In Too Deep (Strike Force: An Iniquus Romantic Suspense Mystery Thriller Book 1)

by Fiona Quinn

  Lacey was a little shell-shocked by Deep’s words. It made speaking feel like a new skill, but she worked to make her lips and tongue form words. “I remember driving too fast down a country road. The speed limit was 55, but I was going a lot faster than that. I was headed toward the highway, back toward DC. I slowed for a turn. I remember putting on my blinker, but not stopping at the stop sign. The next thing I knew, Steve was calling my name. I woke up, and Steve had his hands around my throat—he was trying to keep me from hurting my neck. Apparently, I lost control and hit a tree. He said he was travelling behind me when I swerved after I hit a deer.”

  “This is the story of how you met Steve?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was calling your name? How’d he know your name?”

  Lacey shrugged. “I imagine he looked in my wallet or something.”

  “Okay, go on. He was first on scene after you lost control of your car and crashed.”

  “Yes, I was scared. My whole body hurt. Every inch of me. My chest. My face – when the airbag shot out, it took the top layers off my face. It was like acid being poured onto my skin. When the paramedics got there, they put a collar on me. Steve held my hand; he didn’t leave my side. He even rode in the back of the ambulance when they took me to the hospital.”

  Lacey watched a cloud pass over Deep’s face, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t have any broken bones or anything, but I had deep bruises and whiplash. I had to wear the collar for six weeks.” Lacey leaned over to look in the mug. It was empty, so she swallowed hard, trying to unstick her words.

  Deep nodded.

  “Steve was wonderful to me after the accident. I don’t have any family here to help me.” Lacey cleared her throat. “I’m from Georgia, originally. I moved up here for grad school and to work for Uncle Bartholomew. Anyway, Steve was there for me – helped me around the house, did the groceries, you know—the stuff boyfriends do.” And now that she was looking back on things with a little perspective, Steve seemed to just move into her life and make himself at home. One minute she was coming back to awareness in her bashed in car and the next she had a live-in boyfriend, readymade, taking care of her like they had been together for a long time. With a little distance and discernment, the speed of their relationship did seem . . . odd.

  “We can get an email to him. I can send it through encryption software so it’ll be untraceable, but if you say something personal, he’ll know it’s you. That way, he’ll know you’re safe. Put his mind to rest.” When Lacey said nothing Deep said, “Or your mom and dad. They’re probably pretty worried about you. I think I remember you saying you were an only child, so no sisters or brothers, but your parents—we can get word to them.”

  Lacey shook her head.

  “Friends that would be worried?”

  “I don’t have any of that.” Lacey focused on the rug. “It’s not that I’m anti-social, it’s simply that . . . It seems from the little bit that I know about you, our childhoods were probably night and day. When I left Georgia to go to grad school here in DC and work for my uncle, I wanted to leave that part of my life behind. I needed a fresh start.”

  “Did you get a fresh start? Do you think any of this has to do with family ties outside of your uncle and the art world? Something you left behind in Georgia?”

  “Surely not. It’s been years since I had contact with anyone down there. I’ve been in DC for five years. I was busy with grad school and work, and then just with work. Seems everyone I know is associated with the gallery and my job, besides Steve, of course. I’m not close enough to anyone up here that I think I should reach out to them. Uncle Bartholomew – but he’s in Bali and probably has no clue this is going on.”

  “And Steve?” Deep asked once again.

  Lacey lifted her gaze to the window and held it there for a long moment. Bony twigs from a tree branch tapped against the pane like fingers working on a tempo to accompany the whistle of the wind. Cold and bleak. Lacey wanted to go back upstairs and curl herself under the covers of her borrowed bed.

  “Do you find it odd how many pictures there are of Steve and me together in those files?” She glanced at Deep briefly, saw his keen eyes on her —thoughtful and intelligent—but he didn’t comment.

  Lacey knew that he had absorbed all of her words and would process through them. He hadn’t missed a thing. She wished in that moment that she did have friends and family who cared about her, who sat on the couch and sobbed as they begged the TV cameras for people to come forward with information. But the truth was, nobody cared. Lacey felt the shame she always felt when people realized she was disposable. That nobody gave two hoots if she lived or not. She preferred that people assumed, like her lawyer Mr. Reynolds did, that she came from a good upstanding family. That she belonged somewhere.

  “There are pictures of me alone, and pictures that have me and some strangers, but the only person that I recognize is Steve—no pictures included me with my friends or colleagues. That’s kind of curious, don’t you think?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Steve

  Saturday Afternoon

  Sprawled in an armchair in Monroe’s office, Steve pitched a pencil into the air and caught it time and again. He was listening to the tapes that Higgins had recorded from Danika’s apartment the night before. It was all crap. Many of the words the men used seemed to be slang, and Steve didn’t understand the meaning behind things like, “Crank man, he’s in the tub.” Maybe that wasn’t what the guy said at all. It was hard to tell between the crackling of the microphones and the guttural accents of the men speaking.

  Steve would be glad when the Slovakian translator finished the English transcripts and handed them to him. Though she’d been told to push the pedal down on this assignment, she couldn’t be fast enough, from Steve’s point of view. Every second counted. He rammed his imagined pictures of Lacey being tortured as far back and as deep down in his mind as he could. If he panicked, he wouldn’t be helping her.

  Leaning forward to tap the start arrow, again, Steve listened hard. No, he didn’t recognize these men by their voices, but it didn’t matter. One member of the Zoric family or another – they all worked together as one body. And Pavle Zoric was the brains.

  Pavle was the one who’d brought Danika Zoric to the US when she was twelve, when her birth family couldn’t afford to feed her anymore. She had earned her keep as a prostitute all the way through high school. After that, she danced and worked hard to lose the remnants of her Slovakian accent. Now, the family found her useful for other things. Most of it had to do with information-gathering and blackmail. Why earn a hundred dollars turning a trick when you can videotape an affair and use it like the proverbial goose laying golden eggs? It had been her idea. And Pavle appreciated her creativity and her business acumen.

  Monroe moved into the room and put an uncharacteristically fatherly hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you lost her.”

  Steve froze as he tried to interpret that sentence.

  Monroe pulled out a rolling chair, sat down with a thud, and pursed his lips. “Hell of a thing, to stick your fingers into someone’s neck. You would have been a hero if you’d saved her. ‘Course, if you’d saved her, you’d be on desk duty for the rest of your career. Your face would be too recognizable to use you in the field anymore. As it is, you can’t interface with anyone associated with our investigation. Your cover’s blown to smithereens.”

  Steve felt lightheaded and reached up to rub the back of his neck, trying to force some blood into his brain. Monroe was talking about the reporter who took the ricochet at the press conference, not Lacey. Lacey still might be alright. Well, alright in the Zoric family’s hands would be stretching it – but maybe alive.

  Monroe pulled out his phone, checked the screen, then crammed it back in his pocket. “Higgins catch up with Danika?”

  “Not yet,” Steve said. “He’s gone home to get some shuteye. Last I talked to him, there were men in her ap
artment. No sound from her. I’m listening to those tapes now – translation should be coming up soon.” Steve rubbed a hand over his five o’clock shadow. “When Higgins saw the team leave, he went up to take a look around the apartment, and everything was in place. No signs of trouble. But Danika’s keys were on the kitchen table, and her purse was in the bathroom. He found her phone on the bedside table.”

  “When’s the last time you got some shuteye?” Monroe asked.

  “Not happening until I get Lacey back. Even if you order me home. So don’t even go there with me.”

  “Danika, then. What are the plausible explanations that that’s all normal?”

  “She doesn’t carry her purse unless she’s carrying something for work – weapons, what-have-you. Instead she has a coin purse that she keeps in her pocket with her ID and Metro pass. Higgins didn’t find that. She has a house key on a chain necklace that she sometimes wears when she wants to be hands-free. She’s not as addicted to her phone as some people. Besides, she knows Pavle follows where she goes with the GPS app. I can see her going out to visit a friend, not wanting Pavle to find her, having too much to drink, and crashing on their couch.”

  “You don’t believe that’s what happened.”

  Steve took a minute to explain that Danika had called to let him know that Pavle had Lacey and she was trying to lure him back to her apartment. But Higgins had warned him about the ambush in time.

  Monroe tugged at his earlobe. “I think whether she’s alive or not at this point depends on the answer to two questions — do they need her anymore? And does her benefit to the family outweigh any drawbacks?”

  “What’s going on at the warehouse?” Steve asked.

  “It’s been almost seventy-two hours since anyone turned the lights on. No one’s set off the motion-sensor cameras. Their artist hasn’t shown up, but he’s got to be going in soon. The art show’s this week and one canvas still isn’t finished.”

  “Are you putting someone in place to watch?”

  “We’ll have to depend on the cameras. I haven’t got the manpower to cover the warehouse, too. I’ve already got extra agents in the field trying to hunt down Lacey Stuart, and now we’re going to have to try to catch up with Danika Zoric.” Monroe got up and shuffled some papers around his desk. “You let yourself get personally involved. It’s a risk all of us take in the field. It happens to the best of us.” He turned to catch Steve’s eye. “So who is it you fell for, Danika or Lacey?”

  “Lacey, of course,” Steve muttered.

  “She’s a beautiful girl, smart, on the way to being a big success in her industry – well, before the Iniquus shit happened, anyway. She was exactly what we needed, too – no real ties to anyone but her great uncle, no one to give you the look-over and warn her away. Probably a little lonely, a little needy. She was the perfect cover for an easy sting. Funny how everything just seemed to unfold so perfectly. It’s like it was meant to be. I was glad when you joined our task force to pull down the Zoric family. Surprised. But glad. Have we moved forward enough in the case that you can give me some background now? Why is it that the terrorism task force is interested in the Zoric family?”

  “I can tell you this much. When I was trying to find the Zorics’ weak spot, we landed on Bartholomew Winslow. He was on Pavle’s hook.”

  “Hook? How?”

  “Extortion,” Steve said. “The specifics I can’t share with you right now. We still want this compartmentalized and need to know.”

  “Understood.” Monroe said with a nod.

  “You know the name Krokov?”

  “Krokov?” Monroe shook his head. “No, I haven’t heard his name before.”

  “He’s dead so any part he’s playing in this is over. Publicly, Radovan Krokov bought a few paintings from the Bartholomew Winslow Gallery. The CIA mentioned it in their briefing on the Krokov family sent in from their Slovakian station. We found out after Krokov’s death that he was actually Winslow’s long-time secret lover. This is interesting in that Danika Zoric was working some kind of con either on Krokov or with him. When she was with Krokov, Danika called herself Lacey Stuart. That was long before Lacey’s accident happened. What kind of relationship Danika had with Krokov at his death, I’m not clear. But I do know that Krokov had known Danika since she was a young teen. She was some kind of olive branch between the families. A peace offering, maybe.”

  “You mean a piece offering?” Monroe asked with derision. “When did Danika start calling herself Lacey Stuart?”

  “June of last year. It was when Danika started to help Winslow work on the show, gathering the paintings they wanted to steal.” Steve’s head was pounding, and he wondered if Monroe might have some Advil or something in his desk drawer. “We discovered that Pavle Zoric gave Winslow that list of paintings he wanted to have collected, and we knew that Winslow was actively trying to set up a show with those pieces so they could be stolen all at once. We brought that to the arts task force, hoping they could take our players off the field. Then we discovered that you guys were already going after the family. But then Lacey was in the car accident. My coming to Lacey’s rescue was a huge break—it gave me the idea for the bigger con – more money, more players. I fed the idea to Danika, and she pitched it to Pavle. This turn around meant we were going to be able to take down almost the whole family in a single sting. But to do that, we needed you, and arts and us all working together.”

  “And it was happenstance that put you on the road behind Lacey Stuart when she had her car accident? Life doesn’t happen that way.”

  “Danika,” Steve said. “I still think it was Danika who caused this shit to go down with Lacey that day. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how or why. Especially since Danika saved Lacey’s life.”

  “What’s this?” Monroe asked.

  “The day of the car accident, I got a call from Danika. She’s screaming that Musclav is going to kill some woman and ruin everything. She said I had to stop him. Musclav was going after Lacey, but I caught up with him and told him to leave it alone, that I’d handle Lacey.”

  “Why would Musclav Zoric be trying to kill Lacey Stuart?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not going to be able to tell you the particulars. Those details are classified with a different program, and you haven’t been read in.”

  “The day of the accident is the day you joined the team.” Monroe paused. “When I ordered you to date Lacey, it was so you had an inside track and could keep her safe while the con played out. And I have to admit your con was genius, really. Up until then, the Zorics had kept us at arm’s length. Once you stepped up to the plate with the insurance game, things changed. It was an important move. It had to happen in order to take the Zorics down.” His last words sounded deflated.

  Steve thought Monroe was rationalizing. Steve’s mom always said that if Steve had to rationalize something, he’d know that he’d done that something wrong. Involving Lacey had definitely been wrong. “Looks like I did a shit job on the protection front.”

  “What does Lacey know about all of this?”

  “Nothing. She didn’t remember anything from the accident, only that she was going to Radovan’s house to hang some art and woke up stuck in her car. Other than that, she did her thing at the gallery, she dated me, and she talked about getting a puppy when the spring warmed things up.” Steve voice cracked as he realized he was talking about Lacey in the past tense. “She led a quiet life. A nice life.”

  Monroe scowled. “I thought we had the Zoric family all but cuffed and deported. Off our darned streets.”

  “I think we need to focus on Danika. She’s had something up her sleeve.” Steve was now pacing manically in the small confines of Monroe’s office.

  “Is Danika smart enough to outthink Pavle?”

  “Street smarts and high IQ make up for a lack of higher education. I’m sure she thought she was smart enough to pull one over on Pavle. I guess if she succeeds in her endgame, that’ll tell us who can outt
hink the other.”

  Monroe pulled at his eyebrow, a sign that he was in his head moving parts around, trying out theories, rejecting them, and trying out others. “She could be in the wind. She might have had an exit plan if things got iffy.”

  “Maybe.” Steve let his thoughts do what they would, trying to get a sense of whether or not that was a believable scenario. “That doesn’t feel right to me,” he concluded.

  “Sit down already. You’re jumping on my nerves,” Monroe growled. “What does feel right?”

  Steve moved to a chair, but he couldn’t stop his leg from jackhammering the floor. He didn’t answer Monroe’s question. Nothing felt right. Nothing at all. He shook his head. He had nada.

  “Yeah,” Monroe said. “I’m right back in the ditch with my tires spinning over how Lacey ended up slung over some guy’s shoulder and disappearing from view.”

  “I feel like this all ties into the car accident. I can’t figure out, though, what Musclav was trying to accomplish. If he caught Lacey and killed her, the Zorics wouldn’t have the art in one location to steal which was the directive from Slovakia. If he killed her, there would be no art to ship home.”

  Monroe tapped Steve’s knee to make him stop jiggling. “How’s that?”

  “If Lacey were murdered, her Uncle Bartholomew wouldn’t have stuck around for his turn at the point of a gun or in a prison cell. He would have done exactly what he did when he was caught stealing from Iniquus – headed for Bali. And the Zoric family? Instead of one hit, they’d have to make a dozen to get the artwork that they needed for their Slovakian family members.”

  “This whole thing’s a powder keg. I think our mistake was not bringing Lacey in and explaining that to her.” Monroe pointed a fat finger at Steve. “If she gets in front of a news camera. . .” He shook his head. “She needs to keep her mouth shut.”