Gone Too Far (33 page)

There was no one out in the back lot. Alyssa watched as Sam made note of the fact that there were, indeed, no FBI agents staked out and waiting for them to appear.

She’d parked at the end of a row of employees’ cars and she led him in that direction.

“Can you hold off on the retching for just a little bit longer?” she asked.

It wasn’t a good sign that he didn’t speak, that he just nodded.

She held out her car keys to him. “I need you to get a couple of things out of the trunk.”

He nodded again. He was gritting his teeth, and she knew that he wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball in the backseat for about twenty minutes. But, as usual, he was determined to be Superman, so he took her keys, and after about three tries, during which he started sweating all over again, he managed to unlock the trunk.

Alyssa purposely stood back, as far away from both him and the car as the handcuffs would allow.

“There’s another key on that ring,” she told him. “It’ll unlock the box that my side arm is stored in.”

Sam turned to look at her, surprise and wonder in his eyes. It almost canceled out the haze from his pain. Almost.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she told him. Although it sure would have been easier if he’d trusted her
before
she damn near killed him. She gestured toward the trunk, toward her handgun. “This is about me, trusting you, in return.”

He understood. He unlocked the box and took out the weapon. Checking to make sure it was loaded, and then that the safety was on, he stashed it in his jacket pocket. “Thanks.” It came out as little more than a whisper.

“The keys to the cuffs are in there, too,” she said. “In my fanny pack.”

He was trying his best to stand up straight, but it was more than clear that he was fighting a losing battle. Of course, he’d never admit that, not in a million years.

Alyssa grabbed her fanny pack, took the car keys from him, and closed the trunk. She led him to the front of the car, unlocked the passenger’s side door, and went in first, crawling over the parking brake. Men were entirely too fragile.

Sam got in very gingerly, and when he closed the door it didn’t quite latch.

Alyssa reached across him, opened it, and closed it.

He had the can of soda strategically placed, the seat reclined, and his eyes closed as she found the key to the cuffs and unlocked them both.

But he opened his eyes and caught her hand, turning it so he could take a closer look at her wrist, where the cuffs had rubbed her skin raw. “I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you,” he said.

“Yeah, well . . .” Alyssa pulled her hand away from his so she could start the car. “It’s not that big a deal. Especially since I’ve been wanting to kick you really hard in the balls for a couple of years now.”

Sam’s own wrist was equally abraded. But he didn’t give it a glance. He just closed his eyes again. “I don’t know which is scarier, thinking you’re joking or thinking you’re serious.”

“We have to figure out a game plan,” Alyssa said. “With only forty-eight hours . . .”

“Can I please just have ten minutes to sit here and weep?”

“Can you listen while you do it?”

“You know when you hit your funny bone really hard?” Sam asked, his eyes tightly closed. “And you’re all, ‘Go away, go away, don’t touch me, I just need to be alone so I can scream?’ This is like that only much,
much
worse.”

“So far no retching,” she commented.

“Yes, thanks for noticing. I’m very proud of myself.”

“I have the information that Beth Weiss from the Sunset Motel gave us after we found her in Orlando,” Alyssa told him.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“She said that Mary Lou and Haley checked out at around twenty to ten. I checked the schedule and the next bus that left Gainesville was at 10:35, which works, but it was going to Sarasota, which doesn’t. That’s where she was running from, so why would she go back? Next on the schedule was a bus heading for Atlanta. We’ve questioned the driver, who doesn’t remember seeing her, but it’s possible she altered her appearance, so—”

Sam’s eyes opened. “Holy fuck,” he said.

“What?”

“Sarasota,” he said, struggling to sit up. He reached along the seat to take it out of its reclined position and ended up smacking himself on the back as it sprang forward. “Ow! Fuck! Mary Lou went back to Sarasota.”

Alyssa shook her head. “Why would she do that?”

“
Hide where they’ve already searched
—I told her that once. We were talking about some movie or some book that she’d read, and I told her if I was the fugitive or public enemy number one or whoever we were talking about, I’d end up back where I’d started. I said, then when everyone’s looking for me in Alaska—”

Mary Lou had told her mother that she was going to Alaska. “Did you really say Alaska?”

“Yeah. Because that’s what this was about. I remember now—it was a book she was reading about some guy who went to Anchorage because the mob was after him, and I was like, unless he changes his habits along with his appearance, the mob’s going to find him in Anchorage. I mean, sure, he can go out on the tundra and live in a house that’s five hundred miles from his nearest neighbors, but the reason the mob won’t find him isn’t because he’s isolated. It’s because his isolation keeps him from doing the things that’ll allow the mob to catch him. Stealing cars or gambling or fencing hot TVs. When it’s just him and the moose, and the moose don’t particularly want a great deal on a TV set . . . "

“I told her if this stupid ass guy in this book really wanted to get lost, he could get lost just as easily back where he started, in Newark, New Jersey. He just had to hang with a new crowd and stay away from the strip clubs and stop fencing TVs. No gambling, no prostitutes, no strippers, no drugs—he had to cut his ties with all those fun things the mob has its fingers in. He could live two streets down from the mob boss, but if he joined the church choir and volunteered at the old folks’ home and really changed his habits completely—you know, along with his appearance—he’d be invisible. And if he left a bunch of clues out there that he was heading for Alaska, he would be even
more
invisible. Because everyone on the mob’s payroll has already looked for him in New Jersey. They figure he’s long gone, so they’re waiting for him to show in Alaska, when in reality, where is he? Back in Newark.” Sam shook his head. “That’s what I told her. I had no idea she was actually listening. She usually didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”

“So where did Mary Lou go?” Alyssa asked. “Is Sarasota back where she started? Or San Diego?”

Sam was silent, staring out the window, wincing slightly as he repositioned the can of soda.

She knew he was thinking about that conversation he’d had with his next door neighbor—Don DaCosta, the mentally challenged man who saw “aliens” hanging out around Sam’s house. DaCosta had been questioned—gently, per Sam’s specific request—by agents who were still staking out the neighborhood and keeping an eye on both his and Sam’s houses. DaCosta couldn’t remember the name of the dark-skinned man he’d called the “flower guy.” The man he’d referred to as Mary Lou’s friend. How close had Mary Lou and this “friend” of hers been?

“I think she’d go to San Diego if she could,” Sam said, glancing over at Alyssa. “But I don’t think she had the money. Knowing how much she got for her car and knowing that she paid cash when she stayed at the Sunset Motel . . . I don’t think she could make it as far as California. I think she and Haley are in Sarasota.”

Alyssa nodded. “Then Sarasota is where we’ll start.”

“This is one freaking long shot,” Sam said.

“We have to start somewhere,” she told him.

He was quiet as she took the entrance ramp to 75 south. In fact, he was quiet for so long that when she glanced over at him, she expected to find him asleep.

Instead, he was watching her with those intensely blue eyes, his hair still slicked back from his face in that style Alyssa would forever associate with raw, screaming sex.

“I wish we had more than forty-eight hours,” he said quietly, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about the time they had left to find Mary Lou and Haley.

It was best to be honest, best not to leave him hoping for something that she’d be crazy to let happen.

“I’m doing this to help you find Haley,” she told him. “As far as you and I are concerned, I’m still feeling like we’ve been there, done that.”

“I hear you,” he said, but she knew he didn’t believe her.

And when he looked at her like that, with his heart in his eyes, she wasn’t sure she believed herself.

The team had returned from Gainesville, pissed as hell that Sam Starrett had slipped through their fingers. Max was betting that they’d drawn straws to decide who would come and confront him—and lay the blame for this goatfuck squarely on his desk. Which was exactly where it belonged.

Jules Cassidy opened the door and came in, a modern-day Oliver Twist.
Please, sir, may I have some more?
Interestingly, there was no sign of recrimination or even anger in his eyes. Just cool curiosity.

Max looked at him over the top of his reading glasses. It was a “this better be good” look, and since they both knew damn well that it
wasn’t
good, that Jules had no business coming in here in the first place, the kid should have been shitting bricks.

But Jules gazed back at him, pretending to be unperturbed. “May I sit?”

“No. Whatever this is, it’s not going to take long enough for you to sit.”

Jules actually laughed. “I really have to learn to do that,” he said. “That icy stare thing. It’s very effective.”

“I’m busy,” Max said tersely. “If you have some kind of complaint—”

“I’m not here to complain, sir,” Jules cut him off. “I just wanted to make sure that today’s little exercise went down the way you planned.”

Max kept his face expressionless. The office was filled with angry people who were sure that his interference had created a giant snafu. And yet somehow Jules Cassidy, a man most people didn’t want working for them because—horrors!—he was gay, had figured it all out.

“So what was it?” Jules asked. “The committee from Politicians R Us breathing down your neck? This way you could tell the senators and congressmen, ‘Well, we almost had Starrett. Unfortunately, he got away. But see how hard we’re trying?’ This way Alyssa finds him and gives him those forty-eight hours you promised, without
you
getting reamed for it.

“What I’d like to know,” he continued, “is how you knew Alyssa was going to position herself outside of the doughnut shop, when she didn’t even let anyone on the team there in Gainesville know. I’d also like to know if she’s called in yet. She vanished right after we found out we had the wrong man. I can only assume she’s with Sam right now.”

Max nodded as he took off his glasses and tossed them down on his desk. “So what do you want, Cassidy? A promotion for being so smart?”

Surprise, and then something very like hurt, flashed in the younger man’s eyes. “That’s not why I’m here. Sir.”

“I know. Sit down,” Max said more gently than he’d ever spoken to Jules before, trying to make up for being such a bastard.

As he watched, Jules sat on the edge of a chair. This kid was the real deal. He was not only smart, he was also extremely loyal. And Max really had to stop thinking of him as a kid. He only looked ridiculously young. In truth Jules was rapidly approaching thirty.

“You’re worried about your partner,” Max said. He sighed. “Well, I’m worried about her, too. She hasn’t called in. I don’t know if she’s thinking clearly enough to piece it together the way you did. I may have made her so angry at me that . . .”

He could see the words he’d left unspoken in Jules’s eyes.
That I’ve lost her forever.
But, Christ, maybe that was part of his plan, too. Maybe he had some subconscious desire to push Alyssa away. He thought of Gina, sleeping in his arms last night. . . .

“If Alyssa calls me,” Jules said, leaning forward in his seat, “I’ll tell her—”

Max shook his head. “No. Not over her cell phone. Someone might start monitoring that. I don’t want word to get out—in fact this conversation doesn’t leave this room.”

“Of course, sir.”

“But you have my permission to give her whatever information she asks for. Don’t ask her if she’s with Starrett, though. And don’t let her tell you, either. Keep her from saying it. You and I aren’t going to know anything about that, all right? As far as we’re concerned, she’s on her own, following a lead.”

Jules nodded. “Yes, sir. Don’t ask, don’t tell. I’m familiar with the concept.”

Max forced a smile. “But if you do see her in person, go wild in my defense, would you?”

“I don’t think I’m going to see her. At least not for forty-eight hours.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “I don’t think so either.”

Jules got to his feet. “How
did
you know what she was going to do? You know, put me in the doughnut shop in her place, with one of her scarves on my head?”

“I didn’t know. But when you headed toward Gainesville . . .” Max smiled. “I trusted she had something good up her sleeve.”

Jules nodded. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, sir.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “Oh, and Jules?”

Cassidy stopped, his hand on the doorknob.

Max cleared his throat and picked up his glasses. “Gina Vitagliano’s apparently checked out of her motel room. Did she, uh, give you any idea where she was going?”

“No, sir. But there are dozens of other little places to stay right there on the beach.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” Max said. There were 155, to be exact.

“The info came in, you know, regarding her trip overseas,” Jules told him. “Did that cross your desk yet?”

Ah, Christ. “No,” Max said. “What have you heard?”

Jules made a cringing face. “Oh, sweetie, you’re going to hate this, but Gina’s going to Africa. I believe her final destination is Kenya.”

Max kept a whole string of expletives from escaping by closing his mouth and gritting his teeth. But somewhere in his brain, a vein definitely popped.
Kenya.

“What I
really
hate,” Max somehow managed to say without sounding apoplectic, “is you calling me sweetie.”

Jules actually blushed as he went out the door. “Sorry, sir.”