Players: Bad Boy Romance

by Amy Faye

  The list of suspects was real short, and he'd best keep his suspicions to himself until he was real confident in them, because you don't go around accusing Congressmen's sons of things like that.

  Not without solid proof.

  That thought doesn't put him off the way that he thinks it probably should have. There's a little voice in the back of his mind, a voice that reminds him that he better be careful.

  Josh Meadows ignores it. He's never been careful before in his life, and he's not planning to start now. Especially not when the stakes are as high as they are. But for all that he doesn't like being careful, he'll take his time.

  Something like this, even if it all goes according to plan, doesn't make careers. It breaks them just fine if it goes wrong, but when you rat out a boy like that… all it makes you is right. It doesn't make you rich and it sure as hell doesn't help you out.

  All you'll be, the rest of your career, is the guy who fucked over a Congressman. The guy who is never going to be promoted again, no matter how well he does.

  That suits Josh just fine. Because he didn't get into this job to be promoted, to get a big fat paycheck, or even to get his name in the papers—though his name had been in the papers, and it would be a hell of a lot more if his hunch turned into anything.

  He did it because he wasn't going to see people get hurt again, not if he could help it. And this time, he could help it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The little speaker in her ear crackles a little bit with electro-magnetic interference in the microphone on the other side. They're supposed to be up pretty high, and pretty far away.

  She doesn't turn to look. If she does, maybe someone will see. Maybe the wrong sort of person. So she just holds the suitcase and sits on the bench and waits for someone to come along who looks like they're signaling her.

  She waits a long time. The first minute or two, she thought that she would be seeing something any second. Then she thought, any minute now.

  Thirty minutes later, she doesn't see a convincing-looking black sedan, with dark-colored windows. They're late. They're past late, and now she's started worrying.

  Worrying was normal for Anna, but worrying this much isn't pleasant. It's past the normal. She does her breathing exercises as best she can. In, one two three, out, two three four. In, two two three, out, two three four.

  Nothing. Nobody's coming. Is she in the wrong place? Did she screw something up already? What could she have gotten wrong?

  "We've got something." A woman's voice says into her ear. Just quiet enough to hear. They look like a pair of iPhone headphones. "Coming your way, Anna. Headphones off. We see you. You're clear. Wait for the signal."

  Anna pulls the headphones out and slips them into the pocket of her dress. The car slows down and stops. Dark windows. Dark car. The front passenger-side window rolls down slowly.

  "Anna Witt?" The voice inside isn't one she recognizes. He's got an unremarkable voice. One that's neither high-pitched nor low, one without a remarkable accent. Midwestern, she figures. Maybe from upstate.

  She pushes herself up from the bench.

  "Am I supposed to give you—"

  The guy inside has dark glasses on, and a ski mask. She can't make out anything except for glimpses of the color of his skin. It's not overly pale. Definitely white, or possibly a very light-skinned Latino.

  "Shh—Open up the door, and slide the suitcase on the seat. You aren't here with anyone, are you?"

  Anna stands up and looks around. "I don't think so."

  "Good. Now do what I said. Open the door, slide the suitcase onto the seat, and close the door again. Real easy."

  She does so. The car door opens easily. It's not locked. She picks up the suitcase. She'd expected it to be heavy, as full as it was, but she can lift it easily if she uses two hands. With some difficulty if she only uses one. It slides comfortably onto the seat.

  "Like that? Am I doing this right?"

  "Shut up," he says. His voice sounds hard now. Angry.

  "Okay, sorry. Just close the door, and then you'll call Mitch and tell him where Ava is?"

  "Stop asking questions, bitch. Close the door. Quit stalling."

  She closed the door. She hadn't meant to stall. But it was just so hard to be sure that she was doing everything right. She'd never been in a situation like this one before, where it was all on her shoulders.

  The weight that's been on her chest since last night doesn't pull off just yet. It won't until Mitchell's phone rings and they've got Ava back safe.

  She watches the car pull away, until she loses him in traffic. That was all she could do. There's nothing else she can do now but wait and hope that she didn't screw something up.

  She walks back to her bench and sits down. She slips the ear-phone back in.

  "Did I do alright?"

  The woman's voice is soothing. "You did great, sweetheart. Great job. You're a pro."

  Anna's chest tightens. They're being too nice. Whatever comes next, they're trying to soften it for her, so that she won't get too upset when they tell her where she screwed up. That's how it always goes.

  "What do I do now?"

  "Nothing at all, honey. Come on up, we'll take the equipment back, and we'll all go back to the estate to wait for that call that will let you get your beautiful baby girl back."

  Anna likes that thought. For a moment, she almost feels better. When Ava's back, it will be like all of this was just a bad dream.

  Waking up to find that empty crib had been a shock, but she was never going to let anything happen to Ava, not ever again. If she had to live inside a fallout shelter to keep her safe, then that was what she'd do.

  Part of Anna wishes that Detective Meadows had been there, had been the one talking her through all that. She plays back in her head the memory of his explanation why he couldn't do it, though.

  They had to be in several places at once, and she'd love Sherry. The woman had talked people through stuff like this a hundred times. She was easy to talk to, she was a total pro, and she was going to make sure nothing went wrong.

  That had made her feel at least a little bit better. Which, in the end, was probably enough. After all, she'd felt almost like she could do this. Almost. She just had to hope that she hadn't made that guy angry when she was asking all those questions.

  She was just so stupid. Always thinking too much. Asking too many questions. She should have known better, but her nerves were getting to her, and it was hard to remember how she was supposed to act.

  As long as it didn't end up hurting Ava, though, it didn't matter what she screwed up. As long as it didn't hurt Ava.

  She finally turns and looks up at the apartment that they've set up their little field office in. If she doesn't miss her guess, it's the fourth window up, around the middle of the building. It looks the same as every other window. The blinds are down, but so are most of them.

  Anna makes her way across. Nothing is going to go wrong, she repeats to herself. Everything went fine. Everything went just fine. There's nothing that's going to go wrong, and she's going to have Ava back by the end of the day.

  Then, she can go back to her life. She'll have her baby, she'll have her parents right across the hall. She'll have the weekly meetings. She won't have the sexy detective any more, but to call it a 'fair trade' wouldn't be even close to accurate.

  If it means she can have Ava back, then she'll give up everything else. She just wants her daughter back. Anything else is a distraction, and if this is how bad things can go, then she'll ignore every one of those distractions.

  Sherry's there at the door to greet her when she comes back in. A big, tight hug. Anna feels like she's being suffocated, in a good way.

  "You did great. No mistakes."

  "He got mad that I was asking questions."

  "We heard. Don't worry about that. Nobody's perfect. If he wanted someone who would do it perfectly, then he would've asked for a lawyer. You're just a regular person. Regular people
get confused, okay? Don't get down on yourself about any of that."

  The words come out of Sherry's mouth sounding nice. She seems like she means them. None of it helps to convince Anna. She probably screwed something up. Now she just has to hope that she didn't screw it up real bad. As long as everything's fine, and she's got everything under control, it doesn't matter.

  But if she's just trying to congratulate herself on a job well done after she screwed up bad enough that it's going to come back on Ava…

  Anna doesn't know what she'd do with herself. She's not going to think about it. Because that's a situation that she couldn't live with, not in a million years.

  She'd rather not imagine it. When Sherry guides her to the car, Anna keeps her head down. There's nothing to worry about, right? Because she did everything that they said. They wouldn't do anything to Ava after she did everything they said.

  That was why they'd paid all that money, right? So they wouldn't do anything to Ava. And no matter how many questions she'd asked, it was all going to be fine.

  Right?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Josh Meadows still isn't sure that he made the right call letting this go forward when the call comes through. Nor, when Mitch picks it up like he's screening his calls, is he reassured that he made the right decision by staying with the men.

  Still, it's a real question whether or not he would have been able to reassure Anna well enough. Sherry is a pro, and if anyone can make it all work in the end, it's her.

  The call came through a while ago: the money was dropped, no problems on their end. Now that the call's come through, fifteen minutes later, it's do-or-die time. They'll be expecting a tap and a trace, of course. They expected it the first time, and they're not suddenly morons.

  The same voice comes through. It's too muffled, through the soft sound of the phone against Mitchell Queen's head, for the detective to hear anything. But they'll be hearing it loud and clear at headquarters. Probably louder and clearer than Mitchell's signal, even.

  "Are you sure?"

  His words sound worried, but his voice doesn't. It's hard to buy Mitch Queen as the worrying type. He seems petty and vain. It's easy to believe that he doesn't worry about much of anything except whether or not girls are noticing him.

  He looks at the phone in frustration. Pulls it away from his ear and looks at it. "You're joking, right?"

  Josh feels his stomach twist up. Something's gone wrong. What could have possibly gone wrong? The whole plan was simple. There was nothing to go wrong about it. Which means that if something did go wrong, his gut reaction—that this whole thing had been a setup—was spot on.

  Mitch pulls the phone away from his ear again and slaps the pad of his thumb down on the hang-up button. He seems like that's calmed him down for a moment. Then, as if he couldn't hold back for an instant longer, he throws the phone hard at the third sofa in the room. Thankfully, it's empty.

  The phone bounces off the back and clatters to the floor. He doesn't bother to check and see if it's broken. Josh doesn't move, either. He's got his eyes on Mitch Queen. At the edge of his awareness, so does his father.

  "Well, are you going to let us in on what happened?"

  "Your girl didn't fucking pay up."

  He says that like it was entirely Josh's idea to have Anna involved. He wouldn't have involved her at all if he'd had his choice. It had seemed like a big risk.

  Not because she wouldn't pay, though. There was no way that was going to happen. That was not only unthinkable—it was impossible. He'd taken the call from Sherry herself.

  They'd had four separate guys watching the drop. Four different vantage points. All but one of them had watched her pick up the suitcase, seen her slide it onto the front passenger seat of a black Subaru Impreza, and had seen the same Impreza drive away.

  The Impreza might be a lead. They'd track it down, regardless. Something told Josh that it wasn't going to lead anywhere, not in the long run. If it did, he'd be surprised. More than surprised. He'd be god damn flabbergasted.

  He wasn't going to say anything about it, though, because there were procedures and rules and you followed them when you had to, regardless of what you wanted to do.

  Now Anna was getting blamed for something that he knew wasn't true.

  "So Anna didn't pay, you're saying?"

  They hadn't been privy to that little call. Not so far as Josh knew, anyways. They'd have to have been pretty damn sneaky about it.

  "Didn't show at all. We give that girl a million in cold hard cash and she cuts and runs?"

  "Okay. What now?"

  "What the fuck do you mean, 'what now?' What now, we're toast is what now. Fucking moron."

  Josh's fists clench up a little bit. He relaxes them. This isn't the time to lose it. This is the time to maintain your professional attitude real well, because if you don't, then things are going to end real bad for you.

  It doesn't matter how bad it ends for him, because that's just one scummy son of a bitch in the end. There are thousands more just like him. Millions in the city alone. You have to keep perspective together, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

  "Mr. Queen, I'm going to ask again. What's next?"

  "What's next is, they call us, they ask for more money, and we find someone who will fucking pay it this time. Where the fuck is Anna? Shouldn't you have had someone with her?"

  "Calm down, sir. She's on her way here. We'll talk about this when everyone's arrived, when it's all situated. Then we'll figure out what to do next."

  Josh's jaw is so tight that it's starting to hurt bad. The headache feels like it's spreading through his whole damn body at this point, and there's not a God damn thing he can do about it but wait.

  Wait, and hope that he can figure out how they're going to stop things going sideways again.

  It doesn't matter how many people saw her pay. It only matters that Anna will always be ready to admit fault. She'll always say that she might have screwed something up.

  Maybe she paid the wrong guys. She's not the sort of person who would just give the money away to some random fucking person, but she doesn't know if she got the right car. Maybe she didn't.

  The details were vague in the original call. A black, late-model sedan. They weren't even nice enough to clarify if it would be an import or a domestic. No make or model. Likely the car was stolen.

  They'd get a call about it in a couple of days, maybe. Until then, it was going to be Anna's fault that she'd lost her only chance at getting her daughter back.

  Why? Because she was a convenient choice. Because she would take the fall, regardless of whether or not it was her fault.

  It was a crock of shit. She hadn't done anything wrong, and everyone in that room knew it. Josh Meadows's gut told him that Mitch Queen knew it, too. That every bit of that had been a show. Likely for the benefit of the police department.

  Meadows walked to the door and back. His shoulders were tight. His jaw was tight. His entire body felt like a coiled-up spring, and he didn't have to wonder for a second what had him wound up so tight.

  It was a little rich son of a bitch sitting on a ten-thousand dollar sofa older than half the buildings in the city, and only a couple years younger than the other half.

  It was a couple of bastards who thought they could fool him by putting the blame on a poor girl who didn't do a God damn thing wrong. They'd get away with it, too, in all likelihood.

  Because there was plenty that Josh Mitchell could see as a person. As a detective, as someone who had learned to trust his gut when the chips were down, it was all he needed to see the way that Mitch suddenly got invested the minute that it was convenient.

  None of that was going to matter in the end, if he couldn't prove it. And that was going to be the hard part, because Mitch Queen had all the time in the world to plan this thing. He'd had almost seven months.

  Josh Meadows had been here for four days now, and he was already starting to see the skeleton of the plan th
at was laying out in front of him.

  None of it was going to matter if he couldn't start laying down track ahead of where they were going, because somewhere in the future, there was going to be a point where they had already gotten away with it and no investigation was going to change that.

  He had to make sure that Ava Witt was back with her mother before that happened, because that was the point where there wouldn't be any getting her back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Anna Witt didn't know what to expect when she walked into the room, but it wasn't what she got.

  Detective Meadows sat on the green sofa—the one that he sat on the first day. Anna had always liked that sofa. His hands were balled up into fists, and those fists were jammed under his chin.

  He doesn't look like someone who's waiting for a call, and he definitely doesn't look like someone who's just been told where to get Ava.

  "What's wrong?"

  Nobody responds. In a certain sense, that's good, because when Mitch decides to get a little testy, he can go overboard sometimes. We all make mistakes, and Mitchell is no different. It's not his fault, though. He just… sometimes he loses it a little.

  But there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and as long as you try not to make them again, there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't make you a bad person.

  The thing that hurts Anna's position is that she's never getting any better. She's always just an idiot, and always screwing something up. Just like she must have this time, the way that things look in the room.

  "Will someone tell me what's wrong?" Anna tries to take a step back in her mind. She's at a nine right now. If she's at a nine… she should leave the room. She should leave, she should do some breathing, and then come back.

  But leaving isn't going to help right now. It's only going to create more problems. So she takes a breath. In, one two three, out, two three four. In, two two three… out, two three four.