Chapter 6 #2
“Captain Lynch, I presume.” Wilton stepped forward with a hand outstretched and the missing smile.
Cap waited one more beat and took the man’s hand, nodding.
“Agent Wilton. Agent Simpson. This is Shana George and—”
“Dane Blaise.” Wilton let a half smile slip for Shana before turning his unfriendly attention to Dane.
Dane saluted, but said nothing.
“Let’s have a seat.” Cap pulled out his chair, but did a gentlemanly chair push for Shana before he took his own seat. The two ATF men sat across from them.
“What’s the matter—they have a chair shortage on this island?” Wilton looked at Dane, who was still standing in his corner less than five feet from Shana’s eight.
Cap ignored the comment.
“What do you have for us, gentlemen?”
“It’s not what I have for you. Make no mistake, this is all about what you can do for us.”
Boom. It didn’t take these guys long to lower it. They were more direct that the FBI, he’d give them that. Dane pushed off the wall and stood straight, moving a foot closer.
“Oh?” Cap left the conversational hot potato in Wilton’s hands.
“You’ve seen the file we have on Dagmar Hunt, but you already knew a good deal of what was in there. We know you want him.” Wilton was addressing Dane alone now. He paused, but Dane didn’t react.
“We find this a unique opportunity to get him personally without the filter of his thugs doing his dirty work. We know he’ll want to move against you himself.” This time Wilton paused and waited. Dane decided to cut to the chase.
“What did you have in mind?” He already knew what they had in mind.
“We’d like you to allow yourself to be a vulnerable target. Or seem like one. We want you to let Dag get to you, take you prisoner.”
“What makes you think he’d bother? He wants me dead.”
“We’ve heard surveillance. He has plans for you.”
“That wasn’t in the file.”
Wilton smiled.
“We’ll set you up with audio-video and you get Dag to confess to one of a list of federal crimes. Then we’ll arrest him on federal charges. The goal is to have him put in a federal prison.”
Dane nodded.
“What makes you think I’m willing to be a target?”
“Your history. We have a file on you too.”
“What makes you think I’m willing to work with you?”
“And there it is.” Wilton looked at his partner. “Exactly as I told you.”
“Guess I owe you ten bucks,” Simpson said.
“I knew you’d need coercion to cooperate because you’re almost as much of a badass as Hunt.”
That got Dane’s blood pressure to blip up a few notches, but he held his glacial mask in place and breathed steadily.
“We have insurance—incentive for you. We’ll arrest you for interference if you so much as go within a hundred yards of Hunt from this second onward. I don’t care what the hell he does to you or any of your people.”
Shana crashed her chair backwards and stood up against the table, towering over the two men.
“You two are pricks. The ATF is a bunch of pricks. You hold to that threat and I’ll call a friend of mine at the FBI—”
“What the hell.” Wilton slid his chair back automatically, but Simpson he had to credit with holding firm. That earned him a speck of respect from Dane.
“Don’t worry, Shana.” Dane came around to her and put an arm around her, prepared to be rebuffed, but she let him. The hot vibrating feel of her kicked his adrenaline in and he had to clamp down hard not to reach across the table and punch Wilton’s smug face.
“Wilton knows we have friends. After all, the governor and his boss’s boss play golf.” He didn’t know this for sure, but Peter’s wife said something once that might have sounded like that.
Wilton pursed his lips.
Bingo.
Simpson said, “We’re doing our job. I know you all know this and you all have a job to do.” He was smart and looked straight at Cap.
“I work for the governor,” Cap said.
“And you’ll cooperate with us,” Wilton said.
“You have the full cooperation of me and my department, but Dane and Shana aren’t on my—”
“We’ll need you to move that detail you have out front of their house. We don’t want to make the police presence so obvious. You’ll keep us apprised of Dane—and his mother’s whereabouts at all times. We may need to leak that intel—”
“You son of a bitch.” Shana leapt forward and would have punched Wilton in the mouth if Dane hadn’t grabbed her arm.
Or at least that’s what it looked like. For a fraction, he wasn’t sure if it her reaction had been real until he felt her resistance drop after he grabbed her.
Then she pretended to show resistance and even his mother could have held her in place.
“It’s all right, darling. Let’s hear what the ATF agents doing their job have to say.”
“Maybe she should leave,” Wilton said.
“You’re not saying you’re afraid of her, are you?” Dane didn’t mean it as rhetorical, but Wilton took it that way. Simpson quirked one corner of his mouth. The man was human and reasonable, Dane decided.
“Dag’s a smart guy,” Dane said. “What makes you think your plan will work? He knows a trap when he sees one.”
“We think your presence is an irresistible lure. We’ve heard him talk about you.”
“What did he say?” Dane grinned, but the ATF man took him seriously.
“The usual threats. He’s kept tabs on you and Chief Jake Killian off and on for years.”
“You seem well informed,” Shana said.
Dane almost smiled at his girl. He knew a set-up line when he heard one. She gave him the perfect opening, so he took it.
“Here’s how I see it, guys. Since you are so well-informed, then you know Dag is targeting my mother, not me. And there’s no way in hell I’m putting my mother out there like a goat tethered to a stake waiting for the wolves.”
Wilton cleared his throat, his first real sign of humanity.
“It won’t be like that.”
“The hell it won’t.”
“We’ll have you both covered.”
“No.” Dane folded his arms across his chest. It was either that or punch this guy in the nose.
“We’ll find a look-alike agent. Someone to play your mother—”
Cap interrupted. “How about if we test Dag with a meeting. See where it takes us.”
“Sure. Call it a meeting. As long as we have a presence and as long as Blaise follows instructions.” Wilton responded to Cap, but eyed Dane and Shana, his eyes moving from him to his girl at regular intervals.
Simpson spoke up.
“The only problem with that is we have no idea where he is at present and no way to get in touch with him.”
“Our plan,” Wilton said with a smile, “Was to watch you and wait until Dag showed up. Have you two do what comes naturally and take it from there.”
“Sure,” Dane said. “Then you’d rush in and save Dag’s ass so you could drag him off to jail and then arrest me.”
“Not necessarily,” Simpson said.
“Don’t make rash promises,” Wilton said to his junior partner, or at least he treated Simpson as a junior partner. Dane wasn’t so sure that was the case.
“I don’t think there will be any arrests made of Dane Blaise while he’s cooperating with you,” Cap said. “I think I can count on the governor and your boss’s boss to agree to that.”
“Fine. Any way we can speed up the process of Dag making contact?” Wilton asked.
Dane decided not to tell them he’d already heard from the man.
“Sure. Have your undercover guys at the Lucky Parrot tomorrow at noon.”
“What makes you think he’ll show up there?” Simpson asked, more curious than challenging.
“Every badass that comes to the island eventually shows up there.”
Dane put an arm back around Shana and headed her to the door. Cap stood.
“Wait a goddamn minute. We’ll need to wire you.”
“Like hell.”
Cap said, “It’s not that big a place. If you have a few men there you’ll have them covered.”
Dane took a right out the door instead of going back to Cap’s office and headed down the hall in a swift walk. Shana kept up with his long quick strides.
Out the door and into the nearby Jeep, Dane felt like he was driving a getaway car as he turned the key.
“I’m surprised you didn’t screech the tires,” Shana said.
“You didn’t want to hang around there and let them make more demands, did you?”
“No, but I wanted to get some reassurance that they weren’t going to have Cap pull his detail.”
He chortled. “Don’t you worry about that, girlie. No way was that ever happening. Cap would have called the governor in for sure before he’d have allowed that.”
“Why don’t you just have the governor fly his helicopter in and pick up your mother tonight?”
He looked at her. It was a good question.
“I wouldn’t let her go anywhere right now unless I was going with her. And I don’t think the governor is in a position to let me off the hook on this one until the ATF do a lot more to mess up than threaten to pull a detail from my house.”
“You didn’t mention the real reason.”
“You mean because we still don’t know where Dag is? Or whether he would follow us? The governor’s helicopter is a giant target—a regular neon sign.”
“True. And if he didn’t follow you and you lost him then you’d lose your chance to have it out with him.”
“True. But make no mistake, girlie. I won’t put my mother in danger to get Dag.” He thought about it for a beat, the sharp pain twisting between his shoulder blades.
“It’s a balance between dealing with the immediate threat to my mother and getting rid of the threat permanently.”
“You’ve got a lot of help. We’ll be able to handle this.”
“I’ve got you.”
The startled look in her eyes made him mentally back up and re-examine his words. Hell.
He said, “You’re my secret weapon. Wonder Woman.”
She gave him the finger.
He resisted taking the finger in his mouth and sucking on it. It might send the wrong message. No matter how much he wanted her, she was tricky to navigate.
But he couldn’t stop himself from wanting her, couldn’t let her go.