Shades of Gray (7 page)

What’s to stop them from doing it again? Madrigal won’t fuck up twice. Then we’ll both be dead.”

“It wasn’t an inside job,” Miller said, his voice quiet.

“Then how’d Hinestroza find out?” Danny demanded. “I sure as hell didn’t volunteer the information.”

Miller stared into his coffee, wishing there were some way to avoid this conversation. When he’d gotten the call last night, he’d momentarily considered ordering someone else to deliver the news. But that would be chickenshit and besides, this was his job. And he always lived up to his responsibilities. “Have you talked to Amanda lately?” Danny stopped pacing. “Amanda? What does she have to do with it?”

“Have you?”

“Yeah, Miller, I’ve talked to her. Big fucking deal!” 46 | Brooke McKinley

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing!”

Miller didn’t speak, waiting for Danny to come clean.

Danny sighed, ran a hand through his bed-head hair. “I told her to be careful. I didn’t give her any details. Just told her to watch her back.

That something might be going down.” Danny froze. “Why? Why are you asking me about Amanda?” His panic-tinged eyes told Miller he already knew the answer.

“They got to her, Danny.” Miller paused, giving the words their due weight. “Before they went to your apartment, they went to hers.” Danny’s face, only newly restored to its usual color, drained of blood, going whiter than it had been in the emergency room. Miller could see him squaring his shoulders, steadying himself. “How bad?” Danny asked, his voice fierce. “How fucking bad?” Miller stood, took a step in Danny’s direction, not sure what he meant to offer: a hand, a shoulder, a pat on the back. “She’s alive. But they hurt her. Busted up her face, broke the fingers in her right hand, pulled out a couple of nails—”

A low, animal moan worked its way out of Danny’s throat, increasing in intensity as it burst free. His hands came up to cover his face as he took a lurching step backward. “Oh, my God,” he choked.

“She’s going to be okay, Danny. She’s someplace safe.”

“Oh, yeah? Safe like you said I was safe, Miller? Safe like that?” Danny kicked hard, sending his half-full coffee mug flying to shatter against the baseboard.

“Hey!” Miller cried as coffee splashed against the bottoms of his jeans. “Calm down!”

“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! They could have killed her or hurt her worse than they did. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. You don’t give a shit about her or me either. Why wasn’t someone watching her?”

“It was an oversight,” Miller explained with a calm he didn’t feel.

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“We didn’t think they’d go after Amanda. We didn’t think she knew anything.”

Danny’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying it’s my fault? Because I talked to her, told her to be careful, it’s my fault now?” He took a step toward Miller. “What about you, Mr. I’ve-got-it-covered? Maybe you fell down on the job, aren’t quite as slick as you’d like to think. Could that be it?”

“Technically all of this is your fault, isn’t it, Danny?” Miller shot back. “If you weren’t running drugs none of this would have happened.

Amanda would be fine instead of her face looking like a kid’s art project.” The thin string securing Miller’s patience disappeared into nothing; his ability to hit the jugular was not lost after all.

“Fuck you!” Danny cried, his face crumpling. He moved forward, arm cocked and aimed at Miller’s jaw. A quick spin of Danny’s body and Miller had him pinned, Danny’s back to his front, Miller’s arms wrapped around him tight.

“Stop it!” Miller commanded. “Stop, goddamn it!” Danny bucked and thrashed in his arms. Their strength was evenly matched and Miller couldn’t hold him for much longer. His face was pressed into Danny’s neck, the soft, dark hair tickling his skin. He could smell sweat and smoke and a faint whiff of long-ago soap. For the first time in his career it hit him how absurdly intimate it was to hold a suspect this way. Danny’s taut muscles flexed under his hands, his ass arched back as he tried to break free, and his stubble-strewn cheek rasped like a rough tongue against Miller’s own. Miller released Danny with a stumbling shove, pushing him away.

Jesus Christ. Jesus.
Miller ran a shaking hand over his face, breath coming in short gasps. Danny stood across from him, panting, his body visibly relaxing as the anger burned away.

“When did you find out about Amanda?” Danny asked, his voice raw, like tree branches snapping in a winter storm.

Miller stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Last night, late. A neighbor heard her screaming and called the cops. Madrigal was gone 48 | Brooke McKinley

by the time they got there. The cops called us from the hospital.”

“Where is she? I want to see her.”

Miller shook his head. “No. That’s not possible. It’s too dangerous. We’re protecting her, Danny.”

“I need to see her, Miller.”

“No,” Miller repeated. “But you can talk to her on the phone.

That’s the best I can do.”

“Right now,” Danny demanded. “I want to talk to her right now.” Miller pulled his cell phone from his back pocket, refusing to acknowledge the tremble in his fingers, and dialed. “Sutton here. He wants to speak with Amanda.” Miller passed the phone to Danny, careful that their hands didn’t touch.

“AMANDA? You there?” Danny smashed the phone against his ear, as though he could see Amanda if he only got close enough to her voice.

“Danny?” Amanda’s speech was thick, like she was talking around a mouthful of cotton or a system full of painkillers. Considering what had been done to her, both were reasonable possibilities. Danny squeezed his eyes shut. “Danny, is that you?”

“Yeah, hon. It’s me.”

Amanda took a gulping breath and began to weep, unable to form words that Danny could understand. He turned away from Miller, lowering himself to the arm of the couch. “You’re okay now,” he said.

“They’re not going to hurt you anymore.”

“I didn’t want to tell them anything, Danny,” Amanda sobbed.

“I—”

“I know you didn’t.”

“They came to the door and said they were worried about you, they thought maybe you were going against Hinestroza. I told them you wouldn’t do that. But they barged in anyway, asking me all these Shades of Gray | 49

questions about you… about how you’d been acting, about that night at the police station, who you’d been with, whether you’d said anything since then. I didn’t want to answer, Danny.” Amanda let out a wail. “I tried to lie, but they didn’t believe me. And then they started hurting me and I… and I—”

“Shhh
,
” Danny calmed her, his free hand clenching into a fist.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, honey,” he whispered.

“Are they going to come back?” Amanda asked in the smallest voice Danny had ever heard. It scared him. He wasn’t used to Amanda being anything less than the loudest one in the room, her sassy mouth taking up all available space.

“No one’s going to hurt you again. I promise. The FBI is going to take care of you.”

“What about you? Hinestroza isn’t going to give up. They’ll keep looking for you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I always land on my feet, right?” He forced out a strained laugh.

“It’s not funny, Danny.”

“I know it’s not.” He paused, keenly aware of Miller standing behind him. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will. They said I can’t see you right now.” Amanda sounded close to tears again, her voice vibrating.

“No. It’s too dangerous. But when this is all over, I’ll be there.

You hear me?”

“I hear you. Be safe, Danny.”

“You, too, honey.”

Danny closed the phone with a snap, tossing it over his shoulder to land with a muffled thump on the couch.

“How was she? Did she—” Miller began.

Danny held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk right now,” he said, enunciating each word carefully. He thought throwing another punch might be in his future if Miller underwent a sudden personality shift 50 | Brooke McKinley

and became chatty. But Miller took the not-so-subtle hint and retreated, the sound of running water following him from the kitchen.

Danny fell backward onto the sofa and covered his eyes with his arm. Amanda. With her face wrecked, her bones shattered, her painted fingernails ripped out. Danny could remember exactly how she’d looked on the night they’d met. When her smile was still carefree and her heart not yet broken. When she’d worn a white dress and a crimson flower in her hair and danced barefoot in the street. When they’d both been young and stupid and drunk and Danny had thought wanting men could be limited to the time he spent in a nine by twelve foot cell and Amanda would be the one to save him. But instead he’d destroyed her.

Made her a criminal, torn apart her hopes.
Don’t forget almost getting
her killed.

One more guilt-ridden entry on the laundry list of his sins.

“I’M BACK,” Miller called, shutting the door with his foot.

“Did you get the pizza?”

“Yes,” Miller sighed, “I got the pizza. Pepperoni and mushroom, just like you asked. And the beer you wanted. And the bourbon. And the Marlboros. And—”

“I don’t need the whole rundown, but thanks.” Danny grabbed the greasy pizza box. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the duffel bag slung over Miller’s shoulder.

“That’s your stuff.” Miller let the bag fall to the floor.

“What do you mean, my stuff?”

“From your apartment. Clothes, mainly.”

Danny set down the piece of pizza he’d been about to shove into his mouth. “Um… far be it from me to interfere with the workings of the great FBI, but isn’t that a little stupid? To go to my apartment and then come here? Couldn’t someone have followed you?” Miller moved around Danny to the refrigerator, arms burdened Shades of Gray | 51

with provisions. “Yes, Danny, that would have been stupid. That’s why I had someone go to your apartment right after I picked you up yesterday, when we knew Madrigal was long gone, and get your clothes. Then he took the bag back to my office, on the off chance he was followed, and I picked it up today.” He shut the refrigerator. “I’m good at my job, Danny. You don’t need to worry.”

“Let’s just hope you’re better than the guys who were supposed to be watching my apartment,” Danny commented dryly, snagging a beer from the six-pack in Miller’s hand. “Want some pizza?”

“Yeah, fine.” Miller was knocked off balance by Danny’s easy banter. He had expected Danny to remain morose and angry after the conversation with Amanda. But an hour later he had searched Miller out for conversation, still a little distant but close enough to normal that he was able to resume bitching about the lack of food. For all his tough demeanor, it was clear that Danny was a man who couldn’t hold a grudge for long—fury and petulance a costume he wore occasionally, but not a permanent ensemble.

It took them only ten minutes to devour the pizza before Danny moved on to a pint of ice cream, while Miller settled in with a beer.

There was nothing good on TV but he kept changing channels anyway, Danny telling him to stop every once in a while so he could make fun of an infomercial or smirk along with canned sitcom laughter.

The air in the apartment was foggy with cigarette smoke, Danny lighting up with a vengeance as he sprawled on the couch.

“Slow down with those,” Miller said. “You’re gonna run out by tomorrow.”

Danny shrugged. “FBI’s buying, right?”

Miller shook his head, annoyed, but didn’t protest when Danny passed him the pack so he could have a smoke of his own.

“What’s the plan now?” Danny asked. “For me?”

“You continue feeding me information. Once we’ve got everything sewed up tight, we indict Hinestroza. Then you testify against him.”

52 | Brooke McKinley

“There are two major problems with that scenario,” Danny said, holding up his fingers to illustrate. “One, Hinestroza hardly ever leaves Colombia anymore, so getting him to trial will be next to impossible.

And two, he’d blow the courthouse sky high before he’d let me take the witness stand.”

“That wouldn’t happen. He’s not God, Danny,” Miller observed.

Danny’s eyes were full of fear and memories, his voice harsh as he looked away. “That’s what you think.”

“Are you ready to tell me how you got hooked up with him?”

“Not really,” Danny said, attempting to blow a series of wobbly smoke rings toward the ceiling.

“Well, time’s up. I need to know.”

“I’ll bet you’re a fucking barrel of laughs on a Saturday night, Sutton.”

“I’m not here for fun. I’m here to nail Hinestroza.”

“Like I need reminding,” Danny muttered.

“Did you find him or did he find you?”

“Oh, I think it’s safe to say he found me.” Danny hesitated, eyes focused on something Miller couldn’t see. “I was eighteen, living in Dallas, working at this shitty car wash. The kind where you get out of your car and they run it through and then some down-on-their-luck kid dries it for you. That was me, the loser with the chamois rag.” Miller thought back to when he was eighteen, how close he could have been to Danny’s situation if his father hadn’t pushed him into college, practically forcing him to go, a grown man being dragged like a kindergartener. Without that push, he could easily have ended up like Danny, aimless and adrift with no hope for the future.
Jesus, Miller,
why don’t you get out the violin and play him a sonata? Danny made
his own fucking choices—all of them bad.

“One day this car pulled up and Hinestroza was inside. He offered me a job. And I got in the car. End of story.” But it wasn’t the end of the story and Miller knew it. Danny’s eyes were jumping faster than Shades of Gray | 53

feet on fire, his Adam’s apple bobbing crazily in his throat.

“I’m going to have to hear the rest of it, Danny, at some point.”

“Just… not tonight, okay?” Danny said. “It hasn’t been a great couple of days.”

“Okay,” Miller agreed. “But soon.” Not willing to give Danny too much leeway, he was careful to maintain the upper hand.

“Want another beer?” Danny asked, heading into the kitchen. He didn’t wait for Miller’s reply, came back with two bottles hanging between his fingers. He handed one over and took up his previous position, flopped on the couch, bare feet dangling over the arm.