A Rare Chance

by Carla Neggers

  Then the talk escalated. Joshua Reading was no ordinary guy who happened to like keeping a gun on hand. He was into seriously illegal stuff. Grenades, antitank weapons, miniguns. Whatever he could get his hands on. He could arm a small militia and make a run on Boston.

  Word was, the kidnap attempt was a warning from his dealers not to get too cocky, not to think he could get away with not paying up, with playing his gun games any way but their way. They wouldn’t tolerate any arrogance and recklessness from some rich boy who liked to play Rambo.

  The police investigation into the incident hadn’t turned up any tangible leads. Joshua hadn’t pushed for answers. He hadn’t thwarted the investigation or refused to cooperate. He’d just let it be known that he and his older brother didn’t want to play up such a sensational story when the police were unlikely to make an arrest. The police would look incompetent, and TJR Associates didn’t need that kind of publicity. They were a high-prestige, low-profile company.

  Cam hadn’t learned a thing he could sink his teeth into. Just rumor, innuendo, speculation, maybes, and what ifs, the kind that sometimes ran rampant in the law enforcement community. There wasn’t even enough grounds for an investigation.

  Pete Darrow had worked on the periphery of the investigation. He could have heard the same talk. Had he believed it? Had he hired on with the Reading brothers so he could play the hero and bring Joshua Reading down?

  Or had he decided to use the information for his own purposes? Find the secret cache of weapons, steal them, sell them to the highest bidder. Or just bleed Joshua Reading. Make him pay to keep his habit a secret. Pete had walked the tight rope a long time. He’d put up with the stress, the bullshit, the ugliness of the work itself. He’d been tempted before. He could have fallen off on the wrong side. It happened. He could have seen his chance at the good life he had always talked about and seized it.

  So why would he follow Gabriella Starr?

  Gabriella Starr. Cam rolled the name on his tongue. She’d thrown away her lunch and kept her chocolate chip cookies. She’d charged after Pete Darrow. She wore a funky little pin of some flower on her lapel. She’d shared her cookies with him.

  Maybe Gabriella Starr wasn’t as brass-tacks as she seemed.

  A shadow fell over him, and Pete Darrow dropped onto the bench. “Follow me again, Yeager, and I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp. I swear I will.”

  “Hello to you too.”

  Darrow’s dark eyes zeroed in on his ex-partner. “I’m only giving you one warning.”

  Cam settled back against the bench, drawing his right foot up onto his left knee. He wasn’t afraid of Pete Darrow. Never had been, never would be. “What did you do, duck into the bookstore, give Gabriella Starr the slip? She’s quite the pepperpot, you know. She’d have nailed your hide to one of these trees if she’d caught up with you. Tried, anyway. I don’t think much deters her from trying. Even you.”

  “Mind your own goddamned business, Yeager.”

  “Not my style. First I became a cop, now I’m a lawyer. Minding other people’s business is just a function of my personality.”

  Darrow glared at him, fuming in silence. Cam had felt the sting of his ex-partner’s temper before. Darrow was taller, maybe as strong and as tenacious, definitely more unpredictable. He hated being crossed. He hated finding out Cam was with him, never mind a step ahead. They’d known each other for ten years. For three years, they’d had a difficult, enduring partnership based on a trust and loyalty that sometimes defied logic. The trust came from an understanding, if not an acceptance, of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The loyalty was just there, inexplicable.

  But both had been frayed in the past few months. To Pete Darrow, born and raised in a tough Dorchester neighborhood, Cam Yeager was a trust-fund cop who’d had to prove his commitment to police work. When Cam had started taking law classes at night, Darrow had maintained his partner would never be able to tear himself away from the job. When Cam had gotten his degree, when he’d passed the bar, when he’d announced he was resigning to become a prosecutor, Darrow had taken it all as a personal betrayal. Cam had defected. He’d thumbed his nose at Darrow’s world, so much as told Pete Darrow he was inferior for being a cop, staying a cop. Nothing Cam said could convince him otherwise. Cam had used the job, had used his partner, and now he was out. Darrow refused to see it any other way.

  A month later, however, he’d turned in his own badge. Pete Darrow, the cop’s cop. He was devoted to the job, unable to imagine another life. He needed the adrenaline, the action, the authority. He needed to know he was doing a job worth doing.

  It didn’t make sense that he’d quit, not to Cam.

  “I’m just doing my job,” Pete said.

  “Gabriella Starr doesn’t know that.”

  “Not my problem.”

  Cam had the feeling it was now. Gabriella Starr had something of the foxhound about her. Put her on the scent and she’d stay at it until she dropped. “You trying to rattle her?”

  Darrow jumped to his feet, just a twitch at the corner of one eye giving away the depth of his anger. “Stay the fuck out of my life, Yeager.”

  “Pete Darrow tossing it in to look out for a couple rich real estate and development guys doesn’t make sense. Your work’s always been sacred ground, Pete. Why quit to play bodyguard?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

  “Yeah, you do. Because until I understand—until I believe you’re not doing some dumb-assed thing designed to make you a hero or a fortune—I’m staying on your case.”

  “Go fishing, Cam. Go play with your pals on Beacon Hill. I can run my own life.”

  Cam didn’t relent. “Why follow Gabriella Starr? What’s she to the Reading brothers? You pick her out yourself, or did your bosses put you up to tailing her?”

  Ignoring him, Pete Darrow started into the crowd.

  “Pete, listen to me—”

  Darrow turned, his eyes narrowed, his temper under tight rein. “I see you on my tail again, it won’t be pretty. I promise you, Yeager.”

  Cam sighed. He knew his ex-partner well enough to believe he would do exactly as he promised. “If you need my help, you know where to find me.”

  But Darrow had already melted into the crowd.

  Cam got to his feet, feeling the fatigue come over him. This morning, following Darrow had seemed like a good idea. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d alerted Darrow that his ex-partner was on his case, and he’d alerted a dark-haired, dark-eyed Gabriella Starr that her employers had hired the man who was following her.

  He bit back a curse, pushing his way through the crowd. Hell, he thought, maybe she was the one who’d tried to kidnap Joshua Reading. Maybe she knew who had. Maybe she was his weapons supplier. For all Cam knew, she could have had half a dozen grenades tucked inside her navy suit, and in following her, Pete Darrow was just doing his job.

  But Cam didn’t believe it.

  He had the feeling that before too long, Gabriella Starr was going to be glad she had his name and address on her cookie bag.

  Gabriella barely noticed the tulips coming into bloom in the Boston Public Garden, the buds on the trees, the smell of grass. She’d decided to walk home. It wasn’t a short walk from the waterfront offices of TJR Associates to her Back Bay apartment, but she’d changed into running shoes and taken her time, hoping the exercise would calm her nerves and help her think.

  She hadn’t confronted Joshua or Titus Reading about Pete Darrow and why he was following her. Instead she’d asked subtle questions, gathering more information. Yes, Pete Darrow was an ex-cop hired to analyze and improve the Reading brothers’ personal security following the attack on Joshua. Hiring him had been Joshua’s idea and his doing, with Titus going along reluctantly. He understood his younger brother was spooked. Three masked thugs had run him off the road, bound him, gagged him, and vowed to ransom him for a fortune before a passing patrol car had scared them off. The police had turned up no leads—not e
ven a strand of hair—that pointed to the identity of the would-be kidnappers. If Joshua wanted to lure a detective off the police force, who was his older brother to stop him?

  Gabriella groaned at her own confusion. Nothing she’d learned explained why Pete Darrow had chosen her to follow. Was he checking out everyone in the company? Was he just being thorough?

  Of course, no one else at TJR Associates had her past.

  She crossed Arlington Street in front of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and walked down to Marlborough, arguably the prettiest street in Back Bay, a section of the city built on landfill, part of the huge expansion of Boston during the nineteenth century. The streets of Back Bay were wider and straighter than those of much-older Beacon Hill, the architecture and landscaping on a larger, grander scale. Gabriella’s building was a former single-family townhouse of gray stone, with Victorian overtones. It had a tiny front yard fenced in with ornate wrought iron, its front stoop flanked with huge old rhododendrons, not yet in bloom. Gabriella considered herself fortunate to have found such a perfect location, to be able to afford her fourth-floor condominium with roof rights. She liked her life in Boston. She didn’t need to be looking over her shoulder for a couple of ex-detectives.

  She still had the cookie bag with Cam Yeager’s phone number and address in her leather tote.

  She slowed. Two people were standing on the front stoop. An old man and a honey-haired woman.

  Gabriella held her breath.

  Scag and Lizzie. Tony Scagliotti and Lizzie Fairfax. Her father and her best friend. She hadn’t seen either of them in a year. That they’d pick today of all days to show up was somehow inevitable. And undoubtedly, Gabriella thought, not good news.

  Chapter

  Two

  Gabriella had to invite them upstairs to her apartment. If Pete Darrow were skulking about out on Marlborough, she didn’t want him to see them and report back to Titus and Joshua Reading until she had more information. She’d promised the Readings she was through with Tony Scagliotti. He wouldn’t come back to haunt her, embarrass her, or spirit her off to faraway places in search of rare and endangered orchids. He had his life. She had hers. That was that.

  Except, of course, that wasn’t that. Scag was still Scag, and graceful exits weren’t his style. Deep down, Gabriella had known he would turn up again. It had been like that her whole life. He would go away; he would come back. Before she had died, her mother, who had been a talented Cape Cod florist he’d never married, had helped her to accept Scag for who he was, even as she’d encouraged her only child not to be like him. He was a world-renowned expert on orchids, an eccentric, opinionated crusader on their behalf More than thirty thousand species of orchids existed, and Tony Scagliotti had devoted his life to seeing them all, discovering new species, protecting those that were rare and endangered. It didn’t matter where an orchid was: war zones, crocodile-infested swamps, isolated mountaintops, other people’s land. If it intrigued him, he would go.

  For two years, Gabriella had gone with him.

  Now she breezed on ahead of him and, as a result, didn’t really notice his limp until they’d reached her fourth-floor apartment. He carried a cane, but she’d assumed it was an affectation. Tony Scagliotti in the big city, back on his home turf, playing the dapper old man. But when she pushed open her apartment door and let him go past her, she saw he was stooped, his face gray and wracked with pain.

  “Scag?”

  He grunted. “Yeah?”

  Gabriella swallowed, studying him as he hobbled into her apartment. His dark, full-of-the-devil eyes had gone yellow and watery. He was a wiry man, not tall, with iron-gray hair and ageless features. He was seventy-five but could pass for sixty or ninety, depending on what windmills he happened to be tilting at.

  It looked as if lately they’d been nasty windmills.

  Lizzie Fairfax eased in behind him, her natural elegance in no way undermined by her attire of jeans and expensive cowboy boots. “He hurt himself last week. In Ecuador. He had an accident.”

  Scag swung around, irritated. “I fell out of a goddamned tree. Lizzie here had me dragged out of the hospital and flown up to Miami. She insisted I come up to Boston to recuperate.” He collapsed onto Gabriella’s overstuffed sofa. “Couple weeks, I’ll be fit as a fiddle.”

  Lizzie’s eyes met Gabriella’s, just for an instant. It was enough. Scag was underplaying his injury. He was hurt worse than he wanted to admit, at least to his only daughter. Gabriella suppressed a wave of worry, frustration, anger, fear—the same furious mix of emotions that always assaulted her when she was around her father.

  “We got here on Tuesday,” Lizzie said. “I’m staying at my parents’ place. Scag’s rented a room in Cambridge.”

  In other words, he wouldn’t be mooching off his daughter. After their parting a year before, he probably knew better than to even ask. Yet, seeing him slouched on her sofa in obvious pain, Gabriella had to fight off the guilt. He was her father. With her mother gone, he was all she had.

  Lizzie touched her arm. “He just needs some time to mend. We’ll figure things out.”

  Gabriella sighed, nodding. Now wasn’t the time for I-told-you-sos. But she had told Scag so. And Lizzie too. Rich as ever, pretty as ever, her honey-colored hair long and bouncy, her eyes bright and very green, Lizzie Fairfax loved the vicarious thrill of bailing Tony Scagliotti out of trouble. From the safety of her Miami retreat, she would arrange for bail, plane tickets, cash, lawyers, even the occasional bribe. For two years, she’d done it for Gabriella too. If not for Lizzie Fairfax, both she and her father might still be in a Peruvian jail.

  If not for Lizzie Fairfax, Gabriella thought, Tony Scagliotti would have to confront the realities of his life. He was getting old. He couldn’t keep chasing orchids forever. He had no savings, no pension, no home, nothing but a knowledge of orchids few in the world could rival.

  But Lizzie couldn’t bring herself to stop rescuing him. She loved the drama, she loved the fun of it all. Gabriella understood. For a while, so had she. She understood, too, that Lizzie meant well. She was devoted to Scag. In many ways, he was a surrogate father to her. Whenever he blew onto Cape Cod to see Gabriella and her mother, he had made a point of spending time with Lizzie Fairfax. She and Gabriella had met when they were eight years old, on one of Lizzie’s many attempts to run away, a bid for attention from her disengaged parents. Her father was a prominent cardiologist, her mother from old money Boston. They had a summer house on the Cape. For years the Fairfaxes hadn’t even realized their daughter and Gabriella Starr were friends. For all his many faults, Scag had always been a presence in her life and shown an interest in her. Not so Lizzie and her parents. Getting her to let go of Scag had been an exercise in futility.

  He glanced around Gabriella’s apartment. Two years roaming the world with him had given her a new appreciation for indoor plumbing, never mind interior decorating. The living room, decorated in soothing shades of beige, overlooked Marlborough Street. There was a separate dining room and a small gourmet kitchen, plus two bedrooms and two baths. And, of course, the roof. When they’d parted company a year before, she’d made clear her disdain for orchids. Only now she had dozens—scores—in an elaborate, expensive greenhouse on her roof. They were her one indulgence. She hadn’t meant to have so many, but first she’d bought one, and then another, and now she had more than she had time to care for.

  “You’ve done all right for yourself,” Scag said, his tone more mildly sarcastic than complimentary.

  Gabriella decided not to mention her roof to him. He didn’t need to know she had orchids. “I’ve got a good job. Would either of you like a glass of wine or something? I was going to heat up some soup and bread for dinner. You’re welcome to join me.”

  Lizzie beamed, obviously pleased that the reunion of Scagliotti father and daughter hadn’t come to blows. “That’d be great. Is it your curried corn chowder?”

  Gabriella laughed. “As a matter of fact, yes.” She looked at her fri
end, seeing her relief. Lizzie really hadn’t known how Gabriella would receive her. But how could she have? Gabriella hadn’t known herself. “It’s good to see you, Lizzie. It’s been too long. Come on, you can help.”

  They started into the kitchen, Gabriella vaguely noting Scag’s interest in a white cattleya in a vase on her side table. It was a common variety. She could easily have picked it up in a flower shop.

  Except she hadn’t.

  Lizzie oohed and aahed over the kitchen, opening cupboards, checking drawers, taking the kind of liberties only a longtime friend would take. Gabriella felt a stab of nostalgia and recognized that what she’d felt on her walk home was loneliness. She had an ex-cop hired by her bosses following her, another ex-cop following him, and no one but friends she’d known less than a year to tell.

  But then her father and her best friend had materialized on her front stoop. It didn’t matter how mad they’d all been at each other when they’d parted a year ago. Scag had called her a conventional bore for wanting to go back to Boston. Gabriella had called him an irresponsible idealist. She’d called Lizzie an enabler who was doing him no favor by constantly rescuing him. She’d refused to budge from her desire to have some stability in her life, property, a job. Lizzie, of course, hadn’t called anyone anything, but Gabriella had known she was mad. It just wasn’t in her nature to dwell on anything unpleasant. Best just to put irritations out of her mind and pretend all was well. It was a character trait Gabriella found both frustrating and appealing, since she herself was always one to look reality stubbornly in the eye. In Gabriella’s place, Lizzie Fairfax would simply have pretended Pete Darrow wasn’t following her.

  Yet there was no one in her life, Gabriella thought, who’d known her for as long, or now knew her as well, as Lizzie Fairfax and Tony Scagliotti. No one who would forgive her so readily, or whom she would so readily forgive.

  Lizzie checked out the locked door next to the kitchen closet. “Where’s this go to?”