Hard as You Can (22 page)

“Went good,” Shane said as he put an arm around Becca’s shoulder and hugged her in against his side. “We did good.”

As they gathered around Marz’s desk, she gave a fast nod and batted at the corner of her eye. “Now we wait for Charlie to wake up and beat this fever.”

Jeremy set a box of files on the floor. “He’ll do it, Becca. Don’t you worry.”

Marz’s smile was a mile wide. “That’s right. Man, this is damn good news.”

Shane nodded. “Chalk one up to stupid luck.”

Marz shook his head. “Wasn’t luck out on the dirt road that day, and wasn’t luck tonight. You two are rock stars, man. For real.”

“Besides,” Beckett said, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, “if it’s stupid but it works, it isn’t stupid.” They all chuckled.

“So,” Shane said, eager to change the topic. “Any luck here?”

Marz sat heavily. “Lots of things in the works. Surveillance camera feeds are all up from inside Confessions. I managed to isolate the range of frequencies representing voices from the club’s music and other background noise, so we’ve got audio, too. Sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing. And for shits and giggles, I set up a search query of all the companies doing business out of the marine terminal who have anything to do with Afghanistan, Singapore, or military hardware and materiel using the Port Authority registries.”

“You’ve been busy,” Beckett said.

Marz shrugged and rubbed his thigh. “Couldn’t just sit around and wait, you know?”

A rustling sound caught Shane’s attention, and he glanced around the desk to find Eileen wrestling a big stuffed bear out of a box. The puppy pulled it free but landed on her back, the bear on top. She growled and flipped out from under it. Shane laughed.

“Oh shit,” Jeremy said, reaching for the bear. “No, no, Eileen.”

The dog sank her teeth into the bear’s neck and bolted.

Jeremy took off after her, darting between Beckett and Nick and around the gym equipment. Eileen growled and shook the bear as she dodged and weaved. Jeremy finally cornered her. “Gotcha, bad puppy. That’s Becca’s bear,” he said, scooping the dog and bear up. “Let go, now,” he said. Eileen licked his face as everyone chuckled. They all loved that mutt, but she seemed to have a special sweet spot for Jeremy and Charlie in particular.

“Don’t worry about it, Jer,” Becca said with a smile.

“All right, fess up,” Nick said. “Were you and Marz playing dolls all this time?” Nick asked with a straight face.

“Ha, ha, asshole,” Jeremy said as he flipped his brother off.

Shane snickered at the glower on Jeremy’s face. “Is that an Army bear?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Becca said. “My dad sent it to me from Afghanistan.”

“Here,” Jeremy said, drilling it at Shane like a football.

Shane caught it before it nailed him in the gut. “Fucker,” he said, chuckling. Something metallic clanked to the floor.

“Oops,” Jeremy said, putting Eileen down and retrieving a thin chain from the concrete. He held it up. Play ID tags. “Look what you went and did, Eileen. Bad girl. Bad, bad girl.”

The puppy tilted her head and whined before sitting down on her haunches. Her tail wagged lazily. Dang if she wasn’t the cutest three-legged German shepherd Shane had ever seen. Not that he thought he’d ever seen a three-legged German shepherd before. Or any three-legged dog. Still.

“Sorry, Becca. I’ll get a replacement chain,” Jer said.

“I might have one somewhere. I’ll look,” Marz said. “What’s it say?”

Jeremy smiled. “Bear, Maxwell. His social security number. And ‘B Positive.’”

Shane reached out his hand. “Hey, that’s pretty accurate info. Lemme see. Maybe I can fix it.” He dropped the bear to the desk as he examined the ball chain. “Oh. The connector’s totally gone.” He scanned the floor around their feet, but didn’t see it. Flipping the ID tag around, Shane chuckled. “Maxwell Bear.”

And then Shane froze.

The social security number was familiar . . .

“Holy shit,” Shane said, doing a double take. “This isn’t a SSN. Look how the digits are divided up.” His brain racing, Shane held it out to Marz and everyone stepped closer.

Marz’s eyes went wide. “Three groups of three instead of groups of three, two, four.” He dug a sheet of paper from a stack on his desk and slammed it down with the tag so everyone could see.

Nick leaned in. “Holy. Shit.”

“Oh, my God. That’s . . . isn’t that the number carved inside my mother’s locket?” Becca asked.

Shane looked again, just to prove his brain hadn’t played a trick on him. But, no. The ID tag still read 754–374–329 and matched one of the numbers they’d been investigating the past few days. The Singapore bank account number. The account holding $12 million in cash Merritt received running the black op that took their SF team down.

“It’s the same,” Becca whispered. “Why would it be on the bear’s tag?”

Marz grabbed the bear from where Shane had placed it on the desk. The hat. The coat. The pants. The boots. Shane’s heart pumped harder in his chest as Marz took off each article of clothing and inspected them carefully for writing or false panels. Nothing. When the bear was naked, Marz flipped it around and gave it a full physical. Still nothing.

Becca’s eyes were wide as saucers. “What do you think it means?”

Marz shook his head as he stared at the bear.

Shane’s thoughts flew around Becca’s question.
No way this is a coincidence. What were you trying to tell Becca, Frank? And why did you feel you had to hide codes and account numbers and messages in so many secretive ways?
The bracelet. And now the bear.

“It means we have to start looking at things a whole lot different.” Marz squeezed the toy from ears to paws. “And it means your bear has to die, Becca,” he said as he looked up at her.

She gaped and stared at the bear for a long moment. Finally, she said, “You think something’s in it?”

Shane’s scalp prickled as the rightness of her words ran through him.

Marz smiled. “I think something’s in it.”

Becca nodded. “Well, all right. But if it has to die, can we do the killing over in the apartment so I can keep an ear out for Charlie?”

T
EN MINUTES LATER
, they’d checked on a still-sleeping Charlie and congregated around the island in the kitchen. The beer and whiskey flowed.

Shane was still riding so high from the success of Charlie’s surgery that he didn’t think sleep was anywhere in his immediate future, despite its being well after one o’clock in the morning. And now the adrenaline rush of their discovery with the bear.

“To Becca and Shane,” Nick said, raising his glass. Everyone followed suit.

“To Charlie,” Shane said, diverting the attention from himself with another round of clinking glasses. After all, he’d just been doing his job. Shane tossed back a swallow of whiskey and enjoyed the warm bite of it hitting his tongue.

“If I drink any more of this, it’ll knock me out until Sunday,” Becca said, pushing her bottle of beer away. “And I should keep an eye on Charlie through the night.”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Beckett said in a quiet voice, those ice blue eyes trained on Becca. “I’ll help.” Shane had a pretty strong suspicion that, like himself, the big guy was also trying to make some amends where Becca was concerned. He’d been almost as standoffish when they’d met, and soon thereafter he’d gotten in a fistfight with Nick that she hadn’t appreciated one bit. And she’d let them all know it, too.

The memory of Becca’s fierce defense of Nick almost made Shane smile. Not many people took on Beckett Murda and lived to tell the tale. But she had.

“Me too,” Nick said. “We’re in this together.”

She smiled and tucked in against Nick’s body. “Thanks, guys.”

Nick wrapped his arm around her and kissed her hair. “Now, back to the bearicide,” he said, pointing at the toy in front of Marz.

“This is some serious cloak-and-dagger,” Shane said, studying the tag again.

“Merritt always was a brilliant tactician and strategist. That’s clearly at play here. Question is, why?” Beckett said as he crossed his big arms. And he was right. Merritt had been a soldier who understood war, who knew how to use his assets and mitigate his weaknesses. Shane had always admired that about him. Part of the reason it stung so bad that the man had betrayed him. All of them.

Marz nodded. “Right. Which is why it has to be significant that he had a special ID tag made with the bank account number in place of the SSN. Then sent it to Becca.”

“I can’t believe it,” Becca said, rubbing her thumb over the stamped numbers. “First the bracelet and now this.”

“I know.” Marz met each of their gazes. “That’s why I think there’s something in the bear.”

A rush of anticipation shot through Shane, and he braced his hands on the counter. “Well, what are you waiting for? Open this bad boy up.”

Stepping back, Nick retrieved a pair of kitchen shears from a drawer. “You sure it’s okay with you?” he asked Becca.

“Heck, yeah,” she said, as Marz accepted the scissors into his grip. “My father wouldn’t have done this without a reason.”

“Agreed,” Marz said. “Here goes nothing.” He burrowed the sharp point of the scissor blade into the seam that ran up the stuffed animal’s back, then slowly opened the body, the legs, the head.

Shane peered over his shoulder, trying like hell to avoid blocking Marz’s light but dying to know what they were going to find. What it was going to be, Shane wasn’t quite sure. But it had to be something good, something
important.
Because there was no other reason for Merritt to go to all this trouble except as a signal to pay attention and dig deeper. At least, that’s what Shane’s gut told him. “Who thought we’d be doing another surgery tonight?” he asked.

“God help the patient with Marz as the doctor,” Beckett said. And it was really damn good to see a bit of normalcy returning between the pair. Beck hadn’t handled Marz’s amputation well and had turned into even more of a clam than usual after the ambush.

Low, tense chuckles went around the room.

“Here goes nothing,” Marz said as he began massaging his fingers through every bit of white stuffing. As Marz searched, Shane’s heart kicked up inside his chest. “Double-check me,” he said to Shane, pushing a mound of fluff in front of him.

Shane was only too happy to help. His fingers literally itched to encounter whatever it was that’d been hidden. The stuffing was silky soft and thick, forcing Shane to pull it apart to make sure he hadn’t missing something.

Nothing in the body. Nothing in the legs. Nothing in the arms.

Marz started on the head. “Come to Papa,” he said, anticipation and excitement clear in his voice. Except . . . He finished pulling through the last of the stuffing. Nothing. Shane came to the same conclusion as he double-checked him.

The bear was empty.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Marz said. Disappointment deflated the air around them.

“Check the body,” Shane said, refusing to believe this was a false lead. What would be the fucking point? They each took a section of the bear’s unstuffed body and turned the pieces inside out. Still nothing. “Well, goddamn.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Becca said, her voice suddenly strained. And it nearly broke Shane’s heart to see her struggling to hold back tears. One broke free, and she batted it away, then Nick turned her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. “I’m just tired,” she said in a raspy whisper.

Nick nodded, his troubled expression mirroring Shane’s own feelings. “I know. Tomorrow’s another day. Thanks for everything all of you did today,” he said, meeting each of their gazes. “Come on, sunshine,” he whispered against her hair.

She nodded and offered the rest of them a watery smile. “Thanks, guys,” she said, as they left the kitchen and headed back down the hall toward Nick’s room.

“I guess I’ll call it a night, too,” Jeremy said. “And Marz? I’ve got clients until about noon tomorrow, but I’m free in the afternoon if you need more help.”

Marz dragged his gaze away from the ruins of the bear, his expression as close to pissed off as you ever saw it. “Absofuckinglutely. Consider yourself spoken for.” Jer gave a nod and said his good-nights as Marz scooped the pile of fluff into his arms. “Well, I’m too annoyed to sleep. Think I’ll go scan more of the surveillance feeds. Those fuckers have to say something about tomorrow’s delivery sometime.”

“One would think,” Shane said, feeling like they’d missed something but unable to make his brain focus through the fog of exhaustion.

“Why don’t you just throw that away?” Beckett asked, frowning at the stuffing overflowing Marz’s hands.

He shook his head. “It’s Becca’s. I’ll leave it to her to decide what to do with it.”

Beckett followed Marz to the apartment door, but looked back over his shoulder. “You wanna hang?” Beck asked.

Shane scrubbed his hands over his face. What he should do was go the hell to sleep. But despite the aches and fatigue of his muscles, the dull throb of his gunshot wound, and his fuzzyheadedness, sleep was the last thing on his mind.

Crystal.

She’d be getting off work soon . . .

And she’d promised to talk to him.
Really
talk to him, this time.

With Charlie’s surgery behind him, his thoughts were free to roam again, and they went back to the image of that Bruno asshole running his dirty paws all over her.

The whirlwind in his brain wasn’t going away until he saw her again, that much was clear.

“Nah,” Shane said. “I’m going to go check in with Easy. Make sure everything’s cool there.”

“Okay. Well, don’t forget to wear a raincoat,” Beckett said, totally deadpan.

Marz’s expression froze for a second before cracking into a wide smile and uproarious laughter.

“Fuck off.” Shane realized even as he said it that his annoyance probably confirmed Beckett’s suspicion. First Marz, now Beckett. This cat wasn’t going to stay in the bag much longer, was it? So be it.

Beckett gave a slow grin.

Shane rolled his eyes and beat feet for his room. He’d check in on Charlie, then he needed a quick shower and a change of clothes before he headed out, before he saw Crystal again.