by Janey Mack
She got up and marched stiffly to the door, closing it behind her.
I considered bringing up the fingerless boy in the hospital but decided against it. Kaplan was my handler, after all.
“I apologize for Agent Kaplan’s lack of judgment in allowing you to default to a deep cover operative position. Stannislav ‘The Bull’ Renko . . .” Sawyer tapped the bridge of his nose and muttered under his breath, “Good Lord, July will have my head.”
I’ve got an in with the biggest Serbian gangster in town, and you’re worried about what my mom will think?
Sawyer folded his hands on the table. “You need to consider carefully what is being asked of you, Maisie. Your confirmation of Renko’s relationship with Eddie V. affirms they are functioning proxies for Goran Slajic and Don Constantino.”
I nodded.
“I’m sure you’ve reckoned by now that Special Unit operates beyond the boundaries of the CPD. I created Operation Steal-Tow as a sort of Midwestern canopy working independently with the many agencies that are affected. Our goal is to combat the multimillion-dollar economic ripple, which affects everything from insurance companies to consumers to unions to American auto exports.”
“Yessir.”
“These are ruthless and dangerous men, Maisie. Five days ago, we lost contact with our second field agent working with Slajic. Before he disappeared, we received a transmission that Slajic has successfully made inroads into the illegal arms market. Which elevates this situation to an entirely new level.”
Edward Dunne and Kaplan entered the room. Edward clicked his black brogues together and threw me a sharp salute. “Congratulations, Field Agent Maisie McGrane. A regular up-and-comer. Why, you’re Special Unit’s youngest undercover.”
My breath came in quick pants. I’m in. I’m really in.
They joined us at the table.
Kaplan nodded toward Edward. “Outfit her with the usual gear.”
“No,” Sawyer said. “I’m allowing this. With limits. She’s going in cold. No spy tech. Live drops only, I want her protected.”
Edward and Kaplan exchanged a look.
Sawyer pointed at me. “You’re out at the first hint of anything untoward.”
“Yessir.”
He gave me a small nod, stood, and said to Edward, “Fill her in.”
We watched him stride out the door and close it behind him.
“Okay, lassie.” Edward smiled. “Let’s discuss our objective.”
The change in Kaplan was instantaneous, ball-buster back in charge. “Renko’s leveraging Mob channels. And he’s clever. He’s getting cars, intact as well as chopped, out of Chicago by every possible method. Air, sea, train, and truck. Goran Slajic’s primary funding is derived from Renko’s proceeds of auto theft within the five-state area.”
Edward nodded. “What we do know is that a large percentage of Renko’s cars are eventually held in Honduras, before shipping to South America, the Middle East, and occasionally Eastern Europe.”
“Our directive has increased from crippling Renko’s organization to knocking Constantino’s operation down a peg or two, as well.” Kaplan sat back in her chair. “We want you to find out how, when, and where.”
Gee. Piece of cake.
“Gear her up, Edward.”
His elfin face darkened. “Walt said—”
“Give her the tools. Let her decide when and if to use them.” Kaplan smiled at me. “You want to be a real live field agent, McGrane?”
I nodded.
She leaned forward on the table. “Then do the goddamn job.”
I walked slowly out of the office and rode down the elevator to Silverthorn Estates’s cheerful lobby. My hoodie was laden with $6K of prepaid Visa cards, a micro bug kit, a tiny cell phone jammer, a signal-detecting watch, and a document scanner pen. Real James Bond gear.
Which brought me back around again as to how exactly the Bureau of Organized Crime’s Special Unit operated. Sawyer was well-heeled and well-connected, pulling together funding from all sorts of sources. The real mystery was how he was able to operate within and separately from the Chicago Police Department.
The distraction didn’t last long. Mostly because I didn’t really care how Walt Sawyer gave me my badge or where he was getting the money to pay my salary. I was a genuine bona fide field agent for Special Unit.
Someday, when I can speak, I will own the Table Club. Someday.
I trotted up the sidewalk to Ragnar in the Challenger, unable to shake the guilt rat from gnawing away at my brain.
Why, exactly, had I failed to mention the jar of finger bones in Stannis’s office?
Chapter 23
Sunday afternoon, Hank still hadn’t called or come by. And I was too chicken to call his office and talk to his sultry-voiced secretary.
Ragnar’s blue pickup pulled into the driveway.
Might as well face the music.
I leaned against the front door, took a couple of deep exhales, and went out to meet the Viking.
What the—?
Lee Sharpe got out from behind the wheel. “Hey, baby.” He opened his arms for a hug.
I stepped in and gave him one. “Hiya. Where’d you get the wheels?”
He laughed. “Cash thought your pal Thor might want ’em back.”
“Ragnar.”
“Whatever.” He threw his arm around my shoulders. “Cash promised me beer and a ride home. How ’bout you take me?”
“Rain check.”
He put me in a mock headlock and mussed my hair. “You’re killing me.”
We went into the great room. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Anything American.”
I got a couple of Coors bottles from the wet bar. He reached over and took one from my hand. He clinked his bottle against mine, eyes dancing. “To rain checks.”
“How’d they stop the car, anyway?”
Lee leaned on the counter. “ESA S.Q.U.I.D. Blaster X-Net. Safe Quick Undercarriage Immobilization Device.” He mimed a 1.5-foot circle about six inches high with his hands. “I hit the remote and masses of webbed belts shoot up into the undercarriage, get twisted in the axles, and stop the wheels from turning.”
I frowned. “You hit the remote?”
“Well, sure.” He licked his top lip. “SWAT just got ’em in, so when Cash called and said he had a practical application opportunity, I said, why not?”
I’ll bet you did.
He crossed his muscular arms. “You’re really not going to drive me home, are you?”
“Nope.” I smiled.
“What if I sweeten the deal with dinner at Everest?”
“Ooh. Swanky.” I pretended to think about it, then gave him the dead eye. “No dice.”
He liked that. A lot. In a player’s perverse way where a “no” is more interesting than a “yes.”
Cash came in through the garage. “Hey, Lee, Maisie. Am I interrupting?”
Lee answered, “Yes.” At the same time I said, “No.”
Cash grabbed a beer. “Thanks for bringing the truck back, man.”
“No sweat. Took the grease monkeys a while to get the belts out, but damage free.” Lee shook his head. “Thirty mph and it locked him up before the end of the block. A winner.”
“Yeah.” Cash grinned at me. “Aw, man. You shoulda seen his face, Snap. Cripes, I never seen a guy so pissed.”
“Snap?” Lee gave me a quizzical look.
“As in ginger snap,” Cash supplied helpfully. “As in under all that blond she’s a redhead.”
Lee pursed his lips in a silent whistle.
“What?” I said.
“You’re hot as a blonde, but you’d scorch as a spitfire.”
Behind Lee’s back, Cash pointed at him and gave me a thumbs-up.
Whatever.
Sunday night and everyone was out. The legal eagles stayed downtown, my parents were at another fund-raiser, Flynn and Rory were working, and Cash, Lee, and Koji opted for bar hopping. That left me, alone, watching Once Upon
a Time in the West, unable to decide who I’d pick if I were Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson or Jason Robards.
The doorbell rang at 9:13 p.m. Hank.
I turned off the TV, then went and opened the door.
He leaned against a post, not moving toward me, face a blank. “Wanna hit the cage?”
Batting cages? “Uh . . . sure?”
“Hustle up.”
I trotted up the stairs to my bedroom, feeling like a whipped puppy. No kiss, no hug, no smile, no nothing.
Hank was angry.
I swapped nude heels for black Keen tennis shoes and my Akris sleeveless leather tunic for an Angels jersey and hustled downstairs. Hank was waiting on the porch. He walked me to the G-Wagen and opened my door, closing it behind me.
No music. No talking.
No fun.
He merged onto the freeway and his phone chirped. He hit a button on the steering wheel. Speakerphone. “Yes?”
A heavy Italian accent asked, “Dis d’electrician?”
“Yes.”
“Eddie wants to know ’bout da problem.”
“No more destructive arcing,” Hank said.
“Whaddafuck you sayin’?”
“The choke coil. Tell him the choke’s been clipped.” Hank disconnected.
I had so many questions that the different muscles in my face ticked independently.
He shot me a sideways glance. “Let it settle.”
Hank worked for Don Constantino. He’d cut ties with Vi and now he was working for Eddie V.? It wasn’t much of a leap that Scarface Junior would want Hank on his team if only to mess with his sister. But why would Hank agree?
“Fire away, Sport Shake.”
“You’re not working for Eddie V.,” I said.
“No.” Hank adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “Notice anything?”
“Nooo,” I said slowly, once again proving I have the situational awareness of a dead bird.
“Your bodyguards retired this afternoon.”
Internal forehead slap.
Electric connections zapped through my synapses. Mant is dead.
It was settled.
Hank took the job from Eddie at Constantino’s bidding. To end Mant. Because Eddie couldn’t control him. And the Don doesn’t like loose cannons.
“Feel better?” Hank said.
My breath came out in a half-laugh, half-sigh. “Lots.” The innate cop in my DNA knew some mutts were meant to be put down. The only difference between me and my family? I honestly didn’t care how it was done.
Hank drove the rest of the way to Scotty Jerome’s Batting Cages. We listened to Cake while my mind kept spinning.
The parking lot was empty except for a single car. Hank parked in the far end, popped his seat belt, and turned in his seat. My mouth went dry.
“Wanna neck?” He grinned and pulled me to him.
He slid his hand up beneath my hair, fingers on the nape of my neck. He tugged me close and started kissing me. I went light-headed. The want, the black hot need for him, always just beneath the surface.
A lift and a jerk and I was in his lap, his hand sliding up my shirt, my back arching involuntarily. His fingers brushed across the devil’s paper cut.
I sucked in my breath.
He lifted my shirt.
“What’s this?”
“Jeff Mant’s parting gift.”
He eased my shirt back down and cupped my face in his hands. “Let’s go.”
“Can you still hit?” Hank asked, giving a nod to Scotty, who went and unlocked the door to the cages.
“My swing wasn’t much before, so I doubt it’ll be worse than usual.”
There are some sports you take to naturally, instinctively. And others, where no matter how long and hard you try, you’ll never top mediocre. As far as baseball went, I was doomed to stat-geek—memorizing batting averages, RBIs, and box scores and eating hot dogs.
Hank went first. Swinging loose and easy, taking ten pitches at a time, ramping up from 50 to 85 in 5 mph increments.
I watched him from outside the fence, fingers twined in the chain link, forehead on the cool steel.
Over and over, his shoulders bunched, body tensed as he hit launch position, the millisecond just before the bat began to move forward.
His swing was smooth, consistent, powerful. The stride and rotation of his hips, the ultimate mastery of repeatable motion. Each ball seemed to warp on his bat as he hit the sweet spot again and again.
I could have watched him all night.
“Your turn.”
I entered the cage and took the bat. Hank set the articulated arm in motion at 45 mph and joined me. “Okay, Slugger. Eye on the ball.”
I ting-ed the first one up into the ceiling netting. Damn.
It’s all in the eyes. Almost all professional athletes have substantially better vision than the average population. They have a wider peripheral field, have better depth perception, can change focus faster, and have greater contrast sensitivity. Hank had the vision and the hand-eye coordination of a professional athlete.
Graced with the peepers of a mere mortal, I, however, whiffed and whiffed often. I choked up on the bat.
Hank said from behind the plate, “I want you to quit.”
“Quit what?” I said and actually connected, knocking out a second-rate line drive.
“Everything.”
I glanced back at him, then back to the pitching machine, just in time to ting the next pitch off the end of my bat into the ground three feet in front of me. “What?”
“Quit.”
I swung and missed. “And do what?”
“Nothing.”
What is he playing at?
I squared up my stance and took a good look at the machine. “Why?”
“Would a ring and a license help?”
Another ball whizzed past my shoulder. My mouth dropped open. The bat fell from my nerveless fingers as I spun to face him, stars in my eyes.
Oh my god, are you asking me to marry you?
“Doesn’t matter either way,” he said.
Huh?
He bolted at me, shot his hand out, and caught the ball zooming toward the back of my head with a smack.
I goggled at him.
“Situational awareness, Peaches.” Hank tugged me by the front of my shirt across the plate.
“Thanks.” I tried to blink the haze away. “Does it sting?”
“No.” His mouth quirked up at the corner.
And as I looked up into the face of the man I loved beyond all reason, I realized he hadn’t actually asked me to marry him. He’d asked if a ring and a license would help.
The fact that Hank would marry me to fulfill my need—that he didn’t care one way or another—wasn’t wonderful.
It was a baseball bat to the chest.
A ball smacked against the netting.
I needed him to want to marry me.
And he didn’t.
I tucked my hair behind my ears. I was the only team member the BOC had in place with Stannislav Renko. And this was my shot. My chance to prove to my family, Hank, and most of all myself, that I had what it took to be a cop.
“Maisie?” Hank said.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t think it’d help right now.”
Hank drove us home to his house, completely unaffected by the shooting down of his potential marriage vow.
The pain of telling him “no,” however, had turned my rib cage into a NuWave infrared oven, roasting my heart from the inside out.
We entered the house. “Drink?” he said. “Or Vanilla Swiss Almond?”
“Ice cream, definitely.”
He got a fork, a spoon, and a tub of Häagen-Dazs. But instead of heading toward me and the couch, he disappeared down the hallway toward his bedroom. “C’mere.”
I trotted after him into the bathroom. He started kissing me, backing me slowly into the cabinets. When I bumped up short, his hands slid to my waist and without stopping, s
et me up on the counter.
He broke away to hand me a fork—because the part I like best are the chocolate-covered almonds—and opened the ice cream.
In between bites and deliciously chilly kisses, I wound my legs around his hips. He slid my shirt up. I raised my arms and he tugged it over my head.
He undid my bra with one hand and eased it off. He ate another spoon of ice cream, twisting the spoon so it rested against the roof of his mouth, and bent his head to get a closer look at the stubborn monkey-blood dye that stained my skin. He set the spoon on the counter. “Is that . . . Mercurochrome?”
“Merthiolate,” I said.
“They quit selling that in the States, Angel Face, about the time you were born.”
“Oh?”
“Contains mercury.”
Nifty. Naturally, the EPA cares more about a bluefin tuna than a Serbian.
“Who’s the doc?” His mouth turned in a wry smile. “Not many prefer merthiolate over bacitracin.”
Yeah. Tell me about it.
I tried to smile but couldn’t. He was so close, I couldn’t think . . .
“Cat got your tongue?” Hank growled into my ear before nipping the shell. “Maybe I’ll just suck the name right out of your mouth.”
Wow.
He kissed me then. Expertly, ruthlessly, and I thought I might drown. I wanted him to want me with the same aching desperation. “Hank—”
“Shhh.” He laid a finger across my lips. “You’re allowed a secret or two.”
His pale, almost colorless eyes had gone steely and cold. The faintest hint of gray-blue washed to nothing. I tried to swallow and couldn’t.
“It was painful,” he said in a reassuring voice.
I cocked my head, face scrunched up in a squint.
Hank rasped his scruffy chin down my bare shoulder. Shivers cascaded down my spine. “He took a good long while to die.”
Jeff Mant.
Chapter 24
I woke up at five o’clock. Just because Leticia transferred me to desk duty didn’t mean my body knew it. Hank was already out of bed. I took a shower, taking extra time getting ready for work. I put on my uniform. I’d rather trash it than my street clothes in the Mold Central file room. Not to mention I’d be a constant reminder to Leticia of her lost quota, as well as a not-so-subtle irritation to the PEAs that I was still one of them.