Chapter 10 #3
After climbing two rungs, Dane saw Shana’s gorgeous face and he grinned. She scowled her worried scowl. A few men helped pull the sniper over the wide safety rail onto the deck. Once Dane hauled himself over, he sought her out. He was not wasting another minute.
Without a thought of propriety, or history or moods or rules or good sense or any of those other things that might interfere with his raw need, he went to her where she stood near the stairs to the pilot house watching him.
He reached her and stood dripping wet within the circle of the heat and scent of her and didn’t know what to say. He knew what to do, but she stood so resolute and concerned and angry. And something else was in her eyes that stopped him.
“You called the Coast Guard.” He had no idea what else to say.
She nodded her head. He smiled. His entire body ratcheted up a notch in heat and pleasure in spite of the cold seawater soaking his clothes.
He circled his arms around her and pressed her body to his in a deep satisfying hug that made him quake with emotion like he’d come home from another galaxy to mother earth after a lifetime.
She let him hold her in spite of the salty wet state he was in.
The shouts of the seamen and the resurgence of the boat’s engines invaded their moment, but he could have ignored that. It was Acer’s large dripping presence at his side that made him draw back.
“Where’s Cap?” he asked.
“Back at the station waiting with the car running. I let him know we had ourselves an arrest the second I saw you’d taken Wally’s boat away from him.” Shana smiled and then reached out and gave Acer a quick solid hug.
Dane didn’t laugh, but he wanted to at the surprised look on the man’s face, closely followed by the complete melting of his big bad bear persona. Shana stepped back and stood ramrod straight again, still dressed in her slinky date dress. It was a provocative move. She drew a lot of eyes.
“You called the Coast Guard, didn’t you?” Acer said.
She nodded and said, “You two have a bet?”
Acer nodded.
“Dane won.” She sounded annoyed.
“Don’t worry—being predictable isn’t the worse sin in the world.” It was time for Dane to tease her before things got serious. She punched his shoulder and scowled. All was right with the world.
After he and Acer changed into dry clothes in the appropriately named Survivors’ Compartment—apparently the Coast Guard had spare clothes as a regular part of their onboard inventory—they decided to allow Wallace White, their newly arrested sniper suspect, to change out of his wet clothes as they stood guard.
When the boat docked, Dane saluted Captain Vendi and acknowledged, for the second time in two months, that he owed him. Dane and Acer took hold of their sniper, Wallace White, and escorted him off the ship and straight to Cap’s waiting police car.
Shana stood back. “It’s going to be a tight fit,” she said.
“We’ll be fine. You sit up front with Cap. It’s a short drive.”
Dane almost added that she was one of them, that he would never consider leaving her behind in that dress. Both were true, but he held back from reassuring her. He didn’t think she’d appreciate him showcasing her vulnerability in front of others.
She’d probably full-out punch him in the eye for it rather than be grateful. So he said no more and she was grateful enough. As she got in the car her scowl let up a fraction—on the right side where a dimple showed. He loved that look.
* * *
Back at the State Police station, before they all crowded into the interrogation room with Wally the sniper, Shana said, “Aren’t you going to ask me how my date went?”
The four of them stood in the hallway and Dane went still while his heart went crazy.
“Shit,” Cap said.
“What happened?” Dane moved closer to her, pushing Cap aside which was no easy task in the hall.
“I got some intel. We have some pictures—”
“Of what? Get to the point, Shana.” His hammering heart did not let up.
“Of Peck’s phone call history—and a recording of some of his voicemail messages—”
“You hacked his phone? Impressive,” Acer said.
Dane didn’t take his eyes off hers. Something wasn’t right.
“What happened?” he asked again, his voice lowering and his heart now speeding up to a seizure-inducing rate.
“I didn’t get all the voicemails because he stopped me—”
“Goddamn it—” He swung around and glared at Cap. “Where the hell were you? What happened?” This time he asked loud and he was no longer cool.
“It’s all right, Dane. I’m here and I’m in one piece—”
“What the hell did he do? Tell me.”
She backed up a step and that was unlike her. He took her by the shoulders and meant to calm her—or calm himself since his hands shook like he was a Parkinson’s patient. He took a deep breath.
“He took the phone—his phone. He… there was an altercation and he got my bag and my phone—”
“Jees—”
Cap cut him off. “I called her and there was no answer so I went to his door with my gun aimed and he had her, but with a little distraction she got loose—”
“He had her? You got her out of there.”
His blood boiled with indignation. Cap saved her while Dane was cooling his heels. But she was all right. He tore his attention from Cap and squeezed her arms, the shaking gone from his hands.
“Goddamn it.” The grumble of his words made her smile.
He wrangled his cool back into place. There was no way he could afford to lose it again.
Ever. That’s what happened when the cardinal rule was broken.
He needed to un-break that rule. Dane stood there soaking in her scent and her gorgeousness and her warmth and knew the impossibility of un-breaking the rule.
Then he steeled himself and removed his hands from her.
“It’s just as well it was you,” he said to Cap. “I’d have shot the son of a—”
“I handled it myself. Cap gave me a lift is all,” Shana said.
She stared them down and closed the book on it.
Dane’s heart needed a break from thinking about what might have happened while he was somewhere else because he’d allowed her to go over there with that scum-of-the-earth-shit FBI fraud on her own.
“We need to cut Special Agent Glen Peck off at the knees,” Dane said.
He’d have suggested they cut off a more colorful body part, but hesitated.
Unlike him to be sensitive about Shana, but he knew she felt vulnerable so he tried mightily not to overreact any more than he already had.
Or at least not to appear to overreact. He was reacting exactly the right amount—on the inside.
“As soon as we finish interrogating Wallace we’ll have a look at those pictures of the phone and listen to the recordings,” Cap said. “This could be what the governor needs to go after Special Agent Peck officially.”
“I’d rather keep it unofficial,” Dane said.
In truth, he wouldn’t stop them from going by the book.
His rage at the man’s corruption and assault on Shana warred with his well-honed survival instincts.
He knew he’d get into deep trouble if he murdered the guy, or even maimed him.
Even if he suspected it was Peck who had the hacker killed.
Peck probably justified that to himself figuring the guy was no good and had it coming.
But Acer and Shana were another matter. They would need to sort things out to figure who was behind the attempt on Acer and the hacker’s murder. Now that they had Wally, that should get them some puzzle pieces.
“What are you, fourteen years old?” Shana scowled at him. He smiled back. He loved that scowl.
“It’s what you do to me,” he said. He enjoyed watching her scowl deepen in spite of the confusion in her eyes.
He sighed and hauled her into his side where her shoulder rested comfortably under his and he could breathe in the scent of her hair and feel its softness against his cheek. He needed to let her go. But not today.
* * *
The four of them sat on one side of a four-foot table meant for two. Wallace White was shackled to the lone chair on the other side. Dane wasn’t sure how effective this crowded interrogation would be, but for the moment, they all deserved to be there.
And he was in charge.
He also knew his moments of control would be numbered, so he dived right in.
“Who hired you to shoot at Acer?”
“I don’t know. I want a lawyer.”
“No. Spill it or I’ll let the lady beat you up.” He didn’t meant it as a joke, but they all looked at him like he was insane and Cap started to protest—probably something about the law and legal rights—so he stood and cut them off.
“Shana—he’s all yours. Let’s go.” He stared down the others.
Wally White was taken aback and unsure what to make of this. He wasn’t a fighter, it was clear. He was a shooter.
“Wait—what the hell is going on? Is this some kind of joke?”
“I ain’t jokin’.” Dane gave him an intense wild-eyed stare, his voice sharp and his teeth bared. Wally White shrunk back.
“Look, I don’t have anything personal—I didn’t kill no one.”
Shana, who had been quiet, almost demure in her demeanor, stood abruptly then leaned forward and shouted in his face. “You lie. You killed Harold Small—the hacker.”
Wally almost knocked his chair over backwards and looked like he was a kid who’d just seen the evil schoolmistress from hell.
“I didn’t kill Acer. I missed. I missed on purpose—that was the assignment.”
Dane stared at him. There was a grain of truth there.
He spoke quietly and reasonably then. “When did the assignment change?”
“Yesterday,” the man said without hesitation. His face blanched. They all sat back down again.
They found out that Fiona Whitaker was the one who paid him to get Acer and that’s all he knew. He was to get paid twenty-five thousand dollars and he got five thousand dollars up front for expenses.
“It was transferred into my account.” He licked his lip and looked at Acer.
“The thing is, man, I wouldn’t have taken the job—I wasn’t that desperate—but,” he paused and took on a pleading look, “I was paid to miss. You gotta know if I was paid to hit you, I would have hit you. I took high risk shots on purpose.”
“You could have easily killed someone with your shot through my kitchen window,” Dane said. He was on the fence about whether he believed him. He had to put it through his mental does-it-make-sense calculator.
The man blanched again and refused to meet Dane’s eyes. He looked at Shana—of all people in this room he picked the one least likely to have sympathy.
“I—I meant to shoot to scare. There was no one in the window when I prepped the shot—or it didn’t look like it. It was dark, but I didn’t care because I wasn’t trying to hit anyone—just scare you off.”
“I thought you said the job changed—”
“It did—my orders changed so I had to make it look good. It wasn’t coming from Fiona Whitaker anymore.”
“And what about the hacker?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about him. News to me. Never heard of him.”
Dane realized this could be true. They hadn’t seen ballistic reports. They were only assuming it was his because of the odds—because it was the same type of ammunition for an Army-issue rifle like Wally’s that it was likely the same shooter. After all, what were the chances?
Acer looked at him. The same thoughts likely churned through his head. Shana spoke.
“Who gave you the new orders?”
“I don’t have any idea—it was a text from a different phone, talked about the job and letting me know they had deposited another fifty grand into my account. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”
Dane looked at Cap and they both looked at Shana. She nodded.
“I’ll call David and ask him to run down the bank account information to find the source of the funds.” Wally rattled off his account number and she left the room.
Cap said, “I’ll see if I can get hold of the original ballistics report—don’t know why we haven’t got it yet—”
“Because the feds—or a particular federal agent—held it up and funneled the information away from you,” Dane said.
He felt his cool slipping again. This was a banner day.
He’d lose the Mr. Cool status he’d earned over years before the day was over if he didn’t check himself.
He could use a damn shot of ocean air—even with his hair still damp with seawater.
Dane eyed Wally and took a chance. “You’ve heard of Glen Peck.”
Wally shrugged and shook his head, but darted his eyes to the side. He knew Special Agent Peck.
“Fiona Whitaker mentioned him.” Dane watched White squirm, not obviously, but enough for him to notice. A tense of his shoulders, a slight bow and turn of his head.
“Told you I never heard of him. Who is he?”
“He’s the guy you’re working for.”
“You saying he put up the fifty large?” Wally’s face was hard and alert now.
“The question is, what are you saying, Wally? I’m not the one being interrogated here.
I’m not the one facing jail time for murder and attempted murder for hire.
There’s a special place reserved for people like you.
Especially since Mr. Acer here—the one you attempted to murder—is rather well connected—”
“I never tried to murder him. I told you—”
“You’re forgetting our little boat chase. But I assure you, I will not let anyone forget that you took a shot and aimed to hit at least one of us.”
“That was self-defense.” He looked belligerent, but there was no juice in his words. Dane would bet he realized the futility of that argument and might be realizing how much trouble he was really in. Wally wasn’t used to being on the defensive side of a gunfight—or any fight.
Shana came back into the room with a soft click of the door behind her. Dane knew this without turning around. He felt everything in him light up and almost cursed himself out loud. Mr. Cool might be gone forever.
“David checked Mr. White’s account and found where the deposit for fifty thousand came from.”
She sat back down and didn’t look happy. He leaned toward her as if gravity made him do it and said, “It came from the joint account of Mr. and Mrs. Whitaker.”
“If you knew the answer why did you bother to make me do the footwork?” She almost pouted with the less than enlightening news.
He wanted to kiss her lips when they looked like that.
He dragged his damn eyes away and stood.
He didn’t bother asking if they could track the money from Wally’s account.
He was fairly certain it would show a recent cash deposit.
“I’m taking a break. See what you two can do with this guy.” He left Shana with Acer and Wally.