Reckless

  Chapter 9

  Toni slanted another sidelong glance at Nick. He sat behind the wheel of the parked car beside her, as silent as he'd been for most of the day. His chiseled jaw didn't move except for the occasional twitch. He'd been all business from the moment they'd returned to the hidden apartment. One hundred percent efficient, effective Federal Agent Manelli had taken over. The Nick she'd longed to know, the one she thought she'd finally uncovered, was gone. On the upside, so was the phony thug persona.

  With military precision he'd supervised the packing of her things to erase any trace of her presence. He'd gathered a sparse few of his own, including, she noted, the jeans and the high-tops, the basketball and the photograph. He left every one of those expensive suits behind.

  Meticulously he'd orchestrated her sister's safe departure from the country, just the way he wanted to orchestrate her own. She'd come very close to losing that round. But in the end, he’d caved. She was still with him.

  He stiffened in anticipation when another set of headlights broke through the darkness. The white beams moved eerily, illuminating his face. They passed, and Toni heard his aggravated sigh. For over an hour they'd been parked there in the nearly empty lot. The only other vehicles there were an abandoned Buick and a stripped-down framework that might once have been a Corvette.

  “He should have been here by now.” The worry in his voice came through clearly, and Toni longed to comfort him. He'd been so distant since this morning, she wasn't sure she knew how.

  She knew he was worried about Carl. That was part of the reason for his icy demeanor. Carl should have been there to meet with him at dusk. It was an arrangement they'd made months ago. If it got to the point where they both had to pull out in a hurry, they'd go their separate ways and meet in this crumbling parking lot at sundown the following night. Nick had told her that. He'd also told her about the drug shipment that had been confiscated the night he'd been shot, and his feeling that Taranto had expected the police raid. He thought Taranto suspected Carl. If he was right, then Carl was in serious danger.

  Toni thought of the man's gentle voice and his obvious worry about Nick, and she bit her lip. If Taranto had him—

  Nick glanced again at his watch. He shook his head and looked around the empty parking lot. Change the subject, Toni thought. Get him talking. At least the endless minutes of waiting would tick by a little faster.

  “Joey should be safely in her hotel in Orlando by now. It's such a relief knowing she's away from all this.”

  He looked at her, his eyes narrow, his temper short. “If you had half a brain, you'd be with her.”

  She shook her head. “I told you, Nick, I have just as much invested here as you do. I'm not walking away until I see it through. If you had put me on the flight out, I'd have caught the next one right back here.”

  “So you've pointed out—repeatedly. It's the only reason you're here. I couldn't risk you wandering around on your own. Lou would've had you in a matter of hours.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How did I ever manage without you? Must've been pure luck that I didn't bungle my incompetent self into an early grave last year when I took on those drug lords south of the equator.”

  “I didn't mean....” He shook his head and sighed loudly. “Okay. You're good at this, all right? You're just too damn gutsy for your own good. You rush headlong into situations that could be dangerous. That's all I meant. You’re reckless. Not incompetent.”

  She blinked and looked at him. “Gutsy, huh?” She felt the frown come and go as she digested that. After a moment she shook her head quickly. “Nah. Katrina's the gutsy one. I could never do the things she does,” she said.

  “Things like following mob hit men into dark alleys in the middle of the night? Or maybe things like slugging a six-two alleged killer who's carrying a gun because he says something you don't like?” He looked away from her face. “You're gutsy, lady. You wouldn't be doing what you've been doing otherwise.”

  “You have it all wrong.” She answered him quickly, the words tumbling out before she had a chance to think about them. “I do the things I do, to make up for what I didn't do before.”

  “Before?” His dark brows drew together as he regarded her in the dim interior of the car. “You're talking about your father's suicide, aren't you? Toni, you can't keep blaming yourself for that.”

  She couldn't hold his gaze. She hadn't understood until recently, the connection between her guilt over her father's suicide and her need to fix society's ills in any way she could. She gazed through the window, seeing nothing. “I knew what was happening. I should have done something.”

  “You were still in high school. What could you have done?”

  “Something. Anything. I shouldn't have let it go on so long. I shouldn't have let him....” She stopped and tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

  Nick touched her arm. “You couldn't have changed what happened, Toni.”

  “I could. I knew when he left the house that day...it was in his eyes. I shouldn't have let him go.”

  He was quiet for a long moment. Maybe he finally believed her. Not that it mattered. She knew. She'd always known. When he took her chin in his hand and turned her to face him, she wished he'd just drop the subject.

  “You know what I think?” Nick asked. She shook her head, and he went on. “I think you feel so guilty about it that you want to be punished. I think that's why you challenge death at every turn. Maybe you're hoping it'll beat you one of these times. Maybe you think, somewhere deep down in that pretty head of yours, that you don't deserve to live when he didn't.”

  In the dark, quiet car, Nick deftly opened the festering wound in her soul and let the infection begin to heal. Toni felt her lips tremble. She couldn't speak. How could he see so clearly the truth she'd kept hidden from herself for such a long time? The accuracy of what he'd said was so clear to her all at once. Why hadn't she seen it before?

  “It wasn't your fault, Toni.” He watched the changes in her face for a moment. “Do you think your father would've wanted you to spend your life paying for his decision that day?''

  She shook her head. “No, but—”

  “You know how bad you've felt since he took his own life?” His arms suddenly encircled her shoulders. He brought her close to him, until she was held like a child. “That's how bad your sister would feel if you followed his example. Do you want to be responsible for causing her that kind of pain?”

  She shook her head hard, moving it against his shoulder where it was cradled. “No! I never meant...I didn't realize...” She released all her breath at once. She felt like crying. The huge burden she'd been bearing for so long suddenly grew lighter. It didn't vanish; some of it remained. For the first time in a very long time, though, she thought she understood it. God. This changed the scope of her very existence! She felt free all of a sudden.

  She sat up slightly and studied his face in awed fascination. “You should have been a shrink. My God, how do you see so much?”

  He shrugged. One hand stroked a wisp of hair away from her face. “You’re getting to be a little bit transparent to me. Maybe because we've been together constantly for the past week. Maybe because I’ve wrestled with a lot of the same demons myself. For a long time I blamed myself for not being able to save my brother. So I know you. I know you on a level I think few people ever know another. Except...”

  “Except what?”

  He released her and settled back in his seat. Toni settled back, too, but close enough so their bodies touched. “Did you ever want to do anything else?” he asked. “I mean, besides write tell-all books to clear your conscience?”

  She allowed a small smile. “I love to write and I'm good at it.”

  “I'll let you know after I read your latest book.”

  She smiled fully. Finally the easy, relaxed atmosphere between them had returned. “I had a plan, you know. A long time ago before, I got so wrapped up in being a crime fighter.”

  He folded
his arms, clasping his hands behind his head. “Tell me.”

  Toni closed her eyes and envisioned the life she'd allowed to exist only in her dreams. “Rural town,” she told him. “Not suburban, rural. I'm not even sure my road is paved. The house is a rambling old Victorian—white with black shutters and huge open porches. I have a big office with a window that overlooks the enormous back lawn. There are yellow roses growing there and a flowering crab apple tree. I write wonderful books with happy endings. When I get tired of sitting at the computer, I walk the dog.”

  She didn't need to look at him to know his brows shot up. “The dog?”

  “Um-hmm. He's a huge gray-and-white sheepdog. He's so shaggy I have to trim the hair around his eyes every few weeks so he can see. His name is Ralph. We walk together every day, down the path to the duck pond, and—”

  “This is one vivid plan,” he said slowly.

  “I'm a writer. I live to fill in the details.”

  Headlights approached once more, and Nick sat up straighter. This time the oncoming car veered into the parking lot and pulled up alongside. The driver's window lowered slowly. The man sitting there was not Carl.

  “My boss,” Nick muttered, then lowered his window. “Harry, what the hell's going on?”

  The white haired man in the other car met Nick's gaze, all but ignoring Toni's presence. “It isn't good, Manelli. Carl's dropped off the radar. No one's been able to find a trace of him.”

  Nick flinched as if he'd been struck. The man in the other car kept on speaking. He glanced at Toni. “Her sister didn’t show for her flight, Nick. We haven't been able to locate her, either.”

  “Damn.”

  Toni shook her head rapidly. “No. It isn't what you're thinking. I know my sister. She probably just set her heels and decided she wasn't leaving. When I talked to her earlier and explained the situation—” she swallowed and cleared her throat “—I should have known she agreed too easily. She's stubborn as a mule sometimes.”

  “Must run in the family,” Nick muttered under his breath.

  “I hope you're right,” Harry said. He returned his attention to Nick. “Why's she still with you, Manelli? You had orders—”

  “She would have come right back and become a target,” Nick said. “It was safer to keep her with me.”

  “I'd appreciate it if you two would stop talking as if I'm not here.” Toni looked at Nick, feeling a dark terror creep into her heart. If Taranto had her sister...

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  Harry reworded her question and put it to Nick. “Do you have enough on Taranto to make an arrest stick?”

  Nick shook his head. “He paid me to kill Toni—but that's no good because I don't have enough to prove it and Toni isn't dead. He sent me to witness Vinnie's hit, but he never really confessed to that on tape. The man knows enough to talk in circles. He says all he needs to say without ever admitting a thing.” He looked down and shook his head.

  “What kind of evidence do you need?” Toni asked.

  Both men looked at her, and Nick said, “What kind have you got?”

  She did a mental inventory of the evidence she’d gathered while researching her book, trying to think of the most damning. “I have photographs of Lou Taranto passing a large manila envelope to a man named Santos. Santos was later arrested in Colombia for murder.”

  “Right,” Harry interrupted. “Last year. He'd tampered with the plane that was supposed to carry Juan Perez to the U.S. to stand trial for drug trafficking. The plane crashed after takeoff. Perez died, along with the three DEA agents who were escorting him back.”

  “Juan Perez was Lou Taranto's cocaine supplier in Colombia,” Nick said.

  Toni nodded. “That's right. And if he'd made it here to stand trial, he might have been offered a deal in exchange for his testimony against Taranto. Santos took that envelope from Lou and left for Colombia within six hours. And when he got there, a large amount of money suddenly appeared in his bank account.”

  “Toni, how the hell do you know all this?”

  She met Nick's intense look. “I followed Lou for weeks researching this book. One day I saw him meet with Santos in a little cafe. I slipped the waitress fifty bucks for her apron and got close enough to eavesdrop. Took the shots of Taranto passing Santos the envelope, and they never even glanced up at me. When they left the diner, I decided to follow Santos and the envelope instead of Lou. That's how I know he went straight to Colombia. I still had connections down there from the last book and I called one of them. Larry Wetzel. He has a lucrative little investigations agency going down there. He'll testify if you force him to. Anyway, he met the flight and tailed Santos on that end. He reported that Santos had checked into a motel and got himself a job at a small airfield. The next day Perez's plane took off from that same airfield and crashed.”

  Nick stared at her and shook his head. “Slipped the waitress fifty bucks...” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

  “How much of this is documented?'' Harry seemed eager.

  “The photograph of Lou handing Santos the envelope is irrefutable. I have another one of Santos boarding the flight to Colombia. You already have proof that Santos sabotaged the Perez’s flight. He would've been tried for that last year if he hadn't been found hanging by the neck in his cell.”

  “If that was self-inflicted, I'll eat my badge,” Harry said softly.

  “Still, it's not solid,” Nick put it

  “I have the envelope. There's a coffee stain on it, identical to the one that shows in the first photo. My PI friend grabbed it out of a trash can where Santos had dropped it after lighting a match to it. Larry managed to douse the flame before it did too much damage.”

  Nick looked at Harry, then at Toni again. “Come on, Katrina, don't keep us in suspense. What was inside?”

  She couldn't help smiling a little smugly. “A five-by-seven glossy of Perez, and a handwritten note with the name of the airfield, the flight number and the time and date of departure. The only thing that wasn't there was the money, and that is still in Santos's bank account.”

  Harry's long, low whistle came at the same moment that Nick asked, “Where is all this evidence?” She didn't answer. His hands clasped her shoulders, and he squeezed them between his fingers. “Don't play games, Toni. Tell me.”

  She shook her head. “I'll take you to it.” He frowned, and his grip tightened, but she only stuck her chin out a little farther. “If I tell you, you'll try to stash me somewhere while you go after it alone.”

  His hands fell to his sides. He nodded. “That's right.” He glanced downward for a long moment, then faced her again. “Your apartment. That locked room, right?”

  She shook her head, but not before he'd seen the answer in her eyes. His gaze pummeled her. “All right, yes. But you don't know the combination for my safe, and I won't give it to you.”

  “I'll get into it whether you give me the combination or not.”

  “But that’ll take time. Isn't time of the essence here?”

  “She's got you there, Manelli,” Harry interrupted. “Take her along, we're wasting time arguing. I'll get a team in place outside her building. You'll have backup. One hour.”

  Nick glared from Toni to Harry. “I don't like it— she'll be a moving target.”

  “We'll take precautions,” Harry told him. “Beginning right now. Get out of the car.” Nick hesitated. “Come on, Manelli, I don't have all night. You've been driving that one through this entire operation. Taranto knows it. We'll switch. I'll get that thing out of sight for a while. You two wearing vests?”

  “Not yet,” Nick said.

  “There's a pair in my back seat. Get into them.” Harry got out of the car as he spoke and yanked Nick's door open. “Come on, let's not sit here all night.”

  Toni could see that Nick didn't want to comply, but the moment he opened his mouth to argue the other man held up a hand. “Consider it an order.”

  Lou Taranto leaned
back in his overstuffed chair. He took the cigarette from his lips and held it in front of him, studying the smoke that spiraled up from the glowing tip. He released what he'd inhaled, and his face became a blur in the center of the stark room. Viper stood at his right hand, his button eyes gleaming. He alternately clenched and opened his red-knuckled hand.

  “Bring him around,” Taranto ordered.

  “He's had it, Lou.” Viper thumbed one of Carl’s swollen, purple eyelids open and let it fall. The only things holding Carl upright were the ropes that bound him to the straight wooden chair. “He's told you all he's gonna.”

  “He's told me nothing. But he will, damn lousy cop. Bring him around!”

  “I told you, he's had it. Damn near comatose. Be dead in a few hours.”

  “Stubborn little son of a bitch,” Lou muttered.

  Viper rolled his eyes. “You don't need Salducci to tell you what you already know. Nick's a cop, too. It's obvious. They came in right around the same time. They were both in on the shipment that was taken.”

  “Nicky took a bullet that night!”

  “And Carl patched him up. You know he's a Fed. You think he'd have patched up my leg? Yours? No way. He'd have smiled while we bled to death. What do you need? A signed confession? Manelli's a cop. I say we off him.”

  Lou came to his feet as fast as his ample weight would allow and gripped Viper by the lapels. “We gotta make sure, you little twit, because of the girl! If Nicky's a cop, then you can bet your skinny ass she ain't dead. She's still out there and she's got more on us than any cop does. We gotta find out for sure.”

  “She saw my face,” Viper ground out, jerking himself from Lou's hands. “And so did he. I'm on the line here, and I'll deal with it my way.”

  “Don't cross me, Viper, or I—”

  “Don't you worry, Lou. I'll handle it. You'll thank me before this is over.” Viper spun and left the room. Lou opened the door and bellowed after him, but he kept on walking. A moment later his car left the lot outside the Century.

  A bulky man with a crew cut loomed over Lou a moment later. “Cops are on the way, boss. Our insider says they got warrants to search the place. What do we do?”

  Lou looked at the limp, bruised man in the chair. “Cop or not, Nicky didn't know who that broad was until I told him, I'd bet my life on it.”

  The overgrown hulk in front of him puckered his brows. “Huh?”

  Lou turned, paced away from him, muttering to himself. “If he's a cop, he'll go to her apartment to see what she had on me. If he's loyal, he'll go because I told him to.” He stopped in front of Carl and lifted the lax head by a tuft of hair. “What do you suppose he'll think when he finds you there waitin' for him, huh Salducci?”

  “I don't get it, boss.”

  Lou yanked a small notepad from his shirt pocket and scribbled three letters onto the first sheet, then tore it off. “Here, pin this to his chest. Then take him to the Rio broad's apartment and dump him there.”

  “But how can I get him in there without somebody seein' him?”

  “How the hell do I know? Roll him in a rug for all I care, just do it! We'll soon find out just how loyal Nick Manelli is to the family.”

  Harry Anderson shook his head slowly and tried to see it again in his mind. The way that small woman stuck her chin in Nick's face and told him what was what—the way he let her! He'd finally met his match, the big jerk. It was about time.

  He drove Nick's car toward the gloomy mansion they'd set him up in. He'd retrieve the backup drives with the surveillance footage on them, just in case the del Rio girl couldn't produce what she said she could. They'd be better than nothing. At the very least, they could be used to identify Viper. Then he'd head back to headquarters and get a team together to back Nick up when he went to the woman's apartment. Taranto would be watching, if Harry's opinion was worth anything.

  He was within sight of those ridiculous iron gates, rounding a bend in the curving road, when he heard glass shatter and felt searing pain at his left temple. He clenched the wheel reflexively, jerking it to the right, and felt the front tires leave the pavement. Then he was airborne and heading down the steep drop alongside the road. He prayed the bullet that had hit him would kill him before he hit bottom.