Silent Rescue

by Melinda Di Lorenzo

  “Does he usually follow them?”

  Masters’s shoulders lifted up and down. “He usually follows at least a few at a time.”

  “I didn’t ask for his help.” Maryse didn’t sound defensive—just honest.

  “Not surprised at all. He’s stubbornly helpful. ’Specially when it comes to things that involve Caleb Nank.”

  Brooks’s mouth twisted. “Subtle segue.”

  “Not a lot of time to be subtle.” Masters threw another glance at Maryse. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me how it ties together, but I sure as hell wouldn’t mind knowing why I’m taking risks with my career to save your butts.”

  Maryse’s hand slipped across the car to slide into Brooks’s palm. “You trust him.”

  It was a statement rather than a question, but he nodded anyway. “A hundred percent.”

  “Then I do, too.”

  “Girlfriend seal of approval,” Masters said.

  Brooks knew his partner had dropped the label to irritate him. Or possibly just to get a read on his reaction. It didn’t bother him at all. In fact, it felt right.

  Or maybe not quite strong enough, he admitted.

  He stole a glance at Maryse. Just a look was enough to make his chest squeeze. Yeah, she was definitely more than a girlfriend.

  Brooks cleared his throat. “Tell me what’s happening on your end, Masters.”

  “You mean how did I devolve from being a perfectly sane cop this morning to being a taxi thief tonight?”

  “Exactly.”

  His friend tossed the ball cap aside and gave his head a scratch, then sighed. “Well. I was thinking about you coming home...”

  “Pining for me?” Brooks interjected.

  “Can you shut up for a few seconds?”

  “Probably not.”

  His partner shot him a dirty look over his shoulder. “Anyway. It was bugging me a bit. So I went to the captain this afternoon and asked him if you’d be back anytime soon. He got kinda buggy. Not like him at all. Nervous, you know? So I stuck around the station, thinking something was up.”

  “You spied on the captain?”

  “Had to.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “I said shut up, right?”

  Brooks squeezed Maryse’s fingers. She was smiling a little, which was good, because he was damned sure things were about to get a lot darker. Masters was looking at her again, too.

  “You sure you want to stick with this guy? He’s a serious thorn,” he said.

  “I’m sure,” she said, her voice tinged with amusement.

  Masters sighed. “Fine. Your life.”

  “Back to the spying,” Brooks ordered.

  “I did some paperwork. Just kinda watched what was going on. The captain was on the phone, mostly. Really sweating. Called a few of his favorite guys in.”

  “And usually you’re one of those guys.”

  “Usually I am. But today I wasn’t. So I was thinking about it a little more. You were already on my radar, and also the only thing I could think of that could make the captain not want to tell me what was going on. So I hit up Chatty Patty.”

  “She’s one of our desk sergeants,” Brooks told Maryse. “Tends to know just about everything.”

  “Right,” Masters agreed. “And she did know what was going on. At least enough to tell me it had something to do with Nank and Canada. So then I’m back to the same common denominator.”

  “Me.”

  “Yeah. You. Pain in the—”

  “I get it. I interrupted your day off. How did you figure out I was coming in on this flight?”

  His partner shook his head. “I didn’t. The captain came out and sent me home. So I left for a while. But it was bugging me. And you know how I can’t let something go if it doesn’t feel right, so...”

  “So you stole a cab.”

  “Borrowed one from my cousin. I waited for the captain to put together his unit, then I tailed them here. Wasn’t expecting you, actually. From everything I overheard, they were picking up a girl. Got clearance from both the Vegas people and the TSA to come in and grab her.”

  “Dee White,” Maryse said.

  “You know who the girl is?” Masters asked.

  “We do,” Brooks replied.

  Maryse frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.”

  “Why the hell not?” his partner wanted to know.

  “Because the captain and his guys didn’t get to her. TSA grabbed her as she came off the plane,” he explained. “Why would they do that if they’d cleared Rain Falls to do it?”

  Masters tapped his fingers on the wheel while Brooks turned it over in his head. He couldn’t see the TSA agreeing to something, then rescinding it with no notice.

  “Whoever grabbed her wasn’t TSA,” he said. “I don’t know how they got past all the security, but they did. The captain is going to be pretty damned ticked off.”

  “So who took her?” Maryse asked.

  “My guess is Nank’s men.”

  Her lips pressed together in a tight line for a second. “That’s worse, isn’t it, than the police having her?”

  He ran a frustrated hand over his hair. “It depends on what they want from her. I was assuming Dee had told Nank we were coming. So were they here to rescue her from us? Keep her from talking the way we wanted her to? Or did they do what my sneaky partner here did and intercept the captain’s plans? And why the hell did the captain want her in the first place? Does he know about you?”

  “Lot more questions than answers,” Masters said.

  “No kidding.” Brooks sighed. “We need to regroup.”

  “I’ve got a safe house just outside of Rain Falls,” his partner told him. “We can use it. If the shot-caller agrees?”

  Maryse nodded her assent quickly.

  “Good,” said Masters. “Now maybe you can tell me a bit about what’s happening on your end?”

  “You mean how I went from a single cop on forced vacation to a stepdad-hopeful on a rogue mission in under twenty-four hours?”

  The car jerked to the side as the other man flung his head to the side in surprise. The look on his partner’s face might’ve made Brooks laugh under other circumstances. But right that second, he was having a hard time finding anything funny. All he wanted to do was get to their destination so he could put his police skills to work and bring home the little girl.

  Chapter 18

  Brooks stared at the little pieces of paper taped to the living room wall. They hadn’t moved, or given him any new insight for a good hour, and he could feel a tension headache building up behind his temples. The minutes were ticking by. Each second wasted time that could be spent retrieving Camille.

  “I’m getting back to the part where I just want to storm into one of Nank’s places with my guns blazing,” he muttered, sinking into the couch.

  Maryse shifted over to make a little room for him, rubbing her eyes. She’d been growing steadily quieter since he’d disclosed the majority of her story to Masters. Though Brooks had left out a few of the finer points—like the fact that Cami wasn’t her biological daughter and that her brother had once been his CI—it had still taken the full forty-mile trip from the airport to Rain Falls to do it. He suspected that hearing it all laid out had taken a new toll on her. The display of information on the wall was overwhelming, too. And not in a good way. Like Masters had said, there were a lot more questions than answers, and at the moment, he honestly wasn’t sure what their next move should be.

  “Maybe we should take a break,” Masters said.

  Brooks shook his head. “You know that’s not an option.”

  “What I know is that we’re no
t making any headway. It’s two in the morning, your girlfriend looks like she might collapse, and you look like hell.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re missing something.”

  “Yeah. Food and sleep,” his partner replied.

  “I don’t understand the connection between Dee White and our department. That little piece is the key, I can feel it.” Brooks sighed. “At least we can more or less rule out the idea that the captain is in Nank’s pocket. They wouldn’t have both shown up if they were working together.”

  “That was an idea?” Masters sounded surprised.

  “Just a thought.”

  “Did you think I might be corrupt, too?”

  “If I did, would you be in here with me now?”

  “Hell. I don’t know what you’re thinking, man. You show up back home, unannounced, a woman in tow, all googly-gaga...so there’s a good chance you could’ve been abducted by aliens and replaced with a robot.”

  “Googly-gaga?”

  “Exactly.”

  Brooks chuckled and glanced down at Maryse. Her eyes had closed completely, and the soft rise and fall of her chest indicated she’d fallen asleep.

  “Just a sec, okay?” he said. “I’m gonna move her to the bedroom.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Shut up.”

  He stood, scooped her up gently, then carried her from the living room to the hall. She was solid against his chest and felt right tucked into his arms. So right that he was truly regretful of having to let her go. He knew she needed the rest, though. The nap on the plane couldn’t have done her that much good. She barely stirred as he pulled back the sheets and set her down. When he slipped her boots off her feet, she just curled up her legs and sighed.

  “All right, sweetheart.” He pulled the blankets around her shoulders and stared down at her for a second. “Hopefully, by the time you wake up, Masters and I have things sorted out enough that we can go rescue that kid of yours.”

  He gave the window a quick check—locked and secure—then moved back to the living room, where he found his partner standing in front of all the sticky notes, one hand in his back pocket, the other on their mutual boss’s name.

  “He sent you to Laval on purpose,” Masters stated without turning around.

  “That’s where the corruption speculation came in. But putting aside that theory...”

  “Why the hell would he send you there without telling you why?”

  “I dunno. Something off the books, maybe?”

  “Maybe. But what?”

  His partner moved to tap another set of sticky notes. “Dee White. Is she a CI?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Brooks replied.

  “But you don’t think it fits?”

  “We’d have to put aside the fact that I’m the one who’s run the whole Nank operation from the start.”

  “So maybe she was a CI in for something unrelated and this just came up coincidentally.”

  “Cross border?”

  “Okay. Maybe the captain wanted some insurance and forgot to tell you about it.”

  “Forgot?”

  “Conveniently.”

  “Ha.” Brooks studied the notes again. “Let’s look at it again. We know Dee’s been in Laval for at least a year. The concierge at Maison Blanc told Maryse and me that she’d been employed there—legitimately—for that long. So she couldn’t have been working with Nank directly during that time. Pretty useless as an informant. Captain wouldn’t be able to offer her any perks, either, since she was cross border.”

  “Fine. Not a CI,” said Masters. “You’re a real buzzkill, you know that, right?”

  “Wild speculation is your thing. I’m just here to knock some sense into you.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Could Dee White be a witness? Or is that, also, too wild?”

  “Not wild. But still unlikely.” Brooks grabbed another sticky note and added to the increasing pile. “She came here willingly.”

  Masters shook his head. “You’re right. If she was a willing witness, they wouldn’t have been trying to grab her. If she was an unwilling one, she probably wouldn’t have chanced coming at all.”

  “Why wouldn’t she keep running? Why not do what she said she’d been doing already and get out again? Nank’s men left her behind once they had Cami. She was in the clear.”

  “Hey, Small?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This girl and her daughter...”

  “I know. Googly-gaga.”

  “Hell. You don’t even date.”

  Brooks tensed. “Are we really having a heart-to-heart?”

  Masters shrugged. “Think it’s important to know if my partner’s gone off the deep end.”

  “I’m still on the ledge.”

  “So reassuring.”

  “Look. I wasn’t planning on going up to Canada and meeting the woman I want to spend my life with, but—”

  “Hang on. The rest of your life? Did you pull a love-at-first-sight deal?”

  Brooks ran a hand over his short hair and said nothing. Love. The word hadn’t come into his mind. Not yet. Or maybe just not consciously. But it sure as hell explained that solid wall of warmth that filled him when he thought her name. It made sense of the way he kept thinking about a future together. So even if he hadn’t labeled his feelings yet, there was no denying that love definitely fit.

  Masters let out a low whistle. “Well, damn. Brooks Small. Who’s all wild and crazy now?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”

  “Probably. But since when does that do any good?”

  “Never.”

  “You want me to sing the kissing song?”

  “I want you to help me solve this case.”

  “So you can go back to kissing?” Masters laughed, then lifted his hands in mock defeat. “I know. Shut up. Back to the case. Back to Dee White.”

  “Dee White,” Brooks agreed firmly.

  “Okay. So. Her. Nank. You. The only person who really knows the connection is the captain. He sent you up to Laval. He wanted to get to Dee when she came back to Las Vegas. And the Nank case is on his watch, technically. You’re sure he’s not in on any kind of conspiracy, so why not call him and ask him?”

  “Because it puts Camille and Maryse at risk.”

  “You want to give me a bit more to go on?”

  “I can’t. That’d make you culpable.”

  “Look. The captain doesn’t even know you’re in Vegas, right? If he did, he wouldn’t have let you just walk away at the airport. He would’ve sent someone to stop you, too.”

  Masters had a point. There sure as hell wasn’t anything easygoing about their boss. If the captain knew he’d come back before his leave was terminated...he would’ve unleashed the damned hounds. Which meant that he probably didn’t know anything about Maryse’s presence, either.

  “So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to call,” Masters said. “Even if you just drop a few hints to see if he bites. I can’t think of another—quicker—way to find out what we want to know.”

  Brooks considered it, his eyes sliding to the hall that led to the room where Maryse slept. Then he shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t, man. I just can’t risk doing something that could hurt her. We have to find something else.”

  They both went silent, staring at the maddening pile of information. After a good minute and a half, Brooks opened his mouth, not even sure what he was going to say, but his partner’s stomach growled loudly, beating him to the punch.

  “That’s it,” said Masters. “I’m taking twenty minutes. I’m getting us some pizza. Possibly a beer, if time allows. Do what you want with that time, but
my gut is currently in control, and it will remain that way until I’ve stuffed it with something remarkably unhealthy.”

  Brooks couldn’t help but grin. “Guess I can’t argue with that. Just go easy on the anchovies.”

  “You got it.”

  He clapped his partner on the back, then walked him out. As he closed the door, he couldn’t fight a need to take a breath, metaphorically and literally. He paused in the hall and leaned against the wall. He felt like they were even further away from getting back Maryse’s daughter. Physically, they might be closer. Being able to use that proximity was proving to be difficult.

  For the first time, Brooks really wondered if he was going to be able to follow through on his promise to bring Camille home. He wasn’t prone to false bravado. His case closure rate was over 90 percent. He and Masters were at the top of the precinct. At the top of their game.

  Except where Nank’s concerned.

  Maybe that was the source of doubt. When he’d first said he could help, he’d assumed this case was a separate entity. Not something he’d failed at in the past, and definitely not anything that could be so closely tied to his own life.

  He exhaled in frustration and pushed up from the wall, prepared to get back to work. He stilled, though, as a sudden clatter from the bedroom carried to his ears. With no pretense of calm, he bolted down the hall. He pushed through the door, then stopped. The bed was empty. The pillow was on the floor, and the boots he’d left beside the nightstand were missing.

  “Maryse?”

  There was no answer. His eyes darted around the room. They landed on the closed en suite bathroom door. He stepped toward it and rattled the handle.

  Locked.

  She had to be in there, but his panic wouldn’t ease.

  “Maryse!”

  There was still no response. He leaned against the wood. From inside, the beat of water hitting the tub suddenly came to life.

  She’s showering? Now?

  “Answer me, sweetheart,” he called, “or I might feel obligated to break down this door.”

  * * *

  At Brooks’s statement, Maryse tensed. The knife on her throat tightened. And Dee White spoke into her shoulder.