Hot Pursuit (35 page)

Although, if he really had that much money, wouldn’t Douglas simply have arranged for in-home care? Of course, maybe he had,
and his presence provided emotional support. Except he had said he’d made arrangements with a friend to stay with his folks while he was out this afternoon.

Alyssa was just about to ask him about that, when Jay Lopez came barreling out the door, nearly wiping out both Mick and Jules.

“Izzy called. Panic button’s activated in Jenn’s apartment,” the SEAL announced, loudly enough for both Alyssa and Sam to hear. “Gillman’s on his way. He needs backup.”

“I’m with you,” Jules said, except Mick took off with them.

“Stay back, stay here—God
damn
it!” Alyssa heard Jules order the detective, who did not obey.

“Son of a bitch,” Sam said and she met his eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to go and back Jules up, but he didn’t want to leave her alone with a potential suspect. And until they spoke to Douglas’s mother and confirmed his alibi, he
was
still a suspect, regardless of how ridiculous that seemed.

“Go,” she told Sam, but he hesitated. There was something about this entire case that had him really spooked. And he didn’t spook easily. Or at least he hadn’t before Ash was born.

She didn’t know what to make of his theory that whoever had killed Maggie was, in truth, stalking her. It seemed absurd—the idea that someone had engineered the series of threats in order to get her to come all the way out here from California.

Okay, unless they hadn’t engineered it, but instead merely found out that she was coming here, and took the opportunity to send that bloody message by leaving Maggie’s heart in that desk drawer. …

And now she was getting as bad as Sam. Yes, a bloody message had been sent, but she didn’t speak Psycho-killer, so her ability to translate and understand was severely hampered.

And the idea that Winston, their homeless man, was the psycho-killer in question was as absurd as the idea that Jules truly was Batman,
which she knew with almost one hundred percent certainty that he wasn’t.

If Jules really could fly with his batwings, he would have done so in front of her, many times throughout the years that they’d been friends.

And okay, now she was losing it.

Except the concern in Sam’s eyes was very real.

“I’ll take Mr. Forsythe back upstairs,” she assured him. “We’ll wait for you to get back.” She turned to Doug. “Do you have time—”

“Of course,” he said, taking a cell phone from his overcoat pocket, and dialing. “Just let me call Marileni. Make sure she can stay a bit longer with Mother and Dad.” He held up one finger as, phone to his ear he spoke rapid-fire in a language that wasn’t quite Spanish, it was. …

“Portuguese?” Sam murmured.

Douglas heard him and he smiled as he shut his phone. “Very good. Marileni was my nanny growing up—she’s from Brazil. And yes, she’s able to stay.”

“Go,” Alyssa said, and Sam took off at a run that, with his broken rib, must’ve brought tears to his eyes.

Jenn shouldn’t have opened the door.

She knew she shouldn’t have opened the door, and yet she did, because she thought it was Dan and that he’d forgotten his keys, and now here she was.

With little Frankie Bonavita, who wasn’t so little anymore, and who’d wanted her to go with him up to the roof, where they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Give me the gun, Frank,” she told him as they climbed the stairs.

On the way out the door of her apartment, she’d managed to hit
the panic button—the one that rang silently. She’d also taken her coat and had dropped one of her gloves in the hall outside of the stairwell, and another on the stairs heading up.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” Frank told her. “They said they were watching Maria, so I couldn’t go to her. …”

“Who said that?” Jenn asked. “But please, just, first—give me the gun?”

“I can’t,” he said tightly. He’d lost a lot of weight since he’d been home, and his face was gaunt, his eyes sunken as if he were already dead. He was a mere skeleton of the vibrant young man he’d once been.

“Sure you can,” she said. He was using again, that much was clear. Probably crystal meth—a side effect was this kind of paranoia.

“It’s not safe,” he told her. Definitely meth.

“Frankie, look at me,” she commanded, stopping there on the landing to the seventh floor. Her voice held far more authority than she felt. “You trust me, right? You came to
me
, right?”

He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

Oh, God. “Then give me the gun.”

He was going to do it. She felt it—he was wavering and he was going to hand it to her. But then he shook his head. “I can’t. It’s not safe.”

“Why isn’t it safe?” she asked, holding her ground. “Who told you that it’s not safe?”

He shook his head.

“They,” she said. “You said
they
. Who’s
they
, Frankie?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They sent a letter. To me. They said I killed her but I didn’t.” His face crumpled. “Jenni, I didn’t, but they said they have evidence. And they said that instead of going to jail, they would send me back. I’m not going back! Christ, what’s that?”

Having his gun back in her face was not conducive to clear thinking, but it soon became obvious that
that
had been the sound
of someone opening the stairwell door from a floor or two above them. Whoever had opened it was whistling, making no attempt to be stealthy coming down the stairs.

“Someone’s coming,” Jenn whispered to Frank. “Hide your gun.”

He put it into his pocket, but he didn’t let go of it, and she knew that his finger was still on the trigger.

The tune being whistled was familiar, and Jenn suddenly recognized it. It was the theme from the old TV show,
Gilligan’s Island
. And she had to fight so that she didn’t simultaneously burst into both laughter and tears.

Gilligan was one of Dan’s many nicknames. It was Dan coming down those stairs, and his whistling was his way of telling her he was on his way to her rescue.

Except, God, the last thing she wanted was for him to get shot.

But there he was, rounding the corner and stopping short, looking down at them as if surprised to see them there.

“Oh, hey, Jenn,” he said. “How are you? It’s, you know, Danny, your neighbor from the ninth floor … ?”

He was sweating, but his gaze was steady, his face calm. She knew he’d run back here, as fast as he could, to help her, and she couldn’t keep tears from flooding her eyes.

He was so tall and hard-muscled, with such broad shoulders—but that meant nothing in a situation like this one. Dan may have been strong, but he wasn’t bulletproof.

His face was so familiar to her. In just a short time he’d gone from being some too-handsome player to her lover and dear friend.

But she forced a smile as she met his dark brown eyes, playing along and trying to give him as much information as possible. “Of course. We met at the Halloween party. You were the cowboy with the
big gun.”

He smiled and even laughed a little as if she’d said something
extra funny, but he nodded at her, saying “That’s right. Big Gun Gillman—it’s one of my nicknames.” He looked over at Frank and then back to Jenn, and then over to the railing, and she realized that he, too, had his hand in his jacket pocket.

The silent message he’d just sent her was obvious—move out of the way in case violence erupted.

But even as she moved, she told Frank, “Dan just got back from Iraq.” She looked at Dan.
“Frank
was over there, too. You know, I used to babysit for him. Remember, Frankie? We used to play those epic games of Monopoly with Maria?”

She could see the
oh crap
in Dan’s eyes as he realized that this was Frank Bonavita, Maria’s missing brother.

“Where’d you serve?” he asked Frank.

“I don’t talk about it,” Frank said tightly. “You should go.”

“Hey, Jenn, I’ve been meaning to drop by,” Dan said, his gaze solidly on Frank, “to pick up that book you were going to lend me. The one about the, um …”

“Yes,” she said. “The, um … book I was going to lend you
… Cooking Crystal Meth for Dummies.”

Dan shot her a
what?
look.

And yes, that
was
way too obvious.

“I’m not cooking again,” Frank said fiercely. “I’m not. And I don’t buy it. I don’t leave the house so I
won’t
buy it, but it just keeps showing up. And I’m not an idiot. I saw you with Jenn,” he told Dan. “I saw you go in, and I waited for you to leave. So just go, so I can talk to Jenni. I need to talk to Jenni.”

He was extremely agitated, and Jenn looked at Dan, afraid for him. “You should do what he says.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Dan said. “I’m not going anywhere. As long as it’s confession time, Frank, I know you’ve got a weapon, I’ve got one, too, and mine is aimed right at your chest. Do not move, do not even
look
at Jennilyn or I will drop you where you
stand. I’m an active-duty Navy SEAL and I am good at what I do.” He kept his eyes firmly on Frank as he added, “Jenn, go down the stairs.”

She hesitated, because she didn’t want to leave him.

But then he looked at her—just a glance. And in that moment, as their eyes met, Jenn realized that she’d been wrong about the toaster.
This
was the moment about which she’d tell their children—the moment she truly
knew
.

“Here’s where we find out if you trust me,” Dan said, still talking to Jenn with his gaze glued to Frankie, who, motionless, had started to cry.

“I do,” she told him. Oh, God … “I just don’t want either of you to get hurt.”

“No one’s getting hurt,” Dan said. “Right, Frank?”

“I’m not going back,” Frankie whispered. “You can’t make me go back there.”

“That’s right,” Dan reassured him. “You’re
not
going back. I can promise you that. I can help you, Frank, I want to help you. Whatever you were going to say to Jenn, you can tell me, and I will help you. But first Jenn’s gotta get the hell down those stairs. Say yes if you understand.”

“Yes,” Frank whispered, his eyes tightly closed.

Dan glanced at her again. “Jenni,
go.”

Heart in her throat, Jenn turned to leave. But she couldn’t do it without saying, “Frankie, don’t you dare shoot him—I love him, okay?”

With that, she didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see the horrified surprise on Dan’s face. And she didn’t just go down the stairs.

She ran.

M
arileni called back.

It was not even three minutes after Sam left to follow Jules and Lopez and Mick Callahan over to Jenn’s apartment, where the panic button had been pushed.

The elevator hadn’t even arrived. Alyssa was standing with Douglas Forsythe in the lobby, asking him about the different types of health-care providers who came in to assist him with his parents, while trying not to seem too obvious about the fact that she kept checking her phone, hoping for a text message from Sam or Jules.

The problem was probably just a bug in the newly installed system, and Jenn was going to answer her door, perplexed by the crowd of operatives standing there.

That was better, of course, than yesterday’s fiasco, when Alyssa had sent Lopez and Zanella over because neither Jenn nor Gillman were answering their phones.

Alyssa didn’t know Jennilyn LeMay at all, but Sam had told her about his little talk with Gillman—who was going to reimburse Troubleshooters for his airline tickets to and from New York. Apparently, he was unwilling to get paid, in any way, to protect his “new girlfriend.” Except he wasn’t exactly protecting her. Lopez had said Gillman was “on his way,” which meant he’d left her alone.

And even if the problem wasn’t more than a bug or a glitch, Gillman needed a good lecture about properly testing the system before leaving the client—girlfriend or not—unprotected.

Alyssa surreptitiously checked her phone again while Douglas droned on and on and on.

Currently, he told her earnestly, he was doing most of the work himself.

What were they talking about? Oh, right—caring for his parents.

Nurses aides, nursing assistants, visiting nurses—he’d tried all of them, in a variety of combinations, but his mother was something of a pickle, when it came to having strangers in her house. Marileni, of course, they’d known for years.

And to be fair, they
had
found a nurse’s aide his mother had liked, but she’d just had a baby of her own and was officially on maternity leave. Still, she managed to come in once a week to help his father with his bath. His mother was still doing all right with a walk-in shower …

Douglas was giving Alyssa details about the shower stool he’d ordered from a medical-supply company when his phone rang and he’d started speaking Portuguese again. As he got off the phone, his expression was apologetic.

“Marileni’s grandson’s school just called. Umberto seems to have caught that awful stomach flu that’s going around. She’s got to go pick him up,” he told her. “I really must head home.”

And
that
was not good news.

Sam was completely wigged out by the fact that Winston had had her photograph. It was hard to say which would bother him more—Alyssa taking Douglas out to the dumpster by herself, or letting him go home without following a possible lead that could provide them with some answers.

She checked her phone again, and Douglas asked, “Any word about Jenn? I hope she’s all right.”

“Nothing yet. Can you give me five minutes?” she asked him as she called the main line of Maria’s office, knowing that one of the FBI agents who were on hand would pick up. Carol or John. “To show me—right now—where you saw Winston yesterday morning?”

He frowned as he looked at his watch.

“Three minutes,” Alyssa bargained, leading him to the front door of the building, as indeed it was Carol who picked up Maria’s office line. “Hi, it’s Alyssa Locke. I need you or John to join me and Douglas Forsythe out back by the dumpster, right now. Can one of you do that?”