Deadly Pursuit (29 page)
Authors: Ann Christopher
“Did you subsequently receive money from Kareem Gregory?” asked Jayne.
Jack didn’t look at the judge or the jurors as he answered, didn’t even register their presence. All his attention focused on Kareem and he wished, with all his heart and soul, that he could vault out of the
witness box, lunge across the desk, and rip the man’s heart out with his bare hands. The world would be a better place.
“Yes,” Jack said. “He arranged for us to pick up four-point-nine million from a couple of his lieutenants. Part of the task force completed the transaction and executed a raid of the warehouse where the money was.”
“You had a search warrant?”
“Yes.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Drugs. Additional money. Weapons. Records.”
“Did you find any?”
Even now the bitter disappointment sat on the back of Jack’s tongue, thick and nasty. All that time and energy wasted, a huge opportunity lost. “No.”
Twenty feet away, amusement lit Gregory’s eyes as he listened to Jack’s testimony.
“Did anything else happen that night?”
“I participated in a simultaneous raid of Kareem Gregory’s house. We were there to arrest him and execute another search warrant looking for the same things.”
“How did that raid proceed?”
“Like clockwork.”
“And it turned up …?”
“Some money in a wall safe.”
“Was the defendant home?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have any interaction with him at that time?”
“Yes.”
Jack paused and tried to steel himself.
The dark memories, which he’d stored so neatly
away and locked in a secure location inside his mind—not unlike the endless storage facility at the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
where the incompetent government bureaucrats dump the precious relic in with millions of other unmarked boxes—climbed out, one after the other.
“He was home, having dinner with his wife.”
Jack’s unwilling gaze flickered to the gallery, where Kira Gregory sat listening intently, as a good drug lord’s wife should. She had the young face, cool beauty, drop-dead body and designer suit and purse for the role. She also had the quiet look, caged and desperate, of a woman dying to escape; a woman who might die if she tried to escape.
“What happened?”
What happened? His life changed forever, that’s what happened.
They struck just after dark, at a time when neighborhood traffic was low and the likelihood of bystanders being caught in the potential crossfire was minimal. The team moved with the synchronicity of fingers on a hand, lining up in single file outside the massive front door of the Gregorys’ mansion without so much as the scuff of a pebble to give them away. Two blocks over, the backup van waited, just in case. Air Wing circled a couple thousand feet overhead, providing aerial surveillance.
Jack, his adrenaline spiked and his pulse thundering, watched as their team leader, Dexter Brady, gave the signal, and it was all over in ten seconds.
The first agent in line used a fireman’s Hallagan to work on the front door’s brass dead bolt. The
second agent attacked it with a battering ram. Agents three and four entered the impressive foyer with a shotgun and an assault rifle, sweeping the area for any signs of life, which weren’t hard to find. They all yelled.
“Police!”
“DEA!”
“Search warrant!”
Jack and the rest swarmed inside to see the remnants of a touching scene in the dining room, which was right out of
Architectural Digest
in terms of over-the-top expensive furniture—no roach-infested, filth-strewn crack house here, no siree.
Candles flickered on the mantel and table. Flutes filled with still-fizzing champagne sat waiting. Half-eaten food filled the fine china plates, a nice roast of some kind, by the smell of it.
And leaping up from the chair, where she’d been straddling her husband, was a flushed, terrified and mostly uncovered Kira Gregory, her black dress falling from where it had been bunched up around her waist to cover her bare ass in the back and gaping open on some small but glorious dark-nippled tits in the front.
Kareem, whose shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, stood, shoved her behind him, and worked his rapidly deflating erection back into his pants.
“Oh, my God. You can’t just break into our house! Who do you think you are?”
Kira Gregory’s shouts seemed to go on forever as she faced the federal agents invading her dining room, and Jack had to admire her guts for facing down this occupying army, which was pretty much what they were.
Everyone was in full regalia, with dark jackets with DEA emblazoned on the back in huge yellow letters, badges pinned to waistbands, helmets, goggles, gloves, Kevlar vests and assault weapons, but her righteous anger outweighed any intimidation that she might have been feeling.
Jack would bet his right nut that this was the first concrete encounter she’d had with her husband’s real line of work. Maybe she’d had suspicions, but she didn’t have any firm knowledge. Not before this.
Welcome to the real world, Mrs. Gregory.
“You’re under arrest, Mr. Gregory.”
Dexter stepped forward with the handcuffs. If Gregory had any thoughts of running, the agent standing in his face with the rifle locked, loaded and pointing right at Gregory’s bare chest persuaded him otherwise. He put his hands on his head and submitted to a pat-down, docile and cooperative as a newborn lamb. He showed zero surprise and absolute composure, as though dessert, fucking his wife and being arrested were what he’d planned all along for his evening.
“You have the right to remain silent. If you—”
Kira Gregory now had her dress tied in front and was decent, although Jack was willing to bet that no one present would forget the sight of her delicious and nearly naked body anytime soon. She watched the handcuffing of her husband with growing horror.
“What’s this about?”
“It’s okay, baby,” Kareem murmured. “A big misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“But why is the DEA here?” Jack heard the rising hysteria in Kira’s voice and saw the growing comprehension in her wide eyes. “You run an auto-customizing business. Why is
the DEA
doing this?”
Dexter tightened the handcuffs around Gregory’s wrists and spoke to Kira with respect and sympathy in his tone. “Your husband did this, ma’am.”
“What are the charges?”
“Money laundering. Conspiracy.”
“No.” Kira’s gaze locked with Dexter’s over the top of Kareem’s head. “The DEA is for drug dealers and—”
“Your husband is a drug dealer, ma’am,” said Dexter. “His money is dirty.”
“No.” Kira shook her head but the righteous conviction was leaching away now, leaving only a bewildered young wife in its place, one who wanted to have faith but was finding it increasingly difficult. “You’re wrong. Tell him he’s wrong, Kareem.”
Kareem, who had his shirt and pants more open than closed and his arms restrained behind him, wasn’t in much of a position to tell anyone anything, but he gave it the old college effort.
“They set me up. We’ll get this straightened out, baby, okay? Right now I need you to call my lawyer and—”
“You don’t sell drugs, though, right, Kareem?” Reaching out, she tried to touch Kareem’s face, but Dexter held up an arm, forcing her back. “You told me you don’t sell drugs. You
told
me—”
“I
don’t
sell drugs.” Kareem’s voice was low now, tinged with frustration and desperation, and even Jack, standing ten feet away, could see how the man’s gaze skittered away from his wife’s. “I don’t—”
But Kira was backing away from him now, shaking her head and whispering
no,
and it couldn’t have been more obvious that this woman’s innocence was yet another casualty of Kareem Gregory.
“Let’s go,” Dexter said. He frog-marched Kareem
toward the front door, through which the flashing lights of several blue and whites could now be seen, along with the craning necks of neighbors lining the street.
They passed the K-9 unit, a beautiful German shepherd being led by his leash, and Jack, who’d been lingering by the hall door, waiting for Kareem to clear out so he could begin searching the house with the rest of his team.
It wasn’t against the rules for Jack to be there, but it wasn’t the most brilliant idea he’d ever had, either. The other members of the team could handle the raid just fine without him, and drug dealers being confronted with business partners who turned out to be undercover federal agents tended to react badly.
But Jack had wanted this confrontation. He’d wanted Kareem Gregory to know who he was and who’d brought him down at last. He’d wanted the SOB to regret the threats he’d made the other night, to back down in the face of the full might of the United States government. You couldn’t get away with treating federal agents that way. Maybe that shit flew in Columbia or Afghanistan, but it didn’t work on American soil.
Then Kareem Gregory paused on his way out the door and his expression told Jack that he’d never in his life miscalculated as badly as he had by engaging this monster on the playing field. You didn’t want to be on Kareem Gregory’s radar and, worse, you didn’t want to be in his sights.
Jack was now both.
They stared at each other for one beat … two … and then a twisted mockery of a smile curled one side of Kareem’s mouth. “You scared my wife, man.”
Like Jack gave a shit. He raised his eyebrows. “Sorry about that.”
Kareem leaned close and Jack saw so much violence in his gleaming eyes that the fine hairs rose all along Jack’s arms. “You remember what I told you, don’t you, man?”
Dexter jerked Kareem’s arm and marched him out before Jack could respond. “That’s enough with the chitchat, Gregory.”
Kareem seemed not to hear. He walked on past but turned his head as he went, staring at Jack over his shoulder and refusing to break eye contact until he was led down the stairs of his own front porch.
Behind them in the dining room, Kira Gregory began to sob and, between the sobs, to scream. “Kareem,” she cried. “Kareem.”
“Did you have any further contact with Kareem Gregory?”
“Not until I testified at his trial,” Jack said.
“Why is that?”
Jack stared at Kareem, fixated on and obsessed with the gleaming light of satisfaction on the man’s face. If it was the last thing he ever did in his life—if it required his dying breath—Jack would wipe that look off the man’s face one day.
Oh yes. He would.
“Because,” Jack said, “my mother was murdered two days later.”
A murmur of surprise rippled across the courtroom, drawing Jack’s attention to the jury and spectators for the first time in what seemed like days. What
he saw made his heart freeze and then contract into a painful knot of terror.
There.
Way in the back, near the door, sat a woman wearing glasses and listening intently. She had her hair pulled up and no makeup on and looked utterly unremarkable except that she was the most beautiful woman in the world trying to look like she wasn’t, which was about like a young Lena Horne pretending she was a farmhand.
Jesus Christ.
Amara.
Sitting four rows back from Kareem Gregory, the man who would torture and kill her if he had the slightest idea what she meant to Jack.
The text was short, only two words:
Law library.
It was enough.
So when court broke for the recess, Kira was ready with her excuses.
“We knew Parker was going to be good.” Jacob Radcliffe spoke in the pumped-up tones of a high-school football coach giving his losing team a halftime pep talk. For emphasis, he clapped a supportive hand on Kareem’s shoulder and steered him out of the courtroom and toward one of the private conference rooms down the corridor.
Kira had the strong urge to tell the man that Kareem hated this kind of condescending speech, but why bother? If Kareem’s negative energy was focused on his lawyer, then that increased her chances of slipping away for a few minutes.
“We’ll take a bite out of him this afternoon, on cross,” Jacob continued. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
Wanda swooped in. “How’re you holding up, baby? You need anything?”
“I’m good, Mama.” Kareem focused on Kira, pinning her with the full intensity of his attention until she felt x-rayed. “How you doing?”
“I’m good. But I need some fresh air.”
“Oh?” Kareem raised his brows with mild concern. “You’re not coming with us to the conference room, Kira?”
Kira tried to look pained, as though the thought of missing one second of any aspect of Kareem’s life was enough to double her up with grief. “I’ll be there in a minute. I might walk to the corner store and get some mints or a granola bar. Can I get anyone anything?”
Everyone shook their heads and Kareem and his entourage headed off down the hall and disappeared into the conference room. She watched them go, waiting until she heard the satisfying bang of the shutting door before she wheeled around, punched the elevator button, and ducked inside the car.
When the elevator stopped, she hurried out and followed the signs to the law library, which, she saw to her dismay, had windows that looked out into the hall. Great. All she needed was for some passing person to glimpse her in there and it’d be all over for her. Not to mention all the security cameras that had probably captured her every step on tape. Kareem didn’t have access to the security tapes in the federal courthouse—at least not as far as she knew—but that was the problem with Kareem. You just never knew.
Her heart thudded into overdrive as she sailed past the information desk and a couple of eager-beaver women who were probably reference librarians and
glanced up from their computers looking anxious to help.