Okay, now what? Run? Panic? No, I’ll bang on the door and demand they let me in. So what—Cole can do to me whatever he just did to make Bethanie scream like that? That’s when I spot the fire alarm on the wall. I break the thin glass plate with my phone, pull the alarm, and wait on one side of the door, hoping Bethanie and Cole will come out of their rooms like everyone else on the floor is doing. I only have to wait a few seconds before Cole steps out into the hall and looks the opposite direction from where I’m standing, toward the elevator. I take the opportunity to kick him hard as I can in the back of his knees, catching him completely off guard. Now he’s on the ground, and probably has no idea what hit him.
Bethanie comes out of the room just as I land my kick.
“Come on, that’ll only give us about thirty seconds,” I say as I grab her arm and start pulling her toward the elevators. She doesn’t put up any resistance, probably because she’s still so shocked to find me in Las Vegas, at her hotel door taking down her boyfriend/kidnapper during an apparent fire.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to take the elevator in case of fire,” Bethanie says. She must be truly dazed and confused if that’s the only issue she has with all of this.
“You’re right, the elevator is taking too long,” I say, wondering why I hadn’t used the very escape plan I figured out Cole had come up with. I should have taken the stairs, but now the doors to the stairwells at either end of the hall are jammed with people trying to escape the nonexistent fire. Only problem is I don’t see Cole anymore. He must have gone down the stairs with the crowd. The cops can look for him later; at least I have Bethanie, and after I give her a quick once-over, I’m relieved to see she looks fine. I don’t know why she screamed, but it looks like the fire alarm stopped Cole from doing whatever he was about to do to her.
Just then, the elevator doors open to reveal two scary-looking dudes.
“That’s the guy from the bodega robbery,” I say at the very same instant Bethanie says, “That’s the guy from my parking spot. You’re in the pictures, too. That’s how I know you.”
I look down the hall and it’s now empty in both directions. It’s just the bad guys, me, and Bethanie, and I’m really wishing we hadn’t just revealed that we know exactly who they both are. That’s the kind of thing I hate in movies, and makes me want to yell at the soon-to-be victim how stupid they were for letting the bad guys know they know they’re the bad guys. But now I see how it can happen.
Bethanie and I start running toward the stairwell on the other end of the hall, but before we can reach it, the bad guys catch us. Bodega robber has me by the arm, and the other guy has Bethanie.
“Wait, I know who you’re looking for,” I say.
“We have who we’re looking for,” says bodega robber.
“You were looking for me?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” says the other one. “Her—we’re looking for her.”
Any other time, my feelings might be hurt, but right now I’m more afraid of the bruise bodega man is going to leave on my arm, and probably worse.
“No, I mean Cole. That’s who you really want, because he betrayed you and the Family.”
The two guys look about as confused as Bethanie. Yeah, that’ll teach you not to know who I am.
“Am I right?” I ask, but don’t wait for an answer. “Of course I’m right. I left him doubled over in pain in front of room 501. Take him and let us go.”
“He ain’t there now.”
“Because he ran back into the room.”
“During a fire?”
“There’s no fire. I pulled the alarm, and I told him so.”
“DeLong wants the phone. Where is it?” parking spot guy asks Bethanie.
“Cole took it from me,” Bethanie says.
Why is everybody and their mother jonesing for her phone? Do they think the cubic zirconium are really diamonds, too?
“Cole also has the ransom,” I lie, “and isn’t that what you really want—Cole and the money?”
“What’s going on, Chanti? What ransom?”
“Shut up, Bethanie. You’re just delirious and confused. Cole must have drugged you,” I say, but the bad guys aren’t buying it.
“Thanks for the tip, but we want Cole, the money, and the girl,” says parking spot guy as he starts pulling us down the hall toward room 501. “Since you seem to know so much, we’ll need to take you with us, too.”
As I’m being dragged to room 501 where Cole certainly is not hiding, I wonder how I’ll explain that to the bad guys when we get there. Just then, Cole steps out of the stairwell and yells something I can’t make out, but the bodega robber takes off running down the hall. At the same time the parking spot guy lets go of Bethanie to follow his partner, the elevator pings its arrival. I start heading for it, hoping the doors stay open long enough for Bethanie and I to jump on, but Lana and Falcone step out of it. Now they’re separating the two bad guys—bodega man between Cole and the cops, and parking spot guy between the cops and us. I can see on her face Lana is working out how she’ll run this, but before she can even draw her weapon, the bad guy has already run back to Bethanie and me. His gun was already drawn. He has the advantage.
“Okay, this is how it’s gonna go down—” the bad guy starts, but doesn’t get to finish.
The only thing that goes down is him. MJ has tackled him from behind and is now sitting on his back and applying a choke hold until Lana can get him into handcuffs. Falcone takes off in the other direction after Cole and bodega man, who are probably long gone, lost in the crowd on the casino floor.
Chapter 29
MJ and I are back in our hotel room, where Lana has posted a local cop outside in the hall in case there are any more bad guys running loose in the hotel. After MJ crept out of the stairwell on the other end of the hall and jumped that guy, I feel safer with her close than I do with an armed officer. I tried to talk Lana into letting Bethanie hang out in the room with us until it was time to return to Denver, but Lana whisked her off someplace to question and debrief her. Lana also knew I’d question Bethanie the minute I got the chance. Since I don’t get the chance, I speculate with MJ instead.
“Why do you think everyone was after Bethanie’s phone? She was always frantic about knowing where it was, the bad guys wanted it, and Cole took it from her. At first I thought it was diamond-encrusted and everybody wanted to steal and pawn it or something. And it could be that, but I think there’s more to it.”
“You said her dad’s paranoia was at level ten. Maybe that’s how he tracked her,” MJ suggests. “He used the GPS as part of his home-style version of witness protection. Or the cops did. Then Cole made her get rid of it because he thought everybody, including the Family, might use it to track them.”
“That’s an excellent theory. See, you’d make a good cop.”
MJ is smiling all teeth from the compliment, until the second sentence sinks in. I help her out when I remember something else about the phone.
“But I have a better theory. She lost her phone during the bodega robbery and was in a panic. I jokingly asked if she had some embarrassing photos on her phone and she got kind of mad. When Cole found it and returned it to her, the first thing she checked were her pictures.”
“Most people would probably check their messages first,” MJ says.
“Exactly. Then when we ran into the bad guys today, Bethanie said something about recognizing one of them from some pictures. She must have photos of something that would incriminate DeLong.”
“Or she was using them as protection insurance for her family. But why carry it around, and why not lock the phone if you are gonna carry it around?”
“I think if you’re Bethanie and never stay in one place for very long, always having to get out of town quick, you probably think the safest place to keep something valuable is on you. And now that we know who was after her, she probably figured they could hack any password lock.”
“Okay, but what I don’t
get is why Cole thought he was bad enough to double-cross the Family. My contact said he hadn’t even been working the game that long,” MJ says before she drains the can of 7UP she took from the minibar. After she took out that bad guy, Lana told her to help herself to whatever she wanted out of it, and MJ is doing just that.
“That’s just the beginning of my questions for Cole. Right now the only thing I can confirm is that I was right about him setting up that bodega robbery with the other guy who got away. I hope Falcone can find them.”
Just then we hear the key card in the door. MJ grabs a lamp from the desk and is ready to do battle, but it’s only Lana.
“Whoa, calm down. We’ve got a man posted at the door. No one’s getting in here.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen enough movies to know the man posted at the door always gets taken out,” MJ says, unconvinced.
“Exactly—in the movies,” Lana reminds MJ.
“What about Cole and the bodega robber?” I ask. “I suppose Falcone lost them in the crowd.”
“No, we have them.”
“Really? How? I’ve been in that casino floor crowd. That’s how MJ and I got separated in the first place.”
“We got them; that’s all you need to know.”
“I don’t see how,” I say. “They had a minute jump on Falcone, not to mention Cole is smart. He thinks so much like a cop that I ...”
Lana is quiet but has that look on her face she gets when she’s trying to figure out how much she should say. We both know each other better than anyone, we both read people as well as any psychologist, and we both tend to suspect everything. At times like this, we’re less mother and daughter and more like two cons trying to outgame each other. But I already saw her flinch.
Everything starts tying together for me. MJ was right when she said Cole had gotten in with the Family quickly, all Donnie Brasco–style.
“He is a cop,” I say. “Cole is undercover and so is the bodega robber. But for who—Denver or Atlanta?”
“Neither one.”
“Mom, I deserve not to be lied to. MJ and I were on point through this whole thing. Y’all wouldn’t have solved this case without us.”
“I’m not lying to you, if you’d let me finish. And this doesn’t go outside this room.” She gives MJ the evil eye and MJ nods her agreement. “He’s FBI. I didn’t know it myself until today. They were involved because of the organized crime with the Family.”
“Isn’t he a little young for FBI?”
“They recruit agents at twenty-one.”
I guess Cole didn’t lie about that, at least.
“The Boss is paranoid about taking anyone into his confidence who has been in the game longer than a minute. He doesn’t trust the longtimers. The feds wanted someone who appeared young and impressionable to charm DeLong and infiltrate the Family.”
“Well, that would be Cole. He charmed a lot of people,” I say, running down the list I knew of: that restaurant maître d’, the leasing agent, Bethanie, and probably me if I weren’t ... well, me.”
“Las Vegas FBI have been running this thing for a long time, casting a wider net than DeLong’s operation in Atlanta. They started here, but found DeLong’s illegal sports book in Atlanta was tied to an organized crime syndicate in Vegas.”
“So that’s when they recruited Cole,” I say, realizing why Cole’s accent kept throwing me off. “He really was from around Atlanta because they needed a local to fool DeLong. But he also really went to school in DC where the FBI probably recruited him in the first place, but was based in Las Vegas. Before he went to work for DeLong in Atlanta.”
“Not just based here. He started his cover here, as a driver for the Vegas end of DeLong’s operation,” Lana explains.
“Cole being a cop explains why he came back when things were looking bad for Bethanie and me in the hallway, right before you got out of the elevator.”
“He never left. He was waiting in the stairwell, had the door cracked a little so he could watch. His partner, the bodega robber, had let him know they were on the way up, and something was about to go down.”
“The bodega robber was undercover feds, too?” MJ asks.
“He was working inside the Vegas operation,” Lana says.
“I guess it was a good thing he was able to get the bodega owner to go along with that robbery setup,” MJ says, looking at me. “It’s sort of like he helped the investigation. Kind of heroic and everything.”
I don’t care how she spins it, I’m going to eventually have to tell her Eddie might be another bad boyfriend choice. Then it occurs to me what I did to Cole in the hallway.
“Oh no, I can’t believe what I did to Cole,” I say, cringing with the recollection.
Lana laughs. “You mean with the fire alarm and the kick? He’s recovered enough to tell me I have one tough daughter.”
“Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” Lana says.
“That’s right,” MJ says. “You did what you had to do. He ain’t dead, is he?”
“So why did Bethanie scream?” I ask.
“Scream?”
“That’s why I pulled the alarm in the first place. I needed a diversion to get them out of the room because I thought he was hurting her in there.”
“I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to ask her that yourself when we’re back in Denver.”
I plan to ask her that and a few other things.
Chapter 30
I had a chance to ask Bethanie that question and more once we were back home. She and her mother were given two days to get their lives in order before they became part of the witness protection program. Well, their old lives. Bethanie was about to begin yet another new life, even though the one she’d been living was only a couple of months old. She’d be the new girl again, hopefully for the last time, or at least for a long time. But not before I gave her something from her reverse bucket list—a birthday party with people other than her parents present.
Mr. Larsen was already somewhere in FBI custody until the trial. But her mother, Tiny, and Molly/Josephine helped me pull the party together quickly at their house without Bethanie even knowing what was going on. That’s how big their house is. Of course, we had to make an excuse for Lana not being there since not everyone at the party knows she’s a cop, but I was able to invite a few other people even though it was so last minute.
Bethanie didn’t have much time to make any friends besides me, so I invited my own—MJ, Tasha, and Michelle. I asked Mildred from school to invite her son Reginald. He’ll be starting Langdon after the midterm break thanks to me. While I was keeping myself out of jail last month, I also busted Headmistress Smythe for wrongly expelling Reginald the year before. I figure he’ll need a friend in the viper pit that is Langdon Prep when he returns. People will turn on you at the first sign of adversity. Even Bethanie did that to me before we became real friends.
Marco came, too. Alone, even though I told him he could bring a plus one. A girl has to put up a good front, right? But that hasn’t stopped me from paying extra attention to Reginald even if all I can think about is Marco. He’s here alone but he’s still wearing one of Angelique’s friendship bracelets. If I’m capable of stopping a crime family from kidnapping my friend for ransom and taking out an FBI witness, I’m sure I can get over being dumped by a gorgeous, sweet, sexy guy who gave me the best kiss known to all girlkind. Well, I’m reasonably sure.
My phone rings and it’s Lana.
“How’s the party going?” she asks.
“Pretty good, considering I had about three minutes to throw it together.”
“I saw Marco go inside.”
“Where are you?”
“I guess you two never made up, huh? You’ve been watching him since the minute he arrived, but you’ve barely said a word to him.”
“Lana, where are you?”
“Take a look out front. I’m in the cable truck.”
I go to a window at the
front of the house and spot the truck.
“Doesn’t this case belong to the feds now?” I whisper, wondering if one day I’ll have to leave the state just to avoid being a surveillance target of my mother.
“I wanted to see this thing through to the end. I’ve made a few friends; they let me hang out. Feds aren’t all bad.”
I guess they aren’t all humorless, either, because I hear a few laughs in the background.
“So why don’t you go talk to him?” she urges.
“His mom hates me, so what’s it matter?”
“She doesn’t hate you. I’ve talked to her and she seems nice, just concerned about her kid like any mother. Like me. She and I have the same beef with you, actually.”
“I know. You want me to stop playing detective.”
“Such an easy thing to do, especially if you really want Marco back.”
“I don’t think I ever really had him.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did. And to be honest, I’m more than happy for you to stay clear of any boy until you’re thirty, preferably married first. But I know that’s just wishful thinking. If there has to be a boy, Marco seems like the right one. It’s obvious you like him.”
“We’re just friends. Or were.”
“Chanti, I’m not clueless. I was your age once.”
The minute she says that, our conversation goes from awkward to undoable.
“What was that?” she asks.
“What?”
“That look. And you flinched.”
“You’ve got eyes on me right now? Lana, I need to find Bethanie before she has to leave with your new friends.”
“Marco’s mom tells me he’s seventeen,” she says, undeterred. I turn my back to the window so at least she can’t see my reactions anymore.
“So?”
“You’re about to be sixteen.”
“Okaaay,” I say, wondering why Lana is so intrigued by the obvious.
“You and Marco are not me and your father.”
Creeping with the Enemy Page 19