Terms of Engagement

by Kylie Brant

  “Bull.” Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder and walked her backward until the backs of her knees met the bed. She didn’t resist when he forced her to sit. Her knees didn’t feel all that reliable. Where could he have gotten Niko’s name? How?

  “He does the wet work for the Portino family, right? Connected New York mob outfit. Runs some sort of nightclub there, but his real source of income comes from the hits.” His staccato delivery hammered at her guard, as she struggled for comprehension. “How did you ever run afoul of the Portino family? Did you work for them?”

  Lindsay moistened her lips. “No.”

  He stared hard at her, the intensity of those dark eyes searing her. “Well, you crossed them some way, or they regard you as a threat. That’s the only reason I can think of for them to send their contracted killer after you.”

  The rapid-fire questions calmed something inside her. He knew a bit but he didn’t know all. There was a way around this. She just needed time to think. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where are you getting all this?”

  He curled his lip. “Save it. That phone call earlier? It was a buddy at the precinct. I had him run the MO of using an engraved shell through a few databases and he came up with some interesting stuff. Seems there’s a raft of unsolved homicides in the New York City area, going back as far as nine years. He put a call in to a detective working one of the cases who said they’ve been pulling bodies out of the rivers there for nearly a decade. Guess what they have in common? A bullet hole in the forehead and a shell with the vic’s name engraved on the side, tucked somewhere in their clothing.”

  An eerie sense of calm came over her then. She deliberately widened her eyes, looked at him bewilderedly. “Then whoever shot at me today must have me mistaken for someone else. I’ve never even been to New York.”

  He stared hard at her for a moment. “You’re good,” he said grudgingly. “Bet you’ve had some practice at it. But I’m better. The bullets they took out of the New York vics all match. They were all hand-loaded, which means the shooter is a bit of a fanatic about his work. Once ballistics gets done with the bullets dug out of the railing outside your place, how long do you think it will be before we match them to the ones taken from the other victims?”

  Lindsay put a hand to her head, only half feigning weakness. The pounding there had nothing to do with her head wound, however, and everything to do with the information he was hammering her with. “I…don’t understand. None of this makes any sense. My head…I need to lie down.”

  “Later.” Taking her chin between his fingers, he turned her chin to face him and surveyed her grimly. “It’s time to give it to me straight. The whole story, not just the bits and pieces you fed me this afternoon. It’s the only way for me to help you, don’t you get that? I can’t protect you if I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  There was a light in his eye, a dangerous burn. “Let’s start with your real name. Which is it? Grace Amundson? Grace Feller? Grace Remson? Grace Strickland? Grace Trumbell?” She stared at him numbly as he ticked off the list of names. It was like watching a house of cards fall in slow motion. Remove just one from the middle and the entire structure collapses in on itself.

  “How…” Her voice was barely audible, so she swallowed, tried again. “Where did you get those names?”

  He looked satisfied and she knew she’d answered at least one of his questions. “The National Center for Missing Adults has five listings for women of your approximate age with the first name of Grace. Most of them also have a picture. Do I need to call Phillips back, have them fax the photos to me?”

  Feeling suddenly ancient, her hand went to his where it still held her chin, and pushed it away. If she had the strength she’d get up. Move away from him. But she doubted her legs would hold her. Her family had reported her missing. How odd that with all the subterfuge she’d engaged in to keep them safe, that single act had never occurred to her. “Grace Feller,” she whispered.

  Just the sound of the name whistled through her mind, a snippet from the past. It sounded foreign, even to her ears. She’d ceased being Grace Feller over three years ago. And she’d begun cutting the ties three years before that.

  “Feller.” He thought a moment. “From Wisconsin, right?”

  “This isn’t solving anything.” Somehow she summoned the strength to push away from the bed and carefully stepped around him to pace. She recognized the spurts of adrenaline firing through her veins. Knew that they could fade as suddenly as they’d appeared, and her system would finally crash. She needed to get some sleep. But she also knew there was no more avoiding Jack.

  Which meant she’d have to tell him all, or most, and convince him he couldn’t help her. That no one could.

  Nerves clashed inside her like grinding gears in a car. “I told you this afternoon he was dangerous.”

  He blew out a breath. “Yeah, but somehow I didn’t figure connected. How long have you been running from him?”

  “Thirty-eight months,” she said bleakly. And two weeks. Five days. She hooked a finger in the edge of the blind covering the window, lifted it to look out. Dark clouds scudded across the night sky, but her attention was on the ground below. Too far to jump. But there was an attached garage that the other window should look out over. She could safely land on that, then shimmy down a drain spout.

  “So the Portino family put a contract out on you nearly three years ago, and you’ve been evading Rassi ever since.” She heard the incredulity in Jack’s voice. “Lady, with luck like that, you should be in Vegas.”

  Dropping the blind, she turned to face him. He was half twisted around to look at her, one knee on the bed. “Looks like my luck ran out about the time the restaurant incident made national news. And the Portino family doesn’t have anything to do with this.” At least she couldn’t imagine how they would be involved. “It’s just Niko.” And that was more than enough.

  She saw the questions in his expression, quickly followed by understanding. Recognized the impassive mask that shifted over his face and felt her heart sink a little further.

  “It’s personal, then.”

  “You could say that.” She heard her voice come, as if from a distance. “Everything you said about him…it’s all suspicion. The police have never been able to tie Niko to any of the murders. But I stole something from him that links him to six of them, and he wants it back. And he wants me dead for betraying him.”

  In the sudden silence she could hear the rain start, each individual raindrop plopping against the window. It’d be a wet walk to the interstate if it didn’t stop. Somehow she couldn’t summon the energy to care.

  “What do you have, Lindsay?”

  “The memory card from his digital camera.” She’d stashed it in a safe spot before fleeing New York City. But she had no real illusions that Niko couldn’t get that information out of her before killing her. She knew what he was capable of.

  She crossed her arms, rubbing her suddenly chilled skin. “He likes to keep mementos of his kills. Ego, I guess. He’s got plenty of that. He lays the engraved shell on the victim’s chest, goes down on one knee next to the head, and takes the picture.” Revulsion filled her, as hot and strong as the first time Ricky had showed her the photos he’d recovered on the camera she’d let him borrow. “Stupid on his part.”

  Jack nodded. “But not that unusual. Lots of serial offenders take souvenirs. They use them to relive the thrill of the kill afterward. You say you recovered the pictures?”

  She didn’t answer him directly. It seemed important that he understand. After she was gone, she wanted him to at least know the why.

  “There were four of us. Wendy—she and I graduated at semester of our senior year and cut out for New York.” No amount of ultimatums or pleas from either of their parents had had any effect. They’d planned their escape from Ellison since they were fifteen. “We met Ricky our first year in the city, Nathan our second. We hung together. Looked out for each other. Cou
ldn’t afford places to live on our own, so we shared a studio apartment.” She gave a short laugh at the memory. “It was halfway to New Jersey and the size of a shoebox, but it was ours.”

  “And then you met Niko.”

  He was good at this, she realized. At listening and drawing out and letting the story spin at its own pace. He had practice with his job. And she hated, violently, the idea that she had become just that to him. Part of the job.

  “Not then. Not until I’d been in the city for a couple years. Nathan was older and we were going out to clubs to celebrate his twenty-first birthday.” How young they were then. There was an odd sort of pain at the memory. Lindsay leaned a shoulder against the closet door. Young and exuberant and invincible. Life was a journey and every day was a new adventure.

  “We’d finessed our way into Kouples, although Nathan was the only one old enough. The rest of us couldn’t get served. The bartender called security on us when we tried. Just when we were being shown to the door, Niko intervened.”

  She knew now he’d watched the whole thing from his lair in his office. He’d told her often enough how he’d been mesmerized the moment he’d set eyes on her. For too long that had charmed her. Eventually it had terrified her.

  She lifted a shoulder. “He dazzled us. Set us all up with drinks and invited us to join him in his private booth. He was…attracted.”

  “I’ll bet.” Jack’s tone was clipped. “He must have been a decade older.”

  “He was sophisticated and engaging, with an aura of polished danger that I found irresistible.” It was impossible to keep the self-condemnation from her voice. “He gave us all jobs and it wasn’t long before he was the center of my world. I thought he was a club owner. By the time we found out different it was too late. For all of us.”

  “Okay. These others you mentioned…your friends? They can verify your story?”

  She should have been prepared for the question. Instead the pain ambushed her again, a keen-edged agony that time had failed to dull. Unable to speak, Lindsay just shook her head. She had to force the words from her lips. “They’re all dead. Niko killed them.”

  Lindsay saw Jack spring across the room. Had a moment to note once again how fast the man could move. His arms were closing around her before she even realized her knees had given out. He scooped her up before she crumpled to the floor, turned and strode to the bed, setting her down to lean against the headboard and then propping the pillows behind her.

  “You’ve had enough hits today to send most people reeling,” he muttered. “You need sleep. The rest of this can wait until tomorrow.”

  It couldn’t, of course. Because she wouldn’t be here tomorrow. With or without the money and the gun, she’d be long gone before Jack ever awakened. But now he’d understand why. And that brought her a modicum of peace.

  “I’ll finish it. There isn’t much more.”

  Jack stood there indecisively, as if unsure whether he should insist. But then he sat down on the bed, moving her legs so they lay across his lap.

  The intimacy of their position made her feel awkward. She wasn’t used to being taken care of, although in her naiveté she’d mistaken Niko’s possessiveness for something similar. She’d made all sorts of mistakes with Niko, worn blinders for far too long.

  “Rick was the techie. Niko had him working with the video surveillance for the club, but he knew computers, too. Cameras. Cell phones. He’d gotten his hands on some photo-recovery software and he was hot to try it out. But none of us owned a camera. I knew where Niko kept his, though.” She swallowed hard. “I thought, what’s the harm, you know? It wasn’t like Ricky was even going to take the camera out and use it. He was just going to learn how the software worked, recover the photos that had been deleted from the memory card, delete them again.”

  “But he recovered photos of the kills.” Jack’s thumb went to the arch of her foot and rubbed, and she had to stifle a moan. A woman didn’t make her living on her feet and not appreciate the pleasure of a good foot rub.

  “Ricky went to Nathan first. And then Wendy. It was days before they came to me. I didn’t believe them at first. But Ricky had printed the pictures. I couldn’t argue with that.”

  But she’d wanted to. They’d researched the identities of the people in the photos, and she still remembered how desperately she’d wanted to discover some other explanation. Even though she was already beginning to realize Niko Rassi wasn’t the man she’d thought he was, believing he was a killer was still impossible. Until the research had proved her wrong.

  “Nathan and Ricky talked us into letting them go to the police alone. They spoke to a Detective Lee Vickers. He took the pictures and assured them that we’d be safe. But he needed time, he said. Twenty-four hours to put the case together. He said they had to go back to the club, pretend everything was normal. He’d contact them when he was ready to make the arrest.”

  Jack’s fingers stilled on her foot. “He never contacted any of you?”

  “I called him two days later and he denied ever seeing any pictures. Claimed the guys had only come in to report a robbery, and that he had the notes to prove it.” The cold core of betrayal still burned. “He must have gone to Niko. Accepted a payoff. Maybe Niko’s still paying him. All I know is, within thirty-six hours, Wendy, Nathan and Ricky couldn’t be found. At first I thought Nathan had gotten scared and taken off. But then when Ricky didn’t show up for work…and Wendy…” She’d been wild with worry. And all the while she’d been under Rassi’s watchful eye. Trying to pretend everything was normal. Striving to act as though she didn’t want to scream every time he touched her.

  “And then they started pulling the bodies of my friends out of the East River.” She closed her eyes tight, as if by doing so she could will the images out of her mind. Going to the morgue. IDing the bodies. And wondering if there was a photo somewhere of Niko kneeling next to each of their corpses.

  She opened her eyes then, caught Jack’s intense dark gaze on her and thought she read condemnation there. Or maybe it was just her own sense of guilt that projected it. “I had nowhere to turn. I didn’t dare go to the police. Not again. Niko waited until we’d returned from Nathan’s funeral service before telling me he knew the whole thing.”

  She could still feel the crack of his fist across her face, knocking her to the floor. Could still recall looking up at him as he stood above her, straddling her with that cold hard smile on his face. And then he’d bent down to grab her by the hair and pulled her up to read the engraving on the shell he’d taken from his pocket.

  This one has your name on it, Gracie. Tell me where it is, and maybe I won’t use it.

  “It’s not your fault.” Jack shook her leg a little as if to punctuate his statement. “They didn’t die because of you, Lindsay. You can’t take that on yourself.”

  She leaned her head back on the pillows and wished she could believe him. If it hadn’t been for Niko’s obsession with her, none of them would have had jobs at Kouples. None of them would have crossed Niko’s path. So how could it not be her fault?

  “He wanted the memory card but he couldn’t be certain Nathan and Rick had told me about the pictures. So he took his time. Terrorized me for days.” Woke her nightly from a dead sleep with curses and blows, she recalled. Or worse, far worse, when he’d pretended nothing was wrong and expected her to accept his advances, as if nothing had changed. “There was a part of him that wanted to believe me when I swore I didn’t know anything about it. But I knew it was just a matter of time before he used that bullet on me.”

  “How’d you get away from him?” Jack’s tone was tight, but that barely registered. She was lost in the grip of the past now, unable to shake free of its fetters.

  “He had someone watching all the exits to the apartment building when he wasn’t there. The only way out was the roof.” So she’d taken a gun, the memory card and what cash he’d had in his desk. And she’d gone upstairs and taken a chance on certain death, or a slim ch
ance. “I managed to jump to the next rooftop, and went down a fire escape. He’s never gotten close until now.”

  “And the memory card?”

  “It’s in a safe place.”

  It didn’t escape Jack that she didn’t answer his question. The hell of it was, he couldn’t blame her. She’d been let down by the very system that should have protected her. He believed that, even though there was no way she’d be able to prove it. But he’d been around long enough to know corrupt cops existed, rotting the system from the inside out until they were extracted like the tumors they were.

  His mind was racing. There had to be a way to finish this thing, to scoop up Rassi right here in Metro City. They had the bullets dug out of Lindsay’s railing, and if they could match them to any gun they took off Rassi when they arrested him, they could at least pin him with attempted murder. If they got real lucky, they’d match the shell to the others in his possession as well as to the ones found on the New York victims, and tie him up in a neat bow that even the Portino family lawyer couldn’t get him out of.

  There was a helluva lot of planning before they were at that point, but the first issue to take care of was the woman lying next to him. The one who’d been preparing to run from the moment he’d brought her home a couple hours earlier. The one he was beginning to be able to read, and wasn’t that a scary thing for someone he’d only met days ago?

  She nudged him with her foot. “So I answered your question. You promised to give me my money and gun back.”

  Carefully, he lifted her feet out of his lap and stretched out beside her, propping himself on one elbow. He observed the quick flicker across her expression and wondered at it. Fear? Desire? Or maybe that was wishful thinking because it was a little tougher than it should be to ignore their position. Their proximity. Their surroundings.

  “They’re in my gun closet.”