The Deeper Game (Taken Hostage by Hunky Bank Robbers Book 3) (12 page)

Zeus let go, and Odin took the chair next to him. “What about the package?” Odin asked. “We know it’s you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ingvey turned and addressed me. “Do I know you?”

“You don’t talk to her, you talk to us,” Zeus said.

“Look at me,” Odin said. Apparently they had a kind of good cop, bad cop thing going, or more a scary cop, less-scary cop thing. Odin rattled off questions. Ingvey answered as Zeus stormed off and started tearing through the house, opening drawers and dumping garbage. Either Ingvey was innocent, or he was doing a very good impersonation of a man completely bewildered by the situation.

And then the detail of his fingerprints on the shoebox came up. They were on the baggie, too.

“Well shit, I work at Giorgio’s,” Ingvey said. “The shoe store.”

“You work at a shoe store?”

“I touch shoeboxes all day.”

“How do you explain their presence on the plastic bag?”

“I don’t know. I work in a store. I touch things all day.”

Odin narrowed his eyes. Then he stormed out to the truck and came back in with the shoebox. “This from your store?”

“We have those. Or, had them. Last year’s model.”

“You know this to be from your store?” Odin barked.

“May I?” Ingvey held out his hands. Odin let him take the shoebox and Ingvey lifted the lid. “You mind if I rip it?”

Zeus had returned. He and Odin exchanged glances.

“Go for it,” Zeus said.

Ingvey pulled apart a corner of the lid. “Yup, it’s ours.”

“There’s a tracker in there?” Odin asked.

“Anti-theft device. Other stores use this kind, but the way it’s inserted, this one’s probably ours.”

“Can you tell us who bought this model?” Zeus asked.

As it turned out, he could—if the person had used a credit card. It would be a long list, he warned, and he’d have to get into work and get it off the computer. His shift didn’t start until ten.

“We’ll be in there at ten after ten, Odin promised, pulling a few bills out of his pocket and slapping them down on Ingvey’s kitchen table. “That’s for rousting you. There’ll be more for the list. Okay? We cool?”

Ingvey regarded him grimly.

“And if you have cops waiting for us, we’ll know,” growled Zeus.

“And you will feel the wrath of us beat down upon you like a thousand blazing fists, and we will crush you and this house,” Odin added.

We used the interim to grab dry clothes from a nearby department store and clean up. Thor called Matteo, who reluctantly agreed to sit on the bank for our shift even though he’d said he wouldn’t.

We were parked across the street and down a ways from the shoe store by 9:30. My guys thought it was unlikely Ingvey would have cops waiting for us, but they wanted to check. I certainly thought it was unlikely after Zeus’s manhandling and Odin’s thousand-blazing-fists threats, one of his more colorful ones of late. Odin and Zeus were sure it wasn’t Ingvey at this point. Zeus had a theory that the culprit had given Ingvey the plastic bag to touch during some transaction.

Odin peered through binoculars. Fifteen minutes later, Ingvey met an older woman at the shoe store door. “He looks nervous. Don’t see cops. They’re going in.”

At ten after ten, Odin went in. Five minutes later he came back out and crossed the street with a shopping bag. He swung into the passenger seat. “Got it.”

Zeus peeled out.

Odin handed the bag back. “A gift for you,” he said.

A shoebox was inside. “Thanks,” I said.

“You got a name?” Thor asked.

“More like a hundred,” Odin grumbled. “That’s as far as he could narrow it. The box he used was from a
fucking-g
popular brand.”

“Can I open it?” I asked.

“Please,” Odin said.

I pulled off the lid of the shoebox. Inside a nest of white tissue paper lay bejeweled, pink high heels. “These are like candy,” I said. “In a good way.”

“We’ll always take care of you,” Odin said.

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“And now maybe you’ll stop disrespecting the tattoo with unkempt feet,” Odin said.

I snorted.

“Her feet are awesome,” Zeus said, merging onto the highway. He was unhappy with the length of the list. The stalker definitely upset my guys more than he upset me.

Odin split the list with Thor, and they began to vet the names on their smartphones, knocking out the females, the out-of-state buyers, and buyers under the age of eighteen and over the age of sixty. Thor gave Odin his list and Odin narrowed down the people more from their Facebook pages.

“Seriously?” I said. “You’re ruling out people by their Facebook pages?”

“Best OSINT ever,” Odin said, thumbs flying over his keypad. Open source intelligence, he meant. They’d used the term before. I couldn’t remember what the NT was.

By the time we were ten minutes from home, Odin had the list narrowed down to five. And at the top was one T. Hansen, a.k.a. Travis Hansen. Or in Thor’s words, Sleazy Travis Hansen.

Apparently everybody in their set knew Sleazy Travis, though the man hadn’t shown his face lately because there was a warrant out for his arrest. He’d been locked up twice for sexual assault, and he had jumped bail on rape charges. He was known for stalking his victims, including leaving strange gifts.

“Travis dies,” Zeus grumbled.

“If we can find him,” Thor said. “He might not even be in town.”

He and Zeus discussed the way they’d work the grapevine. The problem, apparently, wasn’t whether they’d learn where he was holed up, it was whether they could learn where he was holed up without his knowing they were after him.

“Because then he’ll really disappear,” Odin said. “Hiding from the cops is a lot easier than hiding from us.”

I didn’t doubt it.

Zeus pulled off at a gas station and Thor took over driving on the next leg. I sat on the passenger side while Odin and Zeus worked the phones in the back seat, conferring and beating the bushes for Travis, going hard at some people, soft at others.

We grabbed gourmet breakfast sandwiches at a place near downtown, then made stops at two bars and one apartment building—both times Thor and I had to wait in the SUV. Both times Odin and Zeus came out looking a little more mussed than when they went in.

After the last stop, we had an address. Travis was staying in the shed behind his mother’s house.

“The cops couldn’t find him?” Odin spat out. “At the mother’s house? It’s Sex Offender 101. The mother’s house.” He seemed almost annoyed.

“Matter of time now,” Zeus said to me, low and hard. “We protect our own, goddess.”

Shivers ran over me.

We parked on the far end of the street. Zeus and Odin slipped out and melted into the neighborhood. Thor and I were to keep watch at the front with the motor running, just in case.

Thor checked his email again.

“Any news?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “The midwives still hope they can turn the baby.”

“She’s lucky to have you,” I said.

“I should be down there,” he said.

“You can’t just sit there. You said yourself it could be a weeks before she goes into labor.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“You’re just two hours away,” I pointed out. A little more, actually, especially if it was rush hour. “And there are midwives. Don’t they know what they’re doing?”

“They’re the best, but neither of them has delivered a breach as risky as this one. Well, one of them has, but it went badly,” he said. “Which is actually worse than no experience.”

Just then a car came up the street behind us. The driver, a lone man, matched Travis’s description—somewhat.

Thor slid down in his seat, watching through the side mirror. “Too old,” he said as he passed.

Zeus called just then. Thor put it on speaker. Travis wasn’t there, but they’d found evidence in the shed. Definitely him.

“Damn.” Thor clicked off. “How are you doing? You don’t seem freaked out.”

“I was at first, but I know this will be okay. I wish he was there, but hey, of all the people who have threats against them in the world, I think I’m the safest.”

“I’d say you’re safer than the president.” He gazed out at the street, scanning a new car coming down the way. A woman. “It’s hard to believe that anybody would decide to go after you. It’s like poking a hornet’s nest, but then again, people do stupid things. And sometimes people have a death wish.”

Ten minutes later, Zeus and Odin were bounding back through the neighborhood carrying large, clear baggies. One contained white butcher paper, the other contained what looked like gloves. Thor and I got out and schlepped into the back seat.

Zeus flung open the driver’s side door. “Not there. But it’s him.”

“
Looks
like him,” Odin corrected, getting in the passenger side. “Still circumstantial.”

“We’ll know when we see him face-to-face.” Zeus shut the door quietly. “That shed is completely wired up with cameras. Almost as secure as our hideout, and he dug a lower level. The place is so empty and clean, you almost couldn’t tell somebody was living there.”

“Clean?” Thor asked.

“The man is a neat freak of the highest order,” Odin said. “Pathologically neat. The mother’s house is even worse. She has plastic over all the furniture,” Odin said.

“Even the kitchen table,” Zeus said. “The lamps. Disposable plates and utensils. Who lives like that?”

“The mentally ill, typically,” Odin said. “Maybe she tried to keep plastic on the son in a metaphorical sense—keep him pristine. Sexual predators like Travis often have issues around mothers and bodily functions.”

“Well, that’s hot,” I said as a white car passed.

“I wonder who wired it for him,” Odin continued, snapping on his seatbelt. “Manning? Not a lot of guys will wire up a shed like crazy and keep their mouth shut. We found all that butcher paper in their dumpster. If we laid it out next to the butcher paper from the package with the feather, pieces would line up. I bet you anything.”

Just then, Zeus peeled out.

“Hey—”

“I think that was him.” Zeus took a corner and the white car ahead squealed around another. “Gotcha.”

“Take it easy,” Thor cautioned as the driver of the white car started getting more erratic.

“Travis knew, goddammit,” Zeus said. “Somebody tipped him. He should’ve been in there.”

We sped after him onto a crowded surface street; Travis wove in and out through a pack of cars.

“Slow down,” Thor said. “He’s gonna kill someone.”

Travis went through a stoplight, nearly causing a crash. That’s when the sirens started.

“Damn!” Odin said. “Hang back.”

We slowed, moving in behind a cop car. Two more cop cars came in from the side to join the first. Zeus slowed to the speed limit. The chase got farther ahead, and soon the cherry-red lights disappeared. Odin fired up his police scanner app. “They’re taking Bentham Road,” he said. “Go west on 28th.”

Zeus did a U-turn and took 28th, going on to follow Odin’s ever-changing directions. We turned left and right and left.

A helicopter sounded overhead.

“Do you think they know who they have?” I asked.

“Could be,” Zeus said.

“Hold on,” Odin said as the voices through the radio got frenetic. “Shit. He crashed.”

“Bad?” Thor asked.

Odin shook his head. “Unknown. Zeus, turn up here. Here—this light.” He directed us to the crash site.

It took a while to get there because the crash had slowed traffic in both directions. Red lights lit up the palm trees and houses. By the time we neared, they were loading Travis into an ambulance and we saw only a flash of him, all bloody and twisted. They were waving people past.

“Did you see him, Thor?” Zeus asked. “What do you think?”

“Doesn’t look good,” Thor said. “From the look of his car, he’s lucky he’s not dead.”

“He preferred to risk death and arrest,” Odin said.

I finished his sentence in my mind:
He preferred to risk death and arrest over dealing with the God Pack.

We arrived home exhausted and dirty. Matteo reported in: things had gone as usual. It was nearly closing time.

Thor called the hospital and finagled an update on Travis. Critical but stable.

I was surprised to see Odin and Zeus, both wearing latex gloves, smoothing out the crumpled butcher paper from Travis’s garbage. They had the paper from the feather package already laid out to compare to this new evidence.

Zeus looked up and caught my eye. “Just to be sure,” he said. “You know how thorough we like to be.”

I smiled. Such professionals. It was a little bit sad, to think of all the things they could’ve been. The work they’d done back in the agency had probably saved countless lives.

“What’s that look?” Zeus barked.

“No look,” I said.

“Go meet us in the hot tub,” Odin said, not looking up.

I headed for my room instead and took a shower. When I got out to our back porch, my guys were already in the tub, which made a peanut-shaped hole in our wood-slat deck. You could see the setting sun glinting through the trees all around us.

“What took you so long?” Thor asked, sliding all the way down. The tips of his longish blond hair grazed the water.

I undid the belt to my fluffy robe, swishing my toe in the warm water. “Girls take longer with everything.” I shed the robe and stepped into the delicious and bubbly warmth.

Zeus snorted.

“But it’s always worth the wait,” I added as I sunk down next to Thor.
Heaven.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Thor said, sliding an arm over my shoulders. “No blood on our hands. We didn’t have to carry out vigilante justice. Travis is on his third strike, so he’ll stay inside.”

“I want to visit him,” Zeus announced.

“Are you afraid he’ll tell the authorities about us?” I asked.

Zeus sniffed, like that was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. “Sleazy Travis would never snitch on us. We could get to him so fast.”

“What is it, then?” Thor asked.

Zeus paused, as though his thoughts were baffling even him. “Just to make sure it’s really him in that hospital bed. And I want to ask him to his face about the package he left. I want you to come too, Odin.”