Front Page Fatality (21 page)

I wished I could turn the clock back a week and do it all differently. I’d never cared less about a scoop.

Charlie was probably on her third sangria of the night, and I was locked in a car trunk. I failed to see where that meant I was winning anything.

I wanted desperately to be curled up on my mother’s sofa in Dallas, watching trashy TV and eating chocolate and laughing.

I hadn’t even called her back. What if I never saw her again? I’d been so scared of that when she was sick, that a can’t-breathe-can’t-eat-oh-my-God-I’m-going-to-vomit dread washed over me every time a monitor beeped or she shifted in her bed.

In a thousand tearful prayers, I’d begged and bargained, offering God anything and everything in trade if he would please just not take my mommy away. And he hadn’t.

And McClendon would not take me away from her. Not without a fight, anyway.

Squashing the terror, I shifted my knees toward the back of the trunk so I’d have a clear shot with the tire tool.

Footsteps on…gravel? I held my breath and listened. Maybe. That would explain the rough ride at the end. So I’d have to watch my footing in my characteristically impractical shoes. If I got a chance to get my feet under me at all.

I gulped a lungful of heavy air and choked up on my steel club, preparing to swing for whatever vulnerability I could see when the trunk lid popped.

The footsteps stopped. 

Would he take me out of the car first? My stomach knotted. Surely they didn’t want blood all over the trunk of the cruiser.

I heard the gravel crunch under his shoes as he turned.

Showtime.

I steeled myself.

The key scraped into the lock.

I said a very fast prayer.

The pop of the latch letting go was heart-stoppingly loud, and I gripped my weapon tighter to keep from dropping it.

Blinded by the security lamp on the back of a nearby building, I stuck the pole straight out of the trunk and swung skyward as hard as I could, praying I would hit something.

From the scream, I did better than I’d hoped.

I fluttered my eyelids, and when my pupils constricted significantly I saw McClendon, doubled over, groaning, and holding his crotch. Bullseye.

I reached behind my head and grabbed the edge of the trunk opening for leverage, flexing my ankles and thrusting both heels at McClendon’s face.

He screamed again. Blood spurted down his left cheek, but he moved too fast for me to guess its source.

Staggering backward, he groped for his sidearm. Shit. My stilettos were no match for a police special.

I shoved with my arms and twisted my hips, rolling out of the trunk and catching my balance blessedly quick, though pain shot through my skull when I came upright.

I blinked away the dizziness, matching the pounding in my head with the memory of the upbeat training music from body combat as I stepped forward. The moves were almost second nature, though the target was new.

Punch, punch. Two to McClendon’s midsection. He took another step back.

I bounced forward, then delivered a swift
ap-chagi
to his chest, stumbling only slightly because of my shoes.

He tumbled over backward, but managed to unholster his gun.

I looked down for just long enough to see that the blood came from his left eye, which was pinched shut. Aiming with his right, he fired as I dodged sideways. The bullet went wide. 

I spun and sprinted across the wide gravel parking lot, no idea where I was or where I was going.

I should’ve stayed at the office with Parker. At least if he’d turned out to be a psycho, my car was there.

I zigzagged in an attempt to avoid the half-blind shots McClendon was popping off, then rounded the corner of the closest building and found a narrow street. Possibly an alley. The sprawling, boxy buildings all looked to be warehouses.

I tried the nearest door, but of course it was locked. Why wouldn’t it be?

I started for the next one, afraid to look over my shoulder and also afraid not to, imagining McClendon as my very own lumbering slasher-movie villain: limping behind the running girl, yet somehow catching her anyway.

Except I wasn’t in a movie, and my stalker had a gun. He didn’t have to catch me. All he had to do was make it around the corner and get off one good shot.

As if on cue, his shadow stretched across the mouth of the alley.

“There’s nowhere to go, bitch,” he called.

I ducked behind a dumpster, peering into the dark. I couldn’t even tell if I’d run into a dead end.

McClendon shuffled closer.

I tried to squeeze between the dumpster and the wall and succeeded only in ripping my skirt and slicing my thigh open on a rough piece of metal. I bit blood out of my lip to keep from screaming.

The chirping that meant I had an eBay alert might as well have been a bugler playing
Revelry
, it was so loud in the stillness. I whacked my elbow on the side of the dumpster,  but managed to fumble my Blackberry out of my pocket and shut the alert off, resisting the urge to fling it into the nearest warehouse wall.

Of course it had a signal now. And look, I was winning the Manolos I’d bid on the night before with only a few minutes to go. Fantastic. I could be buried in them.

“Such a pretty sound,” McClendon called. “Where, oh where, has this little birdie gone?”

Another gunshot. This one sounded like it zinged off the dumpster. Double fuck.

“Come out, come out,” he cackled.

My breath coming fast and loud, I could still hear the shuffling inching closer.

I closed my eyes and prayed. I opened them to headlights flooding the far end of the alley, followed by tires squealing around a corner and the roar of an engine.

Way to be on top of your inbox, big guy.

Mouthing a thank you to the heavens, I stared at the Lincoln emblem racing toward me and straightened my spine, trying to flag down the driver without leaving my hiding place.

The passenger window lowered as the car slowed, and I jerked the door open and jumped in without waiting for an invitation. I figured the likelihood I was in one alley with two murderers was pretty low.

“Drive, please,” I crouched in the passenger floorboard, my voice raspy from ragged breath. “Now. And keep your head down. I’ll explain when you get me out of here, I swear.”

“My, my, Miss Clarke,” Joey clicked his tongue, giving McClendon a once-over and gunning the engine. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

16.

Heroes and villains

I heard one more shot as the sleek sedan leapt forward, the alley fading quickly behind us. Sinking into the cool leather seat, I stared at my mobster “friend,” the familiar sardonic smile on his face and his dark eyes on the road.

“It’s bad that I’m not even surprised to see you, isn’t it?” I asked. “This week has completely robbed me of my ability to be shocked.”

“Damn. And I wanted to save the day and sweep you off your feet.” He chuckled. “Fucking D.C. traffic. Apparently, everyone and their cousin leaves that town on Friday night.”

“I’m not easily swept. But you could take me by the ER if you want some brownie points,” I poked gingerly at my still-bleeding thigh, and his eyes widened when they strayed to the gash there.

“Ouch.” He held the wheel with one hand and pulled off his cornflower blue tie with the other, tossing it to me. “Tie that just above the cut. Pull it tight. You need stitches. I know my flesh wounds.”

Of course he did. So much for two murderers not being in the same alley. But at least this one didn’t want to kill me. I didn’t think, anyway.

I hiked up my skirt and cinched the length of blue silk—Brioni, no less—around my thigh. The bleeding slowed and I studied Joey as he drove us easily out of the maze of warehouses. His expression was the polar opposite of stressed.

“How did you know the day needed saving?” I asked when he turned onto a better-travelled road and I recognized the less-touristy, more-industrial area of Shockoe Bottom.

“I didn’t.” He chuckled. “Though I would like to have a go at that sometime. I was looking for you. Glad I found you when I did. But I gotta say, it looked like you handled that guy pretty well. And he was a big fella.” He glanced at me and arched an eyebrow. “There’s nothing sexier than a woman who can fend for herself.”

“I feel about as sexy as a saddle shoe right now,” I said, sucking a hissing breath between my teeth at the pain in my leg and fighting the urge to smile.

This was not good, Joey Soprano over there flirting with me. I didn’t need encouragement on that front. I needed to stop thinking he was hot. Remembering the headless accountant helped.

“And nice sidestep, but how exactly did you know where to find me?” I narrowed my eyes, looking for any tell that he might be lying and wishing I knew who to trust.

First I’d ditched Parker for a trigger happy cop who’d turned out to be a nutcase, and now I had escaped from him into a speeding car with the Mafia. If I was going to have to bail out, I needed to know it.

I believed his theory about the boat crash, mostly because everything I’d learned since Monday pointed in that direction, and his presence indicated that he knew something, maybe even more than he’d already said. And I still didn’t get the same run-now-and-run-fast vibe from him I had from McClendon.

“Again, I didn’t.” He cut his eyes toward me and shook his head, turning the car onto East Cary. “Not like you think, anyway. You weren’t home, so I went to your office. I ran into a big blond guy in the garage, and he told me you got a text about a huge story you’ve been killing yourself on and took off.

“I was going to go back to your house and wait for you, but I wanted to have a look at something down here first. It’s what I came to tell you about, actually. I heard gunfire and went to check it out. I sure as hell didn’t expect to find you in the middle of it.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Open the glove box,” he said, the smile returning.

“There’s not an accountant’s head in there, is there?”

He shot me a look from the corner of his eye as he weaved the car through traffic, the normal people around us stalking nonexistent street parking for the restaurants and nightclubs that lined this part of the slip.

Wishing I was out there with them, I kept my eyes on Joey’s face, daring him to deny it.

He just shook his head, then chuckled. “You are one very smart lady, Miss Clarke. I like that.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Though it would be more great if I didn’t have a rule against becoming involved with felons.”

“Even never-once-convicted ones with impeccable timing?” He winked, and I ignored the flip my stomach did in response.

“Even then.”

“Rules were made to be broken. It’s sort of a personal philosophy of mine.”

“Not this one.” The words sounded a lot more convincing than they felt, but that was good.

I had a whopper of a mystery it suddenly seemed my life depended on solving, and for all I really knew Sexy McDarkEyes here could be a decoy dispatched by the bad guys. I still wasn’t sure why he was helping me.

“There are no body parts in my car.” He chuckled, and I really hoped it was a sign of sarcasm. “Getting the smell out can be a real bitch, you know. But you might want to have a look at what’s in the yellow envelope in there.”

I pulled the latch on the glove compartment, which appeared to hold mostly the usual: a pair of Ray Bans and a black leather owner’s manual, plus a manila envelope. I plucked it from the pile and ripped it open with the flair of an Oscar presenter, then sighed when I saw the articles about Brandon Smith I’d found earlier in the evening.

“I know this already,” I said. “There aren’t many reporters who aren’t on a first-name basis with Google. I call her Gigi.”

Joey laughed and I glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes, hoping he had more than a handful of old news.

“Do you know what happened to this guy? It would seem that he should be around, since I’m fairly certain his kid brother was my first drug dealer victim.”

“It would seem.” Joey nodded, turning the car into the ER drive at St. Vincent’s. “I don’t know where Mr. Smith ended up, though. I was hoping you might. My friends in Miami tell me he disappeared suddenly several years back, but they weren’t sorry to see him go.”

He did have one thing I didn’t, and I studied  the grainy copy of a half-decade-old mug shot, unable to place the round, bearded face scowling back at me. The guy was vaguely familiar, but I saw a hell of a lot of people every week, and he might bear a resemblance to any dozen of them. Nothing jumped out, at any rate.

“He wasn’t working with your…friends…in Florida?”

“Not even close. They had about the same situation we have here.” The corners of Joey’s mouth turned up in a wry half-smile. “The cops were taking product off the streets and this guy was swiping it and selling it. It’s a bit frustrating, having someone else pocketing our money.”

So that’s why he was pissed.

“But you wouldn’t have made money on it if it had stayed in the evidence room and gotten burned up,” I said.

“Call it the principle of the thing.” Joey parked the car and turned to face me. “Losing to the cops every once in a while is expected. A cost of doing this business, you might say. But this is unsportsmanlike. Let’s put a stop to it.”

“Why does someone like you need my help to do that?” I asked. “I may be forgetting my manners, but I’ve just very nearly been turned into fish food over this. Why can’t you just find this guy and…” I threw up my hands, unable to think of phrasing that didn’t sound like I was enlisting a hitman. “And, well, do what you do?”

He stared for a second and I fidgeted, not wanting to think too hard about the fact that he’d probably killed people. Maybe many people.

Without a word, he got out of the car.

I opened my door and he stepped up to it, offering a hand. I latched onto his forearm, wincing when my leg—absent the stalked-by-a-killer adrenaline rush—protested the weight I put on it.

“What I do, contrary to popular characterization, is not run around ‘whacking’ people left, right, and center,” he said quietly, walking slowly next to me as I hobbled to the door. “Taking someone’s life is not an easy thing to do. It’s a mortal sin. Something that stays with a man long after he’s done the requisite ‘our fathers.’”

I stopped walking and looked at him, feeling a bit like a child who’d been reproached for an accidental slight. The whole Mafia thing notwithstanding, I did like him. And I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings.

“I’m, um, really sorry,” I stammered.

“For what? Figuring out something about me and thinking bad things?” He smiled, his lips tight and his eyes locked on mine. “No need for apologies, Miss Clarke. I am who I am, even if sometimes I wish I weren’t.”

His eyes said everything he wasn’t, and I looked away.

Not. Happening.

He cleared his throat.

“Just so you know, I didn’t have anything to do with that accountant. I know people who did, as you have already deduced. But that wasn’t my handiwork, if that’s what you were thinking.

“A lot too much, what they did to that guy. I’m trying to resolve this differently. Call it an ideology shift. A savvier organization that uses technology and information, and those who purvey that information,” he winked, “to work more around the edges of the law than outside it.”

When he put it that way it didn’t sound so bad. But not so bad was still bad enough.

I turned back to the door and resumed limping toward medical care.

“So, you really don’t know who Smith is?” I asked.

“You don’t, either? Logic dictates that he’s either a cop here, or he knows someone who is. At least, from what I’ve read this week. Nice work, by the way.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Honesty is not flattery.”

The doors slid open and the harsh fluorescent light revealed a left leg that looked worthy of a slasher movie. Blood had run clear down into my shoe, drying brownish-red on my skin. My favorite skirt was trashed.

Looking at the gash seemed to make it throb more, and I felt a little sick. The petite gray-haired desk attendant jumped to her feet and pushed a wheelchair over.

“Oh, honey, what happened to you?” She clucked like a mother hen and wheeled me through to the treatment rooms.

“It’s just a cut,” I said. “I think.”

I looked up to see that Joey had followed. Mother hen lady disappeared and a nurse swept in, tossed me a hospital gown, and smiled at him.

“Help her into the gown and onto the bed,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She shut the door behind her with a loud click and Joey grinned and stepped toward me.

“I’ve got it, thanks.” I held one hand up. “Could you excuse me for a sec?”

“I’m happy to help.”