Twelve #2
“I know if the guy had surrendered, you wouldn’t have killed him. But he fired at you, so there was no choice. You had to save me, and you had to save yourself. You have kids, Sam. You have me, so there’s no question if you come home; there’s no question if it’s you or someone else. It’s you.”
“I know you’re pissed that I don’t share enough of this crap with you, but when I get home, I’m just so happy to be there … I have you and the kids and the stupid cat, and honestly, I feel so different that my head just isn’t in that place anymore.”
I stared deeply into his gorgeous eyes.
“I swear, I will tell you more. I will work on it. I will. But just walking through the door and seeing all your sweet faces … fixes me. Do you get it?”
“I do now, you big, dumb jerk,” I sighed, smiling at him.
He pulled me forward fast, violently, and the kiss I got was ravaging but abrupt, done before I could sink into it, and then I was outside the car, standing there, dazed and wobbling just a little.
Fortunately, the driver had seen nothing, and he grabbed my bicep tight, walking me down toward the door marked 15.
“How did you first embark on a life of crime?” I asked him, trying to draw him into conversation. “I have kids, so I’d like to keep a lookout for the warning signs.”
After a moment, he turned to look at me. “This is your banter? You’re trying to insult me?”
“Well, I was just saying to my best friend the other day that I think everyone’s life can either be an example or a lesson—don’t you think?”
“Best friend? Who talks like that?” he asked as he opened the door and shoved me through it.
“You don’t have a best friend?” I asked, making a mental note of that, turning to look over my shoulder at him.
“I—”
“No, it’s fine,” I said absently. “God, I wish I had my phone so I could make a list. My memory’s not quite what it used to be.”
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked as he got out his gun from the holster under his jacket and pointed it at me before we walked toward the light.
“I’m just trying to stay calm. Aren’t you nervous?”
He didn’t answer.
“Man, this light I’m walking toward is bright,” I said to Sam and everyone else listening to me. “And that’s not supposed to be a good thing, ya know?”
It was a huge warehouse, but we didn’t go in that far. When we stopped, there were five men there, and I knew one.
“Dr. Dwyer,” I announced.
He tipped his head sideways and squinted, like that wasn’t right. As though I’d made a mistake. And right then, I got it. It took me longer than I would have liked—I prided myself on being quicker.
“Oh,” I breathed out. “You’re Salcedo! That’s brilliant.”
He said nothing, neither to confirm or deny.
“And even talking about yourself to yourself? You’re a genius.”
“Where are the others?” a man asked Mr. Morelos.
“I have no idea. I did my part, and we got outside, and there was nobody there. No car, nobody. They both bailed.”
“You were supposed to be driving.”
“Javi changed the order. He decided to drive, and Cranston was backup in the car.”
Silence.
“Cranston is a marshal. He wouldn’t have bailed.”
“The marshal from Vegas,” I clarified. “The dirty one.”
“Shut up.”
“We took him at the—”
“What the fuck is this?” a guy asked, moving forward into the light.
“Mr. Turner,” I said because I recognized him from the photographs Sam had shown me that day at our house.
His eyes met mine. “Who are you, and why are you here?”
“I’m here, supposedly, as leverage to make Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Sam Kage back off, but I suspect what’s really going to happen is that I’m about to die and you’re about to die because I’ll bet you Salcedo’s dead,” I said, pretending I didn’t know who Salcedo was so the wire I was wearing would get it all, every confession, every truth.
What was the point of everything that went on around me being recorded if it wasn’t incriminating?
“He’s not dead, you dumb prick!” He pointed at Dwyer. “He’s right there, and—”
“Aha!” I yelled. “You, Kevin Dwyer, are Salcedo! How the hell did you do that?”
“Of course he’s Salcedo. What the hell is—”
“You’re so dead,” I told Turner. “Salcedo is gonna die, and there will only be Dr. Dwyer, and so whatever you have or think you have on Salcedo—is it video? Snuff film? I never know if those actually exist.”
“Who are you?”
“Anyway, whatever it is, it won’t matter because he’ll be dead, and he gets to start a whole new life here, with my marshal, after you die and I die right now.”
Turner pivoted around to look at Dwyer/Salcedo. “Is that true? You’re going to disappear into the life of the doctor you created?”
“Are you actually a doctor?” I asked.
“Yes!” he yelled at me, and only then did I see that he had a gun.
“Did you have sex with Randall Erickson the other night?”
Why that was the most revolting part of it all, I had no idea, but, God, it so was.
“DEA!” came the first yell, and there were flashlights and lots of feet pounding across concrete. “Everybody down!”
I dropped to the floor.
“Hands behind your head!”
Doing as I had been told, I laced my fingers behind the back of my head and waited.
It occurred to me that Salcedo had been in Dane and Aja’s loft and that he had only gone with Randall so he could ask my brother if he knew where Sam was. I hated that he had used Dane to get to me and to Sam. Even worse, he had used Randall. That would be quite the ego blow.
“What the hell is going on?” I heard someone yell. “Why do I have US marshals and Chicago PD outside?”
It was confusing because there were too many people with too many agendas. I ended up in a small room, handcuffed, sitting on the floor across from Dwyer/Salcedo, who was sitting between the driver and Mr. Turner.
“So, what do you have on him?” I asked Turner. “All the documentation that he and Dwyer are the same person?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I have everything that proves he’s the same guy.”
I looked over at Dwyer. “And so, because you didn’t want to go to prison, you busted him out of WITSEC.”
He was just staring at me.
“But what I don’t get is, why didn’t you just go into witness protection too?”
“Because that was never on the table for me.” He made a face.
“What does … I don’t understand.”
Men came in then, and I saw the DEA badges, and everyone was taken out, except me and Dwyer/Salcedo.
“Before,” I began, “when you started to say you didn’t understand, you meant me and Sam, right? You don’t get us, how we’re together or why.”
His eyes narrowed with hatred. “Yes.”
I understood. He was a gorgeous man himself.
“He doesn’t think there was ever anything between you two. He thinks you used him that entire time.”
He started nodding. “He’s right.”
But it was crap, and my proof was right there on his face, in his eyes.
“He’s wrong. Tell me. It was new back then, this identity. You went to medical school. Come on. Tell me the story.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be my path. But the others weren’t smart, and it came time to step up or step aside … and then we had to get information from an idiot Chicago police detective, working undercover with a federal task force. He had the intel because he’d ended up busting a friend.”
Dominic.
“So, you and Sam … you talked.”
He shrugged. “He was broken then. His closest friend, everything was a mess, he drank so much, and when he got hurt and came to the hospital …”
“Go on.”
“Once I had my hands on him … there was more I wanted.” He exhaled.
I needed to hear it all from Sam, not this man. “So, now, everything you had been afraid of ended up happening anyway.”
“Yes, it did.”
“You had a lot of people on your payroll, your own marshal even—that Cranston guy from Vegas.”
“You have no idea.”
“And for what?”
He shook his head.
“Were you done with Sam, or were you always planning to reappear in his life?”
“When he left, he was very specific about what he wanted for his life and who … and like he told you, it was never anything at all.”
I shook my head as the door opened. “You’re both liars.”
“I suspect some truth in that,” he said as he looked up at Sam’s boss.
“You know you’re still wearing a wire, right?” Farmer gave me the same pained expression I got from Sam quite a bit.
“But you’re gonna erase everything from once the bust happened, right?” I smiled up at him.
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks.”
For the second time that night, I was home alone without my man. After I relieved Chaz and Pat, I took a long, hot shower and washed away the day. I tried to wait up for Sam but finally passed out sometime after two. I had to get the kids up in four and a half hours.
Sam still wasn’t home in the morning, and I was disappointed because I wanted him to go with me to take the kids back to school. The text message I got told me he was still being debriefed though, and as it turned out, Dane was there, waiting for me, when I rolled into the parking lot.
“Is your manic husband better today?” he asked peevishly.
“I have no idea what that means.”
Apparently, Sam had called Dane at some point in the night or early morning, and they spoke at length about the house, and then Sam had asked Dane to be my backup because he knew he would still be sitting with the guys from DEA.
“I don’t want to know. All I do know is that it sounds as though you will not be returning to your home, but will instead be moving from my loft into the house in Oak Park.
There are movers and cleaners going to your current residence today.
I’m having Pedro take care of all the change-of-address forms.”
“My neighbors are going to be so confused.”
“I suspect Sam doesn’t care about that.”
“I wonder what the new ones will be like.” I squinted up at him.
“Different,” he informed me as we started up the stairs, me holding Hannah’s hand and him holding Kola’s.
“You own a home in historic Oak Park now. I took the liberty of contacting the man I have taking care of the grounds now, Mr. Kincaide, and told him you would be taking over the billing. If you or Sam want to do it yourselves, you can, but there are very specific rules about how the yard must be maintained and—”