“And what is that location? Apex is playing it close to the vest, keeping their bloody hands clean, but they let us know that Peluso’s implant shorted out. Last known ping on his whereabouts was Queens. So, we need to be piggybacking on Aleksei’s intel.” Elijah swung his piercing gaze to Finn. “Anything from the lawyers?”
Naturally, Finn wasn’t one bit intimidated. “Feinberg’s cagey, too, but I think he’ll come to me if she makes contact,” he said with a shrug.
“You think? We need better than hypotheticals, people.” Their fearless—and fear-inducing—leader made a sound of disgust, shoving at the folders in front of him. But then he grinned. “Luckily, while you lot were sitting round with your thumbs up your arses, we got a call on Jack’s emergency line. It was none other than the man of the hour, one Joseph Andrew Peluso. He’s been given coordinates for a rendezvous point that we’ll be monitoring. If he can’t get there himself, he’s going to get the woman there. He’s indicated that’s his priority. He sees himself as expendable.”
Elijah’s smile fell away then. And Danny could relate. They could all relate. Each one of them was prepared to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. You couldn’t be involved in any form of law enforcement or covert operations without knowing the risks. Even though Joe Peluso was presently on the wrong side of the law, he clearly had a working knowledge of those risks as well.
“So where does that leave us?” Danny wondered. “What do you want us to do?”
Elijah sighed, dragging his hands over his smooth-shaven head before knotting them together in front of him. “Jack’s on his way back from DC. He’s been making arrangements for Peluso in the event that he does get out of this alive. For Neha Ahluwalia, too. What I want is for you jokers to close in on your marks. Danny, enlist a couple of our freelancers to watch Vasiliev the old-fashioned way. I know Joaquin’s on the hack, but it might take hours we don’t have. We need eyes and ears on Aleksei in the meantime. Finn…turn all that thinkin’ into some action. Put the screws to Feinberg and Taylor. And not with your sodding cock.”
“What about Gracie?” Finn’s favorite person to needle wasn’t even at HQ at the moment, but that never stopped him from bringing her up. It was almost cute, Danny thought. The closest thing the unrepentant pansexual playboy had to a crush.
Lije wasn’t as charmed. He glowered. “Grace is more useful than you and, therefore, done with her role in this little party if she wants to be. She discovered that Peluso’s jailhouse beatings were administered by a particularly nasty crew of Vasiliev flunkies. Two of the leaders are still on the streets. Yuri Medvedev and Anton Sokolov. Ten to one that’s who they’ve got on Peluso’s trail right now.”
Medvedev. Fuck. Danny knew that name. He knew the face, too. He’d picked him up a year ago on a drunk and disorderly call at a flower shop/bar combo down on Cortelyou Road. That drunk and disorderly had quickly turned into assault. He hadn’t relished discovering what a broken flower vase could do to a person’s face. There was no telling what a man like Yuri Medvedev would do to Joe Peluso. Or to any woman in his vicinity.
They had to wrap this up ASAP. Before Yulia ended up in more danger.
“Tybalt dies, too.” That was what she’d told Aleksei. So fucking brave.
The problem with a Shakespearean tragedy, though, was that by the end, everybody died.
Chapter 20
He should’ve guessed the mystery man, the virile vampire, wouldn’t just leave it at a drink and a business card. Then again, Nate had a lot on his mind. A client still AWOL. Cops and the DA breathing down his neck. Other cases piling up like mid-December snow—he’d finally had to farm several out to hungry associates. It was perfectly reasonable to be thrown for a loop to discover Finian Conlan waiting outside when he got home after a strategy session with D.
“Y-you,” he sputtered, the keys to the converted firehouse slipping from his suddenly nerveless grasp.
Conlan grabbed them before they could hit the pavement, mischief bright in the blue of his eyes. “Me,” he confirmed. “I could’ve let myself in, but I thought that might be rude.”
“Rude, illegal. Potay-to, potah-to.” Nate recovered his composure quickly—and his keys, too. He snatched them back and fit the right ones in the regular lock and the dead bolt. “Thank you for showing restraint.”
“I’m bad at restraint,” Conlan admitted with entirely too much cheer, slipping inside before he could be invited. “Though I do enjoy being tied up. Bound. Cuffed. I’m terribly good at that, or so I’ve been told.”
The modicum of gravitas Nate had achieved vanished in a puff of smoke, replaced by the extremely vivid image of this man spread-eagled on a bed. Dark hair, dark beard, acres of sun-starved Irish vampire skin. Fuck. He shook his head, forcing himself to think of the unsexiest things possible. The law-school debt he’d only paid off a few years ago. The 6 train during rush hour. The Jersey Turnpike. The night of the shooting…when he could’ve lost his best friend in the world. He stashed his coat in the hall closet, and by the time he joined his unwelcome guest in the open-plan living area, Nate felt marginally more in control. He crossed to the antique beverage cart that held a selection of his favorite liquors, splashing a healthy amount of gin into a tumbler. “Why are you here, Mr. Conlan? What do you want?”
A dismissive noise tore from the other man’s throat. He stopped prowling across the hardwood and laid claim to the leather sofa, sprawling on it like an indolent king. “Oh, please,” he said with a huff. “It’s likely that we’re going to fuck tonight, or at some point in the near future, so there’s no need to be formal. Do call me Finn.”
Wow. A cosmetics company could make a fortune bottling his confidence and selling it by the ounce. Nate was too impressed to be unsettled—and definitely turned on. “Are you always this cocky?”
“Mm-hmm. I’m terribly good at that, too.” Finn waggled his eyebrows and tilted his head like he knew it was his best angle—though if he had a bad angle, Nate hadn’t found it yet. “But to return to your first question…I’m here because our timetable has seen some changes. Making contact with Neha Ahluwalia is of the utmost importance. Her life could depend on it.”
As if he hadn’t been worried enough about Neha before. Nate tried to suppress a shiver of fear. The vampire could probably sense it anyway. “I told you: I don’t know where she is. She hasn’t been in touch.”
“Shame. Someone should always be touching you.” Finn’s gaze cut to the picture frames on a side table. Him and Dustin when they graduated L-school. And a goofy shot from some DGS Halloween party where they’d dressed up as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder from the “Ebony and Ivory” video. “Is he touching you? Because that’s an idea I will certainly wank off to in the near future.”
Nate choked on a mouthful of gin. He had to sit down. But not on the sofa. Not next to this walking one-man orgy. “Dustin is my partner. Not my partner,” he said emphatically. “There is nothing like that going on between us.” Not for lack of wondering. There had been times over the years—no. No, now was not the time to go down that road. He wasn’t going to lay his private life bare for a gorgeous, filthy-mouthed operative with an agenda. Especially if Neha was in danger. Maybe his dick didn’t have a sense of priorities, but his brain definitely did.
“As I said, Neha hasn’t contacted me. She probably thinks whoever is after her and Peluso is watching me. She’s probably right,” he admitted. And another bolt of fear, combined with unease, skated down his spine. Was someone outside right now, in an unmarked car along the curb? Were his phones tapped? How could he have been so careless as not to think about that?
“Nah.” Finn waved his hand. “They have someone monitoring your law-firm offices and your business line, but your personal phone is clean. As is your lovely home. Nary a bug to be found.”
Nate frowned, retrieving his iPhone from inside his jacket and staring down at the screen. A
s if there would somehow be a Post-it note on it declaring that it had been inspected by Shady Agent No. 2. He’d had it on silent all day. It definitely hadn’t left his custody. As for his house… “I thought you said you didn’t let yourself in.”
That earned a laugh. Another wicked look. “I thought you said your ‘partner’ didn’t touch you?”
“You’re exhausting.” Before the obvious retort could be made, Nate added, “I have no doubt you’d tire me out sexually. It’s not going to be tonight.”
Finn let out a sigh…which brought up all sorts of questions about vampire physiology that they didn’t have the luxury to address. He leaned forward, up and out of his insouciant sprawl. “It pains me to say it…but you’re right. We simply don’t have time to shag properly—and why do it at all if you don’t put in your best effort? I have a reputation to uphold, after all. And, besides…” He gestured with a tilt of his head. “Your mobile’s ringing.”
Sure enough, the screen was lit up with an incoming text from an unknown number.
We’re okay. For now.
Nate felt dizzy for reasons that had nothing to do with Finian Conlan’s overt sexuality. “Are you a psychic, too? Did you know she would reach out to me tonight?”
“No. Psychic ability is not on the list of my many talents. My life would’ve turned out far differently if I’d been born with the Sight.” For a second, the flirtatious mask fell away, and Nate saw something in the man’s face that made a shiver skip down his spine. Then it was gone, and the wolfish grin returned. Finn reached across and plucked the gin from Nate’s hand, gesturing for him to focus on replying to Neha. He lifted Nate’s glass in a toast. “But I was gifted with impeccable timing. Slainte!”
To his health. To their collective health. Somehow, it felt more like a harbinger of doom than a blessing.
Chapter 21
We’re okay. For now. But I’ll need your help.
Joe was asleep when Neha sent the message. He’d been out cold for hours, likely slayed more from the effort of changing for the first time in years than from her impromptu impression of Meredith Grey. His breathing was even, pulse steady. He’d reopened the incisions when they’d made love this last time, so she’d checked his bandages, and the cuts were nothing more than thin red lines, nearly healed.
The iPod Touch sat in Neha’s palm like a live grenade, pin pulled. Texting Nate was a bad idea. Even with the secure messaging app and Auntie’s Wi-Fi, it was risky. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work. Not how it went in the movies. You were supposed to be totally off the grid, right? But she wasn’t a fictional character, not some suspense-thriller badass who couldn’t rely on the system—even if she did own a .22 and a Taser. She was a real person. And real people called those in their lives who might be able to help when they were in trouble. Or they messaged them from a device their tech-head big brother had tricked out with a VPN and all sorts of hacker doodads.
The text sat there. Unread. Then read. But with no dots popping up to signal that Nate was composing a reply. Fuck. That just made her second-guess her decision. After all, there was no handbook for being on the run with a wanted criminal. Jason Bourne movies definitely didn’t count. So, she had no idea if she was doing this right or if she was just putting them in more danger. All she could be sure of was that there was no way she and Joe could get out of this on their own. There were too many variables, too many moving parts—too many people she couldn’t control. And they could only hide out for so much longer. Hiding wasn’t a plan. Going to Nate and Dustin and trying to work something out with the DA and the feds was a plan. Joe would hate it, but it was the most sensible, practical option.
Five minutes went by. Ten. She watched the bed and her screen in turns. What would happen first? Nate responding or Joe waking up?
She was at least eighty percent certain that their cover hadn’t been blown yet. The flimsy disguise of Indian clothes had actually worked when they’d test-driven it the day before. Slouching in the back of a dosa restaurant with cellophane shopping bags at their feet. Because New York City was the biggest small town in the world and you couldn’t go out without running into someone you knew, one of Aishneet Auntie’s neighbors had been in the same restaurant.
“Neha Ahluwalia…is that you? And who is this…? Do we know him? Who are his people?”
“Namaste, Auntie-ji! This is just a friend. Visiting from abroad.”
“‘Friend’? Chee! At your age, you should have more than friends. You need a husband and two-three children.”
“Three? Auntie, who has time for three?”
Her hypothetical children had occupied the nosy neighbor so thoroughly that Joe didn’t have to say a single word to authenticate his identity. Meena Auntie had gone away clicking her tongue about “modern girls today” and not even questioning the suspicious fellow Neha had been keeping company with. “Shit,” he’d joked later, “I think I’m more scared of your aunties than I am of Vasiliev’s goons.”
Fortunately, there’d been nothing more on the news, no chatter on social media when Neha had done a quick check via the apps on the Touch. That didn’t make it any easier to wait. Someone—several someones—had tried to kill Joe. And her by extension. Each time he walked out the door, it could be the last time. And then what? What did that make her? An accessory to a dead man? A fool?
Her iPod buzzed with a message just as Joe stirred on the bed with a rusty groan.
We’ve got your back. Where are you?
“Doc?” Joe sat up slowly, squinted at her in the dimness. “You okay?”
She didn’t know which question to answer first, so she tackled both simultaneously, thumbing out a quick “can’t say yet” and assuring Joe “Yeah, I’m fine” aloud.
Fine was one of those filler words that meant nothing. That you said out of habit. Joe didn’t buy it for an instant. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” he said as he gingerly climbed off the mattress. “You ain’t fine. Nothing about how you’re looking at that phone right now says you’re fine.”
“I’m worried,” she admitted. That wasn’t the whole truth, but it would suffice until Nate texted again. “I think we’ve probably been here long enough and it’s time to move on. Maybe out to Long Island or up toward Tarrytown…though both of those options could leave you vulnerable to an SRB pickup, since they’re outside the city limits.”
Joe pulled a pair of Saravpal Uncle’s drawstring pants over his hips, gaze flicking to the iPod still sitting silent in her hand. “Did someone tell you to go out to Tarrytown? Or you just got a jones for Sleepy Hollow all of a sudden?”
“I reached out to Nate,” she said, cautiously setting the phone down beside her. “I didn’t give him any indicators of our location. You know I’m not that incompetent.”
A humorless smile pulled at the corners of Joe’s mouth. “It’s probably one of the only things I know about you. Besides how you taste.”
He was right. They still barely knew each other. A few minutes of fanciful pillow talk about subway seats didn’t a couple make. Trust took longer than that to build, didn’t it? Neha felt the unease in every pore as Joe began pacing the living area, alternating between working out the stiffness in his limbs and dragging his hands through his hair in obvious frustration. “Doc, telling Feinberg anything could put us in danger,” he growled. “They could be watching his every move! You can’t just do shit because you feel like it!”
What the hell? Neha’s jaw practically hit the floor. “Because I feel like it? Like this is a fucking lark for me? I left my life to keep you safe,” she reminded him, wrapping her arms around herself even though the studio was far from cold. No, the chill was between them. A box of ice that had materialized despite all the heat they’d generated. “Are you being one hundred percent honest with me, Joe? I doubt it. I know I’m not the only one who used this phone.”
“You don’t want my tota
l honesty, baby. Trust me.” He laughed, scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. Like he needed to get rid of the sour tinge of his own words. “I’ve seen things, I’ve done things that you can’t even imagine. Things you’d never want to imagine. I’m not a hero. I’m not even a good man. Hell, depending on who you ask, I’m not even a man at all.”
Oh, they were not playing this self-pitying game. “I don’t care about what anyone else thinks. And I’m not naive. I read the police reports. I read the first trial transcripts. And I still came with you! Because I believed in you. Because I wanted you.” When she said it out loud like that… Neha winced. It was her turn to scrub at her face. “God, maybe I am naive.”
But that didn’t mean she was going to lose sight of their priorities. Staying alive rated far higher than figuring out the action-movie-meets-Bollywood laugh riot that appeared to be her love life. She pushed off from the small sofa, grabbing her jacket from where she’d tossed it after their last supply run. “I’m going to do a walk around the block. See if anything looks suspicious.”
Joe laughed again. “The most suspicious thing around here is me.”
He wasn’t wrong. She ached to protest, but he wasn’t wrong. “Who did you call the other night when you thought I was asleep? What if that puts us in danger?”
“It won’t,” he said tersely. “I called people who might be able to help.”
“Nate might be able to help, too. He and Dustin can work something out with the DA’s office and the FBI, if they’re involved already. Don’t strip me of that choice. Of the chance to get us out of this. I have just as much right as you do. We’re in this together, remember?”
Big Bad Wolf Page 16