Hard to Stop (6 page)

Her phone rang as soon as she sat down. "Detective Collini."

"I need you in my office immediately." Crap. She suspected this might happen after what she'd done yesterday.

As soon as she walked inside his office, her lieutenant took off his glasses and settled back in his seat. "You know you're one of my best detectives, Gianna." He avoided looking her in the eye. That meant trouble. Big trouble.

"And…" She motioned with her hand for him to get on with it.

"I got a phone call from Joey Trattner's father."

"He's a dirtbag." Speaking the truth didn't explain what she'd done in a fit of anger.

"That doesn't mean I don't take his call. I heard you told Joey if he came by your house again, you'd shoot him, and because you were a detective, you'd never get charged with a crime. That you'd probably get a commendation."

She shrugged. Sometimes the Italian temper got the best of her, especially when she saw the punk hanging out on the corner by her house. "I'm not sure if those were my exact words…but…I didn't want him around Mick anymore."

"You can't go around threatening people. I heard you also threatened Stan and Phil to not screw up the case. And you were snooping into their files."

"I was importing some wisdom. Everyone calls them Dumb and Dumber behind their backs for a reason. I didn't want them to look for an easy way out and screw my brother by their ineptness."

"There are processes for that. I have faith they will get to the bottom of the murder case. You getting involved is only going to hamper their efforts."

She rolled her eyes. "More like hamper their two-hour lunches at the local strip joints."

The lieutenant sighed. "Be that as it may, I think you need to take a couple of weeks off and clear your head."

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "You can't do that to me. I…I…" Being home twenty-four seven would make her crazy, especially if she couldn't be privy to what was going on. Who knew what those two idiots would come up with? "I'm a good cop."

"You're one of the best, but what you're getting mixed up in isn't going to do you any favors." He shook his head. "I'm not going to change my mind about this." As an exclamation point to his comment, he put on his reading glasses and began to examine one of the numerous files on his desk.

*   *   *

Holy shit. Somebody was following him.

Max felt the uptick in his pulse when he'd rounded the corner. The Shaw itch raced down his back, and he knew. The way that sixth sense kicked in was both welcome and terrifying. Immediately his muscles tensed, his reflexes readying for what might lie ahead.

His street was deserted at nearly ten p.m. Counting the steps echoing behind him didn't shake the sensations warring inside. At least two people. Maybe three.

His natural instincts had served him well many times before. Like at Heir Ricker's mountaintop home, where he'd almost died, he'd had that sense of déjà vu long before the attack came. He could almost feel it wafting in the air, whispering at him to be cautious.

But it came out ugly and distorted and a vengeful conflux of hate, mistrust, and lies when the attack came back then. Jake had somehow blamed himself for what had happened, even though it had never been his fault. The blame lay upon Max's shoulders. No one else's.

Just like this.

Payback was coming to roost. Big time.

And he had no control over it. So he needed to be prepared.

What would they use? Gun? Knife? Their fists? He couldn't say for sure. So he'd have to prepare for any eventuality. Every possibility.

Max stopped as if checking his phone and oblivious to what waited behind him. Their footsteps stilled. Definitely two people. The perception so acute that adrenaline flooded his synapses, making his brain go into red alert. Others might have dismissed the sensation, but not him. He knew better.

They wore gym shoes, not street shoes, the sound different in a way only someone who'd become accustomed to these kinds of altercations would instinctively know. All of these outward signs would pass by most people. That was not the case with him. Especially not now.

The timing had to be perfect. Two against one—hardly a fair fight, but one he'd won many times before.

One.

Two.

Three.

He twisted while bringing a sweeping roundhouse kick at his attackers. They evaded his strike without much trouble, leading him to believe he might be a little rustier than he thought.

But they had knives.

Crap.

He should have seen that move coming. They weren't there to beat him up. They were there to kill him. Their first attempt had failed. Knives were more deadly than guns in close situations. It was a knife that had nearly killed him before.

They circled, weighing each other in the way skilled opponents do while waiting for an opening. He waited for them to make their move first. The smaller of the two came at him, slashing the knife in a long arch while he advanced. Max struck the guy's arm with one hand while punching the guy's throat with his left. While the guy choked and struggled for breath, the other guy came after him. Max sidestepped and blocked the guy's attack, forcing back his arm. The knife went skittering to the ground a few feet away. Unfortunately, the first guy had already recovered and advanced. Max ducked and turned, driving him back with a roundhouse kick. Guy number one stumbled and looked shaken, but Max didn't expect him to give up.

Keeping a visual on the two of them when they were both in his peripheral vision wasn't easy. Instead, he focused on the guy on the right. Even though he was bigger, his reflexes were slower, thereby making him an easier target. The guy on the left was smaller but more agile than the one on the right. And, more importantly, he had managed to retrieve his knife.

Damn. If Max survived this, he was carrying his gun from now on.

He sucked in a breath and strategized. He'd been in worse predicaments and survived. Time to get serious. They wouldn't come at him at once, because that would be counterproductive unless they could get him on the ground—something he was going to avoid at all costs.

The bigger guy came at him first. He blocked the attack while simultaneously striking the guy with a chop strike to his windpipe. The wiry one now looked worried as the big one gasped for breath. Still, the littler one came at him. Max caught his arm at the shoulder, then easily twisted it behind his back, bringing him to the ground.

"Who hired you?" he growled. When there wasn't an answer, he ground the guy's face into the cement sidewalk. "Who? Give me a name."

"Don't know."

"Bull. Who? I want to know who, or I swear I'll break your effin arm at the shoulder and not think twice about it. And it will hurt like hell."

"They'll kill me."

"And if you think I won't, you're mistaken."

Before the guy could respond, sirens blared through the quiet night. Max released his hold, and both men took off running.

Two police cars screeched to a halt in front of him. Officers came out of their cars. "What happened, sir? Somebody called in a fight."

"Two guys tried to rob me. But ran when they heard the sirens." He pointed in the vague direction they'd headed. "I'm sure they're long gone."

"Are you all right?" one of the officers asked as he pointed a flashlight in his direction. When Max nodded, the officer continued, "Could you describe them?"

Max didn't want to get into something that would no doubt be fruitless, so he shook his head. Oh yeah, he could identify them. He'd burned their faces into his brain. And one of them was lucky to be alive after Max had paralyzed his trachea.

"It was dark. There were two of them. That's about all I can tell you."

"We'll take your statement. You can come to the station tomorrow and follow up with a detective."

"Will do." He gave them his best smile and recited as little information as possible. "Now, if you officers don't mind, I'm going to get home and turn on the alarm. This is a pretty safe neighborhood, so didn't expect anything like that." He was laying it on thick, but he wanted them to think he was an average Upper East Side resident rather than one who knew ten different ways to kill a man without making a sound.

*   *   *

"What do you mean that guy's been hassling you? What guy are you talking about?" Of all the things Gia expected her brother to say, that was not one of them.

"You know, that stupid witness guy that thought we did something we didn't." Mick fidgeted as he stood by the counter in the kitchen while she stirred the gravy and plunked in the meatballs she had prepared the other day. Once again, he avoided eye contact with her.

"Do you mean Mr. Shaw?" Her pulse rate escalated. The idea he was stalking her brother both enraged her and frightened her. What she couldn't say was that it surprised her. She had a feeling that whatever secrets his past held, they were dark. Maybe even ones she wouldn't want to know about.

The real rub was she couldn't do much about it since being placed on administrative leave. Earlier she'd toyed with the idea of telling Mick about it but eventually decided to keep quiet.

"He stopped me before school, then again at lunchtime." Her brother still wouldn't look at her, instead concentrating on giving her the impression he was doing his homework.

She forced herself to remain calm. "What did he want?"

Mick shrugged. "Just stuff like, what was I doing there, and did I do it, or did I know who did?"

"You're saying he's interfering with a police investigation. Is that it?"

He shrugged as if suddenly regretting what he'd told her. "I guess that's one way to put it."

"I'm sorry—is there another way that I'm not aware of?" She threw the spoon into the sauce and tossed the pasta into the pot filled with water.

"Chill, Gia. I can take care of this."

"The hell you can." She pointed at her chest. "I'm the adult in this house. You cannot keep secrets from me. This is serious, Mick."

"And I keep telling you I didn't do it."

"But you were with Joey and Frankie, the two people I told you not to hang with. That's enough to get you grounded."

"So you said about a hundred times." The surly teen with all kinds of secrets once again reared his ugly head.

What in the hell was she going to do?
 

Max had already visited the police station and had given them as little information as possible about what happened last night. The detective who took the report said little. Max was glad he didn't run into Detective Collini in the interim, or surely the whole dynamic would have changed.

He was on his second cup by the time Jennings walked in the coffeehouse the following morning. Guilt, fear, and regret had kept him up nearly half the night. Trying to come up with a strategy kept him up the other half. The acid in his gut felt like it was burning a hole straight through. Things were escalating around him, but he had no idea about why everything was converging now, nor who was behind it.

Jennings stopped at the counter to pick up a large cup before sitting down. "Got some info, but couldn't get it all."

"What do you have?" He shuffled through the papers Jennings had set across the table. "Who is this guy you have circled?"

"That's the address you gave me in Brooklyn. Anthony Falcone. As far as I can gather, he's peripheral to the mob. More of a wannabe than an actual player. Rumor has it he had some juveniles running numbers for him to the big guys in Jersey. He's definitely small potatoes, but I imagine he could scare a sixteen-year-old without too much trouble."

"That fits with what I saw. He didn't seem to hurt the kid except for a bloody nose. By the time the police got there, the kid had left, and it looked as if nothing much happened."

"But he's got to be involved somehow in this. What are your thoughts?"

"I can't see it. The guys that came after me last night were trained. These kids and their ringmaster are amateurs, not hired killers for sure. But they know something." Max took a sip of coffee. "And what's the connection?"

"Maybe none."

"Are you thinking they're unrelated? The kids happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time, and someone else killed Damon?"

"I got a copy of the ME report along with the juvie records of the other two kids. Outside of Mick, a.k.a. Michael Collini, the other two losers were destined for big-boy prison with their troubles. Everything from armed robbery to running numbers to selling drugs. And there was cocaine in Damon's system. He was stabbed, but that's not what killed him. Those boys were sent to detain him to make sure he didn't move—the stab might have been by accident. The kill shot hit him in the back and was from a high-powered rifle estimated to be about two hundred feet away."

"What the hell. Cocaine? A kill shot is a hell of a lot different than a stab wound from some juveniles. Why didn't Collini tell me yesterday?" He never suspected Damon used cocaine and couldn't help but wonder how, or if, it fit at all into what happened.

Jennings shrugged and took a bite of the pastry he'd bought. "Not sure about Detective Collini, other than I suspect you and she are in a good old-fashioned pissing contest. She's too good a cop to be fooled by your evasion techniques. All I do know is that someone's playing with you. They're probably sitting back enjoying you watch your shadow twenty-four seven."

Flashes of Petrovich flitted through his mind.
It's all a game of cat and mouse, Maxim. You exhaust them before you pounce.

"Sounds like…" Max couldn't finish his thoughts, but Jennings's nod let him know he understood. Part of him wanted to purge his soul and unburden the guilt that was buried so deep it had yet to see the light of day. But still he couldn't.

No one could completely understand how he felt responsible for what went down with his family. He'd made the decision to go with Petrovich, and in fact, had sought him out to help his sister, Sabrina. At the time, he had no choice. But in retrospect, had he made a mistake?
Second-guessing is for losers
. Another Petrovich adage slunk inside his brain.