Internal Affairs (11 page)

Rafe went to the kitchenette and rifled through the drawers and cabinets, but all he found were a few chipped dishes and some tarnished silverware that should have been replaced a decade ago.

Rafe knew that if he didn’t take these keys back soon, Aunt Luba was likely to come snooping. Kicking into higher gear, he headed into the bedroom and found an unmade twin bed covered with a stained flat sheet and ratty blankets, butted up against the wall next to a window with a fire escape.

The closet was hanging open and bare except for a couple more jackets, which Rafe quickly searched.

Nothing.

A battered dresser stood in a corner and he yanked open the drawers, finding nothing but a few pairs of underwear, three T-shirts and two pairs of socks. No receipts, no photographs, no letters—nothing.

In other words, this was big fat waste of time.

Rafe was turning toward the bedroom door when he heard muffled voices in the hallway.

“I tell him to bring them back when he finish,” Aunt Luba was saying, “But he no come. He must still be in here.”

“You have any idea who this guy is?” another voice said, and at the sound of it, Rafe’s heart stopped.

It was Eberhart. And Kate was undoubtedly with him.

Uh-oh.

“Do you have another set of keys?” Eberhart asked.

“No,” Aunt Luba told him.

The small apartment suddenly filled with the sound of pounding, fist on wood, the door rattling loudly with every jolt. “Sheriff’s department! Open up in there!”

Rafe stood frozen in place, knowing he was toast, knowing that this was likely the end of his job, and despite all his self-proclamations earlier, he wasn’t quite ready to give up on it. Not just yet.

And as he heard the pounding on the door again, Eberhart shouting for him to open up, he knew that the next sound would be splintering wood.

Rafe didn’t think, just reacted. Turning on his heels, he launched himself toward the window with the fire escape.

He was across the room in three strides, hands grabbing for the lock, struggling to push the window open, when the inevitable happened behind him, the front door crashing wide, as Eberhart and Kate entered the premises.

Mostly likely with guns drawn.

Rafe yanked at the window, trying to force it open, and finally, thankfully, it scraped upward, just enough for him to squeeze through—

And a sound just loud enough to be heard in the living room.

He dove through it just as Kate shouted behind him, “Police! Stop!”

But Rafe didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. He scrambled onto the fire escape and started his descent, glad that the window was dirty and that his face was obscured by the hoodie. Fortunately, he was only two flights up and it took him no time at all to navigate the steps and leap to the blacktop below.

He stood in the alleyway at the rear of the building, heard footsteps clanging on the metal above him, Kate once again shouting for him to halt.

“You! Stop right there!”

He took off running, heading for the mouth of the alley, a sudden sense of guilt sweeping through him—he was running from his own
sister
—but he couldn’t risk being caught.

Kate kept shouting and he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was working her way down the fire escape. He hit the mouth of the alley and turned, picking up speed, but he’d run plenty of races with Kate as a kid and he knew just how fast she was.

A moment later he heard her shouting again as she came around the corner behind him. Rafe suddenly flashed back to early this morning when he was chasing the suspect at the auto repair shop and it was hard for him to believe he was now on the receiving end of such a chase.

He bore down again and picked up speed, his lungs drawing in ragged breaths. Kate had stopped shouting and he knew she was now concentrating on breathing and quite possibly gaining on him. But he couldn’t look back. He didn’t want her to recognize him.

Rafe reached the end of a street, darted across the intersection, nearly colliding with a car that had sped up to jump a red light, then shot across to another alleyway, hoping that Kate had been slowed at the intersection.

But a moment later, she shouted again, struggling to breathe herself, and he knew she was much too close for comfort. “Stop! Stop right now!”

Rafe almost expected her to call out his name, because surely she must recognize him even from behind, but he didn’t waste time worrying about it. He put the hammer to the pedal and picked up even more speed, heading toward a pair of metal doors in the side of the building.

One of them was ajar.

“Stop!” Kate shouted once again, and he could tell by the faltering tone that she was starting to get winded, losing speed.

Rafe reached the doors and launched himself against them, flinging them open to reveal nothing but darkness inside. This was a warehouse of some kind or a storage facility.

As he got inside, he kept moving through the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust and hoping he wouldn’t bump into anything. After a moment, it became clear that this was a file depot of some sort, the massive place crowded with numbered legal boxes sitting on low rows of shelves.

Rafe could hear Kate’s footsteps behind him. She would be inside at any moment now and, per protocol, would slow herself down and draw her weapon.

He wondered for a moment if he should just give this up and cop to the truth, but there was a large part of him that resisted for one simple reason—he didn’t want to look like a complete fool in front of his older sister. Rafe had spent his entire childhood trying to impress both Kate and their older brother, Vincent. And he knew Kate would not react well if she discovered the man she was chasing was her own kid brother.

So he kept moving, working his way through the rows of shelves, looking for another door. A way out.

He saw one on the far side of the second row he entered, visible mostly because of the light seeping under the door. He abruptly shifted direction and was halfway to it when Kate shouted, “Freeze!”

A flashlight beam illuminated Rafe’s back, throwing his elongated shadow onto the floor and up onto the boxes.

Rafe stopped in his tracks, raised his arms and knew what was coming.

“Down on your knees!” Kate commanded.

Rafe’s heart was thumping in his ears.

Oh, well,
he thought.
At least I tried.

He was about to drop to his knees when another voice shouted, “What is this? What’s going on here?”

Rafe recognized the indignant, authoritative tone of what had to be the building security guard, probably pulling his own weapon from his holster as he spoke.

Rafe froze in place, knew that Kate would have to respond, and she did immediately. He also knew that she’d be showing the guard her weapon in a nonthreatening manner to keep him from firing his own.

“County Sheriff, sir! Don’t fire. Do not—”

That was when Rafe bolted. Made a beeline straight for the door, Kate again shouting for him to halt or she’d shoot. But he didn’t falter, didn’t slow down, knowing that she would aim for his legs.

He zigged and zagged and the first shot didn’t ring out until he reached the door, gouging the floor nearby. It ricocheted harmlessly, just as he slammed through the door and burst onto the street, once again running for all he was worth.

Rafe had a better lead on her this time and he wasn’t about to let himself get caught. His lungs felt shallow, each breath harder than the next, but he didn’t let it slow him down, couldn’t let it.

He took a right at the next block, then darted across the street, ran to the next corner and took a left, finally chancing a look behind him.

No sign of Kate. Or Eberhart, wherever
he’d
gone to. Probably still back at Azarov’s apartment, relaxing and smoking a cigarette.

Rafe took two more turns, left, then right, then stripped off the hoodie and dumped it into a trash can on the street. Crossing the next intersection, he spotted a coffee shop and went inside, finding a booth in back that allowed him a view of the street.

A waitress nodded to him as he slid into the booth, gave him a small smile and he smiled back, even though he didn’t much feel it.

He sat there trying to catch his breath, then gestured for the waitress to bring him a cup of coffee.

He waited in the booth for nearly an hour before going back to Azarov’s neighborhood to retrieve his Mustang.

Chapter Fifteen

“Are you sure this’ll be okay with your grandmother?”

“I’ve already called her,” Rafe said. “She’s more than happy to have the company. Thrilled, in fact.”

They were driving at a clip in Rafe’s Mustang, Lisa up front next to him, Chloe and Bea in back. Lisa felt uncomfortable and nervous, but wasn’t really sure why. She had met Grandma Natalie during her junior year, when Rafe had brought Lisa home for the weekend.

Maybe the nerves were caused by the way Rafe was driving, which was a tad too fast for her. When he had shown up at the door looking disheveled in jeans and a T-shirt—as if he had just returned from a jog at the park—she’d had to wonder what he’d been up to.

She was immediately reminded of how gorgeous he was, but he seemed distracted and a little out of sorts. Something was weighing on his mind.

Maybe some of that had rubbed off on her.

Or maybe her nerves were simply caused by the secret she knew she had to reveal. The one sitting right there in the backseat, playing Crazy Birds on an iPad.

The closer they got to Grandma Natalie’s house, the more trepidation Lisa felt. She had spent half the day wondering how she would break the news to Rafe, and still hadn’t come up with an idea that would guarantee a happy outcome.

But then she supposed nothing could.

This feeling was compounded by her mixed emotions about Rafe himself. He had only been back in her life for a few short hours—and only a small portion of
that,
when she thought about it—yet she felt as if something had been awakened inside her. Some long-abandoned emotion that had lain dormant, quietly percolating below the surface of her heart for the past three years.

Why, she wondered, did it matter to her how he reacted to the news about Chloe?

Was she still in love with him?

After everything she had been through with Oliver, was she still even capable of love?

All she knew was that, despite the turmoil inside her, she felt good being with Rafe again, riding beside him in this Mustang that he’d had for so many years. It was the same car they drove here as juniors, and she felt at home in it. Just as she had back then.

She felt safe with him, protected.

It was the role Rafe had always taken. Lisa had grown up very much the independent woman, but when she’d met Rafe in her freshman year—or the tall, reedy teenager he was back then—she had quickly discovered that she didn’t mind his old-fashioned, chivalrous ways. He opened doors for her, pulled out chairs for her, gave her his coat if they were caught in the rain, stood up to boys who made drunken passes at her at frat parties or disparaging remarks when she turned them down.

Yet he did all this without ever robbing her of her independence. Without ever undermining the essence of who she was as a woman.

Now he here was again, falling so easily into the old role. Looking out for her. Helping her.

He was staring intently at the road as he drove and she wanted so much to ask him what he was thinking about right now.

“You seem preoccupied,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Does it have something to do with Oliver?”

He glanced at her, smiled. “Don’t you worry about that jerk. He’s my number-one case now.”

“Meaning what?”

“That sooner or later I’m gonna find a way to put him behind bars, where he belongs.”

Lisa shook her head. “I still can’t believe all this stuff about his being involved in organized crime. I mean the mob?”

“This isn’t like the old days, Lisa. Gangsters don’t dress up like the godfather or threaten people with tommy guns. Organized crime is fronted and populated by people who look like legitimate businessmen, and are often so far removed from the actual wrongdoing that it’s nearly impossible to put them away.”

“So then what makes you think you’ll be able to do anything about Oliver?” she asked.

“Determination,” he said. “Pure determination.”

* * *

G
RANDMA
N
ATALIE LIVED
on the Hill, a largely Italian-American neighborhood marked by the brick and terra-cotta Roman Catholic church that stood on the corner of Wilson and Marconi Avenues.

The house itself was a two-story, red-and-white, bungalow-style affair with a large front porch overlooking Shaw Avenue, which was fairly busy at this time of day.

Rafe pulled the Mustang into the drive, and before they even had their doors all the way open, Grandma Natalie emerged from the front doorway—looking just as Lisa remembered her—arms extended to Rafe.

She was a small, plump Italian woman in her mid-eighties, with a smile that was big and wide and friendly.

Lisa watched as Rafe went to the foot of the porch and pulled her into a hug.

“Rafael,” the old woman sang. “My sweet little Rafael.”

Not so little anymore, Lisa thought. He dwarfed the old woman.

“Good to see you, Nonna. How’ve you been?”

“I work, I eat, I sleep,” she said. “Then I start all over again.” She pulled away and held him at arm’s length, studying him. “You look tired, Rafael. Have you been sleeping?”

He shook his head. “I never made it home after my shift,” he told her. “I’m pretty beat.”

“Well, come then. Come sit inside in your grandfather’s chair and take a nap. I’ll make some tea and keep your friends company.”

This was Rafe’s cue to turn to Lisa, Bea and Chloe. “Nonna, you remember Lisa, don’t you?”

Now the old woman turned her smile on them, and in that moment Lisa could swear she felt warmth flowing through her. Almost magical in its energy.

“Ah, yes,” Grandma Natalie said, taking Lisa’s hands in hers. “Of course I remember. The one who got away.”