Authors: Penny McCall
Aubrey figured she’d given Corona enough entertainment already. The same could be said for Jack, when it came right down to it.
Jack didn’t seem all that torn up when she shut down his mile-high plans. He shrugged philosophically, and spent the next half hour on the phone. Not that he’d replaced her. He wasn’t having phone sex. She was almost sure of it. He retreated to the far side of the cabin and spoke at a volume that kept even his side of the conversation to himself. She didn’t know exactly what he was talking about or who he was talking to, but he didn’t seem any happier after the phone call than he had before. Up until about four days ago she might not have been able to tell, but she’d become sort of an expert on Jack’s . . . moods.
“You’re staring at me,” he said after he disconnected.
“Just wondering if you were having phone sex,” she said, crossing the cabin to plop in the seat across from him.
“No.”
“I figured. You didn’t look all that satisfied when you got off.”
One eyebrow inched up into his hairline.
“The phone. When you got off the phone.”
They listened to the sound of the engines for a minute. Jack had on his giving-nothing-away face; Aubrey was thinking about what she was missing. And she didn’t mean sex. She knew what she was missing there.
“If you weren’t talking to Kiki the Naughty Cheerleader or the Boobsey Twins, who were you talking to?”
“You seem to know a lot about phone sex.”
“It’s those stupid Internet pop-up ads. Even after I get rid of them I can’t get rid of them.”
“You’ve got a real problem there, don’t you?”
“Yeah and its name is Jack. You keep changing the subject and hoping I’ll forget about the phone call.”
“Stupid me,” Jack muttered.
“Well, what do you know? A week ago I was the one you were calling stupid.”
“And your point would be?”
Aubrey crossed her arms and glared at him. “Nothing, Jack. I have no point.”
“And yet you’re still talking.”
“Because you’re not.”
Jack’s only response was a blank stare.
“Okay, then if you’re not going to talk, I guess I’ll have to handle both sides of the conversation,” Aubrey said.
“I think that’s called crazy.”
“Crazy? You’re calling me crazy?” Somehow she was on her feet, looming over Jack, yelling into his face. A part of her knew it was nerves. They were locked on a drug lord’s plane with two hired killers, and they were on their way to see another man—a man she knew and liked—who’d had one woman murdered and wanted her to be next on his hit list. And Jack was laughing at her. Okay, laughing was an exaggeration, but she definitely saw the corners of his mouth twitch. She couldn’t do anything about that other stuff at the moment, but she could deal with Jack.
“You think I’m making an idle threat? I can talk for hours, Jack. I don’t even need to stop and think of things to say. I can recite the dictionary, or talk about the life cycle of the earthworm. I can sing TV show theme songs.”
“
Gilligan’s Island
,” he said.
“It doesn’t stop there. And let me tell you, I’m no Beverly Sills.”
“Who?”
“Britney Spears more your speed?”
His eyes shifted to hers again; she was insulted just by the look in them.
“Okay, you asked for it. ‘Here’s the story, of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls—’”
“Damn,” Jack cut in. “We’re landing.”
Aubrey stopped singing long enough to hear the engines throttle back, followed by the thump and slight shudder of the landing gear going down.
“Just as it was getting interesting,” Jack said.
It was her turn to lift an eyebrow.
“Sounded like you were describing a whorehouse.”
“You’ve never heard
The Brady Bunch
theme song?”
“You were singing?”
The plane touched down. Danny and Carlo bumbled their way out of the other room and Jack got to his feet.
Aubrey stood, too, hooking her backpack. “This isn’t over,” she said to Jack.
“It will be soon.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Ominous could turn out to be an understatement,” Jack said.
Aubrey hated to let him have the last word, but he was already gone, and no matter the comeback shouting at his back felt more like desperation than wit.
She stepped out into cool, dry spring air and felt immediately homesick. Not that she was going to get to see her little house anytime soon. They’d landed at one of the three private airports outside Washington, D.C., and even if Jack hadn’t been hell-bent on getting to the coming attractions, namely Tom Cavendish, Danny and Carlo had a definite opinion of what their next move should be and it didn’t include old-home week for Aubrey.
A black Lincoln Town Car sat off to the side of the tarmac. Danny and Carlo headed for it, Carlo climbing in behind the wheel. “Let’s go,” Danny called to them before he took the front passenger seat.
“Looks like Corona’s still handling the travel arrangements,” Jack said.
“Yeah, he wants to send somebody on a one-way trip to hell.” Aubrey caught Jack by the arm, dragging him to a stop about twenty feet from the car. “Maybe we should wait until morning.”
“We have to deal with this now. If the cops or the FBI find out Corona’s plane is in D.C., they’ll want to know who was on it, and we didn’t take any trouble to hide our identity. Besides, Cavendish won’t be as careful about what he says when he’s tired.”
“Trust me, Tom wouldn’t be capable of guarding what he said, even if he was wide awake with his mouth duct-taped shut.”
“Are you sure? He may be the real brains behind this thing.”
Aubrey pressed a hand to her pitching stomach. She’d been wrong about so much already . . . But she couldn’t be wrong about Tom, too. The man just wasn’t capable of that level of prevarication, not to mention secrecy. “If Tom was the brains behind this operation, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from bragging about it,” she said. “You know as well as I do that it’s Congressman Waters.”
“All I’m interested in right now is following the trail,” Jack said. “Cavendish knows about the money.”
“And without the money there’s no motive. I get that. But do you really need Tom to trace it back?”
“Yes.” Jack took a couple of steps away then came back, clearly impatient. “Look, I know Waters is behind this. His contact at the FBI feeds him information about someone high profile, he threatens to go public, a deal is struck and Cavendish is sent to make the collection—and there’s a reason they always called the funds ‘campaign contributions.’ That way, if the truth came out, Waters could say he had no idea his aide was really blackmailing people.”
“He set Tom up? But he got the benefit of the money.”
“Or maybe Cavendish was doing it to gain the congressman’s approval. A successful fund-raiser is a handy employee to have around.”
“But the influence—”
“There’s no proof of that yet. And none of the guys on the other side of the transaction is going to talk and ruin their own careers. Not without some incentive.”
“So if Waters was really after power, why take money at all?”
“My guess is he used it to pay off his source at the bureau, but Cavendish is the first link in the chain. We need him to implicate Waters or we don’t have a chance of pinning anything on him.” Jack turned his back on her and crossed the small distance to the car.
Aubrey trailed along behind him. “Tom—”
Jack made a shushing motion with his hand, opening the car door and waiting for her to get in before he slid in next to her. “Give them directions,” he said when they were in the backseat.
“This the mastermind?” Danny asked once they were under way.
“Just a witness,” Jack said. “I need confirmation before I confront the mastermind.”
“Great,” Carlo said, “another guy we can’t kill.”
Aubrey found it ironic that they were finally back in Washington, D.C. It was what she’d wanted all along, but of course they were there on Jack’s terms—Corona’s, too, but Jack was the one who’d won the real battle. Turned out she’d have been killed if she’d come back when she wanted to, alone and ignorant. Jack had been right about that. It had taken the information Danny and Carlo supplied to figure out most of the mystery. Tom Cavendish was going to fill in the remaining blanks.
Hopefully.
The car cruised to a stop in front of Tom’s apartment building, Carlo shut it off, and they all piled out.
“You’re not invited,” Jack said to the hit men.
Danny faced off with him. “Corona’s running this show.”
Carlo weighed in by stepping up beside his uncle and resting his hand on the butt of a gun shoved in his waistband.
Jack might be unarmed, but he wasn’t all about the hardware—unless Aubrey counted his balls of steel. “Corona’s in Miami,” he said. “We’re the only connection you have to this guy, and we’re not going in with shadows.”
Danny shrugged, leaning back against the side of the car. Carlo did likewise.
“They’re going to follow us when we come out,” Aubrey said.
“Not a problem. I just want to make sure they don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
Tom lived in a newer high-rise apartment building at the edge of the city. They pushed the buzzer with his name on it next to the locked double doors. Nothing happened. Another consequence of visiting someone in the middle of the night.
“Tom sleeps like the dead,” Aubrey said.
Jack leaned on the button. The buzz was pretty faint but Aubrey could have sworn it had an attitude.
“Whaddya want?” a voice demanded after a minute or so.
Jack stepped back and gestured for Aubrey to talk.
“That’s not Tom,” she whispered, then louder, into the speaker, “I’m here to see Tom Cavendish.”
“I live next door,” the voice said, its owner going from groggy to pissed off. “His stupid buzzer woke me up. It’s the middle of the night, you know.” There was some banging and some yelling and then the speaker cut off.
A couple of seconds later another voice came on and mumbled something completely incomprehensible.
“Tom,” Aubrey called into the speaker. “It’s me. Aubrey. Let me in.”
“Aubrey? Oh my God.” There was some more banging around and some faint swearing before Tom came on again, full volume. “I’m sorry, the lights are off and I tripped over my briefcase on the way to the door.”
“Just let me in, Tom. It’s cold out here.”
“Oh, right.” He buzzed them into the building, but he took his sweet time answering the door. Jack started to get antsy, but Tom finally opened up.
Aubrey found herself wrapped in a tight hug, practically smothered by Tom’s bathrobe. He put her at arm’s length, studied her face for a few seconds, then tried to hug her again.
Jack stepped between them. “What took you so long?” he grumbled.
“Had to brush my teeth,” Tom said.
“What is it with you people and grooming?”
“This is Jack,” Aubrey said. “Believe it or not, I have firsthand proof that he brushes his teeth. Occasionally.”
“Um . . . okay.” Tom slung his arm around her shoulder, steering her into the apartment. Jack was clearly not welcome.
So he invited himself, and took control of the situation by getting between Tom and Aubrey again, then launching into the story of Pablo Corona, drug lord, and Alan Waters, U.S. congressman, both criminals. He didn’t get very far before Tom began to object, but then he’d started with the most objectionable part of the story—at least in Tom’s eyes.
“You’re saying that Alan Waters, a respected United States congressman, has been buying information about some of the biggest movers and shakers in Washington from a source at the FBI, then using me to collect the blackmail payoffs and launder them through campaign contributions?”
“That about sums it up,” Jack said.
Tom sank down on the coffee table in the apartment’s small main room. Aubrey sat next to him, putting her arm around his shoulders.
Tom brushed her off, which Jack found almost as irritating as the fact that she was comforting him at all. The man had been responsible for putting her life in danger—even if he’d done it innocently. And when the shit started to hit the fan all he could think of was himself.
“You’re sure?” Tom asked. “You have proof?”
“Got the confirmation on my way here.” Jack said.
“So that’s what you were doing on the phone,” Aubrey said. “You called your friend at the FBI and he tracked the money. But how did he do it so fast?”