High-Risk Investigation

by Jane M. Choate

  “Go, Nicco. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”

  He ignored that.

  “Please...go. If you die because of me, I’ll never forgive you.”

  Nicco couldn’t find it in him to grin at the remark. He and Scout were both going to die unless he stopped the timer.

  Get in, get it done, get out. The motto of his Ranger unit rang in his mind. Status of first part: done. He was in. Status of second and third: in progress. Going through the checklist steadied him.

  Nicco could feel the tug of exhaustion that began to eat away at the corners of his mind, the result of unbearable stress. He shook it off. The knowledge that Scout would die if he didn’t do something hit him like rounds fired from an AK-47.

  Patience, he cautioned himself.

  If there was one thing he’d learned as a Ranger, it was patience. Skill with weaponry, close-quarters combat, offensive driving—they could all be taught. But patience had to be won through experience. He chafed against it, but he held onto it, forcing himself to take his time.

  “One of us has got to be smart,” Scout said. “You’re elected.” Though her chin quivered, her voice was strong, and he fell in love with her all over again.

  “We need to stop the timer,” he said, thinking aloud. “Something to wedge against the hand.” The space was a scant eighth of an inch.

  Scout looked down at her necklace. “The pencil.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Carefully, he removed the necklace from her and wedged the pencil against the timer hand. The timer stopped, buying them precious minutes.

  He recalled the words of his commanding officer in EOD. What’s the first rule in bomb disposal?

  Figure out what will kill you first and what will kill you second.

  Wrong. Don’t get emotional over the bomb is first.

  Despite his training, he was definitely getting emotional. You think? Seeing the woman he loved wearing a vest of explosives, yeah, he was emotional right now. Fear was a physical being, scrabbling at him with tiny, nasty claws. Okay. Put a lid on the emotions and get to work.

  Second: don’t look at what they want you to see. Look at what they don’t want you to see.

  What didn’t the tangos want him to see? The trigger wire was obvious. Too obvious, and he ignored it. He flashed her a confident smile. “We go together.” Or not at all.

  A second trigger wire had to be there. Painstakingly, he lifted a red wire. There. Tucked in a fold in the vest, almost as an afterthought, was the second. He cut it. So far so good.

  Third and final rule. You gotta believe you’ll make it out.

  A picture of Scout in bridal white flashed in his mind, followed by another of her pregnant with their child. They were both going to make it out of here. Alive.

  He knew what he had to do.

  So do it. His CO’s words resounded in his mind.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Right back at you.” More prayers took hold in his heart. Nicco poised the wire cutter over a third and final wire. “Hold your breath.”

  “How long?”

  “Until...” he clipped the second wire “...now.”

  Nothing. Only silence. Blessed silence.

  “Is it done?”

  “It’s done.” He pulled away the tape, helped her up.

  “Please. Get this thing off me.” Her voice trembled, echoing the one that caused her shoulders to do the same.

  Carefully, he undid the vest, set it aside. He removed the pencil from the now-defunct timer and placed it around her neck.

  * * *

  Scout heaved out a breath and sagged against Nicco. The nerves in her hands were protesting as they woke up. She felt like a million red ants were stinging her palms and fingers.

  “Here. Let me.” Nicco took her hands in his and rubbed them.

  The burning sensation grew worse, and she tried to pull her hands away.

  “Give it a minute,” he said.

  He was right. Gradually, the stinging sensation subsided, and she said a silent prayer of gratitude that they were both alive.

  “You did it. You cut the right wire. You saved my life. It’s getting to be a habit.”

  “One of my better ones.” His voice sobered. “When I saw you with that contraption strapped to your chest... I prayed as I’d never prayed before.”

  “What happened?”

  “I knew that the Lord was guiding my hand. I’ll never doubt Him again.”

  Nicco’s words filled her with joy. “Deep inside, you knew He was there for you. You just needed to be reminded of it. You are a hero, Nicco, in every way.”

  “How do you do it?” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “Make me feel foolish and strong at the same time.” He framed her face with his hands, and she leaned her cheek against one of the callused palms.

  “Maybe because you do the same to me.”

  “We need to get you to the hospital, get you checked out.”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Not until Patrice Newtown and the rest of her merry band are behind bars.” She gave him a look that brooked no argument. “We’re going to the party tonight. I want to make sure that the Duchess gets everything she so richly deserves.”

  Her brave words were cut short when the two men who had bound her to the chair appeared.

  It looked like bad guys weren’t done with them yet.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The men Nicco thought would have materialized earlier now made their appearance. He recognized them as the two who had attacked him and Scout on the night they’d gone to meet Bug.

  “We meet again,” the larger of the men said. And charged at Nicco.

  Nicco recalled that the man had a glass jaw and zeroed in on that. He pounded his fist into his opponent’s jaw and pummeled with all his weight until the man went down.

  But he didn’t stay down. He leapt to his feet and came at Nicco, murder in his eyes. He wrapped his arms around Nicco’s neck, cutting off the air supply. Nicco bucked, clawed, but the man’s greater weight proved to be too much.

  Knowing he was in trouble, Nicco made a last-ditch attempt to free himself. If he lost consciousness, he was as good as dead. And so was Scout.

  He groped for the man’s eyes. Target secured. Nicco jammed his thumbs in the eyes. He didn’t press hard enough to render the man blind, only to force him to release his hold.

  A guttural cry was quickly followed by the lessening of pressure.

  The man grabbed for his eyes as Nicco burrowed his shoulder into the back of the neck. With just the right pressure, he shut off the blood flow to the carotid artery. A second later, the man was out.

  Scout was busy dealing with the second man.

  At the man’s grunt of pain, Nicco spun around to see her kicking her assailant in the gut with her heel, following up by cocking her hip and shooting out her leg. He looked stunned before he charged at her.

  She dropped to her knees and hunched over. Moving too fast to halt his forward momentum, her assailant tripped over her. When he tried to get up, she locked up his elbow, then used it like a wrench to force him back to the floor.

  Seizing her advantage, she pressed her forearm to his neck. He bucked beneath her, but she bore down until he lost consciousness, a move, Nicco knew, that rendered an opponent unconscious but didn’t leave any permanent damage.

  She looked up, flashed Nicco a grin.

  Nicco brought out the plastic zip ties he routinely kept in his tactical vest and secured the hands of the first man, then the second. Nicco then turned the first one over and none-too-gently nudged him awake with the toe of his boot to the ribs. “One question.”

  The man blinked, then glared at Nicco and Scout with sullen eyes. “Yeah?�
��

  “Why did you and your partner wait? Why not take me out earlier?” The question had bothered him from the moment he’d stepped inside Daniels’s estate and reached Scout without encountering any tangos.

  The second man came around and answered. “The boss lady. She said how we was supposed to let the bomb get you, but if it didn’t, we was to kill you ourselves.”

  Nicco exchanged a glance with Scout.

  “She’s crazy, that one,” the first man added. “She told us to take a video on our phones of you going boom. ’Course, you didn’t. Go boom, I mean.” He shook his head. “Boss lady’s gonna be real mad about that.” Suddenly, he brightened. “She’ll be even madder when she learns we was recording the whole time she was giving us orders. She didn’t know that. An insurance policy, so to speak, seeing as how she has a way of getting rid of the people who work for her.”

  Nicco fished inside the men’s pockets and came away with two cell phones. He tried one phone, found it password protected. “Password. Now.”

  The first man looked sullen. “Figure it out yourself.”

  Nicco widened his stance, stared down at the thug. “Password. I won’t ask again.”

  The man spit out the password. “Happy?”

  Nicco tapped it in, opened the phone, and saw the video the man had recorded. He repeated the process with the second man. “Now I’m happy.”

  He pulled out his own phone and dialed 911, explained the situation. “Suspects are secured.” He thought of Daniels. “Send a coroner’s van, too.”

  “These two aren’t going anywhere,” he said to Scout. “We’ll leave them for the police.” He flashed her a smile. “Newtown’s in for some surprises.”

  “I always did love a surprise party.”

  * * *

  Scout gripped the dashboard as Nicco took a fast left turn on the way to the hotel where the gala was being held. “I can’t wait to see the Duchess’s face when she realizes we’re alive.”

  He didn’t break every traffic rule, but he came close. “That’s a party I don’t want to miss.” He slanted a grin at her. “Your stomach still in place?”

  “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  “You’re something else. First you get tied up, then a bomb is strapped to you, and you’ve still got your sass.”

  “Someone once told me I was Ranger-strong,” she said.

  “Someone was pretty smart.”

  Scout gave the video on the first man’s phone a final glance and grinned. Newtown had had no idea that her thugs had been recording her. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s a video complete with sound worth?”

  “I’d say twenty-five to life.”

  “I wonder how the Duchess feels about prison orange.”

  “We’re about to find out.” Nicco swung the truck into a parking space, and they both hopped out.

  At the doorway to the ballroom, she showed the admission tickets to a man in hotel livery. He looked askance at her and Nicco’s torn clothes but waved them through.

  The party was in full swing when they arrived. Scout spotted Newtown on the raised dais along with the mayor, city council members, a congresswoman, and other dignitaries. The clink of crystal, the scent of expensive perfume, and the buzz of alcohol-infused chatter reminded her of the charity ball where she and Nicco had met. She lifted her gaze to his, saw that he remembered as well.

  Then, as now, the room was filled with beautiful people dressed in beautiful clothes and draped with jewel-studded gold and platinum. A string quartet provided discreetly muted background music, a suitable complement to the rich smell of hothouse flowers. To her mind, nothing could be more contrived, staged and altogether false. Not to mention mind-numbingly boring.

  It occurred to Scout that the setting was much like Newtown herself—glossy, sophisticated, an illusion designed to deceive and to manipulate.

  She and Nicco were about to change that.

  As she took in the formal attire of the guests, she looked down at her own bedraggled clothes, hardly suitable for attending the city’s biggest gala of the year, and grinned. “I think we’re a trifle underdressed.”

  His mouth quirked at the understatement. “Yeah, we probably won’t be making the best-dressed list.”

  “I’ll try to bear up.”

  He took her arm and, together, they marched to the front of the room and climbed the short set of stairs to the dais. The party conversation gradually died, but curiosity at their appearance buzzed just below the surface.

  Scout leaned across the table and got in Newtown’s face. “Surprised to see us? You’re done, Duchess. You’ll be spending the rest of your life in a nine-by-nine cell. It’ll be interesting to see how far your Lady Bountiful act takes you in a federal lockup.”

  Newtown’s expression twisted before smoothing to glass as she turned to the mayor. “I don’t know who these people are or what they want. Please have them removed.”

  The mayor made to stand when Nicco placed a hand on his shoulder, forcing him back to his seat. “You’re going to want to take a look at this.”

  Bemusement turned to horror as the mayor watched the short video of Newtown giving orders to kill Nicco and Scout. “I don’t know what to say.” His gaze collided with Newtown’s.

  “It’s fake,” she said, chin raised to an arrogant angle. “A pitiful attempt by my enemies to discredit me and my work.”

  Scout leaned in closer. “We’ve got two witnesses to back it up. And if that isn’t enough, Gerald Daniels’s body with a bullet in his back. All courtesy of you, Duchess.”

  “How dare you? How dare you speak to me—Patrice Newtown—that way? You’re nothing. Nothing, do you hear me?” She lifted her gaze to stare down those in attendance. “You are all nothing.”

  Those close enough to hear gasped in unison.

  Newtown rose from her seat and raised her head imperiously. “Do you have any idea of how much good I’ve done for this city? There are charities that wouldn’t even exist but for me. I won’t serve a day. The people of Savannah will rise up in protest. They love me.” She spread her arms wide, then closed them to embrace herself.

  “We’ll see how much they love you when they find out that you ordered the murders of two men,” Nicco said. “And that’s just for starters.”

  All semblance of the lady Newtown professed to be vanished as she unleashed the full extent of her fury on Scout. “You’re a little nobody who thinks she can bring me down.” She spread her arms wide. “Look at them. All of these people here to honor me. To worship me. They may call me Duchess, but I am their queen. Their queen, do you hear me?”

  “You don’t deserve honor. And you certainly don’t deserve worship. There’s only One who can claim that.” Scout stared at the woman and saw the monster inside.

  Newtown’s pupils twitched, an involuntary reaction, part of the body’s fight-or-flight instincts. The primal part of her recognized she was in danger, even if the cool and polished woman refused to admit it.

  Her gaze darted from the mayor to the other dignitaries on the dais. Whispers hummed through the air.

  Newtown must have accepted that she was beaten for she made a break for it. Nicco started after her, but Scout stopped him. “She’s mine.”

  Newtown darted behind the wall of curtains. Hot on her heels, Scout tackled her to the floor. After a brief scuffle, Scout grabbed Newtown by the elbow and yanked her to her feet.

  “You’re finished.” She looked up to find Nicco grinning at her and giving her a thumbs-up.

  By that time, the police, with Detective Wagner in the lead, had arrived. His gaze traveled from Scout to Nicco, who filled him in on what had happened and showed him the videos.

  Wagner turned his attention to Newtown. “Patrice Newtown, you’re under arrest for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, transport
ation of stolen weapons, and anything else I can think of. You have the right to remain silent. You have...”

  Scout and Nicco left him to it to withdraw behind the curtains. “You took Newtown down like a pro,” he said. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  Scout brushed her fingers over the reddening scrape on his jaw from the fight with Newtown’s henchman, stood on her tiptoes to press a kiss to it. “I think you’re pretty safe there.”

  Now that Newtown was in custody and the heart-pounding fear of the last hours was over, Scout felt more vulnerable than ever. Had Nicco really meant what he’d said just before cutting the last wires of the rigged vest? Or had the words been uttered in the heat of a tension-filled moment?

  Adding to her uncertainty was the realization that he hadn’t actually said the words I love you, only a casual “right back at you.” She let her gaze move over him and saw the man she loved with all of her heart. Had it only been this morning that they’d hurled angry words at each other? So much had happened since then. Could she be sure of her feelings? And what of Nicco’s?

  “Did I thank you for saving my life...again?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure you did.”

  “I was wrong to leave the way I did.”

  “And I was wrong to order you to leave things to me,” Nicco said. “That’s not who you are. Not who I want you to be. I love you just as you are. Strong and courageous and independent. And so beautiful you take my breath away.”

  The last of her doubts vanished. She stood on her toes to press a kiss to his lips.

  In turn, he skimmed his lips over her throat with its necklace of angry bruises from where one of the thugs had all but strangled her. “I love you.”

  It shot straight to her heart, the three simple words that sent her world spinning. They weakened her knees, turned her brain to mush. And her heart...her heart melted in a puddle of love. “I love you back.”

  He framed her face with his hands. “You are my everything.”

  “And you mine.” Tears flooded her throat. Stung her eyes. And filled her heart. But they were healing tears. She touched a finger to her cheek. Found it wet.