Billionaire Blend

by Cleo Coyle

  “Me, too . . .” Mike sauntered into the room and took a seat at the kitchen table. When Frothy curled her little white body around his leg, he picked her up and scratched her ears. “I don’t have to meow, do I?”

  “Not unless you want a cat toy.”

  Eleven

  SKILLET Lasagna turned out to be a great idea for a postponed supper. For one thing, the dish tasted better reheated: just a splash more sauce and a fresh sprinkling of cheese. The mozzarella bubbled under the heat, becoming somewhat crusty as it cooled; but when you got below that crust, you were rewarded with a world of soft, gooey goodness (the culinary equivalent of my longtime relationship with Mike Quinn, when you got down to it).

  “Smells fantastic,” Mike declared, inhaling the tangy tomatoes and floral oregano. Then he picked up his fork and dug in.

  Since my building was still without power, I’d cranked up the oven for warmth and lit a few candles for light. The little kitchen felt cozy, even romantic, and for a few minutes, I enjoyed our silent munching of ricotta-enriched noodles. Then I began to unload, filling Mike in on my talk with Franco and my call to Paris.

  “It’s obvious now. The problem between Franco and Joy is Yvette. She’s been talking trash about Franco, filling Joy’s head with offensive ideas, and—”

  “And why would Joy allow her roommate’s opinion to sway her?”

  “Because she’s close to Yvette. They’re like sisters.”

  Given Mike’s twenty years as a detective, I shouldn’t have been surprised when he asked, “Particulars please?”

  “The two shared an apartment here in New York during culinary school. So, of course, they’ve been through ups and downs together, parties and Pilates, crushes, breakups, and—”

  “And if you know that, why is the situation upsetting you? Has something changed?”

  “Yes, Yvette’s changed! She never talked like a brat before. Until that phone call, she’s been gracious to me and generous to Joy.”

  “Sometimes ‘generosity’ comes at price.”

  I thought about that. “You’re suggesting Joy feels obligated to her? That she’d dump Franco just to please her rich girlfriend?”

  Mike gave a half shrug.

  “Look, I know my daughter. I didn’t raise her to judge people with such superficial yardsticks. She never cared if a friend—boy or girl—had money or not. And she’s never been a gold digger.”

  “Maybe Yvette’s not the only one who’s changed.”

  My fork stilled in midair. I set it down. “Don’t even think that.”

  Mike held my gaze. “Then how do you explain what Franco told you earlier today?”

  I shifted on my chair, not liking the question. “Why are you so prickly? Is it that remark Yvette made about a cop’s salary? Are you taking it personally? Because I don’t feel that way.”

  “But it seems Joy does—or she’s willing to consider it, based on her roommate’s opinion.”

  “We’re going in circles. I need to talk to Joy, find out—”

  “Find out what, Clare?” His tone was sharp. “You found out. You just don’t like what you found out.”

  I stared across the table. A shadow had crossed Mike’s face. The room felt colder all of a sudden, and the candlelight didn’t seem so romantic anymore.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  Mike exhaled tension. Then he leaned forward, out of the shadows. “I’m on your side, sweetheart. I’m always on your side. I’ve just run enough investigations to know we can’t change facts—as much as we’d like to sometimes.”

  “I don’t care. I’m still going to talk this out with my daughter.”

  “Of course you are . . .” He leaned back again, picked up his fork. “Just don’t do some kind of hard sell on Franco. You shouldn’t try to defend him.”

  “Why not? He’s the best thing that’s happened to my daughter in a long time—and she said so herself. Don’t you like him?”

  “It’s because I like him that I’m saying this.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Police work is a worthy profession, but it’s also a demanding one. Franco should have a woman in his life who understands that, one who’s proud to stand by him. No man wants to hook up with a partner who looks down on his work—or his income.”

  “You are taking this personally,” I said and he shot me a look that confirmed it.

  Given what Mike had been through in his marriage, I shouldn’t have been surprised. His ex-wife had never liked his profession—not its demands, its sacrifices, or its salary. But then, the two never should have married . . .

  Leila had come to Manhattan as a privileged, out-of-town girl. Her family had pulled strings to help start her career in modeling. When she wasn’t at photo shoots, she was partying in bars and clubs with such frequency that she attracted a stalker, a real creep who’d beaten and nearly raped her. Mike had been the street cop who saved her and put the rapist behind bars.

  Rattled by the attack, Leila clung to him. They dated for a short time before tying the knot. At his wedding, Mike’s precinct buddies made him feel as if he’d won the lottery; he had a gorgeous model for a wife, one who was completely infatuated with him—until the shine wore off.

  In a short space of time, Leila had gone from glittering parties and Manhattan shopping sprees to changing diapers in the “wrong part” of Brooklyn. Gone were the designer clothes and exciting photo shoots, nightclub passes, and fawning men buying her overpriced drinks in trendy bars.

  As the danger of that rapist became a distant memory, so did the reasons she’d married her husband. Mike the Blue Knight became a square-jawed bore. She didn’t understand his dedication to police work and didn’t want to hear his sordid stories of dealing with lowlifes. He couldn’t afford lavish vacations or gourmet restaurants. She couldn’t even depend on him to come home on time.

  The way Leila saw it, Mike was cheating her; so she felt zero guilt when she began cheating on him.

  Right from the start, Mike knew—he was a detective, after all. He’d tailed her a few times, saw the pattern: she would travel to Manhattan on some pretense or other, buy something sexy, wear it to a stockbroker bar, and relive those years when she was young and happy.

  He once told me what it felt like, the first time she’d cheated—a nuclear explosion in his gut. The second, third, and fourth times had struck him with lesser impacts—a grenade, a gunshot, a firecracker.

  Then came a fifth time, and a sixth . . .

  When he stopped counting, he stopped feeling.

  Confronting Leila hadn’t helped. She lied to his face, claimed his job made him paranoid. He showed her the credit card bills, recounted her movements. She accused him of trying to control her.

  Mike didn’t want to face the mistake of his marriage so when Leila promised to stop, he looked the other way. If stepping out was something she needed to do, then he’d let her do it as a kind of therapy, a way to help her feel young, pretty, and special again. In Mike’s mind, she deserved better than he could give her, anyway, and he was “fortunate” she chose to come back to him again and again.

  Then he met me.

  A case of homicide brought us together, and we got to know each other solving it. After that, he became a regular at my coffeehouse.

  When he found out I’d navigated through a difficult marriage, he began to confide in me about Leila. For years, he’d kept his troubles private. He’d been ashamed to tell friends, family, or the guys on the job who continually told him how lucky he was.

  I enjoyed pouring his coffee and listening to him talk, not just about personal things but also his cases. Given the NYPD’s continual public scrutiny in the news from “stop and frisk” policies and traffic ticket quotas to frame jobs on suspects, Mike was surprised to find a civilian who admired his vocation—who actually liked hearing the particulars of police work.

  I looked forward to our time together, and he did, too, until finally Mike realized that maybe he deserv
ed better.

  Still, Mike’s venal wife and toxic marriage left him with more than literal debt. Leila had forever branded her husband with a deep-seated feeling that he wasn’t good enough.

  “Look . . .” Mike finally said after a long exhale, “if you want me to admit that my base salary is a sore spot, I’ll admit it. Do you remember that crack your ex-husband made before I took this job in DC—that comment about my civil servant pay?”

  I racked my brain. “I don’t remember Matt saying anything about—”

  “Allegro can be a class-A jerk, but that’s not my point. The man wasn’t wrong.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “As a Fed, I’m finally making good money, Clare, very good and it feels good.”

  “Wait. You’re not saying . . .” I studied him. “Please tell me you’re not considering staying in DC beyond your one-year commitment.”

  Mike leaned forward, reached out for my hand. I pulled it back.

  “Answer the question.”

  “I can’t answer it—because I don’t know the answer. Not yet.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. My new boss has changed the game plan. We’ve been directed to expand our case, cast a wider net.”

  I stared. “How long?”

  “There’s no set time frame. The sooner we close the case, the sooner I get the bonus.”

  “Bonus? What bonus?”

  “Lacey, the new boss, struck a deal with me—if I agree to the wider net, which will help Lacey’s career, then I’ll get a bonus—a very big one—when the case is closed.”

  “Since when do you make decisions based on money?”

  “Don’t you think it’s about time? Like I said, your ex-husband can be a jerk, but he was right about my base pay. I want to send my kids to college, Clare. I’m their father, and I want them to know that it’s me writing the checks, not their new, investment banker stepdad. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “To quote you, doesn’t that money come ‘at a price’?”

  He fell silent a moment, gave me an expectant look. “Does it have to?”

  Oh no, you don’t! “You are not turning the tables on me!”

  “When I started this assignment, you said you would stick by me—through thick and thin. Was that idle talk? Maybe you’ve changed your mind. Maybe these woods are getting too thick and you want to turn back, go AWOL.”

  That did it. I was on my feet. “I’m not the one going AWOL! Franco told me you haven’t checked in with the OD Squad in weeks!”

  Mike blinked, clearly taken aback. “I’ve called in. Sully’s been assuring me everything is A-okay.”

  “Maybe for Sully they are. According to Franco, your cases are being poached by rival jurisdictions. Things are so slow that Franco’s started volunteering for uniform duty just to earn overtime.”

  Mike frowned. “I admit I haven’t been stopping by to review cases in person. I figured Sully would step up, handle any jurisdictional beefs. He’s a trustworthy guy.”

  “Sure he is. Franco says he’s a real nice guy, too. So nice that he’s refusing to step on toes to keep new cases. Why should he stick his neck out? It’s your team. He’s just babysitting.”

  Mike blew out air, massaged his forehead. “I wasn’t aware things were slipping.”

  “The squad, me, your kids . . . it’s all starting to add up. All these problems started a month ago, when this Lacey person became your new boss and began pressuring you—and I know why.”

  “Oh, you do? I wasn’t aware you worked for the Justice Department.”

  “Well, you’re aware I’m a boss, aren’t you? And as a boss, I know how important it is to keep good employees. This bonus you’re being promised with no time frame is only part of the plan.”

  “There’s a plan?”

  “Of course! Open your eyes, Mike: If your life here in New York gets disrupted often enough, your boss knows you won’t have a life to come back to. Your only alternative will be to stay in DC.”

  The room fell silent after that. Mike simply sat, studying me. Finally, I threw up my hands. “Don’t you have anything to say?!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  He leaned forward, dropped his voice. “I think you’re overwrought.”

  “Overwrought?!”

  “Anyone who’s been through what you have in the past eighteen hours would be a little emotional, even a little paranoid, and—”

  “And so what? It doesn’t make me wrong.”

  “Listen, sweetheart, it’s like I said. Nothing is definite yet. Time will tell. And right now time is telling me to give this a rest, literally. Let’s go back to bed.”

  He rose from his chair. I sunk into mine.

  “You go. I can’t sleep.”

  “Why not? What good will it do you to sit here stewing in the dark?”

  “None—but that’s not the reason I’m staying awake.” (I hated to admit this, mostly because it bolstered the man’s “overwrought” argument, but—) “When I close my eyes, I’m in that airport again.”

  “What airport?”

  I filled Mike in on the delightful climax of my nightmare: the exploding jet with my daughter inside, the terminal’s window shattering, glass shards raining down, and the pain in my back that was all too real.

  In the flickering light of the votives, Mike pulled me out of the chair, pressed earnest kisses to my forehead, my cheeks, my lips—all while taking care not to press the wounds in my back (which reminded me, all over again, why I wanted to stay with this man forever).

  “Let’s not fight anymore, okay?” he whispered.

  “Sounds good to me—although this making-up stuff might be worth it.”

  He smiled and touched my cheek. I hooked my arms around his neck and began to kiss him back, but as I closed my eyes, there it was again—

  Tick, tick, tick . . . “Oh, that stupid clock!”

  “What clock?” Mike glanced around the kitchen.

  “In my dream, before the bomb went off, a giant clock was ticking backward. I can’t stop hearing it, but it makes no sense!”

  “Dreams never make sense. They’re mind puzzles with scattered pieces. What else do you remember?”

  “There was an Air France steward. He pointed out the clock and told me that I missed Joy’s plane. So I failed to stop the bomb because I was early.”

  Mike made a face. “You mean late?”

  “No, early.”

  “How can you miss a plane because you’re early?”

  “I told you, it makes no sense.”

  “Come on,” he said, gently guiding me toward the kitchen door, “you need to rest—”

  I dragged him back. “What else is early?”

  “I don’t know. It’s early now.” Mike pointed to the window. “Very . . .”

  Outside, the world was cold and dark, a predawn January. I shivered at the black glass.

  “In my dream, the airport steward looked like Eric Thorner, did I tell you that?”

  Mike frowned. “That must mean something.”

  I thought so, too—I also thought Mike was right about dreams being mind puzzles. I stared at the black, cataloging the pieces of my dream:

  A bomb going off

  A backward-ticking clock

  Eric Thorner saying I was early

  Scolding me for missing something . . .

  I broke them down even more: Bomb. Clock. Eric. Early. Me missing something . . .

  Suddenly, I felt my jaw slackening. “Oh my God . . .”

  “What is it?”

  I wasn’t missing it now: “Eric Thorner was early!”

  Twelve

  FIFTEEN minutes later, we were dressed and on the street. “Are you sure your friend is on duty?” I asked Mike, lips quivering from a full-body shiver. “It is the middle of a dark and frigid night.”

  Okay, it was closer to 4:45 AM—but it was darn cold.

  My Greenwich Villa
ge neighborhood was deserted. The sky was rolling with low-hanging clouds, and the winter air was bitter with arctic blasts. Pulling me close, Quinn tried to shield me from a brand-new one. Grateful, I held on, clutching my tote bag (of culinary insurance) on one side, trying to leach a little of the man’s heat on the other.

  “DeFasio’s in charge of the Bomb Squad,” Quinn explained, long arm around me, “so I guarantee he’ll be there. After the incident in front of your coffeehouse, I expect his ‘Italian Squad’ will be burning the midnight napalm.”

  I hoped Quinn was right.

  For weeks, Eric Thorner had come to my coffeehouse like clockwork. Every day, he arrived at the same time, except on the day of the bombing. My barista Esther had even pointed it out. “He’s early,” she’d announced in surprise, but with so much chaos after the car bomb, no one (not even yours truly) had managed to count that fact as important.

  Yet it was highly important.

  “If the bomber had counted on Eric Thorner to follow his usual schedule, then the car bomb should have gone off in some other location,” I’d explained to Quinn back in my kitchen. “Maybe there was another target—a specific building or office complex. Maybe other people should have been in that car. Wherever that vehicle should have been, the people there need to be warned. They need to take precautions.”

  Quinn had played devil’s advocate, pointed out the explosives might not have been triggered by a timer. The Boston Marathon bombers had used a cell phone to detonate their pressure-cooker devices.

  “How would that work?” I’d asked.

  “The bomber would simply dial it up and boom!”

  I didn’t know which trigger Eric’s car bomber had used and neither did Quinn. But we both knew one thing: if lives were still in danger, we had to do something.

  As we hurried along Hudson, I riffled my memories for any past dealings with the “Italian Squad,” as Quinn had called them. The moniker was no joke; it came right out of New York City’s history, when the Mafia used sticks of dynamite to terrorize and extort immigrant merchants and residents. An Italian-American police lieutenant had formed the squad to stop these outrageous acts, which made it the city’s first Bomb Squad.