Deep Cover

by Rachel Butler

  He looked at her as he took the steps, but didn’t slow. “So it’s my problem because I don’t trust you. How the hell can I, when I know you don’t know what you’re doing?”

  She stopped short at the bottom of the steps. “Oh, that’s right. I’m the idiot who got your suspect out of jail.”

  “If the description fits . . .” He jerked open the car door, then glared at her over it. “You’re putting your life on the line—putting us on the line—for nothing. You think bringing down Henry’s organization will make a difference in the larger scheme of things? You think there aren’t a hundred guys out there ready and willing to take over their drug markets once they’re out of the way? You think you’ll actually accomplish something if you succeed, if you’re not killed in the process? I’ve got news for you, honey—people might go to jail, drug supplies might be disrupted for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, and then life will go on as usual . . . except maybe for you and me.”

  The color drained from her face, even as heat flushed his own. The air between them turned too thick to breathe; his chest grew tight from lack of oxygen.

  She backed up one step, then another. When she reached the top, she stopped. “Just for the record, so you don’t accuse me of keeping things from you, I’ll be going to Savannah soon. I have no idea how long we’ll be there. If you’d like, I’ll let you know when we return.” She waited, and he swore he could hear the seconds ticking past, stretching into minutes. Then she nodded once, crossed the porch, and disappeared inside the house.

  He stood there awhile before prying his fingers loose from the car door and sliding inside. He hadn’t lied to her the night before, when she said, Don’t stop loving me. He couldn’t. Couldn’t even imagine it. He’d promised he would always be there for her, and he meant it.

  He just hadn’t realized he’d meant within limits.

  He damn sure hadn’t realized some things about living with her could be worse than living without her.

  Barnard Taylor—Barney to his wife, Mr. Taylor to everyone else—was a creature of habit. Up at six every morning, work out at the gym, run three miles, then home to shower and have breakfast with the aforementioned wife. While she shopped and lunched, he took care of business from a spacious office in the detached garage behind their house, then it was dinner at seven, a little tube, then bed.

  Habits weren’t good, the people who handled his security told him. Vary the routine, make it harder to become a target, they said. Hell, he’d lived to the ripe age of fifty-nine without taking their whiny-assed advice, and he wasn’t about to change. It wasn’t routine that got people killed. It was carelessness, and he was never fucking careless. He doubted everything, suspected everyone, and figured it was better to kill an innocent person than to let a guilty one continue to breathe.

  That Thursday evening, he was where he always was—in the one room of the fuckin’ house that Connie had let him have for his own. He’d paid a fortune for seventeen rooms filled with antiques that weren’t much to look at and for damn sure weren’t much for sitting on. For art that was just plain ugly, and trinkets like vases too valuable to stick flowers in. But room number eighteen—that was his room. Paneled walls, with red drapes at the windows, a big-screen TV, comfortable leather recliners, and cigar smoke perfuming everything. Connie wouldn’t set even one expensively shod foot over the threshold, which suited Barnard just fine.

  A fine Cohiba was burning in an ashtray—cheap, clear glass, filched from his favorite hole-in-the-wall bar—and a glass of whiskey sat on the table beside it. His chair was reclined, his socked feet were propped up on the footrest, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was on the big screen. It was, hands down, the best way he could think of to spend an evening.

  When the cell phone on the end table rang, he glanced at it, debating letting it go to voice mail. But it was his business number, so he muted the TV, picked up the phone, and said a gruff hello.

  “Hello, Mr. Taylor. I hope I’m not disturbing you.” The voice was unfamiliar, male, lacking an identifiable accent.

  “Who is this?”

  There was a pause at the other end, then, “Let’s just say a friend.”

  “I ain’t got no friends.”

  “Then you can use one. How’s business?”

  “My business is none of your fuckin’ business,” Barnard growled. He’d been in that sort of mood ever since the phone call with Selena McCaffrey a few hours earlier. It was a given that someday Davis would be forced to turn over the business to someone else, but everyone had figured it would happen sometime down the road, in five, ten, fifteen years, when old age or death caught up with him. Given how paranoid and cautious Davis was, it had never crossed anyone’s mind that he’d get caught. Christ, he’d kept his real identity hidden from his oldest and closest associates for twenty years. They’d thought he was bulletproof.

  “Getting used to the idea of working for Mr. Davis’s niece?”

  Barnard scowled at the pretty blonde on the silent TV screen. He hadn’t been wild about working for anyone even before this afternoon—had already been thinking it might be time for him to branch out on his own. Davis had been good to him, true, but he’d been damned good right back. He’d made himself a rich man and Davis an even richer one, and it was about time that he began keeping more of the fruits of his labor for himself. He wasn’t getting any younger, and Connie was pestering him to think about retiring. If he was his own boss, he could turn things over to a few trusted people, work when he wanted, and continue to rake in the money. That was better than retirement any day.

  “Are you there, Mr. Taylor?” Mystery Man prompted.

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Have you met Ms. McCaffrey yet?” After a brief pause, the guy went on. “Nah, she’s probably been too busy. She’s going to Savannah tomorrow to meet with Sonny Yates. She’ll probably find time for you after that.”

  Once things were settled, she’d said, she wanted to meet. But things were already settled enough for her to travel to goddamn Savannah to see that snot-nosed punk, Yates? What the hell kind of deal was that?

  Apparently the same thought had occurred to Mystery Man. “How long have you been with Mr. Davis? Eighteen years? And how long has Mr. Munroe up in Boston been with him? Even longer. And Sonny Yates has worked for him for ten years. But who does she go to meet first? The senior partners in this venture? No. The new guy. Why do you think that is?”

  Why, indeed? It didn’t matter whether Yates’s operation showed more profit—a possibility that Barnard found impossible to believe. It was just common courtesy for her to meet with the senior partners first. Simple respect to men who’d been with her uncle from the beginning, men old enough to be her father. Instead, she was snubbing them in favor of a kid who hadn’t even been alive as long as they’d been in business.

  Barnard took a calming breath. “Yeah, well . . .” She was new to the life. She was bound to fuck up from time to time. When he did see her, he would set her straight. If he liked her and she was amenable to his guidance, maybe they would work something out. If he didn’t like her . . .

  But damned if that was any of this asshole’s business. Hell, for all he knew, the guy could be calling on her orders, testing Barnard’s loyalty. “As long as she continues to do business as usual—”

  “Which she has no intention of,” Mystery Man interrupted. “Word is that she plans to make some big changes. That while Uncle William might have been satisfied with a bunch of old men working for him, she wants to clean house and bring in people closer to her own age—closer in age to the majority of her customers. You know, ol’ Sonny’s only four or five years older than her. And you’re what? More than twice her age.”

  Culling the old to make room for the young. It wasn’t a big surprise. Legitimate businesses did it all the time. Why keep around some geezer who was close to retirement when you could replace him with a kid just out of school and save all that pension money? Hell, it even happened in the
fucking animal kingdom—young males killing old ones so they could take over their territory.

  Well, he might be old, but damned if he’d let some little bitch-girl come in and take away the business he’d started building while she was still playing with her fucking dolls.

  “What do you think, Mr. Taylor?”

  What he thought was his own fucking business, but instead of telling him that, Barnard asked testily, “What is it you want?”

  “I just wanted to touch base—give you a heads up about what’s going on.”

  “Give,” Barnard repeated skeptically. “And to show my gratitude, I’m supposed to . . . what? Give you some cash?”

  “Isn’t that how it usually works?”

  “How much cash?”

  There was a moment’s silence on the other end—no television, no voices, no background noises at all. Barnard wondered who the guy was, where he was calling from, whether he was being set up. He wondered if he should call the bitch-girl as soon as he hung up and tell her about Mystery Man. If she was testing him, she would know he’d passed. But if she wasn’t, if this was a genuine opportunity to deal with a problem before she became a bigger problem . . .

  “Have you considered the full extent of what I’m offering you, Mr. Taylor? If you take care of Ms. McCaffrey, and do it in Savannah, Sonny Yates will be the prime suspect. With him out of the way, you can move right in—natural, what with you being the closest. And once you’ve solidified your control of his region, in addition to your own, you take the rest of it. You’ll be the big boss, Mr. Taylor. You’ll be raking in the millions Davis was taking in, only you’ll be sharing a lot less of it and keeping more for yourself.”

  “How much you want?”

  “How about two hundred thou?”

  Barnard snorted. “And what are you gonna give me that’s worth that?”

  “The information necessary to remove the only obstacle that’s standing between you and Mr. Davis’s empire.”

  Barnard tapped the ash from the cigar but didn’t lift it to his mouth. Instead he held it where the smoke curled, sweet and thick, around his head, filling his nostrils, stinging his eyes. “What’d she ever do to you to deserve this?”

  “I’ve got my reasons.”

  Probably money. Young people today were like that. They’d shoot a stranger on the street for a pair of tennis shoes. They didn’t know a goddamn thing about loyalty or honor or self-respect. Everything was me, me, me to them.

  Barnard was from another generation. William Davis had earned his loyalty; he’d conducted his business with honor, with his head held high, and he’d never done a thing he couldn’t live with. But Davis was out of the picture. Now Barnard’s loyalty was to himself and the people who worked for him.

  “Mr. Taylor?”

  “I need some time to think about it,” he said gruffly. “Call me tomorrow—7:00 A.M. I’ll give you an answer then.”

  Before Mystery Man could say anything to that, Barnard disconnected, looked regretfully at the television, then pressed the POWER button, shutting it off. He dialed a number, waited for a curt hello, then said, “Get your guys and meet me at the office. We’ve got business to take care of.”

  Years ago, when William was working in Savannah, Selena had dreamed of visiting the city. Be careful what you wish for, the old adage said, for you just might get it. She’d certainly never dreamed of going under these circumstances— posing as a drug boss, meeting a dealer who placed as little value on life as William and Damon Long did, who likely wanted her dead.

  She wasn’t hoping for a pleasant trip, she thought as she traded her window seat on the private jet for the right-rear passenger seat of an SUV. But it should be memorable.

  Her last conversation with Tony had been so memorable that she couldn’t stop it from replaying in her mind. She’d known the instant she’d seen him that he was angry, but hadn’t realized just how angry until the profanity had slipped from his mouth. Joe Ceola didn’t tolerate vulgarity around women from his sons, and Tony generally succeeded at keeping it to nothing more than a mild hell or damn. But not when she’d last seen him.

  It’s over. She hadn’t known two words could hurt so deeply. Tony didn’t threaten lightly. He never issued ultimatums he wasn’t fully prepared to follow through. He was that angry with her, that convinced she was needlessly endangering her life. Could he be right?

  She honestly didn’t know. But she did know one thing: This charade might frighten her, but it didn’t hold near the terror that jail did. Thanks to her mother’s husband, she didn’t do well in small places. She might survive a prison cell physically, but emotionally . . . She couldn’t risk it. Better to face drug dealers and killers than her worst nightmares.

  And better to feel that she was doing something. For only the second time in her life, she was actively rebelling against William. Instead of spinelessly following the path he’d set her on, politely, passively refusing his job offers, and letting him manipulate her, she was taking steps to destroy his legacy. Granted, she was allowing herself to be manipulated by others in the process, but that was only temporary. Soon she would be free.

  For all his compassion and empathy, Tony couldn’t understand how important that was to her.

  On the opposite side of the seat, Long leaned forward to see past Jamieson, who was seated in the middle. In spite of the cramped space, he managed to extend his foot so the ankle bracelet came into view. “How’d you manage this—me leaving town without all the alarms going off?”

  In the front seat, Robinette made no secret of the fact he was listening.

  Selena raised her voice to make it easier for him. “I told you Mr. Jamieson is a computer expert. He’s very good at bypassing alarms.” In truth, it had taken nothing more than one phone call from Robinette to someone in the local FBI office. They’d taken care of the rest. She hesitated, then asked, “What do you know about Carl Heinz?”

  There was a flash in Long’s eyes—surprise?—that disappeared as he gave a shrug that was a bit too careless. “He’s a little weasel that worked for William. What do you know about him?”

  “That he visited you in jail . . . twice. How did he escape arrest?”

  Another shrug. “Just lucky, I suppose.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “He’s an accountant and computer wiz.”

  “No more active roles? No enforcement, no surveillance, no shooting?”

  Long’s expression remained bland. “Like I said, he’s a weasel. Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”

  Or a lone woman 150 yards away? “Considering that I already have Mr. Jamieson, would it be worth bringing Heinz back on the job?”

  “You’d have to find him first. That might prove a little difficult. Cowards like him go to ground when things get hot.”

  Tony would try to find him, even though he’d said he shouldn’t bother. Would he tell her if he had any luck? Sure, if he found any evidence to suggest that Heinz was the one who had tried to kill her Monday. Especially if he found evidence that Long had been behind it.

  And even if he did find such evidence, she would still have to work with Long, and Tony would . . . Make good on his threat? Walk away from her?

  In an effort to ignore the cold emptiness that tightened her chest, she asked, “What do I need to know about Sonny Yates?”

  “Just one thing.” Long grinned. “Watch your back.”

  Unneeded advice. That was her rule with everyone. Everyone wanted something from her—her business, her life, her freedom. Even Tony wanted some measure of control over her.

  She continued to watch him, and after a moment, he shrugged. “Sonny’s got an ego. He’s ambitious. He’s liable to resent you coming in and taking over. William always figured at some point, he’d want to take control of his region for himself.” He paused for effect. “William wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”

  “Would he have allowed you to take over any part of the business for yoursel
f?”

  “No. That’s why I intended to kill him.” His expression was utterly emotionless. “To take what’s rightfully mine.”

  And how long before he tried to kill her?

  “Should I attempt to mollify Mr. Yates? Should I offer him a reward for handling the matter of the missing boat?”

  “Give him a reward for doing his job?” Long snorted. “The old man would sit up in his hospital bed. More likely he’d threaten Sonny with losing a few body parts for the boat going missing in the first place. Of course, cutting off body parts isn’t quite your style, is it?”

  She let her gaze drop to his denim-clad thigh, where she’d once sunk her switchblade to the hilt. “If I’d cut you a few inches higher, you might be missing the most vital of your body parts,” she pointed out mildly.

  He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. So did Jamieson.

  Long settled back with enough force to rock the seat. “You give Sonny anything besides hell for losing that boat, he’s gonna think you’re easy pickin’s. You may as well go ahead and kill him tonight, because if you don’t, he’ll come after you. And I don’t think these guys”—he gestured around the vehicle—“can stop him.”

  Selena turned her attention to the window and watched the outskirts of Savannah rush by. From there, it was a short flight or a long day’s drive home to Key West, and for an instant she wanted that additional trip so badly she ached. But the FBI could find her there, and so could William’s associates.

  And Tony probably wouldn’t want to.

  She was staring absently at the passing scenery when the sound of a powerful engine broke into her thoughts, followed by a curse from Gentry. “Stupid son of a bitch doesn’t understand what ‘no passing’ means,” the woman muttered as a silver Hummer sped past in the opposite lane.

  To the accompaniment of squealing brakes and blaring horns, the driver swerved into the right lane only seconds before a head-on collision would have been inevitable. An instant later, he slammed on his brakes.

  “Don’t stop,” Robinette ordered, and Gentry obeyed. She jerked the wheel hard into the oncoming traffic lane and gunned the engine.