Swift Edge
Page 24
“Can I get a Pepsi with that?” I asked, peeking under the metal dome at eggs, toast, and applesauce.
He laughed, thinking I was joking, and left.
“We’ll go so you can eat,” Gigi said, hooking her pink leather tote bag over her arm.
“Wait,” I said, in no hurry to eat the rubbery-looking eggs. “Did Irena go anywhere else?”
Kendall shook her head. “She got the phone call pretty much as soon as she got back to the car after visiting the hospital and we went to the World Arena. She drives like Dexter,” she added in a noncomplimentary tone, “and she almost wrecked making the turn into the lot. My face banged against the seat, and I got a bloody nose.”
That explained the blood droplets in the Hummer’s cargo area.
“Poor baby,” Gigi said, brow crinkling.
Kendall had gotten off pretty lightly, in my opinion. I thought about what might have happened if Irena had discovered her, and got the shivers.
“What you did last night—trying to warn Dmitri—was brave,” I told Kendall. Stupid, but brave. I remembered the heroine daydreams I’d invented at about her age—fantasies of helping people exit an airliner after a crash, or single-handedly tackling an armed bank robber to save the hostages—and I empathized with her desire to impress someone, anyone, but preferably the object of her crush, Dmitri. Who had been markedly unimpressed.
She flushed at my words, crossing and uncrossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes met mine for a fleeting second. “Come on,” she told Gigi. “We’ll be late. I’ve still got to do my makeup and get my costume and skates, and you know I like to be at the arena a couple hours before I skate.”
“Are they going ahead with Nationals at the World Arena?” I asked, surprised.
“Duh,” Kendall said with an eye roll. She tugged at her mom’s sleeve and headed impatiently for the door.
With a waggle of her fingers, Gigi followed her daughter into the hall.
After forcing myself to eat half my breakfast, I lay back against my pillow. I must have dozed off, because when I opened my eyes, Dan was sitting in the chair at my bedside, studying me. His bulk shrunk the hospital room, and I was damned glad to see him, even though his presence made me conscious of my undoubtedly ratty hair, my unbrushed teeth, and the skimpy hospital gown that was sagging down my shoulder.
“I’m not that bad off, am I?” I asked by way of greeting. “Last rites bad?”
He smiled. “I brought you this.” He held up a can of Pepsi.
“You’re a god,” I said, taking it from him. I guzzled half the can and let out a satisfied “Aah.”
“Some clothes, too.” He hefted a bulging plastic grocery bag.
My eyes lit up. “Can you bust me out of here?”
“Absolutely. I’ll track down the doc while you dress.” He leaned forward to brush a lock of hair off my face. “I’m glad you’re okay, Charlie.”
The emotion behind his words made me flush. To hide my discomfort, I said, “Okay? I’ve got a hole in my cheek that’s going to make sitting down pretty damn difficult for the next few weeks.”
“Good thing you’re not much of one for sitting down, then, isn’t it?” He grinned and rose to find the doctor.
Getting dressed was more difficult than I had anticipated, even though Dan had—smartly—brought a skirt instead of slacks. Pulling myself to a sitting position via the bed’s handrail, I inched my body to the side of the bed and swung my legs off, letting out a whistle of pain. Standing would be problematic, so I untied the strings of the hospital gown and let it puddle around my waist before slipping the skirt over my head. Shifting so I was propped on my left hip, I worked the skirt down over my hips and let the hospital gown slide to my ankles. My posterior felt like someone was flicking a lighter somewhere inside my glutes. I was starting to think I might have been too hasty in rejecting the last dose of pain meds.
I was barely decent before Dan returned with the doctor in tow.
She took me through some rigmarole about meds, signs of infection, and PT and finally signed the release papers. “You’ll be back here within forty-eight hours,” the doctor predicted with a sigh.
“Why?” I was mildly alarmed. Was I injured worse than she let on?
“Your kind don’t do what’s good for them,” she said. Spinning on her heel, she strode down the corridor, lab coat flapping behind her, a tiny dove with a raptor attitude.
“My kind? What did she mean by that?” I asked a chuckling Dan as he pushed me in the mandatory wheelchair down to the entrance.
“I have no idea,” he said, laughing louder.
34
Having caved in to Dan’s demands and taken my pain pills, I slept for a couple of hours on the couch in my living room, totally wiped out, as tired as the first and only time I’d run the Pikes Peak Ascent, a half-marathon up the mountain. The getting shot thing was worse than the getting-tased thing, I decided, as I drifted off. I awoke to a pounding on the door and Montgomery’s voice calling, “Charlie!”
“Stop scaring the wildlife and come in,” I yelled, glad I’d brushed my teeth and hair before lying down on the couch. I shoved myself to a sitting position, gritting my teeth.
Montgomery strode in, bristling with energy and an outdoorsy scent, stopping inches in front of me. His dark eyes traveled the length of me before he proclaimed, “You look like shit.”
“Tha—” I started, only to find his face suddenly even with mine. Bracing himself with his hands on the back of the couch, he leaned in and kissed me thoroughly. In my weakened and drugged state, I made no attempt to break away, even savoring the feel of his mouth on mine, the clean cedary scent of him, the blood thrumming through my veins. Every inch of me tingled, but I put it down to the drugs. It was a good thirty seconds before he drew away, and I had trouble catching my breath.
“That’s your good-night kiss from the date I suppose is now postponed,” he informed me, lowering himself carefully to sit beside me. “I’ve never met anyone who would go to these lengths to avoid a date with me,” he said, mock-sadly.
“Get over yourself,” I said tartly. “It’s not all about you.”
“You know you don’t mean that.”
“What do you want?” I asked grumpily, wanting him to kiss me again but not wanting him to know I wanted it. “I’m tired, and my rear end hurts.”
“I could kiss it and make it all better,” he said, a mischievous look in his eyes.
“You’re not the kiss-ass type,” I said. One of the things I liked about him.
“I can make an exception…”
“Want a Pepsi?” I asked, way too aware of the heat in his eyes and the muscled length of his thigh pressed against mine on the couch. I shifted away. “There’s some in the fridge.”
He rose and fetched two sodas. “Nice place,” he said when he returned. “It suits you.”
“What was in the packet?” I asked as he settled in the couch.
“Right down to business. You’re nothing if not consistent, Charlie.” He smiled as he said it, though, and took a sip from his can. “The feds say the man we picked up outside the arena is a drug dealer, Jesús Aguilar, medium big, who disappeared from Oaxaca six months back, days before they were going to arrest him in a joint operation with the Mexican police. The CD had photos of him preplastic surgery and with his new face, along with copies of documents related to his new identity as Randall Belcaro. He’s not talking much—lawyered up immediately—but our best guess is that Fane knew he was a big fish, and decided to blackmail him, threatening to publicize his new identity, if he didn’t fork over big bucks. A quarter mil, to be precise, minus a few bills that some lucky concertgoers or janitors will discover under the World Arena seats some day.”
“What does Dmitri say?”
Montgomery leaned back. “Ah, that’s where it gets interesting. Mr. Fane repeated the tale he told you, about being forced to become a courier when Duncan Graham caught him using a stolen credit card to pay for
a tattoo for Dara Peterson. Graham is not in a position to verify this, due to the bullets in his chest, fired, in all probability, by Irena Fane. The bullets match the gun we took off her at the World Arena, and Gigi’s daughter can place her at Tattoo4U around the time of death. We’re still waiting on ballistics results for Edgerton.”
I stared at him. “Irena was still in Detroit when he got shot.”
Montgomery got that superior look that irks the hell out of me. “Au contraire. Her name doesn’t show up on any airline manifest in the last month. My guess is she drove here a couple weeks ago, possibly when Fane got the brilliant idea of blackmailing Aguilar so he could retire from his criminal life with a nice little nest egg, and has been with her son off and on ever since.”
That explained why she had no luggage at the airport. I hated having to admit that Irena Fane fooled me, even for a short while. “So Dmitri says he was forced to become a courier—that doesn’t explain why he disappeared and how he came to be blackmailing your friend Mr. Aguilar. Dmitri’s in this up to his lying blue eyeballs.”
“I tend to agree with you,” Montgomery said, leaning back against the couch and laying his arm casually over my shoulders, “but we have no proof. Fane’s gun hadn’t been fired recently, so he’s not on the hook for Graham’s death or your injury, and a bullet from your gun put Aguilar’s enforcer in the hospital with a collapsed lung and assorted other damage.”
I’d already ascertained from the hospital staff that he was going to live, and I was glad. Killing someone—even in self-defense or to save someone else’s life—is a heavy burden. I didn’t need another death on my conscience.
“It gets worse—or better, depending on your perspective. Fane kept a list of the identities he delivered, complete with copies of the IDs and such that are allowing a slew of criminals and other undesirables to start over again. He’s trading that list to the feds for immunity.”
“What?” I bolted upright, then grimaced as my ass objected to the strain on the stitches.
“I knew that would make you happy.” Montgomery gave me a rueful smile. “It doesn’t exactly thrill me, either, but it’s a done deal.”
“So he’s going to walk away?”
“Skate away is more like it. I understand he and Dara perform their short program Thursday.”
I growled.
“I understand how you feel, Charlie,” he said, easing himself off the couch. “But you know how the game is played. The feds really want that list. They’ll bring down some much bigger fish than Fane once they get a look at it. They’ve already located two pedophiles and a murderer who escaped from custody in Alabama. The greater good and all that.”
“Screw the greater good,” I said. An image of Dmitri jabbing his gun under Kendall’s chin was seared into my brain. “I can’t believe he gets to compete in the Olympics as if nothing has happened.”
“He’s got to win at Nationals first, as I understand it,” he said, looking down at me. “I’ve got to go. Big powwow with the FBI, my chief, and assorted others to decide how we’re moving forward with Fane’s list. You get some rest.” He bent to press a warm kiss on my lips and then drew back, his face still so close to mine I had to cross my eyes slightly to focus on him. “I could get used to that.”
Truth be told, I could, too, but I flapped my hand at him as if his kiss hadn’t lit up my skin from the inside. “Go away. Catch some criminals. Make the taxpayers proud.”
* * *
When he’d left, I threw off the afghan tangled around my legs, reached for my cane—Dan had loaned me a handsome wooden one with the handle carved into a griffin’s head so I didn’t have to use the utilitarian metal one the hospital gave me—and hobbled to the kitchen. Downing my meds and a large glass of milk, I stared into my yard, feeling some of the tension ebb as chickadees and a mountain blue jay pecked at my suet feeder and a breeze sifted snow off the evergreen branches. A lot of people—Gigi, for instance—find the winter landscape dull, but I love the winter palette of grasses and shrubs that range from pale tan and dull gold to reddish brown and mahogany with splotches of green from pines or juniper. As my gaze fell on my hot tub and I mourned not being able to soak in it until my wound healed, the doorbell rang.
I called, “Coming,” and limped toward the door, irritated by how the gunshot wound slowed me down. Checking the peephole, I raised my brows. I pulled the door wide, inviting my guest in. “I guess you got word that it’s safe to come home,” I greeted Dara Peterson.
The girl looked as fit and confident as the day she breezed into my office, and considerably less tense. Her dark hair spilled out from beneath a red tam that flattered her clear skin, and her white teeth gleamed as she flashed a smile. “Yeah. I called home, and my mom let me know.”
“Where were you?”
“Austin. With a friend who’s at UT. He was cool with me hanging at his place for a few days.”
I gestured her toward the easy chair. She flopped into it, swinging one Ugg-booted foot in a carefree way that told me all was right in her world now that she and Dmitri could compete at Nationals and, one presumed, the Olympics.
“I just stopped by to thank you for finding Dmitri, even though I fired you. My mom told me she hired you again, so that all worked out. We’re skating our short program Thursday and our long program on Saturday. So we have a couple of days to train, although it won’t be the same without Coach Bobrova. Dmitri told me what he’s been going through the last few months and I can’t believe it!”
“That’s probably the right reaction,” I said drily. I remained standing—it was easier on my tush.
Her brows twitched together. “What do you mean?”
Dara had paid me to find Dmitri Fane, and I figured her retainer bought her the truth at least. So I filled her in on Dmitri’s criminal activities, from credit card fraud to stealing identity documents and helping Graham produce new IDs so some seriously bad guys could go on being seriously bad under new names.
She bit her lip as I wound down. “Well, he shouldn’t have taken those credit cards, but that Graham guy forced him to help with the identity stuff, after all—and he didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, disgusted. I banged the rubberized tip of my cane onto the floor, realizing as the impact reverberated through my hand that it was a Bobrova-ish gesture. Dara might be only nineteen, but that was old enough to make some hard moral calls. “He might not have beaten Yuliya Bobrova to the brink of death himself, or killed Edgerton and Graham, but he was directly responsible for those deaths. If he’d gone to the police when Graham caught him out—never mind not stealing credit cards in the first place—those people would still be alive. As it is, they’re dead, and Dmitri, with your help, is free to skate his way to an Olympic medal.”
Dara jumped to her feet, face flushed. “That is so not fair! Don’t think I don’t see what you’re trying to do. You’re pissed that Dmitri’s not going to jail, and you want me to punish him by refusing to skate with him. Well, it’s not all about Dmitri, is it? It’s about me and my dreams, too. And my mom, who has sacrificed for years so I could compete in the Olympics. And it’s about America and bringing home the most medals from the Olympics. Dmitri and I are the nation’s best hope for an Olympic gold in figure skating, you know. Japan will get the women’s gold, Canada or Russia will win in ice dancing, and we don’t have a man who will finish in the top five.” Unshed tears glittered in her eyes, and she dug a hand into her jacket pocket. “I came over to give you tickets to our performances, but I guess I shouldn’t count on seeing you there.” She flung the tickets at me, and the light cardboard rectangles swooped and spun before settling on the floor.
“Dara—” I didn’t know what I was going to say, but it didn’t matter, because she blasted through the door and slammed it behind her. I flung the cane to the floor in frustration and then had to hop on one foot, jouncing pain through my torn muscles, to retrieve it from where it rolled to a stop against a table leg.
* * *
Wednesday, Bobrova regained consciousness and identified Aguilar’s thug, the one I’d shot, as her assailant. The police matched the bullets found in Dmitri’s condo with a gun hidden in the thug’s rented SUV, and a recently stitched knife wound in his left arm seemed to indicate he was the man Dmitri slashed at the Estes Park cabin. He admitted to tossing his lighter into the gas-filled cabin but denied knowing I was in it at the time. I actually believed him.
Thursday, I decided a walk was in order so my muscle tone wouldn’t deteriorate completely, but I barely made it a quarter mile before pain forced me to turn around. I spent most of the day in bed, exhausted by my attempt at exercise. While I snoozed, the district attorney filed formal charges against Irena Fane for the premeditated murders of Duncan Graham and Boyce Edgerton—I guessed ballistics matched her gun to the bullet in Boyce—and Peterson and Fane landed in a tie for third after their short program. Angel and Trevor were sitting atop the leaderboard or whatever they call it in figure skating.
Friday, Aaron Wong burst through my door, a smile as wide as the Mississippi River splitting his face. “Mom heard from Nate!” he crowed. I demanded all the details and learned that Nate Wong, now calling himself DuShawn Morton, had indeed scored a new driver’s license and Social Security card through Graham at Tattoo4U.