Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “You bitch!” a voice shouted. “You turned me in. They forced me to leave Mom. She’ll kill herself if I’m not there. I’m the only thing that keeps her safe. You bitch. I’ll never forget this. They’ve dumped me with a family who are only doing it for the money. The doors have locks on them and they already hate me. If they touch me in a bad way, it’ll be your fault.”

  She reeled, holding the table. “Jacob?” she asked.

  “Fuck off.” He slammed the phone down.

  “Everything okay?” Nick asked, coming back into the room. A frown etched his face and she wondered if he was concerned for her, or something else had happened.

  She reassured him and updated him on Penelope’s interview—which, when she detailed it, gave them more information about how the Whisperer approached his victims, but not much else. She wanted to explore her idea, but she needed to find Jacob before something awful happened to him.

  “My question is, if Penelope was given the choice between her child, and a lot of other children, who was given the choice that resulted in the NYPD being bombed?” Nick said.

  The room was silent. He was right. Once they’d caught the Whisperer, they would then have to go back and investigate whose silence resulted in the deaths of so many people. Lara wondered for a second if they’d actually be able to prosecute those people, too, but her mind was really on Jacob. What if his new foster family was abusing him?

  “I have to go out for a bit. I’ll be right back.” She stuck her phone in her back pocket and waited for Nick to nod. But he held her gaze as if waiting for her to explain.

  “No,” Nick said, simply.

  “What?” she asked, flabbergasted.

  He motioned her into Victoria’s office. As soon as the door was shut, she turned on him. “What the hell—”

  “No, Lara. That’s all—no. You are not receiving a phone call that left you devastated and then running out by yourself when we’re in the middle of a time-critical investigation. Was your phone call more important than saving Ben’s life?” Nick towered over her, hands on his hips.

  She didn’t know.

  “This is what I’m talking about, Lara. You always go off half-cocked on some errand that you don’t want to involve your team in...and it nearly always ends up in death and destruction. No more. You share, and let us help you. Or the first thing I’ll do if I get Victoria’s job will be to reassign you. To Alaska, maybe. Or North Dakota.” His voice trailed off from his strident tone into a gentler one. “Let us help. Let me help.”

  Lara took a deep breath. Opening her mouth and sharing her concerns about Jacob took just about every ounce of balls she had. She didn’t like the vulnerable softness it produced in her stomach. But she did it anyway. She really couldn’t run off with just a few hours left on Ben’s life. But she also couldn’t believe that she’d had to be reminded of that. Jacob was messing with her head.

  “Remember Jacob? I called in his home situation, and they took him away from his mom and sent him to a foster family. He called me to tell me that they were a few locked doors away from abusing him. And that I was a bitch. I was going to check out the place they put him.” She leaned against the corridor wall, dropping her voice whenever anyone walked past.

  “This is why hundreds of people work in this building. You don’t have to run out on an investigation. You can ask someone else to look into it.”

  Well, of course he was right, but that didn’t stop her arguing with him. “But how do I know they’re really doing their jobs...” She was about to say “as well as I would” but stopped.

  “Then you ask someone you trust to do it,” Nick said patiently.

  She looked at him. Who was he talking about?

  “Lara! I mean me.” He ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Jesus. Remember Sally? I dated her a little a few years ago. I introduced you to her a couple of months ago when we bumped into her on the child slave case.”

  “Oh, right. Sally. And you,” she hastily added.

  “I’ll ask Sally to get into it, okay?” Nick said with exaggerated patience.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  He held up a finger as he hit a speed-dial number on his phone. “Sally. I need a little help. Do you have a minute?” he said.

  Wait? He has her on speed dial? She watched his expression as he talked to her on the phone. The tension creases slipped from his face, and his voice changed, too. Wow. Was she... Did he still have feelings for Sally? The thought made her stomach clench. Was Lara letting Nick slip away? Or had he already gone? And why wasn’t she all right with that? She’d been so sure that she’d put her short liaison with her partner behind her. But had she?

  She jumped slightly when he hung up the phone. She’d totally missed what he’d been saying to Sally. “Well?”

  “Sally pulled it up on the computer. She actually knows the Gellhorns. They are very experienced, very kind and the children they’ve fostered before all say amazing things about them. Jacob’s in a great place, Lara. Don’t worry about him, he’s just lashing out. He’s confused probably. He loves his mother, but there’s no way he’s not loving being with the Gellhorns, too. It’s common. Give him a week or so, and maybe go see him. Sally says it’s best not to rise to the bait, and let him settle in.”

  Lara nodded. It made sense. “Okay.” She nodded again. “Okay, thank you. I mean it.”

  “See? Asking for help, delegating and letting someone in isn’t the end of the world, is it?” Nick said.

  Well, that was taking it way over the top. She punched his arm.

  “Too much rubbing of the salt?” Nick said with a grin.

  “A tad,” she replied.

  He disappeared into the spectator area for the interview room where Jennifer had taken Dunbar after Penelope left. Lara headed to her desk. She’d made the right call by reporting his mother to CPS. She was sure of it. Her judgment was good. Maybe she could trust herself to make better decisions for herself.

  That’s what the shrink had told her to do. Recognize when she’d made a good call. Build up her personal and professional confidence by mentally noting the good decisions, good judgments and good calls she made. This may have been all three. Okay, she’d made them on Jacob’s behalf, not her own, but still.

  She basked in the warmth that seemed to be pulsing out from her soul. Was she slowly being fixed? And if so, what was next for her?

  Lara was already in motion. She was going to get Christina on to Penelope’s past to figure out where she may have pissed off the Whisperer, and she was going to find Ben before he was killed, and she would find the Whisperer. That’s what was next. And she wouldn’t let anything else get in her way.

  Chapter Four

  She made a beeline to watch Jennifer’s interview. It was now after eight o’clock. She’d been with Dunbar for a very long time and every time Lara planned on seeing how Jennifer was holding up, she got sidetracked.

  The first thing she noticed was that Dunbar looked nothing like he had when he walked in. He was sweaty and pale, sitting upright, his back not touching the chair at all. It was as if he’d been nailed to the seat.

  Lara pushed the button so she could listen in to their conversation.

  “I can’t tell until I have to. But you have to find that guy. You have to find him. Save him,” Dunbar insisted weakly.

  Jennifer leaned forward. “I’m not going to judge your secret. We all have secrets. I have secrets that no one in this building knows. But if it would save a life, I’d have to tell.”

  Dunbar swayed as if he suddenly lacked the strength to hold himself up. “If it were just me. If it was just about me, I would. But it isn’t. This...this person is asking me to sacrifice someone I love, and I don’t know why. You need to find his prisoner. You need to find him because I can’t tell. I can’t. I won’
t—” He was getting more and more irate. Spittle was spraying from his mouth.

  Instead of recoiling, Jennifer leaned in. “Mr. Dunbar. Are you all right?”

  It was Jennifer’s concern that alarmed Lara. All color had drained from his face, his mouth was slack and his left arm was jumping. Suddenly he grabbed his twitching arm and screamed.

  Lara jammed her palm down on the emergency response button and ran out of the observation room. The small corridor’s lights were now red, the light outside Jennifer’s interview room was flashing so the EMTs would know where to go. She barreled into the room to find Jennifer already lowering him to the floor.

  Without speaking, they untied his tie and loosened his collar. Lara pressed her ear to his chest. “Weak and fast,” she said. “Slowing. Slowing. Shit.”

  They were taking turns to do chest compressions and breathe for him when Nick ran into the room. “What happened?” He stood in the doorway, head swiveling between the scene on the floor and the door to look for the arrival of the paramedics. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Dunbar on the floor, because even though he knew logically that it was Dunbar, it was his father’s face he saw.

  He shook his head to clear the image. Dunbar and his father had been virtually attached at the hip since he was a kid. They were both cut from the same cloth, both intellectually, mentally, emotionally and physically. And Nick despised them both with equal ardor. But it was interesting to him how his gut had reacted to seeing him being worked on by Lara and Jennifer. Maybe there was some saved emotion left for his father, after all. Maybe.

  “Don’t just stand there, grab the defib kit,” Lara said between switching from breathing to compressions.

  Shit. Where was his head? He ran to the end of the corridor and grabbed the unit from the wall. He cracked it open as he entered the room and knelt at Dunbar’s head. He ripped the man’s shirt open and attached the sensors to his chest. Then he flipped the switch. “Everyone back.”

  Lara and Jennifer sat back on their heels and watched the dial on the machine as it calibrated Dunbar’s heart rate and assessed the charge to apply. The machine beeped and a second later, Dunbar’s torso jumped a little.

  Before Nick could figure out what the new beeping was from the machine, two EMTs ran in, followed by another two rattling a stretcher along the corridor.

  All three of them stood and stepped back to let the men work. Nick was too conflicted to listen to what they were saying. He reached for the phone and dialed his father as the men loaded Dunbar onto the stretcher.

  “Delano,” his father spat.

  “Dunbar seems to have had a heart attack. He’s on his way to hospital. I thought you’d want to know.”

  There was silence. A silence Nick was used to. He could almost see his father’s expression as he processed the information. Why was Nick telling him? How did Nick know? Was Dunbar with the FBI? If so, why?

  “Will you tell Martha? Or shall I?” his father said.

  “It’ll probably be faster if you do,” Nick said. “Unless you can give me her number?”

  “I’ll get my assistant to call. Which hospital?”

  “New York-Presbyterian. The Lower Manhattan location.” If his father could be a master of the clipped sentence, so could he be.

  There was silence again. Nick didn’t have time for subtext. “I’ll be at the hospital shortly. So if you want to talk to me...” He deliberately left it hanging, wondering how his father would interpret his invitation. God, he wished Dunbar had talked. Was he into something that his father was into, as well? Would his father take the bait and confide in Nick?

  He heard a change in the silence, and realized he was listening not to his father’s thought process, but to dead air.

  It’d be a cold day in hell.

  But he hadn’t said no.

  “Are you okay?” Lara asked in a low voice.

  Paramedics were still gathering their equipment and chatting. “Yup. But I better make my way to the hospital.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “I know you’ve known him forever. I’m sorry you even had to see that.”

  He allowed himself the warmth of her hand on him for a second. “It’s fine.” He looked around and dragged her to the far end of the corridor. “If my father goes to the hospital, too, I’m going to see if I can get any information about what Dunbar’s secret might be. I can’t help thinking that if we can find the link between the people he’s blackmailing, we might get a head start on him.”

  “Sure. Do you want me to come with you?”

  Her earnest eyes made him want to say yes. He wanted her to be there for him, but knew in his soul that he was better to deal with it himself. “No, no. It’s okay. You need to keep working the case here with the team.”

  She nodded, but said nothing, her gaze still on his as if looking for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked.

  He squeezed her arm and left.

  * * *

  Nick was surprised to see Jennifer perched at the edge of a chair in the cardiac waiting room when he arrived. “Jennifer?”

  She just looked at him. Some kind of agony had settled into her eyes. It was like looking at a different person.

  “It was my questioning that brought on his heart attack, I’m sure of it.” Her fingers were gripping the chair seat as if any false move would make her tumble off.

  He sat next to her. “No it wasn’t. It was his health, and the secrets he was keeping.”

  “His secret tried to kill him,” she said with a grim edge to her voice. “It wasn’t about him, it was about someone else. That’s why he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  Nick’s face settled into a blank expression. He couldn’t help but assume that Dunbar’s secrets had something to do with his father. What was his father into? Did Dunbar just give his life for his father’s secrets? Everything bad that happened to someone in his family had something to do with his father. His thoughts went briefly to his brother. His father had a lot to answer for.

  “No. Secrets don’t hurt people. Everyone has secrets,” Nick said.

  “I guess so,” Jennifer said, sitting back in her seat.

  “It’s the guilt that kills you, not really the secrets. If you’ve got a conscience, of course. Too many people don’t have a conscience.” He shrugged. “It’d certainly make our job easier if murderers just dropped dead of their own accord, wouldn’t it?” He aimed for levity, but clearly misjudged it.

  “But surely some people kill people for the right reason, don’t they?”

  “Everyone who murders someone thinks they did it for the right reason. They’re always wrong.” Nick jumped up as a doctor exited the room opposite.

  “Are you here for Trevor Dunbar?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m FBI Special Agent Delano, and this is Special Agent Gulden.”

  “Is he under arrest?” The doctor frowned and looked back into Dunbar’s room.

  “No, not at all. He was with us when he got sick. His wife and business partner should be along soon,” Nick explained.

  “In that case, I’m sorry I can’t give you any further information about his condition. I’ll have to wait for his next of kin to arrive.” The doctor paged through the clipboard. “Can you give me his wife’s name?”

  “Martha Dunbar,” Nick said. “Would it make any difference if he was under arrest?”

  The doctor just looked at him.

  Jennifer took his arm and led him back to the chairs. “You know he’s got you pegged as a troublemaker now, don’t you?” she said, with a glimmer of her regular humor.

  “Good thing Lara isn’t here. She would have already beaten him into submission.”

  “Truth.”

  “I think they would have told us if he were dead. So there’s that,” Nick said, wondering h
ow long they should stay. After the initial shock of his heart attack had worn off, Nick realized that staying would be fairly useless. The doctor obviously wouldn’t let them speak to him without his wife and/or lawyer—which presumably would be Nick’s father—present. They weren’t going to get any more information sitting here, and he wasn’t naive enough to think that his father would crack and spill everything.

  “Come on. Sitting here isn’t going to find Benjamin.” He rose and waited for Jennifer to get up. It took her a long, reluctant second to follow his lead.

  “Nick, how sweet of you to come,” a voice said.

  Martha was walking toward him, her elbow supported by his father.

  He opened his mouth to explain, but a familiar speak-and-you’re-dead expression from his father stopped him in his tracks.

  “I called him as soon as I heard,” Nick’s father lied. “I thought he might be able to get here before us.”

  “Of course. Thank you so much for coming. I know it would mean the world to Trevor.”

  “You’re welcome. The doctor came out of his room a few minutes ago, but wouldn’t tell us anything about his condition until you arrived.” Nick looked around and spotted the doctor at the nurses’ station. “There he is. Doctor!” he called.

  The doctor came over and Nick introduced him to Martha.

  “Is it okay to discuss your husband’s condition in front of everybody?” He gave Nick a disapproving look.

  “Of course, of course,” Martha said. “Everyone’s family here.”

  Nick resisted the urge to make an “I told you so” face to the doctor.

  “Your husband suffered from what seems to be a stress-induced cardiac infarction. He got here very quickly after his attack, and that probably saved his life. He’s stable, but an echocardiogram shows that we will need to do bypass surgery sooner rather than later. We need you to fill in some forms with our nurses here, Mrs. Dunbar.”

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “Of course,” the doctor said, gesturing her toward Dunbar’s room. She disappeared inside, leaving Nick, Jennifer and his father standing in the corridor.