Twelve
Ihad to go home without Sam. There was no way around it. I was okay to drive; it was normal, and so I did it. Of course we had a police car in front of us and one behind us, and four officers escorted us to the loft, which was thoroughly checked before we were allowed inside for the night.
Once we were home, I did normal things. We had dinner; I made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup with Goldfish.
I had the kids take showers and get into their jammies.
We got clothes out for the following morning and filled Kola’s new backpack with the things from the old one.
Then, because Hannah didn’t want to play a game, we sat together on the couch and watched Schoolhouse Rock!
on DVD because Hannah liked the songs and Kola enjoyed the math.
Hannah fell asleep right after seven, which was her bedtime anyway, and I put Kola to bed at eight, which was his on school nights.
When there was a knock on the door, I checked the peephole and was surprised that standing next to one of the officers was Chaz.
I opened the door, and he looked pained.
“What’s wrong?”
“You gotta go downstairs. Sam’s there. Me and Pat …” He stopped, looking down the hall as the elevator dinged and Pat got off. He was jogging toward me when Chaz put a hand on my shoulder, returning my attention to him. “Okay, Pat and I are gonna stay with the kids. You need to go.”
“Where am I going?”
“To Sam, downstairs,” Chaz reiterated. “Where’s your coat?”
I went and grabbed the first thing in the closet—my trench coat—and pulled it on over the jeans and long-sleeved shirt I was wearing, along with my sneakers. I normally walked around the house in only socks if I was planning on staying in.
After Chaz locked the door behind me, I headed down to the elevator to find Sam.
He was outside with, as far as I could tell, his entire team of marshals, more men in suits, and then some uniformed patrolmen. As I reached him, he looked up and gave me a faint smile.
I knew it pained him not to be able to grab me, put an arm around me.
I knew the guys who worked in his office were cool with Sam living with me—or at least, they said nothing to his face—but this was a professional situation, and in front of our building, there were a lot of people who didn’t know me or Sam.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” he told me, his eyes locked on mine. “It turns out the guy I shot and the other two work for Salcedo. They were looking to pick you up tonight because they had gotten a tip that I was out of town. Who would know that I was out of town, Jory?”
I cleared my throat. “Kevin Dwyer.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “He saw you at Dane’s party the other night without me. When he asked, he was told I was out of town, and when he asked Dane when you were expecting me back, he told Kevin he didn’t know.”
“And you know this how?”
“From the planted bugs in Dr. Dwyer’s residence, and it was confirmed from text messages he had sent from his cell to others. We’d cloned his phone at the same time we bugged his apartment.”
“Okay.” I took a breath. “But why am I out here instead of upstairs with my children?”
“Salcedo doesn’t know he hasn’t acquired you yet.”
“You mean, he thinks his guys are still on the way with me.”
“Yes.”
“And so what?”
“And so, in exchange for being allowed to turn state’s evidence, Mr. Morelos, who’s in the car—the man who was driving—has agreed to escort you to the rendezvous point with Salcedo.
We need you to go in with Mr. Morelos, wearing a wire, to draw Salcedo out so we can arrest him.
None of us have ever seen the man. Even me.
I’ve heard of him. We were even supposed to meet once, but it fell through.
So, nobody knows what he looks like. If you go in, he should be easy to identify. ”
“And if I don’t go?”
“If you don’t go, they’ll know we popped their guys, and they’re back in the wind. We need you to be the bait.”
I saw it then—the quick cording of muscles in Sam’s neck, a slight narrowing of his eyes—and understood this was not his call and not his idea in any way.
“Mr. Harcourt?”
Turning, I found Clint Farmer in front of me.
“We find ourselves in a unique situation. Obviously, Mr. Salcedo sent Dr. Dwyer here to keep tabs on Sam because they felt he was getting too close to finding Andrew Turner. They tried to kill him in Phoenix, and now, tonight, they tried to acquire you. So, we need to stop this before they come at him again. The problem is, of course, that we have no idea what Mr. Salcedo looks like.”
I nodded.
“I need to slap a wire on you, and I need you to walk into that warehouse in the shipyard and meet with these people.”
“Okay.”
He took a breath. “We would never ask this if we thought they truly wanted to do you any harm. You were being kidnapped for leverage, and that was all. It is our understanding that no one actually wants to hurt you.”
“Sure.”
“That being said, there is always a danger that something could go wrong.”
“I understand.”
“Unfortunately, you’re the only one who can do this.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Okay, so are we good to go, then, Mr. Harcourt?”
I couldn’t for the life of me answer. Yes, I wanted this whole thing to go away, but on the other hand, it wasn’t just me anymore. Me being dead would affect the man I loved and the two short people who lived with me.
He waited for a moment and then took hold of my arm and walked me out of the circle of the other men before he turned and looked at me. “Three years ago, my wife, Maggie, got in the middle of a mob hit.”
He had all my attention.
“I’m still a bit fuzzy on the details, but she worked in PR, and her firm was putting on an event, and this dear, sweet old man gave her a letter to pass on to his son. I mean, how Breakfast at Tiffany’s can this get, right?”
His tone, the reference—I was liking him.
“Okay, so, all of a sudden, we had hit men following her, trying to kill her, and she had no idea what the hell was going on. Then, one night, when I was trying to decide whether to lock her up or kiss her, she said, ‘Oh yeah.’ ” He paused.
“ ‘I think that old man gave me a letter that I forgot to deliver. It’s filed under F for favor in my file.’ ”
I smiled at him.
He made the international sign of strangulation, and I understood his wife had driven him insane.
“I love her, but I was going to throttle her.”
“What happened?”
“I had to send her alone and wired for sound into a room with men I didn’t know, or she was going to be running for the rest of her life. So, I get it. I get what we’re asking of you, of the marshal, of your family. I understand, so the choice is yours.”
“Was she okay? Your wife?”
He lifted his phone and showed me a picture of a woman smiling at him in the midst of what looked like a demolished kitchen. There wasn’t a part of her not covered in baking flour.
“Cookies for my daughter’s third-grade class this afternoon. There’s no telling what it looks like currently.”
I took a breath. “If it’s crap you just laid on me, it’s really good crap.”
He lifted his hand so I could see the thick band of gold. “It’s not crap.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he sighed and motioned with his fingers. “We’ll come running in a heartbeat, Mr. Harcourt.”
“Call me Jory.”
An hour later, we drove in silence toward the warehouse district.
“Would you please talk to me?” Sam demanded.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m wearing a wire, Marshal; I don’t think right now is the appropriate time to be asking me questions.”
He growled at me.
I crossed my arms.
“Why are you mad at me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said snidely. “What could it be?”
I read it on his face when he got it, the heavy sigh before he turned to me.
“It was nothing.”
“Your boss seemed to think that a man trying to kill you was, in fact, not nothing.”
“Yeah, but—”
“This is just like you and Rico having to shoot your way out of something. This is like you going to work every day and taking your life in your hands and then coming home like nothing happened and asking me what we’re having for dinner.”
“Jor—”
“You killed a man tonight, Sam, because of me, and—”
“Listen,” he said, grabbing hold of my chin and yanking it sideways so he could see my face.
“I shot that man because he had turned and fired on me. I was terrified of hitting you, but I was not letting him put you in that car. But for anyone else in that same situation, I would have fired as well—do you understand? You being there did not change the use of deadly force. Do you get it?”
I tugged free and leaned back. “Yes, Marshal, I got it. Anyone there, and you would have acted the exact same way. I hear you loud and clear.”
We rode in silence.
“You’re not listening at all,” he muttered under his breath.
“I would be listening, but you never say anything. You need to tell me what’s—” I reminded myself I was wearing a wire. “Never mind.”
The car finally stopped close to the docks, and I saw a light halfway down a small pier on the left. The driver, Mr. Morelos, got out first, and I was about to follow when Sam grabbed my wrist tight and dragged me off my seat and into his lap.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, facing him.
He fisted one hand in my hair, wrapped the other around my throat, and tipped my head back. That quickly, that easily, I was at his mercy.
“I will kill anyone who ever tries to hurt you—is that clear?”
My eyes met his, and I saw the heat there, the possessiveness, and understood. I listened.
“You’re thinking I feel guilty about that man you killed, but I don’t.”
He let me go, and I put my hands on his chest, straddling his thighs.
“If the man had thrown down his gun and put up his hands, you wouldn’t have killed him. You think you might have because the guy’s intention was to take me with him, but, Sam, you would never hurt an unarmed man.”
His hands went to my hair, pushing it back from my face.