All Jacked Up (29 page)

“I showed up. She was already dead.” And he had no idea why he was trying to explain it to this cop. Aubrey, that’s why. She’d infected him with language. He’d been trying to reason with her for more than a week and now he didn’t know how to shut it off. “Why all the questions about Doris? D.C. isn’t your jurisdiction.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something to charge you with in Florida. Car theft for starters, soon as the prints from the Ferrari are matched to yours.”

“My prints aren’t in the system.”

“They will be once I get somebody down here to print you.”

Jack fisted his hands, the cuffs around his wrists rattling the bed rail they’d been looped through. “Call Mike Kovaleski, FBI. He’ll vouch for me.”

“Great, you’re claiming to be a Fed. Not exactly a good thing in my book.”

“Jesus, I don’t have time for you to be territorial
and
stupid.” Jack tried to sit up, but it wasn’t only the handcuffs holding him back. His head spun, he slumped back against the pillow, half out of it. By the time he fought his way through some of the fog, a doctor was chasing the cop out of the room—a woman doctor, beautiful and voluptuous enough to qualify for a profession that didn’t take nearly as much training.

Her lab coat sported a gold name badge complete with caduceus, the lettering too small to focus on with a killer headache. Jack privately dubbed her Dr. Stripper, figuring he must not have come all the way back to full consciousness since he wasn’t having any kind of physical reaction to her. Or maybe it was Aubrey. Maybe language wasn’t the only part of her that had gotten to him.

“You have a concussion,” the doctor said, laying her cool hand on his forehead. “And a bit of a fever, I think.”

Not to mention a mission. He’d rescue Aubrey and then he’d figure out why it felt like his life would be over if he didn’t. And then he’d yell at her for shooting him in the head. “I have to get out of here. Someone’s life depends on it, and I’m not talking about mine.”

“You’re not going anywhere tonight. Mr. Doe,” she added pointedly, glancing at the door with its little square window, the side of a man’s head visible through it. The head sported a cop haircut.

“You were lucky,” she continued. “The bullet only grazed your temple, but you’re going to have a constant headache and probably some dizzy spells for at least the next twenty-four hours. Even if you could talk me into letting you out of here—which you can’t—there’s a policeman at the door. They took all your clothes, and just to make sure you stay put . . .” She took a needle from a nearby silver tray and inserted it into his IV.

“You’re putting me out? I have a concussion.”

“The concussion is mild and so is the sedative. And someone will be in to check on you once an hour, so there’s no danger.” Her tone softened. “You look like you’ve been through a war, and sleep is the best thing for healing.”

Jack didn’t answer her. He rolled onto his side, his eyelids fluttering shut.

Dr. Stripper wasn’t fooled. She laid two fingers on the pulse in his neck, then peeled one of his eyelids back and flashed a light into his eye.

“Nice try,” she said, her voice close enough to tell him she was still bent over the bed.

What was it with the women he was running into lately? Jack opened his eyes, said, “I’m sorry,” and before she could straighten away, he reared up and banged his head against hers. She crumpled to the floor.

It scrambled his brains more than they already were, and for a good thirty seconds he was afraid the head butt was going to do what her sedative hadn’t. It took precious time for his brain to stop bouncing against the inside of his skull, but he managed to stay awake, and keep his fist clamped around the kinked IV tube.

The idea of oblivion was tempting, but he tore the tube out of his arm, stripping the needle from the rest of the contraption and setting to work on the handcuffs.

Aubrey wasn’t the only one who could pick a lock. He hadn’t quite managed it yet, but he’d be willing to bet she wasn’t having nearly as much luck getting out of wherever Corona had her. Assuming she was still alive—

His hand fisted, and the needle broke off in the lock.

It took him precious moments to think beyond that possibility—and realize he was screwed. Picking the handcuff lock was a bust, the bedrails were designed to prevent a comatose whale from rolling out of bed, and even if he managed to break them he’d still be handcuffed. He did a visual search of the room but there was nothing of use. Except the cop at the door.

Jack could’ve waited for him to get curious about the doctor and come in to see where she was, or he could expedite things. “Hey,” he yelled, “Dr. Stripper fainted.”

It wasn’t the same cop who’d questioned him. This cop was a rookie, barely old enough to shave and too low in the pecking order to duck guard duty. Not to mention his inability to spot a trap. A more seasoned officer would have sized up the situation before he took any action. This kid bent to check on the doctor, oblivious to anything but her welfare.

Jack brought his heel down on the back of the rookie’s neck and sent him sprawling facefirst into the floor. He didn’t get up. Unfortunately, that left the key out of reach. So Jack flipped down the rail his hands were cuffed to, slid his lower body out of bed and pulled the bed over sideways, careful not to crush the law-abiding citizens.

Aubrey had her methods, he thought as he fished in the cop’s pocket, but there was nothing quite so effective—or stress-relieving—as a little well-placed violence. He found the key, opened the cuffs, and hit the door, still congratulating himself.

“I thought you might try something like this,” Officer Nosy said before Jack had taken one step out of the room.

“I knocked out a lady doctor and a rookie cop,” Jack said, “what makes you think I’d hesitate to take you out?”

“I have a gun.”

Jack produced the rookie’s police-issue .38 from behind his back. “So do I.”

He fired first. The cop’s shot came a split second later and went wild because he was on his way to the floor, shot through the right shoulder. Jack scooped up the second police issue and caught the nurse who came barreling through the door by the scruff of her neck.

“I need clothes.”

She took one look at his face and her eyes started to roll back in her head.

Jack wasn’t having any of that. He shook her until she decided that unconsciousness might have its advantages, but it would be a really bad idea to faint in the hands of a guy who’d just shot a cop.

“Take him to the closest ER,” a voice said from behind him.

Jack glanced over his shoulder and found Dr. Stripper staring back at him.

“When did you rejoin the land of the living?”

“Right about the time you dropped junior, here, on me.” She sat up and checked the rookie cop’s pulse, then rolled him off her lap. “Nice view, by the way.”

“Huh?”

“I have a new appreciation for hospital gowns.”

Jack felt the draft wafting across his bare ass. He could have cared less. “I’ve had other things to worry about.”

“I noticed.” She crawled the few feet to the other cop and checked his vitals as well. “You could have killed him,” she said.

“What makes you think I didn’t try?”

“Because you’re standing about twenty feet away, and you strike me as a man who knows how to use a gun. You deliberately shot him in the shoulder.”

He popped up one eyebrow.

“He’ll live, but he needs surgery.”

“And?”

“There are always extra scrubs in the OR prep room.”

Jack didn’t have a whole lot of options. There was no telling who else had heard the gunshot, and whether they’d called the police or assume the ones on hand would deal with the situation.

He handcuffed the nurse to the unconscious rookie, looping the chain of the cuffs around the bottom rail of his bed, then helped Dr. Stripper get the shot cop onto the second bed in the room. He tore the blanket off his bed and put it around his shoulders, mainly so he wouldn’t draw more attention than necessary on his trek through the halls.

Turned out it was a short trek, and uneventful since it was sometime between midnight and hospital rounds, just a skeleton staff on hand. The police officer he’d shot was being readied for surgery, and Jack was dressed in green hospital scrubs inside of five minutes. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked Dr. Stripper. “The cops aren’t going to be very happy with you.”

“They’re going to be a lot less happy if I waste time trying to stop you instead of taking care of their friend.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I hope your friend is all right.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It was drizzling when Jack got outside, and the humidity notched his headache up to something just short of excruciating. He was about as inconspicuous as a pimple on a stripper’s ass, even in the early morning darkness, and he had no clue where he was. He needed some normal clothes, and he needed a car. And a phone. He had some questions for Mike Kovaleski.

There was no doubt in his mind that Corona already had Aubrey, but with Mike’s help Jack could get to her before Corona got tired of waiting for her to come up with information she didn’t have.

Then again, knowing Aubrey she’d probably burn Corona’s house to the ground, or accidentally kill off all his men, or cause some kind of atmospheric disturbance that called up a hurricane. By accident, of course. It made him smile.

Aubrey woke up, took in her surroundings, and shut her eyes as realization dawned. Still it wasn’t all bad. Turned out Corona’s psychological warfare was no match for her exhaustion. And apparently she was bulletproof.

All Corona’s goons had orders not to shoot her, including the one at the dock, and the accidental discharge of his gun had missed everything except her T-shirt. She might have gotten away, if she hadn’t passed out when she saw the bullet hole. She told herself it was two nights without sleep, but in the honest part of her brain she acknowledged “fainted” might be a better way to put it than “passed out,” and there had possibly been some terror involved.

Her wakeup call had been a bucket of seawater in the face, and Corona’s anger had been more of a deterrent against another escape attempt than the three guys he had escort her to her “room.” Carlo hadn’t been one of the three. She didn’t know where Carlo was, and she didn’t want to know. Carlo might not be her favorite person, but finding out he’d been killed because he couldn’t do something simple like getting her to a locked room would only result in guilt for her. She already had enough guilt. And its name was Jack.

Tears began to leak out of her eyes. God she wanted Jack, and not because she’d almost died again. Now that she was alone, she realized her sense of invulnerability hadn’t come from naivete. It had come from having Jack around. She’d been a screwup the entire time, but somehow, between the two of them, they’d always managed to scrape through the dangerous moments.

Until she shot Jack in the head.

She really hated that, and she really hated that she didn’t know if he was alive or dead. And she
really
hated being helpless.

She’d been right about the basement. There were no windows, no air ducts big enough to crawl through, only the door, with no doorknob on the inside. There wasn’t even an electronic lock to short out so it would magically whisk open. There was a TV, but fat lot of good it did her. MacGyver would have figured out a way to turn it into transmitter that sent a message to the space shuttle, which the astronauts would have conveniently known to forward on to the Pentagon where the SEALs or Rangers would be called out to rescue her. She could barely work the remote.

She crawled out of bed and dropped to her knees in front of the door to study the place where the lock went into the jamb. She wasn’t going to become an electronics wizard in the next five minutes, but she was pretty good at demolition. Maybe if she broke the television and found something thin enough to slip between the door and the jamb—

The door whipped open, and she looked up.

“Lucky for you it’s me and not Carlo,” Danny said. “Finding you on your knees would give him the wrong sort of ideas.”

Which meant he was alive. She shouldn’t have been relieved, but she was. For all of two seconds. “What kind of ideas does it give you?”

“Hopefully you were praying, because only God can save you now.”

“You mean . . .”

“He’s asking for you.”

She must have turned pretty green, because Danny’s expression softened. “I’ll give you a couple minutes to get yourself together, and . . . I thought you might want to know . . .” He turned his head and looked out the door, and her heart sank into her stomach.

“What?”

Danny pried her hand off his arm, rubbing at the spots where her nails had dug in. “Mitchell’s not dead. The cops picked him up, so it will only be a matter of time before he’s taken out permanently, but you didn’t kill him.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes for a second, and took a deep breath, feeling like she could face anything now. “Thanks for telling me before . . . Thanks.”

He flushed. “Yeah, well, you’re a lot of trouble, but I guess I feel sorry for you.”

“Not sorry enough.”

“To let you go? That wouldn’t be sorry, it would be stupid.”

He stepped out of the doorway. Aubrey squared her shoulders and followed him out. They took a different route than she’d gone with Carlo. No doorways leading outside.

The trip ended in a small, sunny breakfast room, lined with windows overlooking the ocean, and a door that led to another small veranda. Between her and the door, however, was Pablo Corona, eating breakfast at a pickled oak table. A buffet against the wall held silver chafing dishes, steaming slightly. All very domestic-looking.

“Come in, Miss Sullivan,” Corona said when he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. “Have some breakfast.”

“I’m not really hungry.” But when he gestured toward a chair she didn’t feel daring enough to refuse him.

“Perhaps it’s best if you don’t eat anything this morning.”

“If it’s any help, I already feel like throwing up.”

He stared at her for a second, then threw his head back and laughed. It shocked the hell out of her for a couple of seconds, before she relaxed enough to join in. Just as he stopped.

“You can go,” he said to Danny. “And now, Miss Sullivan, you can tell me how you learned of my family.”

“Your family?”

“My family.”

“In Colombia?”

No reply.

“Everybody assumes you have a mother,” she said. “I mean, of course you have a mother. Everybody has a mother. In Colombia. And there was your brother . . . Probably you don’t want to talk about him.” She knew she was babbling but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Somewhere during the night she’d come to the conclusion that Corona wasn’t really crazy. And that was even scarier. It meant his decisions came from a place of cold, cold deliberation. And that he had no mercy in him.

“My brother betrayed me,” he said.

“I’m sure you only did what was necessary.”

“Of course, just as I will do what is necessary to learn what you know.”

“It’ll be a waste of your time.”

Aubrey froze, afraid to turn around and discover that her ears were playing tricks on her.

Corona wasn’t shocked. Corona was smug. “Mr. Mitchell,” he said, “so happy you decided to join us.”

Aubrey did turn then. Jack stood in the veranda doorway, looking like death warmed over. His face was almost as white as the bandage on his forehead, and leaning against the doorjamb seemed more of an attempt to stay upright than to appear relaxed.

Aubrey was so relieved to see him, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Fainting wasn’t out of the question, either, since her heart was pounding so hard she had become light-headed. “Where’s the explosion?” she asked. Her voice shook, but where Jack was concerned the best approach was always sarcasm. “Where’s the gun battle? Why aren’t you breaking me out of this place?”

“I’m unarmed,” he said, more for Corona’s benefit than hers. To prove it he turned in a circle. No bulges under his T-shirt, and he lifted each pantleg to show he wasn’t carrying an ankle piece. “Can I sit down and rest before I take on the small army that mans this place?” He didn’t wait for an answer, taking the chair across the table from Aubrey.

Corona gave Jack one of his polar looks.

“I spent the last week with Calamity Jane over there,” Jack said. “Unless you can shoot real daggers out of your eyes, you might as well save it.”

Corona continued to watch Jack over the top of steepled hands. The spider toying with the insects before he sucked the life out of them. “I’m intrigued,” he finally said. “I won’t ask how you got in. That would be an insult between men of our skills. But I will ask how you were able to locate my home.”

Jack bumped up one shoulder. “I LoJacked her.”

“What?” Aubrey came out of her seat, running her hands over her shirt, checking the pockets of her jeans.

“The backpack,” Jack said. “I was afraid you’d find a tracking device if I put it on you somewhere.”

“You weren’t afraid I’d find it, you thought it might get lost when—”

“Yeah,” he interrupted, his gaze cutting to Corona, then back to her.

She glared at him, but she knew he was right. Best not to give Corona more information about their relationship than necessary. She wasn’t about to let Jack off the hook entirely, though. “You could have told me you put a tracking device on me, Jack. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.” Not to mention tears and guilt.

“It would have saved us all a lot of trouble,” Corona added. “Carlo would not have another black mark on his record for Miss Sullivan’s attempted escape.”

“You sent Carlo to watch her?” Jack barked out a laugh. “She beat him up the last time he tried to kill me—not because he tried to kill me, but because he stole her underwear.”

Corona looked over at her, eyebrows raised, nodding once in acknowledgment. “Carlo has a weakness where women are concerned.”

“It had nothing to do with being a woman,” Aubrey said. She gave Jack a brief rundown of her escape from Carlo, leaving out the panic. Corona wasn’t too happy, but Jack seemed a little impressed. Looking back she was pretty impressed herself. “I was going to hot-wire a boat. I would have done it, too, only there was a goon at the end of the dock. I figured he had orders not to shoot me, but his gun went off when I barreled into him.” She pulled out her shirt and stuck her finger through the hole.

“I noticed,” Jack said, his gaze going as hard as Corona’s with one big difference. There was a heat rather than coldness behind Jack’s anger. A lot of heat.

“I must have hit my head because I got kind of woozy.”

“You passed out,” Corona reminded her. “Typical woman.”