Bad Guys Don't Win (Janet Maple Series Book 4) (13 page)

“All set to go.” Dennis smiled at her.
“Just be yourself and let me do the rest. Act as naturally as you can.” He
started to snap away. Surprisingly, Jess was quite a pro at striking a pose—it
was clear she’d told him the truth about trying to break into the modeling
industry. At least one thing about her checked out so far. “Very good.”

“Thanks.” She smiled. “I just hope the
editors at
Vogue
agree with you.”

“Oh, I’m sure they will, unless they’re
blind,” he quipped. “And last time I checked, they weren’t,” he added quickly.
“Let’s do a few more.” He pointed toward the trees marking the entrance to
Central Park. “That’s a nice backdrop.”

About two hours later, Dennis wiped his
forehead with an exaggerated gesture. “Well, I certainly think we got enough to
start with.” He’d photographed Jess all over Central Park and now they were
back at Columbus Circle for more shots with an urban background. But aside from
friendly chatter, he hadn’t been able to get any closer to her. This girl was
so good at avoiding the most basic of questions, it made you wonder what she
was hiding. At least Baxter had cooperated. He’d required a dog biscuit every
thirty minutes, but he’d cooperated. Dennis hoped Janet was never going to find
out—he was pretty sure he’d exceeded Baxter’s treats allowance for a month.

“How about we grab a cup of coffee and
take a quick break?” he suggested.

“A cup of coffee would be nice,” she
agreed.

“We can go to Bouchon,” he mentioned a
famous bakery with mouthwatering pastries in the Columbus Circle shopping
complex. “They’ve got amazing chocolate croissants.”

Jess wrinkled her nose. “Too much
temptation. Pastry is off limits.”

“You can splurge once in a while.”

“Not if I’m ever going to make it as a
model.” She nudged him. “How many models you know who eat croissants?”

Dennis cursed his slipup—this girl
didn’t miss a beat. “Not too many, but then they don’t have a gorgeous body
like yours,” he flattered her to smooth things over.

She nodded. “And I’d like to keep it
that way. So how about we just grab coffee right here?” She motioned at a kiosk
nearby. There were a couple of empty tables and chairs for them to sit down on.

“Works for me. Grab a table and I’ll get
the coffee. “How do you take yours, black?”

“That’s right.”

Dennis tugged at Baxter’s leash. “Come
on buddy, let’s get some coffee.”

A few minutes later Dennis joined Jess.
He’d bought two cups of coffee and a bottle of water for Baxter. He poured the
water into a paper cup and set it down on the ground for Baxter, thinking he’d
be thirsty after all the biscuits he’d gobbled up.

Jess sipped her coffee. “Mmm, this is
good.”

Dennis took a swallow of his. “Yes, but
the espresso at Bouchon is better.”

She shook her head. “Are we back to
that?”

“Sorry.” Dennis cursed himself again. It
wasn’t like him to blunder like that. The whole day had gotten off with a bad
start and it just wasn’t getting any better. He was ready to call it a day, but
not before he bugged Jess’s phone. He needed to distract her for a few moments.

“Can I see the photos you took so far?”
she asked.

“Sure.” He turned on the camera, about
to show her the photos. Unexpectedly, she reached over and grabbed the camera
from his hands. “Let me show you how to work it. You don’t want to accidentally
erase the images.”

“I think I can manage.” She flipped
through the photos. “Not bad.” She frowned. “You keep your settings on
automatic?”

“Only when I turn the camera off,”
Dennis improvised on the spot, wishing he’d paid more attention to Janet’s
crash course on photography. “I like to adjust the settings to each shot.”

She nodded. “I see. Looks good so far.”

“I’m glad you like them. I’ll send you
electronic files in the next few days once I’m finished editing them. And I
should be able to get them printed within a week or so,” he rambled on.
Now
,
he thought,
I have to act now
. He was about to get up when he flipped
over the water bottle, its contents spilling on Jess.

She jumped up, her purse falling on the
ground.

“I’m so sorry,” Dennis mumbled, as his
hands reached for Jess’s purse. Within seconds he found her phone and quickly
slipped a tiny bug beneath the cover case—it wasn’t ideal, but it was all he
had time for. The bug looked like a speck of dust, so even if she did see it,
she’d never put two and two together. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m such a klutz,”
he continued, handing her purse back to her. “How bad is it? Let me get some
napkins for you.”

“Don’t bother. It’s not that bad.” She
smiled. “I’m going to be a good sport about it. But if I were a real model, I’d
give you hell.” She nudged him.

“You will be soon enough,” he flattered
her. “And I’ll be sure to watch my step about you.”

“You’d better. It just so happens, we’re
in luck—I have a change of clothes of in my car. I was going to change anyway.
We can’t have my entire portfolio in the same outfit, can we?”

“You’ve got a point there,” Dennis
agreed, realizing yet another omission he’d made.

“Good, so let’s go. I’m parked on
Columbus Avenue and Sixty Second Street. Shall we?”

Dennis grabbed Baxter’s leash and they
proceeded to walk towards Sixty Second Street. At least he’d accomplished part
of his plan. Now all he had to do was wait. In due time, Jess was going to tell
him everything he needed to know about her.

About fifteen minutes later they were
approaching the spot where Jess had parked.

“My car is over there,” Jess said,
motioning to the right.

“I’ll wait here to give you some
privacy.”

“Come with me.” Jess tugged at his
sleeve. “I want you to help me pick an outfit.”

“If you insist.” Dennis followed Jess to
the red Volkswagen bug he assumed to be her car, but at the last minute Jess
headed to a beat-up blue minivan next to it. Something inside Dennis made him
feel uneasy. He brushed it off—they were in the middle of Manhattan for crying
out loud—it wasn’t like he was going to get abducted.

Baxter, who’d been obediently trotting
by Dennis’s side, dug his hind legs into the ground and growled. Dennis pulled
at his leash. “Come on, Baxter, be a good sport.”
I don’t feel any better
about this than you do, buddy
, Dennis thought,
but we can’t back out now
.

Jess swung the van’s back doors open.
Inside, there were several rows of outfits hanging. “What should I wear next?”

“You’ll look great in anything. I’ll
leave the choice up to you.”

“Come on in and help me pick an outfit,”
she urged him, already inside the van.

“You’ve got great taste—surprise me,”
Dennis tried to bail out, feeling more and more uneasy about this.

“Please?” Jess made puppy eyes at him.
“Isn’t that what photographers are supposed to do—dress their models? My mom
always told me I have terrible taste in clothes. I don’t want to mess this up.”

“You managed pretty well so far,” Dennis
pointed out.

“I had my best friend help me get
dressed this morning,” she explained. “Please?”

“All right, all right. Come on, Baxter,”
he added, ignoring Baxter’s growling and picking him up. Shaking off his unease,
Dennis started to climb inside the van. He really was all bent out of shape
today. What was this skinny girl going to do to him? Beat him up?

Once inside, he ran his hand over the
row of hangers. “This one looks nice,” he said, pointing at a random outfit. He
reached for it and was about to hand it to Jess when he felt a sudden sharp
pain in his neck. “What the—” he groaned, his entire body going into
convulsions as he collapsed to the ground.

Jess stepped over his body and he heard
her shutting the van’s back doors. “Help!” he tried to scream and felt another
painful jolt shake his body. He struggled to stay alert, but something heavy
and blunt hit his head and then it all went dark.

Janet’s heart was beating like a sledge
hammer—she couldn’t believe she’d just witnessed Dennis being abducted. Things
like that didn’t happen in real life. At least she’d memorized the van’s
plates. Now, she had to find a way to follow that car. Her eyes scanned the
street for a cab, as the minivan sped up the street. A few more moments and it
would disappear from sight.

“Janet, get in!”

At the sound of the familiar voice she
turned her head. “Peter? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving your butt. Get in!” Laskin flung
open the car door.

Without another word, she got into his
beaten up Jetta. “We gotta follow that van!”

“Calm down, Janet. We have to notify the
authorities. This is way out of our league.”

“To hell with the authorities! My fiancé
is in that van!” Janet leaned over, lifting her leg over Laskin’s and pressed
her foot on top of his, pushing on the gas pedal. The car jolted into motion,
zigzagging into the adjacent lane and almost colliding with a passing car.
“Move over, let me drive.”

Laskin grabbed the wheel, gently, but
firmly pushing her aside. “Calm down. We’ll follow them, but that’s as far as
it goes. We’re not going to do anything stupid.” Carefully, Laskin drove on.

“Where’d you learn to drive like that?”
Janet asked. They’d been driving for about thirty minutes with Laskin keeping the
van in sight, yet staying back far enough not to raise suspicion. He’d been
calm and collected the entire time, as though he pursued kidnappers on daily
basis. Janet was still on edge, but Laskin’s cool demeanor was starting to rub
off on her.

“I played lots of Grand Theft Auto,”
Laskin replied, keeping his eyes on the road.

Janet raised an eyebrow. “Is that how
you stay so calm?”

He shrugged, his eyes still on the road.
“I took a training course once.”

“What kind of training course?” she
prodded.

He sighed. “It was when I was in the
program.”

“In the program?”

“Can’t you just let me drive? I need to
concentrate.”

“You seem to be doing okay.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you, but then you gotta
let me drive. I wanted to work for the FBI. I went through the training to be a
field agent, but I bombed on the physical stuff. They offered me a desk job,
but I was too pissed off and went to work for the Treasury instead.”

Janet nodded. “I think it was their
loss, Peter.”

He scoffed. “Flattery will get you
nowhere, Janet. I’m still not letting you drive.”

“One more question,” she added.

“If you must.”

“Is that how you knew to follow me
today? From your training with the FBI?”

Laskin scoffed. “I didn’t need training
for that, Jan. You were so high-strung when you came to see me, I worried you’d
do something crazy. So I figured you could use a friend.”

She smiled. “You were right.”

“I’m still not letting you drive.”

“You can’t blame a girl for trying, can
you?”

She leaned forward in her seat and
looked around. They’d left the City and were now driving through Williamsburg,
Brooklyn. Once filled with warehouses, printing presses, and small factories,
the neighborhood had experienced a revival, becoming a gathering ground for
artists and a fashionable place to live. They’d passed the trendy part and were
now deep in the borough where there were still remaining warehouses and empty
lots. Her fists clenched so tightly her fingernails were digging into her
palms. Part of her was worried sick about Dennis, but another part was mad as
hell. How cocky of him to saunter off on his own and get trapped, and how
stupid of her to let him do it. She’d had a bad feeling about his plan since
the morning, the kind of feeling one gets when one had a bad fish, only she
knew it had nothing to do with fish. Still, she’d let Dennis go, but she’d been
carefully tracking him the entire time. A lot of good it did. By the time she’d
made it to the van, Dennis and Baxter were already trapped inside. She’d
managed to get a glimpse of Dennis’s unconscious body and Baxter squealing by
his side. Before she could call for help, the van’s doors were shut and it sped
away.

The van started to slow down for a turn
and Janet focused her eyes. The van turned on a side street and Laskin
followed. The van went up the street, but Laskin stayed behind, bringing the
car to a stop.

“What are you doing?” Janet demanded.
“We’re going to lose them!”

“We’re not going to lose them. The GPS
is telling me this is a dead-end street, so they’re not going anywhere. But if
I follow them they’ll know something is up.”

Janet squinted, trying to see where the
van was going. The street might’ve been a dead-end, but it was pretty long and
already the van’s outline was becoming vague. “I gotta get out of the car and
follow them.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“I’m not asking.” Before Laskin could
react, she quickly opened the door and slid out of the car. As she looked over
her shoulder, the outraged look on Laskin’s face almost made her laugh, but the
situation didn’t exactly have room for levity. She motioned for him to stay put
and quietly followed in the van’s direction.

Janet crept up the street, doing her
best to stay in the shadow of the buildings. She tried not to think about what
would happen if she was spotted. Even if Laskin did come to her rescue, she
doubted he’d be any use. Maybe she should’ve listened to him after all and
stayed in the car, but it was too late to back out now.

Janet saw the van stop before a private
parking lot next to a warehouse and quickly hid behind a truck across the
street. A young woman jumped out and opened the metal gates. Then the woman
climbed back inside and drove the van into the parking lot. Janet recognized
her instantly—she matched Amy’s description of Jess Hall to a T.

Janet waited a few moments and moved
closer to the gates, taking cover behind a row of garbage cans. The gates were
made of solid metal, but she could see through a crack. Jess jumped out of the
van and knocked on the heavy-looking metal door. A few moments later the door
opened and a man walked out to meet her. Even though she should’ve been
expecting it, Janet nearly let out a scream when she saw Anton Kovar in the
flesh. He was sporting a long beard and looked older than she remembered—with
grooves around his eyes and on his forehead—but it was definitely him.

By now the van’s back doors had been
opened and Anton dragged out Dennis’s body, grabbing his torso with Jess
picking up the legs.

“Dammit,” Jess cursed. “We forgot the
dog.” She let go of Dennis’s legs and leaned inside the van. There was a
growling sound and moments later, Baxter was pulled out of the van. The girl
dropped him on the ground and yanked at his leash, as she grabbed Dennis’s legs
again. Baxter started barking and kicking, so Jess had to drop Dennis’s legs
and pick up Baxter who was wriggling in her arms. “You’ll just have to manage
him yourself,” she said to Anton. “I have my hands full with the dog.”

“Just let him go,” Anton grunted. “What
do we need a dog for?”

“No way. The dog could lead people back
to us.”

“You watch too many TV shows. Damn, this
sucker is heavy.” Anton turned purple as he heaved Dennis’s body across his
shoulders.

Jess went ahead of him and opened the
building door. “Move it.”

“You’re not the one carrying two hundred
pounds on your shoulders,” Anton snapped.

“He weighs one eighty at most.”

“What did you do, weigh him?” Anton
wobbled as he inched toward the entrance.

“I had to shove him around the van to
cover him up. Hurry up. We don’t want anyone to see us!”

“Relax. I own this building.” Anton had
finally made it to the door.

“Where you want to put him?” Jess asked,
pressing her back against the door for Anton to pass.

“We’ll stick him in the same room with
Mila, so they could talk about the good old days,” he grunted.

Moments later the door slammed behind
them and they disappeared inside.

Janet gasped, barely able to breathe.
She was scared witless. She willed herself not to think about whether Dennis
had been drugged or beaten into unconsciousness, or worse. She would think
about that later. Instead she focused on the fact that now she knew where Mila
was. Now, she had to get help to get Mila, Dennis, and Baxter out.

***

Dennis woke up with a dull ache in the
back of his head and a sensation of pins and needles—the kind one gets when
one’s limb falls asleep—only he felt it all over his body. He tried to move his
arms and stretch out his legs, but couldn’t. It took him a moment to realize
that he was restrained—he was seated in a chair and his arms and legs were tied
with leather ropes. In a flash, the events of the day came back to him. He
grimaced, this time more from embarrassment than from pain. He got cocky and
now he was paying the price for it. On the positive side, however, he now knew
Jess was working for the Kovars. Who knew, maybe the Kovars themselves weren’t
so far away. He was on the right trail.
Ah, dammit, who am I kidding?
Dennis grimaced again. For all his attempts to stay upbeat, there was no
denying he was up the proverbial creek. Janet must be worried sick about him
and about Baxter.
Baxter!

“Baxter, buddy, where are you?” Dennis
called out, scanning the room. There was a loud bark and a sound of tapping paws
against concrete.
Concrete floor
, Dennis remarked inwardly, probably a
warehouse. Moments later, he felt Baxter’s tongue licking his hand. “Baxter,
buddy, I’m so glad you’re okay.” Dennis tried to scratch Baxter’s ear, but
couldn’t reach. Suddenly, he realized he wasn’t the only one in the room. He
did a double take, thinking he was really off his game. There was a slouched
body in a chair across the room. It was dark, and her long hair was covering
her face, but he recognized her instantly.

“Mila?” he called out, his voice low in
his dry, scratchy throat.

“I’m so sorry, Dennis,” she muttered,
her head hanging low. “It’s all my fault.”

Even though inside he was far from
feeling it, he forced optimism into his voice. “It isn’t as bad as that. We’re
going to get out of here.”

“You only say that because you haven’t
seen Anton.” She looked up at him with dim, hopeless eyes. A purple bruise
covered half her cheek.

“Did he do that to you?” Dennis made an
effort to get up, forgetting about his restraints. “That bastard—why doesn’t he
pick on someone his own size? To hit a woman—”

“He’s mad with anger and revenge. We’ll
never get out of here,” Mila continued listlessly.

“Yes we will.”

As if to back him up, Baxter ran over to
Mila and started licking her hand.

“Your dog is sweet.” Mila smiled wanly.
“Too bad they got him too.”

“I betcha Janet is looking for us right
now. She’s going to get us out of here. Or better yet, we’ll get out on our
own,” he added, desperately wanting to believe it—being rescued by his girlfriend—correction—fiancée,
would put the final nail in the coffin of his pride. Dennis shook his
head—there it was—the real reason he’d messed up the case. When he’d asked
Janet to marry him, he’d been certain of it, and he was still certain of it
now. But all that wedding planning and apartment hunting felt so
overwhelming—suddenly it seemed like things were getting out of control.
Instead of talking to Janet about it, he used work as an excuse to blow off
wedding appointments, and now he’s made a mess of everything. Dennis was filled
with guilt. His personal demons were his alone—he had no right to endanger
others because of them. Mila had come to him for help and instead of protecting
her, he’d failed her.

“He’s coming!” Mila whispered,
terrified.

Dennis listened closely and sure enough
there was a sound of heavy footsteps outside the door, followed by jiggling of
keys. Moments later, the door opened with a heavy creak and Anton Kovar walked
inside. He was followed by Jess who trailed after him like a faithful servant.

“Well, well. Who do we have here?” Anton
leered. “The famous detective Dennis Walker. How does it feel to have the
tables reversed, Mr. Walker?”

“It’s nice to see you too, Anton.”
Dennis resisted the urge to grimace—Anton smelled like a mixture of very potent
herring and vodka. It didn’t help that Anton was now sporting a long beard—it
reeked of the herring he’d had for breakfast or perhaps for dinner the day
before. “Nice beard by the way.”

Anton stroked his chin, clearly proud of
it. In a sudden move he reached for Dennis’s fake goatee and tore it off his
face in one jerk. Anton smirked, dangling Dennis’s fake facial hair. “I must
tell you, it takes more than pasting a dead rat on your face to get close to
Anton Kovar.”

It hurt like hell, but Dennis didn’t
flinch. “Clearly my attempt at a beard wasn’t nearly as impressive as yours,
but surely it deserves more than a comparison to a rat? A raccoon at least,”
Dennis shot back.