Ace Is Wild (30 page)

She’d been open, looking for even the weakest hint of trouble. What came to her was so strong she stumbled a bit mentally, and when she did realize what she was feeling, her stomach took a long, greasy roll.

Daniel had made his way back to the baseball diamond, a good ways off. She waited until he glanced in her direction and then waved her arms. To anyone else in the park, it would look like he hadn’t even marked her presence. To Vivi, the look he sent spoke volumes. Stay put, he was saying, don’t give away your position. Great advice, if her position had been a secret.

She followed the direction of her mental red alert and saw Hatch, walking with purpose, coming in from the north end of the Common. Flip appeared almost simultaneously at the south end. He was walking with purpose, too. Vivi was pretty sure the purpose was her. The only mystery was what would happen if they accomplished their purpose. The possibilities made the sick feeling in her stomach spread. Thankfully, it hadn’t spread as far as her vocal cords or feet, and she put both to good use, racing from her hiding place and yelling for Daniel at the top of her lungs.

Daniel might not be too happy about her abandoning his game plan, and Cranston would probably stand there and cheer while she was gruesomely murdered, but they both wanted to get their hands on the hit men, so it was no surprise to see them come running. It was just her luck that they were too far away.

Daniel was pointing to Hatch and shouting something. Probably wanted her to try to get a read on him. But she was too busy freaking out to get anything. And there was no way she’d get within a foot of Hatch if she could help it. Hatch was scary.

And anyway, Daniel was on an intercept course for Hatch, so maybe she’d mistaken his reason for yelling and pointing. Cranston was just realizing the plan had been hijacked, and apparently he was a can’t-walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time kind of guy because his feet had stopped moving while he looked at the four other participants of the drama and struggled to make a decision about what he should do.

There wasn’t a whole lot of decision-making necessary for Vivi. She cut left and headed for Flip. Flip probably had a gun, but it wasn’t in plain view—and it was hard to be scared of a man wearing a flowered neck brace, even if he was armed.

Turned out it wasn’t the gun she needed to worry about. Flip had even scarier weapons.

“Sappresi’s psychic, right?” he said, coming to a halt about ten yards away. “That’s what the boss told us.”

Momentum took Vivi the rest of the way. Desperation had her reaching for Flip’s throat. She didn’t want to kill him, exactly, just shut him up. Fast. Choking someone with a neck brace, she discovered, was impossible.

“We just want you to come with us,” Flip said, backing off a couple steps, hands up, looking harmless and sincere.

But Vivi was in full-blown panic mode, not thinking, acting out of sheer terror that Daniel would hear her secret. She threw herself at Flip again, searching him for a gun. He fought her, but she had abnormal strength, Russian weight-lifter strength. The kind of strength that allowed an ordinary mother to lift up a car and save her trapped child. Flip was no match for it.

She found the gun at the small of his back, and she heard Hatch yelling his partner’s name and then a bunch of other stuff. She couldn’t make out what Hatch was saying, but she couldn’t take any risks. Flip had gotten to the gun while she’d been sidetracked, so she kicked him in the kneecap, wrenched the gun out of his hand, and pointed it at him.

“Oh, puh-leeze,” he said, hopping on one leg and holding his injured knee, “you’re not going to shoot me.”

“No?”

They did the Mexican standoff thing for a minute, then Vivi said, “Crap, you’re right,” because her hand was shaking, and there was no way she could trust herself to pull the trigger. She might hit Flip, but she might hit someone else altogether. “Aren’t you at least worried I’ll shoot you by accident?”

“There’s no reason for violence,” Flip said. “We just want to talk. We’re not going to hurt you, honest.”

No, but Daniel would if he found out about her connection to Sappresi, not to mention Tom Zukey. And he could hurt her worse than any physical pain Hatch and Flip could inflict.

“Why me instead of Daniel?” she asked Flip.

“Don’t know. We were told to bring in Sappresi’s psychic.” He glanced at the gun, then met her eyes again. He said he didn’t believe she’d shoot him, but there was enough doubt to have him opting for verbal persuasion over physical enforcement. “Like I said, we just want to talk to you. And maybe you’ll learn something useful if you come with us. Maybe you should ask Pierce what he thinks.”

Suddenly it wasn’t so hard to shoot the gun. In fact, Vivi heard a bang and realized she’d pulled the trigger. Thankfully, when she looked down the gun was pointed at the ground. But that shot had served its purpose.

Daniel stopped and immediately turned to her, Hatch took off running. Flip was standing there, mouth open, eyes wide, legs crossed.

Vivi considered throwing the gun at him, but that would be counterproductive to not becoming a kidnap victim, so she shoved it in the waistband of her pants. And then she couldn’t remember if the safety was on. Flip was limping in her direction, and she didn’t want to wrestle with him since the car-lifting strength was gone, and when they grappled for the gun she’d probably get shot in the backside. Getting shot in the butt would be a great distraction, but there was the pain and bleeding and potential hospital stay to worry about. Not to mention the definite possibility that Hatch or Flip would spill the beans while she was writhing on the ground in agony.

Something prompted her to reach into her pocket, and there were the stones she’d stuffed in there earlier. Quartz, turquoise, jade, carnelian, and a nice knobby chunk of amethyst. Just about all of them had protective powers. Vivi was more interested in their earthly purpose. She started winging the stones at Flip, and about the third one he zigged when he should have zagged.

“Ouch,” he said, clapping a hand to his eye and taking off.

A minute later Daniel raced by her, but Flip had a pretty good head start, and it was clear that Daniel’s leg wasn’t going to hold up much longer. Thankfully, for both of them, it didn’t have to. A newer Impala screeched to the curb. Hatch was behind the wheel. Flip jumped in and they took off.

Daniel turned around and began to limp back. Even from a good distance away Vivi could tell he was angry.

She met him halfway. Nothing to gain from putting off the inevitable. “Did you get the license plate?” she asked, making a useless attempt to side track him.

“No, and there are a million of those cars on the road. What the hell were you thinking? If you were going to shoot the damn gun,” Daniel said, keeping his voice down, “why didn’t you hit something?”

Vivi gestured to the small crowd of innocent bystanders that had gathered. “Like one of them?”

“Like Flip. He was a foot away from you.”

“He was also six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier. I was afraid he’d take the gun away and use it on me.”

“So you threw stones at him instead.”

She looked away. “It got rid of him, didn’t it?”

“That wasn’t the point of this.”

“No, the point of this was to capture him alive, remember?”

Daniel didn’t say anything. He was busy wrestling with his temper.

“Go ahead,” Vivi said, “spit it out.”

He stepped away, then whipped around and came toe-to-toe with her, keeping his comments between the two of them. “You had a gun in your hand. All you had to do was point it at Flip until I got here.”

“I was a little panicked,” she said, knowing she sounded convincing because it was true. She’d been a lot panicked that Daniel would get his hands on Flip, and Flip would spill his guts about her past involvement with Sappresi. “I’m sorry.”

“At least tell me you were able to get something from him.”

“All he said was that he wanted me to go with him. I was . . . surprised.” Again, not a lie, even if it worked in her favor. “I didn’t— There wasn’t time—” She did a palms up. “He’s a threat—to both of us—but I can’t tell you anything more that that.”

Daniel took a few seconds to absorb that. “He wasn’t supposed to come after you,” he finally said, sounding like he was on the downhill side of the anger roller coaster. “Did he give you any idea why he did?”

She shook her head. “It’s a complete mystery.”

“Great,” Daniel said, completely disgusted, “I was getting tired of the last one.”

Cranston finally showed up, huffing and puffing. “There wasn’t supposed to be any shooting,” he said between gasps for breath. “Now I’ll have to write a report.”

“Go ahead, write a report,” Daniel said, “make sure you answer all those pesky questions that are sure to arise, like why were you running an undercover operation your sergeant didn’t know anything about.”

Vivi had to give Cranston credit, he thought about it for at least half a minute and then he muttered, “I knew this was a mistake,” before he held out his hand.

She reached behind her, pulled out Flip’s gun, and gave it to him.

“I’m a police officer,” he said for the benefit of the gawkers. He looked the gun over and added, “It’s only a starter’s pistol folks. Nothing to see here.”

People began to wander off in ones and twos.

“You’re holding the gun with two fingers,” Daniel said to Cranston. “Still hoping for fingerprints?”

Vivi made an apologetic face. “They’re probably all mine, since I had to wrestle it away from Flip.”

Cranston sighed and stuck the gun in his pocket before he shuffled off.

“He’s not too happy with me,” Vivi said.

Daniel headed for Maxine. “Neither am I.”

Chapter 20

THE GAME PLAN AT BOSTON COMMON HAD BEEN
pretty simple. Go fishing. When one of the hit men bit, reel him in and have a serious conversation. Problem was, he’d used the wrong bait. So instead of answers, he’d come back with more questions. First and foremost: Why had the hit men gone after Vivi instead of him?

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said out of the blue.

“I thought you couldn’t read minds.”

“It doesn’t take a psychic to know what you’re thinking.”

“Too bad, I could use a psychic about now. Not to mention earlier today.”

“Why are you getting pissy with me?”

Daniel took it for a rhetorical question, but when he didn’t respond Vivi got to her feet and stepped into his path. “No, you know what, Ace, never mind. I’m done.” And she stalked across the room, grabbed her backpack, and started jamming her things into it. It didn’t take long.

“If you think I’m going to stop you, you’re mistaken,” Daniel told her.

“Emotional blackmail only works on someone who has emotions,” she shot back.

“I have emotions.”

“Stubborn isn’t an emotion, neither is stupid.”

“Those aren’t the ones I was referring to.”

“Oh, you mean the ones you ignore.”

Daniel gave her one of his lawyer looks. She rolled her eyes. The lawyer looks had lost all effectiveness on her. Apparently, a bad attitude was what it took now.

“You’ve been trying to get rid of me since the Oval Room,” she said, zipping her backpack and shouldering it before she turned to him. “You win.”

Daniel caught hold of her as she brushed past him, then looked at the hand around her wrist—his hand—as if it belonged to a stranger.

She was right, he’d been trying to make her go away since day one. He didn’t need her to get through this thing. She was just dead weight . . .

Vivi tore free and headed for the door.

Daniel got there first. “Where are you going to go?”

“Home.”

“Those guys were after you today,” he reminded her. “They know where you live.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“You’ll have to go out a window to prove it.”

She took a survey of the windows, contemplated the possibility of climbing out one of them and getting safely to the ground two stories below, and came to the conclusion she was stuck. “You’re just an ape in a suit,” she snapped at Daniel. “You can dress up the brawn, you can give it a corner office, but underneath the expensive suit and fancy law degree you still want to muscle your way through things.”