you're playing," he murmured in Laura's ear.

  She whirled around, eyes wide. "God, you scared me!"

  He pulled Maggie behind him. "You're lucky that's all I did to you."

  Laura's eyes narrowed. "You do love playin' knight in shining armor, don't you?"

  "Cut the old crap and tell me why we shouldn't walk out of here right now."

  "I don't see why we don't," Maggie muttered.

  "I believe Remy Chauvin is tellin' the truth." Laura lowered her voice. "I think he saw Mark Blevins shoot a man named Nicky Tamburello, a Philly mob hit-man who turned up dead in the Pontchartrain a couple of days ago."

  A hit-man? Something about that information nagged at the edges of Jack's mind. It was important somehow . . .

  "We aren't sure why he killed Tamburell
o, but we suspect it has somethin' to do with Blevins' extracurricular activities. He's dirty as mud, and I've spent the last six months tryin' to prove it." As a customer entered the store, passing close, Laura nodded toward the door. "Let's take this outside, okay?"

  Jack put his arm around Maggie, keeping her close, and followed Laura outside. He spared a look at Maggie, meeting her wary eyes. She looked afraid and ashamed.

  She should. Shame was nothing next to the sick ache that had settled in the pit of his gut when he'd realized his hopes she might actually feel something real for him were nothing but a fool's wish. Forget loving him; she didn't even trust him. Their lovemaking had been nothing but another one of her games.

  He forced himself to move past the festering pain. There would be time to work through his regrets later. Right now, he had to figure out whether Laura Sandoval was friend or foe.

  Maggie leaned against the passenger door of Jack's Beretta, her body placed strategically between the car and Laura Sandoval so that the other woman couldn't see Remy hunkered down in the floorboard in front of the passenger seat. Not that it made much difference. Laura had eyes only for Jack, drinking him in like she'd been stuck in the desert for weeks without a canteen.

  "I didn't send Cooper to Mobile," she was saying, her voice low and oozing sincerity. Maggie curled her lip in distaste.

  "You think Cooper may be part of this thing?" Jack asked.

  "I don't think so. But he's not in on my investigation."

  Jack's teeth worried his lower lip. Maggie knew that expression. He was considering his next move, thinking it through like moves on a chess board. "What do you want us to do?" he asked Laura.

  "Come back to New Orleans with me."

  "No," Maggie said. "We're not going anywhere with you."

  Jack gave her an admonishing look. Her first flicker of anger was quickly swamped by shame. It poured through her, hot and relentless. Jack had every reason to be disappointed in her for lying to him, every reason not to listen to her opinion on anything. She'd just have suck it up and deal with it.

  "What good would it do for us to come back with you?" Jack asked Laura.

  "What good is it for you stayin' out here with people lookin' for you?" Laura countered. "I have extra sofas and a guest room. You're safer there than out here on the run."

  "I doubt that," Maggie growled, putting aside her regrets to focus on the trouble at hand. Jack may not want her opinion, but she'd be damned if she was going to keep her mouth shut. Too much was on the line. "How do we know this isn't a trap?"

  "If I wanted you in custody, I'd have the cops with me."

  "Custody?" Maggie asked. "I think you want us dead."

  "Maggie—" Jack began.

  "Think about it," she interrupted. "Why didn't she bring the cops? Afraid they might ask inconvenient questions?"

  Laura threw up her hands. "You are certifiably insane."

  "Maggie has reason to worry about her safety," Jack said softly. "Someone broke into my house while she and Remy were there. They weren't looking to steal the silverware."

  "Okay, fine. You have reason to be paranoid. So how do I prove I'm tellin' the truth?" Laura addressed Maggie directly.

  Maggie considered the question. Was there really anything Laura could do to prove her honesty, or was that impossible, given the combination of circumstances and past history?

  "For starters," Jack said, "leave your car here. Maggie drives. I sit in the back where I can keep an eye on you."

  Maggie wasn't sure she liked the sound of that, but she had to admit it was definitely safer than letting Laura have any sort of control over their drive back to New Orleans.

  "Deal?" Jack asked.

  Laura looked from him to Maggie and back, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed tight with annoyance. She turned her gaze back to Maggie once more, her dark eyes

  flashing. "You're really more trouble than you're worth."

  "Deal?" Jack repeated.

  Laura sighed and looked back at him. "Deal," she said.

  Maggie's heart skipped a beat.

  They were going back to New Orleans.

  Laura's apartment building had started life as a turn of the century textile mill in New Orleans' Warehouse District. The sprawling building spanned nearly a whole block, its red brick façade still looking more like a mill than an apartment complex. A tall brick smokestack stood in one corner of the grounds, its top half visible above the wall that circled the entire place.

  From the backseat, Laura pointed out an ornate iron gate set into a brick wall near the middle of the block. "Punch in my key code at the security panel. Four three nine five."

  Maggie pulled up to the concrete pillar that housed the keypad and punched the code. The gate swung open slowly and Maggie drove the Beretta through, trying to tamp down the feeling that she was driving into a trap.

  Inside the gates, the factory atmosphere gave way to a funky urban jungle of ivy-draped balconies and haphazard flower gardens strewn with an eclectic collection of yard art, from kitschy gnomes to sweeping abstracts constructed of scrap metal and spare auto parts. An Olympic-sized pool occupied almost the entire west corner of the courtyard, a modern oddity plunked down in the middle of living history.

  Laura led them inside the apartment building through a covered walkway from the parking garage. She said little as they walked. In fact, she'd been uncommunicative for most of the drive from Picayune—annoyingly so, for it seemed to Maggie that sixty minutes was plenty of time for Laura to explain just what, exactly, she was up to.

  She had managed to find time to catch up with Jack during the drive, wasting no opportunity to remind him of the old times they'd shared. Maggie's jaw ached from clenching her teeth for forty miles, swallowing every snide, jealous remark that occurred to her so that she wouldn't blurt it out and make herself look even worse in Jack's eyes than she already did.

  After all, Jack had done his share of walking down memory lane, damn him, warming to the subject as the miles rolled past and they neared the Crescent City. If Remy hadn't kept up a constant patter of questions and comments from the passenger seat, Maggie might have felt completely invisible.

  Obviously, Jack was furious at her. And the drive to New Orleans hadn't done much to improve his feelings, judging by the careful distance he kept from her as they followed Laura into the apartment lobby.

  His cold-shoulder act was starting to make her angry. Yes, she'd lied about the ring. Yes, she'd failed to tell him she was going to the pawn shop to redeem it on her trip into Picayune. But she'd had time to think on the drive back to New Orleans, to consider the options she'd been faced with when Jack left for Mobile. There'd been no guarantee that he'd come back to her. Anything could have happened in Mobile—look how close he'd come to walking into a trap.

  She'd had Remy to think about. They had needed money in case they needed to make a quick run for it. Even Jack had understood that, or he'd never have risked sneaking into his office to get his own stash of safe money.

  The only difference between them was that she'd lied.

  Was that really unforgivable?

  Laura led them up two flights of stairs, turning to look at Jack as they reached the hallway. "There's somethin' I need to explain—"

  Jack stopped so abruptly that Maggie stumbled into him from behind. "Son of a bitch," he growled. He reached back and grabbed Maggie's arm, keeping her still behind him.

  "What is it?" She found she was whispering, though she wasn't sure why.

  "Cooper," Laura breathed.

  Maggie heard shoe soles clacking against the hardwood floor of the hall, slowly coming closer. Panic rippled through her gut. Cooper? The F.B.I. agent Jack had seen the morning before in Mobile?

  "Go back to the car. Now!" Jack told Maggie.

  "No," Laura said quickly. "I think Cooper's one of the good guys. And we'll need his connections before this is over."

  Jack hesitated, his fingers still closed around Maggie's arm. She pee
red around him to see a tall, sandy-haired man dressed in a gray silk suit walking toward them, his steps unhurried and his expression a mixture of surprise and curiosity. He didn't look particularly threatening, but by now, Maggie knew that danger didn't always wear a scary face. She curled her fingers in the back of Jack's t-shirt, reaching behind her to make sure Remy was out of the line of fire.

  "Jack Bennett." Agent Cooper's voice was low and well-modulated, his accent mostly neutral, although Maggie thought she caught a whiff of Texas twang in his vowels. He looked like a Texan, rangy and confident, closing the distance between them with unhurried, long-legged strides.

  "Travis Cooper," Jack responded, his voice gravelly with tension. His grip on Maggie's arm tightened. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see you.

  "Funny, I'm surprised as hell to see you." Cooper turned his gaze to Laura, his stern expression belying his light tone of voice. "You never call, you never write . . ."

  "Why are you here?" Laura asked.

  He held up a bag of doughnuts. "Called your office; they said you were working from home. Thought I'd bribe you with sugar-coated goodness and see if your troll through the pawnshops had netted any leads." He cocked his head slightly, turning his gaze back to Jack. His gray-eyed gaze slid past Jack to meet Maggie's. "You must be Marguerite Cole."

  The sound of her former name on the F.B.I. agent's tongue snapped the tension that had been building in Maggie for over an hour. She pulled her arm free of Jack's grip and stepped out from behind him, lifting her chin. "Maggie Stone," she corrected. "And I'd like to know what you plan to do with us."

  Cooper's shapely lips curved in a half-smile. "Damned good question. Any suggestions?"

  "Well, you could let us go and pretend you never saw us."

  His smile turned into a chuckle. "Bzzzzt. Try again."

  "How about protecting us?" Jack suggested. "We're not the bad guys here."

  Cooper crossed his arms. "Well, let's see, the boy there took Miss Co—Miss Stone captive at knifepoint." He looked pointedly at Jack. "You compounded the problem by spiriting them away to—" He glanced expectantly at Laura.