In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  “Yeah.” Castaways, Danny thought. They were all castaways in their own fashion. Except Molly.

  She shone brightly above the rest of them, he thought, pure and strong, muttering to herself all the while. He felt his breath punch out of him with the image of her that came to his mind. What had he done to her?

  He knew what he’d done to himself. He’d lost her. But that he had caused her pain in the process was more than would settle under his skin. He put his face in his hands. “Ah, man.”

  “I didn’t take ’em, you know,” Plank said suddenly.

  “What?” Danny looked up, bemused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Them cattle. You asked me once if I’d took ’em.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I did.” What difference did it make now?

  “Something else ran me off that ranch, boy, and landed me here, sleeping in a gym.”

  For the life of him, Danny couldn’t care. He didn’t feel like talking. He put his hands to his knees and pushed to his feet again. “Listen, cowboy—”

  “It was a woman.”

  “Yeah, well, they’ll destroy you every time.”

  “You love ’em hard enough and you’re stupid, sure they will.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” He loved her, Danny thought, and he sure as hell was stupid. His only choice, he realized—his only chance—had been to come back from that meeting with Ricky and tell her right then and there that her life was in his hands. It had been a matter of every next breath she’d ever take. He’d owed her that. Sure, she would have been spitting mad. She probably would have gone after Ricky and Carmine herself. But she wouldn’t have hated him for what had happened, not if he’d told her then. If he had just come back to the rec center that day and coughed it up, she would have seen the whole sordid mess for what it had started out to be: a nasty warning, issued by some scum thugs, that had inadvertently involved her because they’d played basketball late one night.

  She didn’t hate him because Ricky had threatened her, Danny thought. She hated him because he had gone along with that threat for weeks, allowing it, never sharing it with her. Not even, he thought, when she had asked why he was knocking on her back door.

  If he had told her then, what would she have done? Danny’s mouth twisted into a grimace, because he knew without a doubt. She would have reminded him—long before he realized it himself—that bowing down to the mob was no way out at all.

  Danny pulled his mind back. Plank was jabbering on about something.

  “Me and the foreman went after the same gal, see. Pretty little thing name of Tia. She worked in the main house. Mexican, with some big black eyes could stare right through a man, right to his heart, bring him to his knees. Foreman told me I didn’t leave her alone, he’d get her deported. He woulda done it, too. Nasty son of a gun, he was. Figured he’d rather do without her himself than see me have her.”

  “Yeah?” Danny stared at the far wall of the gym. How the hell was he supposed to fix what he had done to Molly?

  “So I figure to myself, that’s the end of me and pretty little Tia. I buckled, I did. Gave in to it. Didn’t want nothing like that to happen to her. Then, the son of a gun, he goes and sends her back to Mexico, anyway, and sets me up for taking those steers just cause I had the guts to set my sights on something he thought was his.”

  Danny finally looked at the old man. Something he had just said jiggled at loose threads in his mind. “What’s your point, Plank?”

  “I’m just telling you, you want a woman, you ought to fight for her. Back down like some kind of female, you probably don’t deserve her, anyway. What’s Molly gonna do if you go over there? Shoot you with that gun of hers?”

  “She might.” A raw laugh scraped from Danny’s throat, surprising him. He hadn’t thought he was capable of it.

  “What did you do to her? You never said, boy.”

  He found that the answer was easy. “I underestimated her. I forgot for a while that she can handle anything, as long as she knows what it is she’s supposed to be handling. I shut her out.” And that, he thought, was the worst of it. That was what she would hold against him for the rest of her life if he couldn’t reach her.

  Then it hit him.

  “I’ve got to go,” Danny said suddenly. Of all the words he’d said to her tonight, the fact that he was sorry, that he regretted his course of action had never fit into them anywhere, he realized. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had left to reach her with. And maybe, if he went to his knees, she would understand.

  He started for the double gym doors, then something stopped him again. He looked back at the grizzled old cowboy sitting on the bleachers. “Hey, were you sleeping there the night she and I…” He trailed off and waved a finger in the general direction of the far basket.

  “Wasn’t sleeping. I was trying to. Big difference.”

  Well, hell, Danny thought.

  “I heard what she said about her brother. She was trying to save you, too, Mr. Not-Quite-a-Con. She’s got that way in her. And somethin’ tells me you didn’t let her.”

  Danny thought about it. “Yeah. Yeah, she was.” He found his keys in his pocket. “Plank, go on upstairs. Use my room. I won’t be back tonight—I hope.”

  “No kidding?”

  “About which? The hoping?” Danny pushed through the gym doors.

  Molly smelled smoke.

  It was the first thing that came to her. Old, acrid, bitter, it hurt the inside of her nostrils and made her headache worse. She tried to roll over, then she grunted in shocked pain when something kicked her in the shoulder hard.

  “Get her up,” a male voice said. “Bring her around. We’ve got to talk to her.”

  “Man, I’m telling you. We’ve got to kill her now.”

  “Those aren’t our orders.”

  “She gets loose from us, it’ll take us days to catch up with her again. You saw what I went through trying to grab her.”

  “Look at her. She’s not going anywhere. We’ve got to find out everyone she’s talked to first.”

  “She’s been hanging with the con. But we’ll get him and Bobby. Janine will get Bobby. I promised he’s not coming out of that coma as long as she’s a nurse there.”

  The con. Molly’s mind swam a little closer to the surface. Nurse? Then she remembered.

  It felt like everything in her mind gathered suddenly into a shining, hot ball. Her headache was excruciating. But she remembered now. Beau Maguire had come at her from behind in Bobby’s room. And there had been a woman waiting in the shadows in the corner. She’d done something to drug her. Here, here, use this, she’d said.

  And it had been the same voice that had called her earlier to tell her that Bobby had come out of the coma. Who had she said she was then? Nurse Myers. And Beau had just called her Janine.

  She’d been set up, Molly thought. Again.

  Someone grabbed her beneath the armpits and started dragging her. This, she thought, was enough of this. She tried to struggle. “Let me go before I hurt you,” she rasped.

  Her voice was raw, a little slurred, but at least it startled whoever had been dragging her. He dropped her again, hard and fast, with a grunt of surprise. Molly moaned with fresh pain as her head cracked into the floor. She rolled onto her stomach, then the boot came back again—it had been a boot that had kicked her before, she realized. It aimed for her throat but she twisted at the last moment and it hit her in the jaw instead. Fresh pain exploded.

  “You’re in no position to even be thinking about hurting us,” the first voice said equably. She didn’t know it, didn’t recognize it. Molly forced herself to open her eyes. The man stood beside Maguire, watching her. He was tall, almost skeletally thin, with a sandy-blond mustache and hair. And he had a gun aimed at her, a regulation M.C.P.D. service revolver.

  Where was she? Molly dragged in air again, tasted the smoke. Her vision cleared a little more and she looked around. They were in the bombed-out Men’s Grill kitchen at the country club
.

  Fresh memory seared into her head, of driving here in her car. Beau had said they couldn’t risk doing anything to her at the hospital or having her car found there, either. He had to take her to someone else at a safe place.

  “I’ll be damned,” Molly moaned. “I was right. This is your turf. You blew the place up.”

  “Shut up!” Maguire snarled.

  “Try it yourself.” The tall, thin man clouted him with the back of his hand. “We’re supposed to let her talk.”

  So, Molly thought, we know who is in charge here. “I have the floor?”

  The man gave her a stark grin. “Sure. It’s all yours.”

  “Thank you so much. But, come to think of it, I have nothing more to say.”

  “I told you she has a mouth on her.” Maguire was still rubbing his jaw.

  “Who are you?” Molly asked the mustached guy. She dragged herself up to sit against the wall behind her. Oh, everything hurt.

  The man sank down onto his haunches to meet her eye to eye. “Well, now, I guess I might as well tell you, seeing as how you won’t be leaving here alive. We can be on a first-name basis while you spill whatever else it is you’ve figured out.”

  Molly’s heart seemed to seize at his response. She was in trouble. She was in very deep trouble. They were going to kill her.

  Danny.

  Her mind veered to him, desperately, pleading with fate. She’d only just found him. She didn’t want to lose him. She was going to kill him for not telling her the truth about Ricky and Carmine, but they’d get past that. They had to get past it. He was her own personal handsome hero.

  She was going to get out of this. Somehow. And damned if these idiots were going to kill him or send him back to jail. She had plans for him. And one of them was to make him pay for that little oversight of his every day for the next forty years. In the nicest possible way, of course.

  It cleared her head a little more, gave her the strength to fight back. “Let me guess,” she said finally. She let her gaze flick to Maguire, then back to the sandy-haired guy. “Your favorite pastime is finding money in innocent guys’ condominiums, right?”

  The blond man grinned again. The look chilled her blood this time. “Smart lady.”

  “Too smart for her own damned good,” Maguire said. “I’m telling you, she went right for the crime book in the war room and started chatting up Gannon.”

  “Shut up, Beau. Don’t make me keep telling you.” The mustached man nodded at Molly. “Pleased to meet you, Officer French. I’m Larry Higgins. Detective Larry Higgins. Which means I rank you, and you will answer my questions when I tell you to.”

  “And then I can die for it? I don’t think so.”

  This time he backhanded her. Molly couldn’t help herself; she cried out as her head cracked back against the wall. Then she brought her gaze around to him again and narrowed her eyes. “Go to hell, Larry. That’s what I think of your seniority.”

  Something flared in his pale eyes—something almost like respect. “You’ve got some grit. You know, you should have joined us instead of fighting us.”

  “No one invited me to the party.”

  “We were going to watch you for a while after you got on the task force. Then you started cozying up to the wrong people and asking questions you shouldn’t have asked.”

  “My cross to bear.”

  She saw his hand move to hit her again. This time she was ready for it. Molly lashed out with her foot, knocking him off balance as he squatted in front of her. He went down and rolled, and by the time he did, she was on her feet.

  She was unsteady, Molly thought, breathing hard, but at least she was on her feet. And Higgins was coming at her again.

  She didn’t have the strength to fight him. And even under the best of circumstances, she couldn’t fight both of them. She had to outwit them. Somehow. Oh, God help her, she needed a plan!

  “Don’t do it!” she gasped, recoiling when Higgins brought his gun hand up again. From the way he was holding the weapon, she knew he was going to hit her with it. “Break my jaw and I’ll never tell you a thing.”

  Higgins caught himself up short from the blow. But then he grabbed her arm and spun her around. He drove her face first into the wall. Molly made a gargling sound of pain. He twisted her arm up behind her and held her that way, then she felt his gun at her temple.

  Where was her own gun? Did Maguire still have it?

  “Enough idle chitchat,” Higgins said. “Talk to me about what matters.”

  “Politics? Religion?”

  The revolver clicked as he cocked it. The sound was huge in her head.

  If she talked, she would die here. As soon as they knew what they needed to know, Higgins would pull the trigger. She didn’t want to die.

  He wouldn’t kill her until he knew what she had learned about them and who she had told, Molly thought. For the first time since Mickey had died, she knew she was going to have to back away from a wall. She couldn’t follow her instincts and hurl herself at it. She had to keep her mouth shut.

  You’re right, Danny, you’re right. They don’t all fall down. And even if this one did, it would take me with it.

  Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Danny knew it in his gut when she didn’t answer his knock on her door.

  Molly was many interesting, complex things, but she wasn’t petty. She might want to leave him standing out here like a fool for spite, but eventually she’d have to throw the door open and come at him with both barrels. The woman wasn’t known for her restraint.

  He knocked for a fourth time. Still nothing.

  Danny swore and went back to his car, springing the trunk. He retrieved his neat little crowbar for the second time that day. He started to use it on the deadbolt again, then ice drove into his veins. It wasn’t locked. She hadn’t locked the deadbolt on her door.

  He tried the second lock and that turned easily as well. Then he went for the plain, pedestrian doorknob and he found that that lock held.

  She’d only used one lock? Fear was starting to make him feel nauseous.

  Danny broke past the restraint of the doorknob about as easily as he’d tried to convince her he could get her out of her knickers. The memory closed his throat as he stepped inside her apartment.

  The wine she’d told him she was going to drink was sitting on the coffee table—just the bottle without a corresponding glass. He picked it up, hefting it. She couldn’t have had more than a few mouthfuls of it. It was still nearly a quarter full. He scowled at the table. There were a bunch of wadded-up tissues there and a tissue box sat on the sofa cushions.

  She’d been crying. He’d made her cry.

  “Molly!”

  Silence.

  “Molly, answer me!”

  He knew she wasn’t there. He jogged through the apartment anyway and when he returned to the kitchen he went to the place on the wall where he’d noticed that she hung her keys. They were gone.

  She’d left under her own steam then. It should have comforted him. But would she have done that without locking all her locks?

  Danny left the apartment and ran to his car. “Who, damn it, who?” The Mercados? Or the Lion’s Den? He banged his fist repeatedly against the steering wheel as he drove, growling wordlessly in frustrated terror. One of them had her.

  There’d been no sign of a struggle in her apartment. So they’d lured her out…somehow, somewhere. And she had been in a hurry, or she would have used all those damned useless locks on her door. Don’t you die on me, Molly. Don’t you dare die before I apologize.

  Danny pressed his foot down on the gas, and the old yellow car hurtled as it picked up speed. Okay, he thought, this would have to be a process of elimination. It would eat up crucial time, so he’d have to rule someone out quickly. He went to find Ricky.

  Five minutes later he hit the brakes. They screamed as he skidded to a stop in front of the condominium complex where the convenience store money had been handily discovere
d six years ago. Oh, yeah, he thought, all his bets with the Mercados were off.

  He ran up to the third floor, then he rammed his fist against Ricky’s door like a wild man, again and again. When it was suddenly flung open, he almost nailed Ricky in the jaw.

  His old friend jumped back. “What the hell, Danny? What are you doing?”

  “Where is she?” he snarled.

  “Who?” Then Ricky’s sleep-clouded eyes cleared. “Your cop? Oh, man. We don’t have her, bro. I swear it. What’s going on?”

  Danny needed to believe him so badly it nearly buckled his knees. But the alternative was very nearly worse. “Call Carmine. Make sure.”

  “I don’t have to. I was with him until a few hours ago. He’s in the hospital—another heart attack. Danny, with all due respect, you’re the farthest thing from the man’s mind right now.”

  His brain was grinding, Danny realized. It kept trying to move but it felt like it was missing gears. He was terrified. “What about one of the others? One of Carmine’s favorite goons? Someone has her.”

  Ricky grabbed both his shoulders, his strong hands squeezing hard. “It’s not us.”

  Danny met his eyes. And he believed him.

  He turned away from the door. “It’s the cops then.”

  “Cops? She is a cop.” Ricky shouted after him. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are bad ones.”

  Ricky raked a hand through his hair. “Well, we’ve always known that.”

  “No, I mean, they have some kind of network.” Too late, Danny thought to stop and look back at his friend’s eyes. If there was awareness there, if Ricky knew about the Lion’s Den, then he’d missed the truth in the second it had glimmered there. And he didn’t have time to press the issue. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Whoa,” Ricky said. “Just hold on a second. I’ll make some phone calls and see what I can find out. I know the cops that are in our pockets. There are only a couple these days, but I can find out if any of them know anything.”

  Yeah, Danny thought, they were still brothers—for what it would be worth when this nightmare was over. “Okay, thanks. One way or the other, I’ll come back here.”