by Dale Mayer
“You want her to be happy. You want a relationship with her,” he said. “And, whether it’s now or in ten years, there are bound to be grandkids one day.”
“That’s hardly a deal,” she murmured.
“It’s the deal that I’m offering,” he said. “I keep her safe and take her out of this life, away from you and the influences that surround you, and you take the price off my head and Fallon’s and the rest of my team. At some point in time, I’ll take her anyway,” he said.
“But where’s the satisfaction in that for me?” she sneered.
“Maybe none,” he said, “but at least you’ll have something left with your daughter.”
She snorted at that. “And why do I care?”
“You care,” he said, betting everything he had that some maternal instinct still burned in there. “There’s no other reason you would have tried so hard to keep the truth from her otherwise.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she snapped.
“Nope, I don’t,” he said, “only what I’ve seen. A mother who’s tried to keep her daughter sheltered from all this and the pain that will occur when it becomes public.”
“You don’t know that I was hurt by any of it,” she said. “You’re full of BS as usual.”
“Maybe,” he said, with a cheerful smile. “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
“I have the men with the guns,” she said. “That’s hardly a deal you get to make.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but you can see what happened to the last two gunmen. Plus the two before that, the ones we trussed up and left out back for the cops to haul off.” He pointed to his right.
“That sounds like a threat,” she said.
“No, not necessarily,” he said. “All I want to do is make this go away.”
“And then what?”
“Then I’m going after whoever went after Bullard,” he said.
She nodded. “That at least makes some semblance of sense.”
“It should,” he said. “Just think about it. There’s a chance he’s out there still.”
Her gaze shadowed, as she half turned to the warehouse behind her.
“Not that you care so much about Bullard, when you’ve got somebody like Michael there for you,” Kano said. “He is somebody who you should be looking after.”
“Michael’s a good man,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t have the same impact on me right now.”
“Maybe it should,” he said. “You don’t have to be such a hard-ass all the time.”
She started at that. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know that I love your daughter and that you’ve always done everything you can to keep us apart, but that won’t be enough now.”
She glared at him.
“You’ll just have to accept that she needs me to keep her safe from all the greasiness of your world, especially as it slides toward hers. Because, in case you didn’t hear, these guys were already looking at snatching Catherine and using her against you.”
She glared down at the two men and said, “That’s bullshit.”
“No,” Fallon said, stepping in. “It’s not. And it’ll happen more and more, unless people realize that Catherine is hands-off.”
“Dammit,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, “so that’s the new deal. I look after her and keep her safe, and you pull the price on my head and Fallon’s and the rest of our team, plus leave Catherine alone.”
“How does that give me a relationship with her?” she snapped.
“Give it time,” he said, “and that’s the best I can do. She has to want that relationship, and, if you hurt me, you’re done.”
She looked at the two men at her side, looked down at the two men on the concrete, motioned at them, and said, “Get rid of them.”
Kano winced, not wanting to ask too many questions. He was pretty sure his guy was already dead or close to it, but he wasn’t sure about the other one.
When they were gone, and she held the one handgun, he had a moment when they could have overpowered her, if that had been the plan. He knew it was still an option, if needed, but, at the same time, he’d like to avoid if he could.
She looked from Kano to Fallon and back, then said, “You make sure that she still likes me when this is over.”
“She’s always loved you,” Kano said, “even when she was confused and hating what you did and how you did it. She’s never stopped loving you.”
She groaned at that. “The loss of innocence when it’s directed at you is brutal,” she said. “I’m giving you this one chance to get the hell out of my sight. Don’t make me regret it.”
“No regrets necessary,” he said, “but remember. You have to call everybody off.”
“I don’t know that anybody’s still out there after you.”
“Maybe not, but someone is still out there, and, if they were after me and took Bullard down instead,” he said, “that’ll be a huge issue.”
“I don’t think that was it, but I can’t be sure.”
“So find out who brought down the plane,” he said, “and then we’ll talk. In the meantime, I’ll take Catherine away from here. Hopefully far, far away,” he admitted. “At least so I can keep her safe.”
“She won’t go,” DeeDee said. “I know she won’t.”
“Then I’ll have to base myself from here,” he said, “and we’ll bump up against each other once in a while. But, as long as it’s civil, I’ll be fine with it.”
She glared at him and said, “You’ll turn me off food if I have to share a meal with you again.”
“And maybe we don’t,” he said, with a smile. “Because it doesn’t really make a damn bit of difference. We’ll do whatever we need to do for Catherine.”
“Still doesn’t change anything,” she snapped. Just then, her two men returned to stand at her side. She looked at them and said, “Get an ambulance for Michael.”
“Already called one,” he said.
“Go help him then,” she said, with a wave of her hand.
She walked back to the side door of the warehouse and said to Kano, “Get lost. More men are hanging around somewhere too. We’ve got them on camera, but they’re not mine.” With that, she walked inside and shut the door.
Fallon looked at him in surprise. “Did she just give you a warning?”
“Yeah, I was counting on that. Of all the things she doesn’t want to do, losing her daughter ranks pretty high.”
“I didn’t see that coming,” Fallon said. “So who do you think is still after you?”
“I would think anybody still after us right now,” he said, “is connected entirely to the reason we came over here.”
“Bullard’s battle?”
“Exactly.
As they headed around the corner to the left, to the front of the warehouse, he said, “I’m calling Catherine. I need to know she’s okay.”
“Right. No telling what happened to her in this nightmare.”
When he dialed Catherine’s number, it rang again and again. He looked at Fallon. “She’s not answering.”
“Redial,” he said. “She could have the ringer off, or she might have lost her phone over this.”
But his heart was sinking, as he thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“She went out the front. Let’s go.” By the time they made it to the front, DeeDee and her men got into a vehicle and were taking off. Kano didn’t even try to contact her. The last thing he wanted was to get her involved. As they circled the front, he said, “I’ll go take a look around inside.”
“I’ll check outside,” Fallon said, “but we need those cameras.”
“Yeah. DeeDee caught the unknowns on camera, but we need to get into them.”
“I’m calling Ice. They’ve got the best setup for it.”
As Fallon made the phone call, Kano found the warehouse locked. He quickly broke the lock and heade
d inside, where he called out, “Catherine, … are you in here?”
But he got only dusty silence in response. He quickly dialed her phone number again, this time manually punching in the number. Again, no answer. After he’d made a quick search of the warehouse, he stepped back outside and shook his head.
Fallon looked at him grimly. “Ice’s already on it,” he said. “Catherine was escorted into a vehicle five minutes before her mother left via the front door.”
“So, while we were still off to the side, fighting, Catherine was picked up?”
“She appeared to be standing here for a few minutes on her phone, looking undecided. Then a vehicle pulled up. She looked up with relief on her face, which quickly turned to fear as two men came out, grabbed her, and put her inside the vehicle.”
“Please tell me that Ice got the license plate?”
“That she did,” Fallon said. “But we don’t have any time to lose. If this is connected to Bullard’s case,” he said, “you know there’s only a fatal ending for all parties involved.”
“Let’s go,” Kano said. “I won’t lose her now that I finally got her back.”
Chapter 13
Catherine sat mutely in the van, studying the men around her. An odd, eerie calmness filled her that she barely recognized. But another element was involved in this game. As she had suddenly become free of her mother’s influence, something else had moved in to take its place. And this was much darker and deadly looking. Something was almost familiar about this particular man. But she didn’t know him and didn’t have a name for him. She studied his profile again, then sank back in the seat.
“At least she’ll be smart,” said the man beside her. The other two didn’t say anything.
“This has obviously got to do with Bullard,” she murmured. “And you’re trying to stay under my mother’s radar.”
At that, the man driving looked in the rearview mirror and asked, “What do you know about Bullard?”
“Nothing to know,” she said. “He was blown out of the sky.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” he said, with a sneer. “Now, if only we had any confirmation that he was actually dead.”
“You mean, you missed that part?” she said, with a smile. “It would be so typical of a scenario like this to have doubts. … Just because he was blown out of the sky doesn’t mean Bullard’s dead,” she said.
“Oh, he’s dead,” said the one man. And such a definitive note was in his voice that she knew he believed it.
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, he’s a hard man to kill.”
“They all fall eventually,” he said. “Just like you.”
“Some fall easier than others,” she said.
“Don’t even bother talking to her,” the driver said.
“Just making a little light conversation,” he said. But he shut up, then turned and looked out the window. She waited, as they drove through town. She hadn’t been blindfolded, so they obviously didn’t care about leaving her alive.
“You do know that, if you’d wanted to use me to get to Kano,” she said, “there are easier ways to do it.”
“Yeah, how’s that?” the driver asked.
“You could just ask him. He’s looking for you as much as you’re looking for him.”
At that, the man driving laughed. “I doubt it,” he said.
“If this has to do with Bullard, it’s still a little confusing why you’re going after the rest of the team.”
“Just tying off threads,” he said. “We’re not after the whole team. Just anybody who’s had something to do with this.”
She sat here in silence, as she considered this. Had this been anything to do with Kano? Had he seen anything? Is that what they were being so careful about? Was that all this was, tying up loose ends? It was a distressing thought to consider her life had come down to that. “Quite odd to think that you’re going after him just because he might have seen something,” she murmured.
“Anybody involved,” he said, “they all have to go.”
“Ah, so this is just a good spring cleaning?”
“Something like that,” he said.
It still didn’t make any sense to her because so many people were involved in this. I mean, just these three guys alone. “What if he didn’t see anything?” she asked curiously.
“Too bad for him then,” he said.
“And when was he supposed to have seen whatever it is you think he saw?”
At that, the guy beside her, staring out the window, turned to look at her. “You saw it all too.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she said. And her astonishment was real because she had no clue what he was talking about. He turned and looked at the driver. The driver just shrugged and said, “It’s too late now.”
“Right,” she said, “because I’m here, and I can see you guys?”
“Sure,” he said, “that works.”
She didn’t know what to say to that but figured it had to go back to the fact that he looked slightly familiar. And she didn’t know why. “Maybe it’s just a case of mistaken identity,” she murmured. “Maybe there’s no need to kill any more people.”
“The ones we needed to take out have been taken out,” he said quietly. “As I said, we’re just cleaning up now.”
“So you’ll kill me just to clean up. You know what? Of all the reasons to die, that’s the worst one yet,” she murmured. The other man, sitting in the back, didn’t say anything and kept his face averted. She didn’t know what his role in all of this was but figured he was just extra. She was hardly a threat, although she’d done some serious damage to one of the two men who had first attacked her at the hospital. She stopped at that thought, turned, looked right at one of her kidnappers, and said, “Oh, wow, you’re one of the guys who attacked me at the hospital.”
He smiled. “See? You do remember.”
“And what’s that got to do with Kano?” Then she realized Kano had been there at the same time. “So, just because somebody might have seen you, you’ll kill them?” she asked, shock and horror in her voice.
“That little slipup,” he said, “can be the death of us all.”
“What a world you live in.”
“You won’t have to worry about it,” he said, “because you won’t be living in it much longer.”
“Of course not,” she murmured, “because I saw you, all three of you now, even though it would have been a lot wiser if just one of you had come after me,” she said. “It’s not like I’m a threat.”
“No, you sure aren’t, except for that never-ending voice that won’t shut up,” the driver said.
She smiled and went quiet again. But her mind raced. Kano had seen them at the hospital, but they’d already attacked her then too. So, somewhere along the line, they must have assumed that Kano had seen them, and was that the reason why the one guy beside her deliberately kept his face averted? Was there something familiar about him too? Not that she had any chance to identify him or to let anybody know who was involved here. This was just all a little bit too odd for her liking. But then again, that was the world they lived in.
“I’m sorry for you guys,” she said suddenly.
The driver looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Save your pity,” he said. “We don’t need it. You’re the one who’s about to die.”
“When you’ve lost your humanity,” she said quietly, “when you can look at people who have absolutely nothing to do with your world and suddenly decide they will live or die on a whim, without any proof to back up your allegations,” she said, “it’s … it’s pretty sad.”
“We don’t need proof,” he said. “We have all the proof we need.”
“Says you,” she said, “and, of course, for you, that’s all that’s required, isn’t it?”
“Yep, it is,” he said. “That’s right.”
“Right,” she murmured. “Again, that’s very sad.”
“And again, keep your bul
lshit to yourself,” he said.
“So why haven’t you already killed me?” She paused, but no one answered. “Oh, I’m bait to lure Kano in because you can’t catch him otherwise.” She noted the trio clenched in anger at her words. She smiled, as she studied the guy beside her. The one whose face was deliberately turned away. “And who are you?” she asked, but he didn’t say anything. She reached out and smacked him with her hand. “Hey, you.”
He turned and glared at her.
She raised one eyebrow. “Oh, wow,” she said, “now I know who’s in danger of getting recognized.” She started to laugh.
He looked at her and frowned. “What the hell’s your problem?”
“You work for my mother,” she said. “And you’re trying to keep that hidden. These guys are ex-employees, but you’re not. You’re still on her payroll.”
“She won’t know,” he said.
“So you’re the traitor,” she murmured. “That won’t make her happy. I can’t remember your name. Reginald or something, isn’t it?”
He shrugged and didn’t add to the conversation.
“I’m already marked as dead,” she said, “so what difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t,” he said, “but you need to shut the hell up before I shut you up.”
“Oh, right, a woman beater,” she said. “That would make my mother happy, wouldn’t it?”
“Your mother’s a bitch.”
“She so is, isn’t she?” she said cheerfully. “But she’s my bitch, so what do you want me to do about it?”
He turned his face back to the window.
But she studied him for a little bit longer. “You’ve worked for her for like ten years, right along with Michael, haven’t you?”
“Michael’s okay,” he said, “but he’s lovesick.”
“She just shot him in the warehouse,” she snapped. “He didn’t even do anything.”
At that, the other guy laughed. “That was just to teach him a lesson.”
“Yeah, something like that,” she said, then turned to Reginald. “Is that how you treat your girlfriends?”
“Hell, no,” he snapped. “They listen to me, not the other way around.”
“Right, that wife-beater mentality arising again,” she said, with a smile. “I mean, a woman isn’t allowed to have her own opinion, right?”