Ace Is Wild (29 page)

“Oh, I know who’s in charge.” And she walked away, leaving Daniel to wonder if he was the one in the dark. And deciding that he was.

If he had any sense he’d sneak out and handle the operation on his own. Then again, if he took off she’d only hunt him down again. Thank God she wasn’t working for the hit men . . .

Daniel turned around and pointed his finger at her. “You,” he said. “You’re the key. You could figure out what I was going to do long before we met. Why can’t you do the same with Hatch and Flip?”

“I was having premonitions about you,” Vivi reminded him. “It took me forever to figure out who you were and where the first murder attempt was going to take place. I don’t even know Hatch’s and Flip’s real names.”

“Then let’s find out.”

“Just like that?”

“You wanted me to have a game plan,” Daniel said, “this is it, take it or leave it.”

Vivi mulled that over for a minute. Her response wasn’t what he’d expected. “Does the game plan include letting me read the rest of your e-mail?”

The game plan didn’t have a lot of actual details yet, but Daniel was pretty sure laying open his private life wasn’t going to be on the list.

“Patrice wants to know why you haven’t been around to see her, right?”

Then again, private was a relative term where Vivi was concerned—relative, as in nonexistent. “She’s worried.”

“Of course she is.”

“She knows what’s going on, and she hasn’t heard from me in a while.”

“Two days is a while? Is that the legal definition?”

“You’re pissed off about the ‘take it or leave it’ crack.”

“I’m not even surprised by the ‘take it or leave it’ crack, and I hope Patrice is feeling better. Feel free to take Maxine.”

“I already told her I couldn’t go to see her until this thing is over.”

“You didn’t tell her about me, did you?”

“She already knew.”

Vivi went into silent thinking mode again. It was unnerving.

“What?” Daniel asked her.

“Nothing.” Vivi started to turn away, then spun back around. “It’s just . . . Did you ever wonder . . . Is it possible . . .”

“If you have something to say, just spit it out.”

She laughed a little. “I bet that’s something you thought you’d never say to me.”

“It was definitely on the list,” Daniel said. “And now that you remember how to finish a sentence, maybe you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Nothing. ” Vivi waved a hand and said, “Nothing,” again on the way across the room to rifle through her backpack.

Daniel was pretty sure there was “something” bothering her, but she wasn’t telling him until she was ready—and he had no doubt it would be at the most inopportune time. And probably when it was too late for him to do anything about it.

THE BEST WAY TO GET HATCH’S AND FLIP’S ATTENTION, Daniel decided, was to call the cops and report a sighting. He was told, politely but firmly, that there was no longer an APB out on Daniel Pierce.

His next call was to Officer Cranston. “How’d you like another crack at the two guys who invaded the Oval Room?” he asked Cranston.

Vivi pulled the phone away from his ear. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Daniel ignored her. “Meet me at Boston Common,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be over by the baseball diamonds off Charles Street.”

There was a pause, Cranston talking some sense into Daniel, Vivi hoped, then, “You can tell your sergeant about it if you want,” Daniel said, “but it may come to nothing.”

Daniel did some more listening, then disconnected. “Cranston is off duty in a half hour,” he told Vivi. “He’ll meet us there in plainclothes.”

“Even if Hatch and Flip show up,” Vivi said, following Daniel out of the apartment, “how are you going to get one of them alone?”

“We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“Wow, first no game plan and now play it by ear. What happened to the anal retentive part of your personality?”

“It doesn’t want to get killed either. Get in the truck.”

“But—”

“There’s no way of knowing when they might show up,” Daniel said, clearly running out of patience. “That makes it kind of hard to plan ahead. Unless you can tell me where and when to expect them.”

“I don’t have any connection to Hatch and Flip.”

“You have a connection to me,” Daniel said.

Which was exactly the trouble. Vivi had stopped getting any readings from Daniel days ago. It was nice not to see him dead every other night, but it was hell when it came to preventing her fears from turning into reality.

“You knew there was going to be an attempt at the Oval Room,” Daniel reminded her needlessly. “You knew there was going to be another attempt at Cohan’s, and then at my house. You knew Patrice was going to get hurt.”

“What’s your point?”

“You should be able to tell me where the next attempt will be.”

“Those attempts were preplanned,” she explained, thinking off the top of her head. “This one isn’t.”

“Or maybe they’re not coming.”

“That’s possible, too, but if you’re playing it by ear, then they don’t know when or where they’ll strike, and if they don’t know, how can I?”

Daniel’s brow furrowed.

“We don’t have to do this,” Vivi said. “Walking around with a target on your back isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“The target wasn’t my idea, capitalizing on it was.”

She heaved a sigh and gave up. He wasn’t going to change his mind, and she wasn’t going to let him stake himself out like live bait without being there to watch his back. “Get in the truck,” she said.

He did, and so did she, getting behind the steering wheel and turning the key. Maxine started right up, running rough as always.

“The Common is going to be crowded with people, even on a weekday,” she said, steering the truck away from the curb.

“It’s a big place. I think we can avoid the tourists.”

“We aren’t the ones the tourists need to worry about. It’s Flip and Hatch. Or are you forgetting the Oval Room and the crowd outside Cohan’s?”

Daniel gave her the I-haven’t-forgotten-anything-ever look, including the stuff she’d done to irritate him. “Hatch and Flip didn’t shoot at me in the crowd the other day. Something has changed.”

“You could have told me that earlier,” Vivi snapped. At the very least, it would have saved them an argument.

“I think they want to capture me instead of kill me outright,” was all Daniel said. “Whoever is behind this must want some interaction before I die.”

“What sort of interaction do you think they want with me?”

“As little as possible, if they’re smart. And we’re going to give them what they want.”

There didn’t seem to be anything left to discuss, so they made the rest of the drive to Boston Common in silence, both busy with their own thoughts.

“Leave Maxine in plain sight,” Daniel instructed when they got there. “Cranston is going to call in a sighting. The dispatcher will tell him to ignore me, but it’ll go out over the radio, and hopefully Hatch and Flip will hear it. I want them to know where to find me.”

Vivi found a parking space on Charles and maneuvered Maxine into it, then turned sideways in the driver’s seat. “Are you really going to let Officer Cranston arrest Hatch and Flip?”

“No.”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“I’ll figure it out when the time comes.”

She crossed her arms, raised a brow.

“If they get arrested they go into the system,” Daniel explained. “They’ll lawyer up, and I won’t be able to question them. Cranston can have them when I’m done.”

“When we’re done, you mean.”

“Fine, when we’re done. But this all starts with you staying out of the way.”

“Okay,” Vivi agreed with a shrug.

“You’re not going to argue?”

“You have Officer Cranston for the takedown. My part comes in later.”

Daniel didn’t look like he believed her, but he’d be singing a different tune when she told him who was behind the contract.

BOSTON COMMON WAS FIFTY ACRES OF GREEN SPACE that had once been pastureland but was now dotted with memorials, trees, and the homeless sacked out on park benches or staking out patches of grass surrounded by all their worldly goods. The Common had seen public hangings, British army encampments, eighteenth-century food riots, and twentieth-century protests for peace. None of it surprised Vivi. The place was cluttered with so much psychic noise she could barely think.

She’d tried to tell Daniel, but he’d gone into a zone, channeling the field agent that still lived inside him, macho attitude and all. The Common suited his purpose, and that was all that mattered to him. Vivi and Officer Cranston had their roles, as far as he was concerned, but it was his “op,” and he was running it his way.

Officer Cranston was the catalyst, Maxine was the tell, Daniel was the bait. Charles Street cut through the Common to the east of the Public Garden. Daniel chose to go in that way because Charles had on-street parking, and he could leave Maxine parked nearby like a big red X-marks-the-spot. And there were a lot of places to stash Vivi so she could stay safely out of the way, yet be handy when he decided she was useful.

Cranston’s Daniel Pierce sighting had already gone out, which meant Hatch and Flip should have heard it on the police band by now. They should be on their way to scope out the Common, and hopefully when they got there they’d see Maxine and go looking for Daniel, only instead of them finding him, Daniel would find them and capture one or both of them. And in case they didn’t immediately spill their guts, he’d expect Vivi to race in and produce some sort of psychic miracle to get him the information he needed.

And if any part of his foolproof plan went awry, Vivi figured Daniel would blame her. The jerk. He didn’t even believe in her abilities, but if she didn’t produce results, he’d get all cranky and moody and not talk to her for hours. That would be better than when he did decide to talk to her, because when he decided to talk to her he’d accuse her of being a fraud again.

And if she couldn’t shut out some of the ambient spiritual chatter, she’d prove him right.

She leaned back against the tree Daniel had threatened to tie her to if she didn’t stay put, closed her eyes, and tried to shut out everything. The cloudy, grumbling sky, the pickup softball game on the diamond not far away, Daniel watching it like he didn’t have a care in the world.

First she filtered out the background noise, like she’d done at the market. Normally she would have focused in on her target, but Daniel was a closed book to her. She lifted her eyes to the heavens and made a mental comment about the fairness of
that
. The heavens didn’t apologize. Apparently the heavens had decided that falling in love with a man was enough of a gift—the kind of thinking, Vivi decided, that meant God was definitely male. A female deity would have known Vivi needed every advantage she could get.

Since she wasn’t getting divine help, and Daniel wasn’t a useful resource, all she could do was “listen” to what was going on around her—again, just like at the market. Could be she’d get a whiff of nefarious intent, and if she could narrow it down she might be able to warn Daniel when Hatch and Flip arrived. It was a pretty big
if
. There were a lot of people in the Common, and no guarantee Hatch and Flip would be the only ones planning mayhem. But it was all she had.

They’d been there about a half hour, Vivi following instructions, staying under the cover of one of the trees planted along Charles Street where she wouldn’t be immediately visible. Daniel was wandering back and forth between the sidewalk not far in front of Vivi and the baseball diamond, where Officer Cranston had joined a pickup game. Cranston was in the outfield, which let him blend in while leaving him relatively free to keep an eye on the goings-on with Daniel. After watching him play for a few minutes, Vivi figured it was also in keeping with his skill set.

She didn’t appreciate being shoved to the sidelines, but she had to admit the setup was pretty good. It probably would have worked exactly as intended—if Daniel had been the target.