by Beverly Bird
Molly hot-wired her car. There was something to be said for having grown up with a hoodlum brother.
She left the parking lot just as the first units arrived. Where would he go? Not to the rec center, she thought. It was the first place the police would look for him. Her apartment? No, that would be the second place they’d look. His mother’s house? Molly had no clue where the woman lived. She could find out through department channels, but she didn’t want to risk surfacing until Joe Gannon managed to sort things out at the country club and she found Spence Harrison.
The mob, she thought suddenly. The Mercados. “Ricky,” she whispered aloud. What had Danny said that day he’d met with him? That they’d always be friends; they just wouldn’t see each other after that last meeting. Well, Molly thought, this situation pretty much changed everything. If Danny needed to avoid the law now, who better to hide him than his best friend, the mobster?
She knew where Ricky Mercado lived. Everyone in law enforcement knew where Ricky Mercado lived. They just couldn’t lay a hand on him because he never obviously did anything wrong. She turned south, heading for the posh condominiums at the hem of town.
“Please, Danny, please, don’t have turned yourself in yet.” Her heart tried to stall. It was possible that he had. He was that kind of man.
He’d left the mob on principle, and he’d done jail time rather than talk about what he knew. He’d saved her life at unconscionable cost to himself. More than any man she had ever met, Danny had goodness and honor inside him.
What would he do now? she thought frantically, driving. Would he do the just and noble thing and head straight for the police station because he had broken his parole? Or would he lie low for a while, to give the dust time to settle and to think things through?
Molly stopped in front of the condominiums and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Then she painfully levered herself out of the car and headed for Ricky’s door.
“Third one on the top,” she said to herself. “I think.” Otherwise, she was going to wake someone else up very early.
She took a second to look up at the sky. Dawn was spreading…and she had lived to see it. She prayed that Danny would be looking at it tomorrow—and not through a barred window.
She went up to the third floor and banged her fist on the door that she thought belonged to Ricky Mercado, then she rang the bell for good measure. He opened it too quickly to have been sleeping.
“Here’s your chance,” she said flippantly. “Either kill me now or tell me where to find Danny. But I’ve got to warn you, I’ve put up one tough fight already tonight and I’m not in the mood to be nice about this.”
Ricky looked at her for a long time, then he called back into the condo over his shoulder. “Would she be cute and sarcastic with a lot of dark hair?”
“That’s the one,” Danny’s voice came back.
Molly cried out in relief. She shoved past Ricky, nearly knocking him off his feet, and ran into the living room behind him. Danny was sitting on the sofa.
He came to his feet to meet her and she found her way into his arms. “You didn’t do it,” she gasped. “You didn’t do anything stupid.” She couldn’t stop touching him, his face, his hands, his arms.
“Not in the last hour, anyway.”
“I was afraid you would turn yourself in.”
“Why, Officer, does that mean you’re willing to aid and abet a criminal?” Then he found he could no longer talk. His throat was a knot of pain. She was alive.
She was warm beneath his hands, humming with emotion—energy, fury, panic, he couldn’t tell which. Danny buried his face against her hair and just held her.
“I wanted to see you first,” he said finally.
“And you knew I’d look here on the dark side?”
“Hey,” Ricky said from behind her, affronted.
“Never mind. I’m here.” Molly kissed Danny. Then she kissed him again. “You’re not going back to jail. Not without a fight. We’re going to the D.A.”
“Oh, now he’s a pal of mine.”
“He is now. He’s all we’ve got.” She finally eased back from him. “I don’t have much time here, Danny. I’ve got to get to Spence Harrison.”
“Just a second. I need a second.”
“What?” she asked anxiously.
“About the other thing—when you left me tonight. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I’d do it all over again, I’d make the same deal, knowing what I knew then. But I should have told you when I did it.”
Her eyes filled. Molly bit her lip. “Danny, it’s okay. Not now…”
“Wait, I’m not done yet. When I made that deal, I didn’t know I was in love with you.”
“Well, I did,” Ricky said from behind them. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”
Molly’s throat closed. Her gaze whipped between the two of them. Her tears spilled. “You love me?”
“And now that I know it, I would take any risk, fight any battle, rather than lose you.”
“You already did,” she whispered, choking.
“Tell him you love him, too,” Ricky suggested, “so I can get some sleep here.”
“I love you.” Molly slid back into his arms. “Oh, I do.”
Danny felt his heart move in his chest. He wanted to stand there forever, just holding her. But he kissed her and set her away from him, looking at the man he still loved like a brother. “You’re going to need to duck now, pal. Get out of the line of fire. I can probably give you a couple of days.”
Ricky just closed his eyes as he understood. “Damn it, Danny. You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re going to talk.”
“I have to. Just get out of the way first, would you? Before I do it? I don’t want to take you down. That’s the best I can give you.”
“Don’t tell me this. Don’t put me in this position.”
“I don’t want to see you in jail. You’re too pretty.”
Ricky crossed his arms over his chest. “Go on.”
“That money Carmine siphoned off from what was sent up north to the New York boys—you had no part of that, not then. But do you now?”
“No. I still keep my hands clear of the whole drug scene. That was the money from the heavy stuff we bring up from Mexico.”
“Right.”
Molly didn’t want to hear this. Her stomach was hurting. And she knew how important it was for her to stay…just because Danny hadn’t asked her to leave.
Trust, she thought again. And she knew if she came out of this with her career, she’d never do a thing with this information.
She wouldn’t have to, she understood now. Danny would.
“I thought about giving that information to New York,” he said.
That brought anger to Ricky’s eyes. “My uncle would be dead before nightfall. They’d kill him.”
“And the rest of Carmine’s guys would be running around town with sawed-off shotguns looking for me—for revenge. They might even hit you—for your association with me. No, that’s not how I’m going to play it. But I will turn it over to the D.A. to give it to the FBI.”
“You know where we bring the stuff in. They’ll have agents all over the border there.”
“Not if they’re smart. They’ll pick up the trail there and follow it straight to Carmine’s bedroom door. That should successfully dismantle things in Texas.”
“They’ll kill you, bro. The FBI won’t put everyone in jail, and someone will come after you. One of you.” He glanced at Molly.
“My mother is already gone. I went to her place before I came here and sent her away. She’s got bus fare and she’s already on the road. And I won’t talk unless the FBI agrees to protect her once she gets where she’s going.” He looked at Molly. She nodded her agreement.
“What about you guys?” Ricky asked.
Danny looked at her again. Molly found his gaze one more time and held on.
“For better or worse, we’ll
be together.”
They found Spence Harrison hustling down his driveway toward his car. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw them. “Molly French. We’ve got people all over the city looking for you right now.”
“Good guys or bad guys?”
Harrison winced. “Both. Come on inside.”
In that second Molly breathed again. He wasn’t going to try to take her in. He could be trusted.
Harrison rented the second floor of a rambling, two-story Colonial on Brent Drive. They followed him upstairs. Molly sank down at his kitchen table while he put on coffee. She tried to stifle a groan of pain but it worked past her lips.
“Damn it,” Danny growled, “you need to be at the hospital.”
“They’ll find me if I go there.” She looked at Spence. “Have you got any aspirin?”
He got a bottle from the cabinet. “What the hell did they do to you?”
“They tried to kill me. Larry Higgins and Beau Maguire tried to kill me. They settled for taking my arm out of its socket instead.”
Harrison’s face went white. “Joe Gannon called me from the country club. That’s more or less what he said. I wasn’t sure I could trust him. He booked Bancroft that day.”
Molly washed the aspirin down with coffee. “Yeah, he did. But he’s a good guy.”
The coffee was sweet, delicious, and she shuddered a little as it hit her stomach. Then she started at the beginning, with Bobby’s last words at the hospital before he’d gone into a coma. “Higgins never denied that they were called the Lion’s Den,” she finished. “He just kept hammering at me, trying to get me to tell him who I thought was part of it.”
“Give me the names.” Harrison took a notepad out of his briefcase.
“Higgins and Maguire, obviously. Maguire tailed me all day yesterday, watching my apartment, then he caught me at the hospital. And you know someone shot at me last night, right? Joe Gannon was supposed to investigate the incident, but they pulled him off it.”
Harrison nodded. “Higgins is in the hospital right now,” he responded. “He’s not going anywhere. As for Maguire, he tucked tail at the country club and ran right after Joe Gannon got there. He’s gone underground but we’ll find him. He’s not that bright.”
Molly nodded. “And Kyle Malloy and Ed Bancroft were probably involved.”
“We knew that.”
“I put together a list through personnel records of others that seem shady.” At his look, she added quickly, “Don’t ask me how. I had help and I won’t divulge it.”
“All right. Who else then?”
“Frank Hasselman, Paulie McCauley. Sergeant Connelly seems definitely connected. And I’m pretty sure Kevin Neely and Bryce Evans are involved. You might want to check out Donita Carver and Harry Roscoe really closely.”
Danny spoke up. “Uh, for what it’s worth, there’s an unconscious guy behind the reception desk at the country club that tweaked my antennae.”
Harrison almost grinned. “Yeah. They found him. He’s a cop, too.”
“And Janine something-or-other,” Molly added. “Um…Myers, I think she said. She’s a nurse at the hospital. She helped them grab me when I went there to see Bobby.” Suddenly, something else hit her hard. “Spence, they said they were going to get all three of us. If she’s still there at the hospital, Bobby could be in danger right now.”
He put down his pen and went to the telephone. “I’ll have her picked up for questioning right away.”
Danny got an odd expression on his face. “Janine? Did you say Janine? I guess I really ticked her off.”
“What are you talking about?” Molly scowled.
He told her about the daisies.
Molly had thought she’d never smile again, but a grin took her lips. Then she let her gaze slide back to Harrison as he hung up the telephone. “One last thing. Higgins and Maguire found the money in Danny’s apartment six years ago when he was convicted of robbing the convenience store. I think the Lion’s Den is working for the mob. I think there’s our connection to the bombing. It was Connelly who shifted them to that patrol that day. Danny was set up by the mob for trying to leave them. He never robbed that store.” She found Harrison’s gaze and pinned it with her own.
“Molly, hold on—” Danny began.
“You’re giving me a lot to deal with here,” Harrison said.
“I am.” Molly watched his eyes and found what she wanted to see in them. She finally nodded.
She trusted him, too. She had learned a lot about trust these last weeks.
“So that’s that, then.” Molly let out a shaky breath. She had to ask it. “What happens to me, Spence? I know they’re trying to say I was there tampering with the scene. Beau was already giving them that party line when I slid out.”
“And Ben Stone has put out the word to find you and bring you to the station ASAP.”
“He’ll take my badge.”
“No, he won’t. But you both need to get out of town for a few days. You—” he nodded at Molly “—are hereby on an official leave of absence from the M.C.P.D. And you—” he glanced at Danny “—stay clear of Mission Creek until I can make sure they don’t revoke your parole for saving the life of an officer.”
Molly felt a squeaky sound escape her throat. She gulped it back and pressed a hand to her mouth. She wouldn’t cry.
“Here’s my inside line at the office and my home number,” Harrison added, writing both down. “When you get wherever you’re going, call me and let me know where you are. I’ll tell you when the coast is clear to come home.”
“Thanks,” Molly whispered. She stood.
“Don’t go too far.” Harrison snapped his briefcase shut again. “The one thing we don’t have right now is anything to link the Lion’s Den to the bombing—other than the fact that Higgins and Maguire took you to the country club tonight, and that won’t hold up in court for as long as it takes a good attorney to stand up and object. I might need your help on hammering that part out later.”
“Uh…I resigned from the task force.”
“Not anymore, you didn’t. I don’t know how many officers I can trust right now. Those I’m sure of—like you—I want in place, where I can use you. We also can’t be sure who these Den guys are working with. I like the mob, given that Higgins, Maguire and Connelly were instrumental in finding that money in your condo, Mr. Gates, but we’re going to need more.” He paused. “I need to get into the office now. This is going to blow sky-high with the press at any moment.”
They went back outside again. For a long time Molly and Danny stood on the sidewalk, watching Harrison’s car retreat down the street. Then she found his hand and linked it with hers.
“The man has a point,” she said finally. “I’ve got the really strong feeling that we should do what Spence said and get out of Dodge. Like…now.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere but Texas.”
He grinned wearily. “How about Las Vegas then?”
“What’s in Las Vegas?” she asked, startled. “Besides a lot of scantily dressed women?”
“Guys who will marry us pretty cheap.”
Her heart vaulted. “Is that a proposal?”
He pulled her into his arms. “Yeah.”
“Well, I’ve heard better.”
“I’m an ex-con. You get what you get.”
“Not for much longer, you’re not.”
“Maybe I should do this right, then.”
“I agree. I’ve waited thirty years for this. Get down on one knee.”
His brows lifted. “In the middle of the sidewalk?”
“I’m still making you do penance for the bit about talking me out of my knickers.”
“That’s all?”
“I’ve forgiven you for the other. That was one very touching apology back at Ricky’s place.”
They grinned at each other.
“Come to think of it, I never got to prove my theory about your knickers.” He looked
into her green eyes and got lost in them. “Oh, what the hell.”
When he dropped to one knee, Molly’s mouth fell open. Then she threw back her head and laughed. She laughed until the tears that she’d been battling for hours spilled freely. Then she sank down on her knees to face him. “Will you marry me?” she asked.
“Hey, that’s my line.”
Molly sobered. “Danny, you don’t ever have to tell me anything about that part of your life if you don’t want to. And what you do tell me, I won’t ever repeat.”
“I know, Molly. It’s one of the first things I loved about you.”
She threw herself into his arms.
“This is the part where you get to tell me how you fell in love with me,” he reminded her. She reared back to kiss him. “I will. On our way to Las Vegas. It’s going to take a while.”
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Beverly Bird for her contribution to the LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7198-6
IN THE LINE OF FIRE
Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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*Wounded Warriors