Chapter 13 #3
“This calls for a round,” Acer said. He turned and walked toward the wall where a couple of bags sat, ready to be stowed in the copter. He rummaged.
Acer returned to the circle with a bottle. Shana smiled. Her fondness for Acer went up another notch if possible.
“You’re our pilot. You’re not drinking any of that, are you?” she said.
“Hell no, but someone ought to.”
“Where the hell did the tequila come from? I thought you were joking about a round,” O’Keefe said.
“You don’t know Acer,” Dane said, talking over her head.
“I’m always prepared,” Acer said.
“Like some goddamn warped boy scout,” Dane said.
Dane led her and the others to sit on a wood pallet near where the two bags of supplies were dumped in a heap. David passed her the bottle. No glasses. Even Acer had limits to his preparedness.
“What now?” she asked as she took the bottle and tipped it to her lips.
Dane didn’t answer right away. He watched her—stared at her lips.
The flash of heat she felt could have been from the tequila, but it was more likely caused by that look in Dane’s eyes—the one he always got when he stared at her mouth.
It was one of the few unguarded looks he allowed.
And then she realized, wistfully, it was too rare.
She swallowed the fiery liquid and shoved the bottle back at Dane. He took it and held it without passing it around again.
*****
“We get out of this hellhole jungle. Finally.” Dane felt the tension that wouldn’t leave—not even with the help of tequila—until they were out of Brazil. “And we figure out how we can nail Floyd Parker”
“You still think he’s responsible,” O’Keefe said, “after he saved you and then called you to help Oscar—”
“He set us up,” Dane said. He knew there was an edge to his voice. He let it ride.
O’Keefe had a few sips of tequila, but he still looked sullen.
Dane stood and stretched, his tension tightening. They all stood.
David turned to O’Keefe and said, “Why do you still trust Floyd?”
“I have doubts about him.” O’Keefe had the bottle and pointed it in Dane’s direction. “We killed too many people and committed grand theft auto.” He glared at Dane like it was his fault.
Shana moved close to him, pinning herself to his side and said, “Dane got Oscar out of trouble and he saved your ass too—you should be ashamed of yourself for your ungrateful attitude.” Her chin was up and she was in full defense mode.
Acer fixed Chief O’Keefe in his sights and spoke up.
“Why do you have it in for Dane?”
To his credit, the police chief didn’t bother to deny the charge.
“I heard about Chicago,” O’Keefe said. He looked straight at Dane. “There were rumors about you and Elena being bad cops—”
Shana jumped in again outraged, “Rumors? You don’t know a damn thing.
How dare you judge this man because of some lousy rumors.
” Dane stopped her there with a squeeze of her arm.
He wanted to hear what O’Keefe had to say.
For the first time in hours his tension abated.
He felt nothing, no anger, no outrage, no shame.
He felt like a TV tuned to a channel with nothing but snow.
Everything was tuned out, on hold. His emotions were off-line. His heartbeat was normal.
Oscar said, “Elena?”
O’Keefe gave his version of events. “His girlfriend. They were undercover. Drugs and the mob. It went south when his girl turned bad and busted up a bust. She ended up dead in the shootout.” O’Keefe kept his eyes on Dane’s.
Dane couldn’t help filling in the bits in between the bullet-point version of the story O’Keefe told.
There’d been suspicion. On him as well as her.
But not until later. And now he knew the truth thanks to Shana.
Elena hadn’t been a bad cop, hadn’t betrayed her team.
She’d been doing her job and got compromised and set up.
Funny Dane didn’t feel all the pain he knew accompanied the events at the time. Not now.
“Blaise left town after the fiasco. Left the country.” O’Keefe finished, turning back to Oscar.
Shana said, “So you assume he’s guilty? You don’t know shit.”
David said, “She’s right. Dane left town because he was heartbroken.
Since then our Shana found out the truth of the matter, fully exonerating Dane and Elena.
Neither of them were bad cops.” David lowered his voice.
“I’m surprised you would think that.” David didn’t have to say what everyone knew he was thinking.
He wouldn’t be Dane’s friend and comrade in arms if he were a bad cop.
O’Keefe redenned and Dane found he enjoyed it, the numbness receding, the cavity holding his heart, where his soul should be, filling up again, not as dark as before.
“Tell me what I don’t know,” O’Keefe said.
Shana recounted how she contacted Elena’s sister and found the document Elena left behind in code.
“There was a note, but it was in code and only two people knew it. Undercover code. Marion told me the police didn’t bother going to the trouble of getting a code breaker and didn’t try too hard to find Dane.”
She took a deep breath and continued under Dane’s new energetic stare.
“Marion tried to get in touch with Dane, but he’d already disappeared.
Elena left the coded note and a letter—one of those letters that starts by saying ‘if you’re reading this now then I must be.
’ It was in a backpack she’d left behind that last day for Dane.
But he never bothered to pick up her personal effects.
The envelope was in the backpack. It took Marion some time to figure out about the code.
There was also a safety deposit box key and she had trouble with the bank letting her use it, but the Chicago PD helped her.
They found out a few weeks after Dane had disappeared.
Marion gave me the coded note from Elena—written during the undercover operation.
It said that she’d been compromised and taken hostage. She’d been killed in the blast.”
O’Keefe said nothing but nodded.
David said, “All this time you think I’ve been working with a bad cop?”
Dane could feel Shana stiffen beside him, feel her coiling into strike mode, but she waited for her spot. He kept silent, his blood hummed hot but steady. He watched it play out while he became the impervious granite block, without feeling.
“I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt, but Blaise is a cowboy—a rash and dangerous operator. We left four people dead in an alley—”
Oscar said, “That’s the nature of the business.”
“That’s the nature of the man,” O’Keefe said. “I notice you didn’t shoot the place up.”
Oscar said, “It’s not my specialty, but—”
“I can’t believe you all.” Shana stood vibrating next to him.
“You count on Dane to be the so-called rash and dangerous man. I counted on him. If it weren’t for him, this mission would never have gotten done and I’d be some billionaire’s concubine right now.”
Dane moved next to Shana and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her. “As they say, it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. O’Keefe’s right—not everyone is suited to it. I am. It’s who I am.” He didn’t apologize. Why bother. O’Keefe would never be a fan and that’s the way it was.
Shana leaned against him. She spoke more quietly and directly to O’Keefe, “He saved your life.”
Acer said, “I’ll take Dane Blaise on my team any day of the week.”
“Here, here,” David said with a rueful smile.
“What a racket we’re in,” Oscar said, raising the bottle. He smiled big and changed the vibe in the room.
“When are you going to retire and get out of this racket?” Shana asked.
“Get out of the racket? You have it all wrong, honey,” Oscar said. “I am the racket. It’s how I was born.”
David stood at Oscar’s shoulder. “It’s true. Ever since he was a youngster he was running some racket or other.”
“You’re going to need to find a new racket handler. We’re shutting this one down.” Dane looked around at all the smiles fading at the reminder of what they were doing here and where they were.
“We’re ready to roll,” Acer said. He stepped into the circle and clapped Oscar on the back.
“What about Floyd Parker?” Shana said. She moved to her Wonder Woman stance and Dane felt like ducking the flashing sparks flying from her eyes.
“He’ll follow us to Martha’s Vineyard,” he said.
She scoffed.
“We’ll be lucky if he isn’t already halfway to an island with a boatload of money right now.”
“Henrique Tavares wouldn’t let him go. Not according to the latest intel from Cap,” David said. He wore a pair of reading glasses and was studying his cell phone as he spoke. After a few moments of silence while he finished, he slipped the phone back in his pocket.
“What intelligence?” Dane asked.
“It appears that Henrique Tavares transferred one thousand dollars into a Cayman account held by a Floyd Parker alias two weeks ago.”
“A thousand dollars?” Shana shook her head.
“A down payment,” Dane said.
“It’s something I’ve heard that Tavares does—especially with government officials when he’s paying them,” Oscar said. “He wants to get them on the hook so they have to go through with it. Prevents cold feet if they know they’ll get caught for consorting if they do nothing.”
“Exactly our thoughts,” David said.
“So he doesn’t get the rest of his payoff until Tavares gets…” Shana trailed off.
Dane wanted to leap to her side, to kiss her hair, to envelop her in his arms. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she and Dane were the prizes for the payoff. No one finished the thought for her. No one wanted to say it out loud.
Dane wanted to dispel the tension, so he said, “Impressive intel. Where the hell did he get that from?” Dane asked.
“ATF.”
“The last nail,” Oscar said. “Almost.” He sighed heavily. David had told Dane that Oscar was as an enormously loyal man.
“When Floyd called you to tell you Tavares had Shana, how did you know he was telling the truth?” Dane asked.