Criminal Deception

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Me?” She managed a decent chuckle. “News flash. Josh and I aren’t together anymore. He wouldn’t cross the street to talk me. He damn sure isn’t going to risk his life for me.”

  Wallace merely continued to smile.

  “Come on, this is the guy who didn’t stick around to see if his twin brother who got shot in his place was going to survive. Even if I had a way to get hold of him, he wouldn’t come.”

  “You sell yourself short, Ms. Dalton. Ignoring his brother…” He shrugged dismissively. “Ignoring the beautiful woman who shared his bed for more than two years…that’s an entirely different matter.”

  Liz scanned the lot again. A car turned in off the street, then drove past to the other side of the mall. An elderly woman came out the main entrance, cane in hand, and started toward a Cadillac in the handicapped spaces. There were no familiar faces, no police cars, no gangs of brawny teenage boys who would consider it fun rescuing a woman in distress.

  The van was now about twenty feet away. Had they expected her to go quietly? Was she supposed to be intimidated enough by Wallace that he could just shove her inside? Yeah, right. Flipping the phone open, she blindly dialed 911, took a breath, then lunged to the right, getting her feet under her, interrupting the operator before she could ask, What’s your emergency? “Copper Lake Mall,” she shouted into the phone, not daring to look back at the sound of squealing tires, not willing to estimate the distance separating Wallace’s heavy tread from her. “I’m being kidnapped!”

  Grateful for the thick-soled sandals she’d chosen in anticipation of a bike ride, she ran fast, hard, zigzagging around parked cars toward the entrance. They slowed her some, but with the benefit that they also slowed Wallace. She was halfway to the entrance, gaining ground, sirens sounding in the distance and racing closer. Please let them be in time, she prayed as she circled behind a monster SUV.

  She caught the hint of movement an instant too late: a bare arm, tattooed beneath the short sleeve, muscular, hand clenched into a fist. She tried to swerve, tried to slow, but momentum pushed her forward, carrying her to meet the fist with its own momentum. The pain was instantaneous, nauseating. Her eyes filled with tears, her vision went blurry, her legs crumpled beneath her, and she fell, everything disappearing into blessed darkness.

  Joe had never done any long-distance riding, but he found out that afternoon he could do nearly forty miles, the roundtrip distance between Copper Lake and the next town to the east. His calf muscles were fatigued and burning by the time he pedaled back into town, but he was no more tired than when he’d ridden out of the mall. Not tired, hungry, angry. Just numb. Physically, emotionally, mentally. He wanted to stay that way for a damn long time.

  He’d passed the mall, refusing to look at the square building or the parking lot even in his peripheral vision. He kept his gaze narrowly focused on the pavement ahead of him, maintaining a safe, constant distance between his front wheel and the curb, so focused that when a car going the opposite direction spun around, tires squealing, and blocked both westbound lanes, he managed to stop only an inch from the vehicle’s rear quarter panel.

  A. J. Decker jumped out of the car. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you for hours.” With the efficiency of the longtime cop he was, he located Joe’s cell in his pocket-turned off-and swore. “These things aren’t worth crap unless you turn ’em on.”

  Joe glared at him. “If I turn it on, people call.”

  Decker turned it on, waited for it to boot up, then shoved it in Joe’s face. “You think?” he asked sarcastically.

  The screen showed thirty-eight missed calls. Jeez, and he’d been gone only three hours. He took the phone and started to check the numbers, but Decker snatched it back, closing it. “They’re probably all from us.”

  In that instant, the numbness disappeared. Hands shaking, Joe removed his helmet, fastened the chin strap and dangled it from the handle bars. “Josh,” he murmured. The Boulder police had found him, and, being Josh, he’d done something stupid. Was he hurt? Dead? Oh, man, if his brother was dead because Joe had wanted to know if it was okay for him to have slept with Liz…

  “When’s the last time you saw Liz?” Decker asked.

  Joe blinked. “A few hours ago. A little after twelve. Why?” Had she gotten the word from her supervisor? Had she asked Decker to break the news because she knew he’d rather not see her again as long as he lived?

  “Where?”

  “At the mall.” Joe asked again, “Why?”

  Decker’s expression was grim. “Apparently she’s been kidnapped.”

  Kidnapped. The word didn’t compute. Not Liz. After he left, she would have gotten in her car and gone home. She would have checked in with her supervisor and, if there was a God in heaven, she would have packed up and left town. After all, she’d gotten what she wanted; she’d said as much. There was no reason for her to stick around. Not him. Certainly not their phony little affair.

  “She’s not kidnapped. She’s just gone.”

  Decker’s expression didn’t lighten. “911 got a call from a woman screaming that she was being kidnapped at the mall. We found Liz’s car parked in the lot. Her cell phone was on the ground behind another vehicle, and there was blood, both on the phone and splattered on the ground around it. What we can’t find is Liz. You have any idea why?”

  The people and events of the last few days flashed through Joe’s mind with such intensity that his head hurt: Liz, Tom Smith, Ashe, Wallace, the near hit-and-run, the sex last night, finding out the truth today. There was little chance Smith or Ashe would have taken her; they were feds, too. They knew her; she knew them; she would have gone with them willingly.

  Wallace? He’d tried to buy Josh’s location from Joe and failed. Was he capable of kidnapping Liz? Of course he was.

  Was he willing to kill her?

  He shied away from the question, from even the possibility that Liz was in Wallace’s, and therefore the Mulroneys’, hands. This was just another of her deceptions. Maybe the cops hadn’t been able to catch Josh in Boulder; maybe they thought if they pretended that Liz had been kidnapped, that her life was in danger, Joe would tell them something more. Not that he had anything left to tell, but why would they believe that when he’d lied to them all along?

  But if it was real…His gut tightened. If it was real, would he trade Josh for Liz?

  No matter how angry she’d made him or how badly she’d hurt him, there was only one answer. Not only yes, but hell, yes. Falling for her might qualify as the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but mistake or not, he’d be damned if he would let anything happen to her. He wanted her gone, out of his memory and out of his life, but not dead. Never dead.

  “Joe?” Decker prodded. “Why would someone kidnap Liz Dalton?”

  His head throbbed; his stomach churned. He could barely make his mouth move. “Because they think she knows where my brother is. They think she’ll tell them or…or I will.”

  “Who are they? Why do they want your brother? Where is he?”

  Sickly, Joe met his gaze. “A few hours ago, he was in Colorado. Boulder. Now…” He shrugged. Now it was anyone’s guess. Josh could have gone to ground in Boulder, hidden so well that not even a pack of bloodhounds could find him, or he could be well on his way elsewhere.

  Decker stared back for a minute, then opened the trunk of the car. “Put your bike in here.” Together they heaved it in, though the trunk lid wouldn’t close. Joe slid into the passenger seat, remembering to fasten the belt only when the reminder dinged.

  As Decker pulled back into traffic, he said, “I’m guessing you’ve got a long story to tell. First, though, check those missed calls. See if any of them aren’t from the cops.”

  It was the seventh call, an out-of-area number. He punched the buttons to get to the corresponding voice mail, then switched to speaker phone as the message began. “Mr. Saldana, it’s Daniel Wallace. Since you weren’t receptive to my offer last night, I’ve raised
the stakes a bit. I’ve got Ms. Dalton, but I’ll happily return her unharmed-more or less-in exchange for your brother. I’ll be in touch with you soon with the details.”

  Something inside Joe died: the faint hope that this was another of Liz’s lies. The feds, he’d discovered-Liz, he reminded himself; she was a fed, too-weren’t above making complete fools of innocent people to achieve their goals, but they wouldn’t use the Mulroneys’ people to do it.

  He would return her unharmed, Wallace had said. More or less. Joe’s gut clenched again, his fingers whitening around the phone. They’d found blood along with her phone. What had the bastard done to her? Obviously she hadn’t gone with him willingly, or she wouldn’t have called 911. Had he merely subdued her? Or worse? How much worse?

  “Any other calls from him?” Decker asked as he turned into the police department parking lot.

  Startled by the cop’s voice, Joe refocused on the missed-calls screen, then shook his head. Every other call had come from the police department, Decker or Tommy Maricci.

  Decker’s next question didn’t come until they were seated in a conference room inside the department with Maricci, Pete Petrovski and KiKi Isaacs, Copper Lake’s lone female detecive. “Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell us everything you know about Liz, your brother and Daniel Wallace.”

  “I will. But one thing you need to know up front…Liz’s name isn’t Dalton. It’s Dillon, and she’s a U.S. marshal.”

  Decker and Maricci exchanged looks, muttering the same curse at the same time, and Maricci rose from the table. “I’ll call Atlanta.”

  “Ask for a marshal named Ashe. He’s familiar with the case.” Joe took a deep breath, then slowly blew it out. He’d lived in this town a while. He considered these people friends, and they thought the same of him. They were about to find out just how much he’d hidden from them.

  “I have a brother, an identical twin. We lived in Chicago, and two years ago…”

  They let him talk without interruption, and he told them everything. Except about the night before. Except the personal parts of his conversation with Liz at the mall. Damn it, if he hadn’t been so pissed off, if he’d done the reasonable thing and gone home with her to talk it out…If he’d at least offered the courtesy of walking her to her car…

  But he hadn’t had any courtesy inside him after finding out that while he’d fallen in love with her, he was nothing more to her than a pawn in the government’s game to get Josh. All the lies, all the hurt-he’d just wanted to run away.

  And while he was embracing Josh’s childish tendency to flee, Wallace was forcing Liz into his vehicle, taking her hostage to use as his own pawn. Threatening her, scaring her, making her bleed.

  Joe had never felt such impotent rage, not when he’d awakened in the hospital with red-hot pain consuming him. Not even when he’d found out it was because of Josh.

  “So you don’t know if the cops found your brother in Colorado,” Decker said. When Joe shook his head, his expression tightened. “It’s not like we can just call the Boulder PD and ask, not with this being a federal case. Do you still have the number?”

  Joe pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket. It was damp with sweat from his long ride, the ink smudged, but the digits were legible. Decker dialed the number from the landline on the table between them, then handed the receiver to Joe. This time the call went straight to voice mail. “It’s me. Joe. Call me as soon as you can. It’s urgent.” He read off the number from the phone, listened until the cell clicked off, then slowly hung up.

  “If his calls are going straight to voice mail either he’s on another call or the cell’s shut off,” Maricci remarked. “I doubt he’s got much of a social life, being on the run. But with the cell turned off, the feds can’t use its GPS to track him.”

  “We can assume they didn’t catch him in Boulder,” Decker added, “or a cop would have answered that call.”

  Maricci leaned back in his chair. “So Wallace and at least one accomplice have Liz, and they want to trade her for your brother’s whereabouts-”

  “If we’re lucky,” Decker interjected.

  “Or for your brother himself. We can give him a location, but he’s not gonna let Liz go until his people have Josh in custody, and because you don’t know where he is, that’s not gonna happen.”

  At the end of the table, KiKi spoke up. “I have a suggestion. Let’s write up a report and go home. This is a federal case. The FBI and the marshals service are going to come swooping in here within the hour and take over. All they’ll want from us is coffee and doughnuts, so let’s not waste our time.”

  Petrovski rolled his eyes, and Maricci scowled. Decker directed a cool gaze her way. “Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut and learn,” he said in a level voice. Bright spots of color appeared in KiKi’s cheeks as he went on. “She’s right about one thing. I imagine we’ll have fifteen to twenty feds here soon, and we’ll be pretty much out of the loop in their investigation. But that doesn’t mean we just blow it off.”

  “Maybe Wallace will call before they get here,” Joe said.

  “And you’ll give him what?”

  He smiled thinly. “Josh.”

  “You said he was in Colorado.”

  “He is. Was. But Wallace doesn’t know that for a fact.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, everyone watching him. Did they think he was nuts? He wouldn’t argue. Reckless? Out of his freakin’ mind?

  Decker rubbed his hand over the beard stubble on his jaw. “Do you know how dangerous that would be?”

  “Did I mention that Josh and I are identical? Give us the same haircut and put us in the same clothes, and even our parents can’t tell us apart. Wallace wouldn’t know the difference.” Except for the scars. He might pick up on those.

  “Maybe not, but have you thought ahead to after the trade?” Petrovski asked. “After Liz is gone and you’re still there? They want to kill your brother, which means they would want to kill you.”

  Joe swallowed hard. He’d never been an adrenaline junkie like Josh. He’d come close to dying once and he didn’t want to do it again, not until he was at least ninety. But letting them kill Liz was unthinkable. Better that he take his chances with Wallace than her.

  “We’d rather get her back without sacrificing you,” Decker said, then smiled one of his rare smiles. “But it’s a plan.”

  He didn’t say what kind of plan. He didn’t need to. One doomed to disaster. But what other choice did they have? Either Liz’s life was on the line, or his was, and he couldn’t live if it was hers.

  While the cops talked, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Now he was tired, though not from the bike ride or the restless night. All he’d wanted from Copper Lake was peace and security, and he’d had it for two years. Then Liz had come, and those damn dogs and everyone else, and peace and security had disappeared out the window. He wanted it back.

  He wanted her back.

  Restlessly, he picked up his cell and dialed Natalia’s number. It went to voice mail. “Hey, Nat, it’s Joe. I’m not gonna be home for a while, so can you let Bear and Elizabeth out now, then feed them supper around seven? Thanks.”

  “You named your dog after your girlfriend?” Maricci asked with a grin.

  “You’d be surprised how much they have in common.”

  KiKi snorted. “I’m surprised she didn’t shoot you between the eyes.”

  “She took it as a compliment.” He smiled faintly at the memory. Liz had been wearing a short dress and amazingly sexy heels and drinking a frozen coffee. Watching her lick the whipped cream off the straw had left him so weak in the knees that if he hadn’t been sitting, he would have fallen at her feet.

  Pain slashed, sharp and lethal, through him.

  “We’ll get her back,” Maricci said quietly.

  It was a guess, no better than Joe’s best guess-or his worst-but he grabbed the hope it offered.

  Then his cell phone rang. His fingers s
pasmed as he reached for it, turning on the speaker, and the rushing in his ears nearly blocked out Decker’s quiet admonition. Stay calm.

  Daniel Wallace sounded as cool and in control as ever. “Mr. Saldana, ask one of those police officers with you for his cell phone number. I want to send you a video.”

  Decker gave his number, and a moment later his phone beeped.

  “We want your brother, Mr. Saldana,” Wallace said.

  Joe’s response was automatic. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Then that’s very unfortunate for Ms. Dalton, because you have only until midnight tonight to gain her release. Ask the officer to show you the video.”

  Decker held out his phone, and everyone gathered to watch over Joe’s shoulder. The room on the small screen was dark except for the light shining on Liz’s face. Her cheek was scraped raw, her left eye swollen shut, her nose and upper lip puffy and dried blood trailed across her skin. She lay motionless, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. She could be unconscious. She could be dead.

  Then, after a mumbled command, a booted foot came into frame, nudging her shoulder. Her lashes fluttered, her forehead wrinkled and a low moan escaped her.

  And the clip ended.

  Tension expanded in Joe’s chest, making it damn near impossible to breathe. “How am I supposed to find Josh and have him here by midnight?”

  “That’s not my problem, Mr. Saldana.”

  “I need more time.”

  “Sorry.” Wallace sounded professional, strictly business. “I operate on the schedule I’m given. Midnight. I’ll call you again to tell you where we’ll make the exchange. Just you and your brother. No one else.”

  Wallace hung up, and Joe did the same, his hand shaking. Across the table, Decker and Maricci were watching the video once more. He didn’t ask to see it again. The image of Liz’s battered face was burned into his brain.