by Byrne, Wendy
“You’ll have to show me some of those top secret Special Forces moves. The way my life’s been headed lately, they might come in handy.”
He stopped and looked at her. “We need to go to the airport and book you on the next flight out of here.”
“They have my name and a picture of me. Even if, by some miracle, I make it out of town, they’ll track me down, and that won’t be good. Like it or not, I’m in this until it’s finished.”
Guilt played on his features as he rubbed his hand along his chin. “One way or another we’ve got to figure this out before it’s too late.”
* * *
Instead of taking I-94 back through Milwaukee, she headed directly south, finally stopping in Beloit and checking into a small motel. Shane looked feverish again, even though he’d taken some aspirin only about an hour ago.
“I need to look at that cut on your back. Do you know how you got it?”
He shook his head. “Maybe from the bottle they hit me with, or maybe I scraped it on the side of the dumpster when I was trying to get inside.”
“There might be glass or metal in there. Could be why it looks so red.”
“It will be fine.”
“Your mom was a nurse. You know better. Don’t be such a chicken. Let me have a good look.” Truth was, she knew it was bad. She could feel it down in her belly. The way he didn’t want to eat, the sudden flush to his face, the elevated temperature of his skin.
He grabbed the bottom of his t-shirt, yanking it over his head in one swift movement, causing him to wince.
She turned him so she could see his back. “Come into the bathroom. There’s better light.”
She was no expert, but it looked awful. Poking at the skin around the cut, she hoped to uncover the glass or metal causing the problem. Despite how easy they made it look on TV medical shows, it was impossible for her to detect anything foreign.
After wetting a washcloth and adding some soap, she pressed it against his skin, trying to loosen up the crusting blood and pus clinging to the top layer.
He wiggled his shoulder up and down as if to prove he was fine. “This is ridiculous. It’s a cut. My guts were hanging outside of my body and I survived. A little nick isn’t going to kill me.”
To keep her mind from focusing on the nastiness of the task, she decided to keep him talking. “You kind of glossed over how that happened. Was it a knife?” She continued to work at loosening the gunk around the oozing sore, but more seemed to be hiding inside. Worse yet, there was a nasty smell coming from the area. That couldn’t be good.
“A woman went after Garrett. I stepped in the way.” His shoulders flexed as he shrugged. “No big deal.”
“Who went after Garrett?” She figured the longer she kept him talking, the longer he’d be distracted enough to let her poke around.
“One of the women we were working with turned on us. That kind of stuff happens all the time when you’re working covert operations, so it’s not as if we weren’t prepared. But she took it one step further than usual and went after Garrett. I intervened and got the bad end of a knife.”
“It must have been some knife.” The scar down his middle was huge.
He nodded. “And she was good.” He winced when she pressed at the skin, trying to get more of that disgusting stuff to come out. Unfortunately, it only oozed out in tiny droplets.
“Why did you do it? Step in front of Garrett?”
“He wasn’t expecting it. Besides, he had a family who loved him. I had nobody. I’d be damned if I’d let him die.”
His words tore through her in a hard, swift torrent. A tortured soul, he couldn’t stop blaming himself for being without a family. Why hadn’t she seen that before? All his macho bravado was one big act to cover up the scared little boy he was inside. For a few seconds she felt terrible about all the grief she’d given him initially. But then she remembered all the crap he’d given her, and harnessed the remorse.
“What happened then?”
“I don’t remember much. Garrett wrapped me up in some kind of cloth so my insides stayed where they were supposed to be. We were in the middle of nowhere, so it took about two hours to get to the hospital. I kept passing out from the pain, which was probably a good thing.”
Gabriella couldn’t envision that kind of—excuse the expression—intestinal fortitude. Since Shane obviously had such a high pain threshold, God only knew how much he’d been suffering over the last day or two. He was lucky she wasn’t the one injured. She would have been screaming and crying until he’d probably want to knock her out to put her out of her misery.
“This cut isn’t big, but it sure is infected. You need antibiotics.” While she tried to minimize, she also tried to get her point across.
“We’ll get nabbed right away if I go into a clinic or hospital. I still look like I got the hell beat out of me.”
She chewed on the corner of her lip trying to think of a way out. “Maybe it’s worth the risk. If it seems fishy, we could leave and be on our way.”
“Too risky.”
“Point taken.” She finished with the cut as best she could, and slathered half a tube of the antibiotic cream over the wound. Next, she scrounged around in the bag and found a bandage big enough to cover it.
They went into the other room and plopped down onto the bed. Shane positioned the gun on the nightstand within his reach while she un-stuffed papers from the backpack, spreading them out on the bed between them. He didn’t put his shirt back on, but she tried not to be too distracted.
Instead, she focused on the seriousness of the situation. That was so unlike her it was kind of scary. “You said something about Tony knowing something, and then he got attacked in prison. Do you know if he’s still alive?”
“Not sure. But if he came around, maybe he passed the information on to Vince and Vince sent it to me.”
“Would he risk putting it in an e-mail? And what about the video they were looking for?” It was kind of scary that these questions were popping into her head like tiny bubbles of thought. “Why are you so sure Tony’s innocent?”
“Marcos isn’t an honor roll kid. He’s been in and out of juvie so many times, I gave up trying to count. But he shouldn’t go down for something he didn’t do. He was in Cleveland at the time the robbery went down. His alibi was solid.”
“So why pin it on him?”
“Don’t you get that cops don’t care?”
“Stop with that bull. You know that’s not true. I’ll admit there are some dirty cops out there just like there are dirty lawyers and dirty private detectives. Stop letting your own prejudice interfere with reason.” Her nerves were frazzled beyond belief. She needed him to shake free from this cloud of paranoia and think straight.
He started to run his fingers through his hair before he remembered he had none, then grimaced. “What if Tony got mixed up in this because of something else. I don’t know, maybe he overheard something, or saw something that he could use as leverage. Maybe it worked for a while. Maybe he was even making some money on the side through blackmail.” He shrugged. “I told you he’s not a saint. Maybe whoever he was blackmailing, if he was, decided to screw him over and send him away big time.”
“But why wouldn’t he report whatever he knew, especially once he got arrested?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe there was some way he could be implicated,” he huffed. “This is getting too convoluted even for me.”
“We’ve got to find a connection between that case, the cops and the Blues Stop. What if Annie’s death wasn’t so simple as getting on the bad side of one of her drugged out friends? What if she saw something or heard something that got her killed? What if she told Vanessa and that’s why she got attacked? And who is this elusive boyfriend of hers? Is he somehow connected to this mess?” Her brain started to rapid fire. “Did Annie know Tony?”
Shane punched at the pillow beneath his head. “She asked me about a lawyer for a friend of hers a day or two before she went mi
ssing.”
“What if her friend was Tony? Or what if she was really asking about herself instead of a friend and went to Vince about what she saw?”
“Vince would have mentioned it.”
“Not if he didn’t know the connection between you and Annie. There’d be no reason for him to do that.”
“More than likely she’d mention the Blues Stop and he’d know then.”
“But what if she didn’t?”
“Why do you think she saw something?”
“Remember when I told you I was in the alley when Mack met up with somebody? Let’s face it. If you and Garrett were as uninvolved as you were initially, they could have done whatever it was they wanted to do. When you started to hang around more, then things became dicey.” She tried to conjure up memories from that night without much success. “And what if Mack thought I’d witnessed the same thing Annie had?”
“That’s a big assumption. Besides, you didn’t see anything.”
“It doesn’t matter if the bad guys think I did. I’ve got to think the note and blood I spotted somehow connect as well.”
“Close your eyes and go through that night minute by minute. Why did you go out back?”
Gabriella tried to relive that night in her head. “I needed some fresh air so I slipped out the back door. Mack was behind the dumpster, so I didn’t see him but heard some people talking.”
“Any words?”
Frustrated, she could only shrug. “Not that I can recall. It was shortly after that I found the note in Spanish and saw the blood. Again, it all might be unrelated. Besides, I can’t remember anything specific, just that Mack was weirded out once he spotted me back there.”
“We need to get to the Blues Stop.” He stretched back in the bed. “That’s where this all started. It’s gotta be connected somehow.”
“And the city ought to be the last place they’d look for us.” While the bad guys were chasing all over Wisconsin, why not hide in plain sight?
“We’ll have to be really careful.” He gave the notes a cursory inspection. “They wouldn’t look for us at the Ryans’ house. At least I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t.”
“So you’re on board with my idea of heading back into trouble?”
“It couldn’t get much worse than it already is, could it?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
All their plans to return to the city were shattered when Shane woke up with a raging fever. Gabriella knew all too well he had a fever because he had affixed his body to hers and it felt as if his skin were burning her backside. All that cleaning she’d done the day before must have driven the infection deeper inside his body.
She turned around on the bed to face him. “Shane, we’ve got to get you to a doctor.”
He mumbled a ‘no’ and pulled the covers over his shoulder. His body trembled and his teeth chattered.
At this point, however, she figured she didn’t need his permission. That thought lasted about sixty seconds, which was about how long it took her to recognize she couldn’t move him, no matter how much she wanted to.
Instead, she forced some aspirin down him with a glass of water. She got a washcloth from the bathroom and wet it down with temperate water, wringing it out before folding it and placing it on his forehead.
Then she did a lot of pacing. Once again, she was thrown into decision-making mode without her permission. Even in a small town like Beloit, she figured doctors didn’t make house calls. For a wild second or two she contemplated bringing a doctor here at gunpoint. But that was too crazy even for her.
She pulled out the phone book from the nightstand and looked for medical clinics, thinking it best to avoid a hospital. She selected a few clinics, then looked on a map to see where they were located.
Next, she set about the business of giving herself a sore throat by coughing. Which is what she did all the way out the door and to the car and until she landed at the nearest clinic. Then she tried to look sick, even without benefit of a fever, which she couldn’t fake. She’d thought about drinking some hot tea but figured they’d be on to her if she tried that one.
With her hair pulled back and braided and wearing a non-descript t-shirt and jeans, she went inside the clinic, determined to get drugs for Shane. If that didn’t work, she’d have no choice but to do something drastic. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Luckily, it didn’t. Two hours later, she had a prescription for penicillin in her hands and was making her way back to the hotel room.
Shane didn’t even open his eyes when she came inside, rehooking the ‘Do Not Disturb’ tag on the door. She immediately gave him the penicillin and soaked all the available towels with water and placed them on his body. He fought her at first, but then, as she layered the blankets over his shaking form, he fell into a fitful sleep.
Knowing she needed to do something and doing it were two different things. At this point, she’d run out of options. Even with Shane at one hundred percent, they couldn’t clear all this up without help.
As she alternated between listening to music from her iPod and then Shane’s, she tried to conjure up a Plan B. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no Plan Bs floating around the universe. Her mind remained a blank.
If she could get back to the Blues Stop, maybe she could get inside and find some evidence, although that seemed like a remote possibility. Surely the bad guys and then the crime lab had scoured the place from top to bottom. But somehow it all connected. Shane’s case, the Blues Stop, what happened to Carissa and more than likely what happened to Annie and Vanessa as well.
But how? She contemplated the idea while the Tommy Castro Band sang in her ears, bringing her a moment of calm.
She eyed her newly purchased pay-as-you-go cell and thought about the only person she knew in Chicago she could trust. Without thinking about it one second longer, she dialed.
“Donna, this is Gabriella.”
“I’ve been so worried. Are you all right? Wait, don’t say anything. Remember that number I told you to call if you couldn’t reach me? Hang up and call it.” Without another word, she hung up.
Gabriella rummaged through her purse before she came up with the alternate number for Donna and keyed it in.
“Gabriella.”
“Do they have a tap on your phone?”
“Not sure, but didn’t want to take any chances.”
“Everything is so crazy lately.” Gabriella tried not to dwell on all that had changed in her life over the last several days, but hearing a friendly voice brought back all the uncertainty and fear.
“Are you with Shane? Is he all right, too?”
She glanced at him. He seemed to be thrashing about a lot less and had even managed to kick off some of the covers. She figured that was probably a good sign.
“Yes.”
“They’re saying he killed Mack, and now they’re talking about some other retired cop he attacked in a Madison hotel. It’s such bull—” She blew out a breath laced with pure disgust. “The police keep coming to my house trying to get me to tell them where you guys are. It isn’t as if I’d tell their sorry asses anything even if I did know.”
The unconditional support from Donna brought tears to Gabriella’s eyes. “Shane didn’t kill Mack. And the cop came there to kill Shane.”
“I figured as much.”
“Oh, God, this whole thing is spiraling out of control.” Her heart sped up as a bout of anxiety riddled along her spine. With supreme effort she forced herself to calm down. One worry at a time. “What are they saying about Mack?”
“That Shane killed him over some kind of mismanagement, which is ridiculous. He’d just fire him. We both know that.” She drew in a breath. “I’ve got some more bad news. Vanessa died. I feel awful because of the kid. I guess it’s good that by the time you got there, the killer had already left.”
When she thought about how close she’d come to getting herself killed over the last couple of days a shiver wormed through her, but she forced it
back. She didn’t have time to indulge in fear. “Annie ever mention to you about something going down at the Blues Stop?”
“Like what?”
She chewed on the corner of her lip. “I’m not sure yet. But it’s got to be connected.”
“Not that I can remember.” She was silent for a few seconds before continuing. “I do have some good news, though. Carissa is home from the hospital and fit to be tied about them trying to railroad Shane. She’s been trying to get in touch with Garrett so he can help out with this mess.”
“That is good news. Did she say when he’ll be back?” She desperately needed help, and the elusive Garrett might be the perfect answer.
“So far he hasn’t answered her e-mails, but I’m sure he doesn’t check them every day since he’s in the middle of nowhere. As soon as she hears from him, I’ll give you a call.” She stopped and drew in a breath. “What are you thinking of doing?”
“I’m not sure. There are a couple of cops involved up to their eyeballs in this. I can’t trust that either Shane or I would ever get a fair trial. After I watched them kill Mack, I found Shane with the hell beat out of him in the alley. When we tried to get away, they shot at us. That bartender Stu is a cop.”
“Yeah, he’s a detective. The idiot tried to bully me into saying Shane was a murderer. Got me thinking he’s somehow involved.”
She didn’t want Donna to take a chance, but had no real choice. It was more than clear they needed help from the outside. “How can we prove it?”
“While we’re waiting for Garrett to respond, how about if we pursue Walt Cummings?”
“The former owner of the bar? How the hell could we ever find him?”
“You’re not going to believe this, but he wants to help. Says he knows what’s really going on and wants to talk to Shane. He wrote me a letter. He says he doesn’t trust anybody but Shane ‘because they’re all in on it.’ That’s a direct quote from the letter.”
“Now what?”
“Ask Shane. See what he thinks.”