Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “I’m barefoot because I’m dressed for bed,” she responded tartly. “Which is where I would be right now if some crook hadn’t decided to rob the house I was sleeping in.”

  He smiled. “Give me your other foot.”

  He nudged her now sock-clad foot off his leg.

  Mick complied, plopping her foot on his thigh while keeping a precautionary watch on the black expanse of water in front of them. She cast glances full of greedy anticipation at what he was doing as he rolled the second sock over her frostbitten toes and eased the stretchy cotton past her heel. Her pulse-quickening reaction to his touch didn’t abate, but she managed to ignore it by concentrating on the wonderful comfort of the sock.

  “That feels so good,” she sighed as he pulled the sock all the way up her calf.

  As soon as she heard her own words, Mick could have bitten her tongue. Though she hadn’t meant it that way, the remark had sounded sexual, sexy. Their eyes collided, and Mick realized that a certain type of man might take her involuntary expression of pleasure for a come-on and respond accordingly. Well, correcting any mistaken impression this guy might have gotten would be easy enough by, say, flattening him with something like a half hip throw if he tried anything. But still, she really didn’t want to go there. The situation was already complicated enough.

  “Cold feet, warm heart,” was all he said as he finished the task with brisk efficiency, then dropped her foot. Mick was relieved to realize that apparently he wasn’t that type of man. “At least, that’s what they say. You’ll have to tell me if it’s true.”

  “Definitely not,” she assured him.

  “Why is that not a surprise?” His tone was sardonic.

  Her feet were already going all pins and needles as they slowly began to thaw. Despite the slight discomfort, it was good to feel them beginning to warm up. At least she wasn’t going to lose any toes.

  “Mittens,” he announced, holding up a pair of fuzzy pink ankle socks that he had retrieved from the pile. The boat was skipping through the water now, bump -bump -bump -bump, and he had to rest back against the console for balance again.

  Judging that they were now far enough away so that she didn’t have to risk pushing the engine to the max anymore, Mick eased back on the throttles enough to where the ride smoothed out a little, then she peered through the darkness at what he was holding up to be sure she was seeing what she thought she was.

  “Those look like socks to me.”

  “That’s because you have no imagination. Here, give me your hand.”

  She made a face at him, then, operating on the theory that socks on the hands were better than nothing in this cold, she held out her left hand. He took it, his bare hand warm and strong as he gripped her fingers. Pulling the sock down over them, he said, “Stick your thumb out,” and she did, thus discovering that he’d made a slit for her thumb.

  Like he’d said, mittens.

  “Good thought.” Holding out her other hand, letting him put the other sock on it, she relished the comfort he’d provided. Considering that he was her soon-to-be prisoner, she felt the tiniest pang of conscience at the thought that at the end of the night she was going to be putting him in handcuffs. Making mittens for her and putting socks on her cold feet was really way above and beyond any usual perp-cop interaction, and, like a stirring sexual attraction, it was the kind of thing that could potentially cloud her judgment, she realized, if she was the kind of cop that let it. Which she wasn’t. It helped to keep in mind, too, that he probably didn’t yet realize that she meant to haul him off to jail as soon as she possibly could. If he did, he’d probably be trying to lock her in the head, or worse.

  “It was, wasn’t it? I found some boots. They’re probably a little big for you, but they’re better than nothing.”

  Looking where he indicated, Mick saw that he’d brought her a pair of the knee-length black rubber boots they often used when they went ashore on the islands that dotted the lake.

  “They’ll work.”

  Without a word he reached into the breast pocket of the coat she wore. The action was unexpected enough to cause her to look down in surprise, but before she could say anything or protest in any way he pulled out a wadded fistful of black knit. Mick’s forehead crinkled in puzzlement at first as she looked at it, but even before he shook it out, then pulled it over her head, she realized what it was: the black ski mask he’d been wearing earlier. He carefully turned up the edges so that it formed a cozy black knit cap.

  “Your ears looked cold,” he said in response to the glance she shot him.

  Once again thanks stuck in her throat. “They were.”

  Exponentially better off than she had been just a few minutes earlier, Mick quickly tucked her hair behind her ears, then tugged the edges of the cap over them once again. She turned her attention back to driving—and to figuring out what she was going to do next. From the corner of her eye she saw him pull a black Red Wings hoodie over his head and shrug into a dark-colored jacket on top of that, but she wasn’t really paying attention. So lost in thought did she become that when she heard his voice behind her, low as it was, she jumped.

  “You guys get away okay?”

  He was speaking into a cell phone, she saw with a quick, surprised glance over her shoulder. She was pretty certain that the person on the other end was Jel-whoever, his would-be murderous partner in crime, because who else would he call at a time like this with a question like that? Thinking of her own cell phone, left behind on the nightstand beside her bed, she suffered a brief pang. Well, maybe later she could … ah … borrow his. Having a phone would simplify matters enormously.

  “On a boat. Don’t ask.” He paused, presumably to listen.

  “Tell him to pick us up,” Mick instructed, inspired. “At, um …”

  As she tried to think of a place to designate, he shook his head at her and mouthed, No.

  “Yup, that’s her,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, I’ll make it. Count on it.” Another pause. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.”

  Disconnecting, he met Mick’s gaze. She was feeling indignant at having her instruction ignored, because if she could get a couple of squad cars to the same place at the same time, the entire gang of thieves could be hauled away in one fell swoop, leaving her one less problem to deal with.

  “You couldn’t have him pick us up?”

  “Nope.” He slipped the phone into his right front pants pocket. Mick noted the location, because she felt that she might need to take possession of it at some point.

  “Why not?”

  “To begin with, he wants to shoot you. And unless I miss my guess, you want to arrest him—and me, too. So probably it’s in everybody’s best interest if I keep the two of you apart.”

  Mick did her best not to let him see the self-consciousness in her expression: so he had her intentions nailed. Nothing she could do about that, but she didn’t have to admit that he was right.

  “I take it there was a driver waiting in the van?” she suggested, presuming because he’d asked, “You guys get away okay?” As in the plural. “Is it just the two of them now?”

  She asked it supercasually in the hope of getting information she could pass on when she handed him off to her fellow cops.

  “For all you know, there could be a cast of thousands in that van.” His voice was dry. “Just pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s dark as hell.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t going to fall into the trap of just blurting out something she didn’t already know. And he made a good point: they were leaving the last of the residential areas behind now, and that source of light was going. Remembering one particular sunken barge and various other obstacles that lurked not too far ahead, Mick steered out into deeper water while still taking care to keep the shore in sight. The running lights would have helped, but she was still afraid to turn them on. Of course, turning on the lights at this point would only be a problem if someone was giving chase, but sh
e dared not assume that they were in the clear. Anyway, at this hour, in this weather, running without lights was safe enough because only commercial vessels were likely to be on the water, and they were required by law to have their lights on. Looking into the inky blackness toward where lake and sky intersected, in fact an inchworm-like string of white lights and a distant, smaller, blinking red light pinpointed the locations of at least two other vessels. To the north, just on the horizon, she could see the glow that was Windsor, Ontario. Heading that way was an option, but it came with its own set of headaches, like the border patrol and the fact that turning around might bring them into head-on contact with any of Uncle Nicco’s guys who’d found a way to get on the water and give chase.

  “This thing has to have lights.” He sounded uneasy. Well, she didn’t blame him. The lake was black as ink, and the sky wasn’t much lighter. The moonlight allowed her to discern water from sky from land, but that was about it.

  “It does, but if we turn them on finding us gets way too easy.”

  “Point taken.” He frowned as he scanned the water. Unless his eyes were a lot better than hers, it was nearly impossible to see anything in enough detail to discern even a ripple or shadow on the surface. “On the other hand, I’d hate to hit something. Like a rock.”

  “We’re too far out for rocks. The thing would have to be as big as a mountain. They’re more of a hazard closer to shore.”

  “You know this lake pretty well, don’t you?” His tone was thoughtful. When her only reply was a shrug, he continued, “You were in Nicco Marino’s mansion in your pj’s on New Year’s Eve, you’re familiar with his security staff, you know his estate down to having the code to get into his boathouse memorized, and you know how to operate his persnickety classic boat. So what are you to him, exactly?”

  She gave him a long look. “What’s your name?”

  “What?” He frowned at the apparent non sequitur.

  “Your name? What is it?”

  “I think we’ve had this conversation.”

  “Exactly. You don’t want to tell me anything about yourself. I don’t see why you should expect me to tell you anything about me.”

  “Big secret, is it? You his girlfriend?”

  “Of course not.” She blurted out the rebuttal before she thought, then eyed him with real hostility.

  “But you’re something to him, obviously. So how is it that finding out that he’s a murderous criminal seems to come as such a surprise?”

  “He is not a. …” Mick’s heated reply trailed off. Hard as she might find it to accept, the pictures, plus the money in the suitcases, proved otherwise.

  “Oh, yes, he is. Believe me, baby, I know.”

  “Crooks know crooks, is that what you’re saying?”

  He said nothing, just looked at her with the smallest of smiles. After a moment—smart guy!—he changed the subject.

  “So where we headed?” he asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Probably you want to put in pretty soon. They know we’re out here on the lake, which kind of simplifies the whole ‘find them’ thing.”

  “Yeah, well. Out here we have a vehicle. On land we have our feet,” she said.

  He made a face. “True that.”

  “Unless you want to call your friend back and have him pick us up.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’ve already got plans to meet him somewhere, don’t you? Probably you have a set rendezvous point in case you got separated.” The first observation had been gleaned from what she’d overheard of his phone call, but the second was pure guess. But it hit home: she could tell by the narrowing of his eyes.

  “How about you just drive the boat?”

  The sharp thunk of something hitting the bow refocused their attention in a hurry.

  “What the hell …?” He moved to the port rail and peered over the side as Mick eased back on the throttles, slowing the boat way down. “That was a log. We hit a log.” He looked back over his shoulder at her. “I thought you said we were too far out to hit anything.”

  “I said we were too far out to hit a rock. I never said anything about logs.” From the way the boat was moving and the readings on all her instruments, she could tell that it hadn’t done them any harm. “Logs happen.”

  “Great. Good attitude.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do about it.” Before he could say anything she added, “I’m not turning on the lights.”

  He seemed to see the sense of that, because he didn’t argue. Instead he said, “I’m going below to check for damage.”

  “What are you going to do if you find a hole? Stick your finger in it?” she called after him as he went below. He didn’t answer. She kept the boat throttled down, because hitting something at speed carried a lot more potential for disaster than just nosing into it, and where there was one log there were likely to be more. The boat rocked gently; the sound of the water was more gurgle now than splash. She could just make out the curl of whitecaps, pale against the jet-black surface of the lake, and realized the wind was picking up.

  Turning on the lights would draw the attention of whoever or whatever was searching for them, like, for example, every minor street hood in Detroit whom Uncle Nicco’s guys had probably alerted by now to look out for them. She knew most of Uncle Nicco’s guys from way back, she knew they were connected, and how that had failed to translate into having her take seriously the rumors that Uncle Nicco was a big-time crime boss she couldn’t really say. Probably because he was family, because she was as fond of him as if he were actually her uncle, she’d never really even considered that the rumors might be true. But now—now she had to consider it. Had to accept it, in fact. As for his guys, they would be using their contacts in whatever way they could. They knew as well as she did that Uncle Nicco was going to be furious about being robbed, and even more furious that the thieves had been allowed to escape with his money, his boat and his almost niece as a hostage. Add in his anger when he found out about the incriminating pictures, and the result wasn’t going to be pretty. The guys would pull out all the stops to capture the thief—and, as collateral, her—before he blew a gasket. In an effort to make that as hard as possible, her plan was to stay dark, go past the highly populated areas, then take the boat in at a remote dock. If she recalled correctly, there was a small dock connected to a boat launching ramp at Deer Ridge Park. It was used mainly by casual boaters in the summer and should definitely have been deserted now. It was sufficiently remote that its existence shouldn’t have occurred to any of Uncle Nicco’s guys or anyone else who might have been looking for them. She hoped.

  Having decided where to make landfall, she turned her focus to the problem of who to tell about what she now knew. The supposed murder/suicide of the Lightfoot family had been big news. Nate had been one of the homicide detectives on the case, and like the others he’d been convinced that Lightfoot had killed his family before turning his gun on himself. Now, tucked safely away inside the pocket of her flannel pants, she possessed definitive proof that that was not so in the form of three of the pictures, which she had folded up and tucked away when the thief hadn’t been looking. The only conclusion anyone seeing those pictures could come to was that Nate had been wrong. The other detectives had been wrong. The medical examiner had been wrong. Everybody who’d signed off on the case had been wrong. Being wrong on such a public case could hurt their careers. The resulting media firestorm would make both them and the department look bad. The backlash could hurt her career, too, because the brass in the Detroit PD had long memories. If she caused the department embarrassment, some of them would hold it against her forever. Nate might very well hold it against her forever. Not that she cared about that.

  Handing over the pictures would more than embarrass Uncle Nicco. From the look of it, at the very least he would be arrested and charged as an accessory to murder. Depending on how things shook out, he could be facing charges of Murder One.

/>   Uncle Nicco was as close to family as it was possible to get without actually being blood kin. Aunt Hope, Angela, his other children—they were practically family, too. She loved them. They loved her.

  At the thought of the pain she would inflict on them all, Mick felt heartsick. Tossing the pictures and keeping quiet about what she’d seen was an option, but she already knew that it probably wasn’t one she was going to be able to live with. That would amount to turning a blind eye to murder, multiple murder of an entire family to boot, and, aside from the fact that she was a cop who had sworn to uphold the law, that she just couldn’t do. Besides, it would be dangerous. Unless the pictures lied, Uncle Nicco clearly had been involved in the Lightfoots’ deaths. She now knew it, and he knew, or soon would know, she knew it. The easiest, smartest thing for him to do would be to kill the witness, namely her. Would he do it, or, rather, order it done? Even though he loved her like family?

  The conclusion Mick came to was that waiting to find out would be just plain dumb.

  Given that, then, the first thing to do was call her supervisor, Stan Curci. Tell him she had an armed robber in custody and needed backup at the Deer Ridge Park boat ramp like yesterday. Everything else she wanted to impart to him face-to-face.

  A slight hiccup to the plan was that she didn’t have access to a phone. Of course, the thief had one, but unless she managed to wrestle it away from him, she didn’t see him letting her use it, especially if he suspected she was calling for backup. Probably she could get him to do something like call a cab when they docked, if, that is, a cab could be persuaded to come that far outside the city at this time of night. Alternatively, there was an open-all-night liquor store about a mile from the Deer Ridge dock that they could walk to if necessary. Even in the early hours of New Year’s Day an establishment like that should be open, and they would have a phone she could use. Problem was, once there she’d have to shake the thief to make the call she wanted to make. Well, probably he’d want to use the men’s room, or something, and she could sneak in a call. Or, alternatively, she could end the bullshit, take him down, cuff him, place him under arrest, and then make the call. She wasn’t eager to revisit the fight they’d had before, but she would if she had to. Then she remembered something: she had the next best thing to a phone right at her fingertips. Looking at it, she smiled.