Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (14 page)

“And you’ll tell her
what, that you overheard half a phone conversation in which she was mentioned?
What do you think that will buy you? I sincerely doubt you’re her type.”

He scoffed. “No,
you’re
her type. But it never hurts to make a new friend.”

I walked back to the
desk. “Listen you horny little homewrecker, you better think about how bad it
can hurt to make a new enemy.”

His Adam’s apple
bobbed as he stared at me. If I wasn’t mistaken, that was fear swirling in his
muddy brown eyes.

“You don’t scare me,”
he said, trying for bravado and falling pathetically short.

“Yes, I do. And I
should.”

I turned and left the
desk a second time. As much as I hated to admit it, the kid had forced my hand.
I wasn’t willing to bank on the fear I’d sparked in him. If he said anything to
Cole and she went to ground, I might not be able to find her before Sideline
forfeited the bond. And I knew Amerson well enough to know he was serious about
assigning her to me. Not only would the hit affect my standing, however minimal,
with the bond company, but it would also upset my perfect recovery record. I
could only hope Cole was agreeable and Ellmann understanding.

I cut through the gym
and approached Cole, still on the Bowflex. She didn’t appear to be sweating,
and her strawberry blonde hair was still perfect. I felt like a slob beside
her.

“Excuse me, Rena
Cole?”

“Yes?” she said
without stopping.

“My name’s Zoe Grey. I
work for your bond company. I’m afraid I need to take you in to reschedule your
court date.”

She stopped at the top
of the machine, holding herself in place while she looked me over with a
critical eye. Then, very slowly, she let herself down and stood. She was taller
than I’d first estimated, standing at nearly six feet. From the way she looked
down her nose at me, I guessed she was accustomed to using her height to
intimidate others. Unfortunately for her, intimidation in general doesn’t
really affect me, given my history.

“At the risk of
sounding trite,” I said, “there is an easy way and a hard way to do this.”

“I don’t think you can
handle my kind of hard.”

The way she said this,
it sounded more like innuendo than a threat. Which took some of the punch out
of it.

“Is there anything I
can say to talk you into the easy way?”

She swung at me–her
way of saying no.

I blocked it and sunk
a fist into her rock-solid abdomen. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I needed to
get control of this situation, and fast. Pouncing while I had an opening, I
moved in and grabbed her wrist. But my tried and true solar plexus blow hadn’t
been as effective as it usually was. She swung at me with her free hand. Too
late to put up an effective block, the blow glanced off my kidney with enough
impact to bring tears to my eyes.

Cole had had some
self-defense training at some point. But I had more. Not to mention, now I was
pissed.

She ripped her arm
free, and I charged after her. Of course, chasing after your attacker isn’t
part of any self-defense program. So I tackled her, grabbing her around the
waist. We went down in a tangle, and I cried out as my left shoulder struck the
floor.

She managed to get an
arm free and swung back with an elbow, catching me on the side of the face.
Then she tried pushing to her feet. I grabbed her ankle and yanked. She fell
back against the floor then rolled over and kicked out with her feet.

I rolled out of the
way and got to my feet a second after she did. She’d decided to abandon the
idea of a physical confrontation and run. I wasn’t about to let another FTA run
away from me today, certainly not one that had probably given me a black eye.

I scanned the
immediate area and spied an orange exercise ball resting against the wall
behind the Bowflex machine. These balls were stored on the other side of the
gym, but obviously the horndog at the front desk had yet to straighten up. I grabbed
it and chucked it.

The ball slammed into
the back of Cole’s head as she reached the glass door leading to the pool. The
impact forced her forward, and she face-planted against the glass. Charging
forward, I was on her before she hit the floor. Although disoriented, she was
not incapacitated. She swung at me as we went down. One of her blows landed on
my mouth, splitting my lip.

I grabbed her arm and
wrenched it back, forcing her flat on the floor and pinning her. One of the
guys working out with the free weights who had wandered over to watch stepped
forward.

“What’d she do to
you?”

“Mind your own
business,” I snapped, tasting blood on my tongue.

“Hey,” he said,
stepping closer. “I think you should let her go.”

I shot him a look and
discovered he was about the size of a vending machine. And looked about as
smart. Just what I needed.

“Bond enforcement,” I
said. “Stay out of it.”

“Let her up,” he
repeated. “Now.”

Before I could reply,
he grabbed me and ripped me to my feet.

Already Cole was
getting up.

I swung my leg at the
vending machine. I sunk my heel into his belly then gave him a roundhouse kick
to the head. His eyes rolled back, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
Before he collided with the mat, I was already after Cole.

This time she was
running for the front door, or maybe the locker rooms. As I passed, I grabbed a
water bottle from an onlooker and threw it at her feet. She could outrun me, no
question. I needed her to stop.

The water bottle got
tangled up under her feet, slowing her as she lost her footing and stumbled.
She didn’t go down, but it was enough. I was able to close the distance, pain
burning in my right thigh now, and get my hands on her. We went down in a
tangle of arms and legs. She put up a good fight, but more than anger and
determination, I had skill.

I got her from behind.
She forced me over onto my back, but it was to my advantage. I wrapped my legs
around hers, pinning her. My arms wound around her neck. She clawed at my arms
and swung back with her elbows, but they just hit the floor. I maintained the
hold until she was still, then for a few seconds longer. When I was certain she
was out, I pushed her off of me. She flopped to the floor, inert.

I lay sprawled on the
floor, panting and staring at the ceiling for a few beats. I could feel the
tension and shock of the others in the gym, who had once again converged as
spectators. I couldn’t really blame them. This wasn’t the type of thing you
expected to happen when you went for a workout.

Finally, I pushed to
my feet and stumbled into the locker room, retrieving the handcuffs from my
bag. When I returned, the crowd had closed in around Cole. They had flipped her
over and were trying to revive her.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I
said, shooing them back. “Stop it. She’s nice and compliant; don’t wake her up.”

I noticed with some
satisfaction Cole hadn’t escaped without consequences. Her nose was bloody, no
doubt from plowing into the door, and she had scrapes on her knees and elbows.

“She’s dead,” a mousy
little woman croaked from my left. She was in tears.

“Oh, please,” I said,
rolling my eyes. “She’s not dead. She’s
unconscious
. It’s different.”

“We called the
police,” someone else said, a man.

“Excellent. Thank
you.”

The cops could drive
her to jail while I went to the office for the capture paperwork.

I grabbed Cole’s arm
and flipped her over again, securing her hands behind her back. 

I’d barely stood
upright when I heard the distinctive jingling of a heavily laden belt. I looked
up at Frye parting the crowd. He spotted me and immediately slowed, rolling his
eyes.

“I should have known,”
he said.

“What’s the deal,
Frye, you working every shift this week, or what?”

“This is my normal
shift; you know that.”

“What about yesterday?
You were on at five a.m..”

“They needed an FTO to
work with Brooks. I switched, because if he’d switched, I would have had to
work with him all week.”

“Once was enough?”

He looked slightly
uncomfortable with the question, as if he felt guilty about the answer. He
shifted his gaze to Cole on the floor between us.

“Who’s this?”

“Rena Cole, FTA.”

“Gave you a run for
your money, huh?” he asked, studying my face.

“A minor disagreement.
I wanted to take her to jail. She had other plans for the day.”

“You’ve gotta get
better at this, Zoe.”

“I’ve only been doing
it on my own for a week. There’s some kind of learning curve, surely.”

He sighed and shook
his head. “Come on, I’ll help you get her to the truck.”

“Actually, can you
drive her? The paperwork’s at the office.”

He looked back at Cole
and seemed to consider something for a long minute. “Fine. Just this once. I’d
hate to think of the damage that would ensue if she came around before you got
her to jail.”

I rolled into the Outback parking
lot at six thirty. Before leaving the gym, I’d run through a quick shower and
swiped on some makeup.
From
an early age, my mother had instilled the importance of such vain pursuits as
makeup, hairspray, push-up bras, and control-top pantyhose. I’d given up most
of that as a gesture of rebellion, but I still can’t bring myself to go out in
public without mascara. Even if I’m in a hurry and have so many facial injuries
a little mascara won’t even be noticed.

My hair was still wet,
my eye and lip were noticeably swollen, I was still red from the pepper spray,
and I didn’t have any clean bandages to put on my neck, which was horribly
bruised. But my lip was no longer bleeding, and I had on clean clothes. Not the
best first impression ever. All for a lousy three hundred bucks and the
preservation of my reputation.

I hustled through the
parking lot and blew by the little girl who hurried over to hold the door open
for me. Ellmann’s size makes him difficult to overlook; I spotted him
immediately at a table to the left.

“Just one tonight, or
are you waiting for your party?” the little girl asked, coming up behind me.

“They’re waiting for
me,” I answered. “Excuse me.”

I took a breath and
started over.

As I walked to the
table, I noticed there were one too many people. Also, I suspected Susan wasn’t
quite what Ellmann had expected. Conversation seemed idle as the table munched
on an appetizer.

Ellmann saw me
approaching and did a double take when he saw my face. To his credit, he didn’t
show his annoyance, just his concern. Sporting, considering he was introducing
his girlfriend to his family for the first time and she looked like she’d gone
ten rounds with Mike Tyson. He stood and reached for my hand.

The only other man at
the table, who bore a striking resemblance to Ellmann, looked from me to his
watch. I saw the smiles fall from the faces of the others as they looked up at
me. Definitely not a great start.

“Are you okay?”
Ellmann asked, standing in front of me.

I tried to smile, tried
to ignore my worry of being a huge disappointment. I was failing miserably at
the second.

“I’m fine. I’m really
sorry I’m late.”

He lifted his free
hand and lightly touched my cheek, taking in my injuries. “Who did this?”

It had finally
occurred to me as I was driving to the restaurant that Ellmann, who had been
worried about me all day, would assume the worst when I failed to show for
dinner. But I’d thought of it too late to call him. Being without a cell phone
was really becoming an inconvenience.

“It’s not related. It
was an FTA I happened to come across.”

He pulled me into a
hug. “I was starting to lose my mind,” he whispered.

I squeezed him tightly,
hoping to be reassuring. “I’m okay, really.”

Finally he released
me. He kissed my forehead then took my hand again and stepped aside. What
conversation there had been had stopped, and an uncomfortable, slightly awkward
silence had settled over the table.

“Zoe, let me introduce
you,” Ellmann said, studiously ignoring his family’s reaction. “This is my
father, Vince, his fiancé, Susan, her daughter, Courtney, and my sister,
Natalie. Everyone, this is Zoe.”

I offered my hand to
Vince, trying for another smile. “I apologize for being late. I got tied up at
work. It’s nice to meet you. Ellmann’s told me so much about you.”

Vince was only a
couple inches shorter than his son and obviously fit. Time had done nothing to
soften him; he could probably still pick up small cars. It was also clear the
Italian genes came from him. He had the olive complexion, dark brown eyes, and
dark hair you think of when you think “Italian.” The man was in his fifties,
but the only indications of age were the flecks of gray in his hair and the
small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. And he was attractive. It wasn’t
difficult to understand his long list of female companions over the years.

“Funny,” Vince said.
“He never mentioned you.” He leaned back in his seat. “Didn’t even know he had
a girlfriend until we showed up today.”

I didn’t take this as
the dig Vince had intended it to be. Vince never mentioned any future
stepchildren. Had he, Ellmann would have said something. Not sharing things was
sort of standard operating procedure in this family. 

I laughed. “Well,
surprise!”

Susan chuckled as she
shook my hand, but she was obviously concerned about my injuries. She was in
her early forties, almost twice as old as Ellmann had expected, though still
ten or so years younger than Ellmann’s father. She looked a lot like her
daughter, only older, and maybe a little rounder. She had shoulder-length
blonde hair and bangs she swept to one side. Her skin was beach-tan, and she
was very trim. She was wearing white capris and a summery pink cotton top. I
thought she was a brave woman for wearing white pants.

“My goodness, honey,”
she said. “What happened to your face? Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank you. I got
into a small misunderstanding. I’m fine.”

Courtney studied my
eyes as she gave me a limp, largely disinterested handshake. Then she gave a
half smile and bobbed her head in indifferent, teenage approval. I could only
imagine her conclusion for the redness.

“Allergies,” I
clarified.

She gave me a
yeah-right-
“allergies”
nod.

Courtney was around
sixteen or seventeen. She was dressed in green skinny jeans, which made
everyone’s hips look big, even if they didn’t actually have hips, and a yellow
tank top. There were plastic bracelets in mostly neon colors on both wrists
halfway up her arms. She wore giant hoop earrings and a long sliver chain-like
necklace. Her blonde hair had pink streaks in it and was cut in choppy layers.
Overall, she looked bored and intermittently annoyed. She was doing a lot of
texting.

I offered my hand to
Natalie, and she looked at it like it was diseased. With her nose almost turned
up, she flopped a limp hand into mine then quickly withdrew it.

Natalie, like her
brother, looked perpetually tanned. Her dark hair was long, a couple inches
past her shoulders, and wavy like Ellmann’s. It was pinned up around her head
with several pieces hanging free. She wore minimal makeup, a brightly colored
knee-length skirt, and a tank top. She, like Courtney, wore a lot of jewelry,
but hers was almost all silver and looked handmade by someone with skill.

Ellmann and I sat, and
he leaned over to me. “Allergies?” he whispered in my ear.

“I’m allergic to
pepper spray,” I whispered back.

He groaned softly to
himself. But, really, the pepper spray was the least of the damage.

“It was really nice
you could join us,” Susan said to me, smiling. She was really very motherly. I
wasn’t sure how Ellmann felt about her, but I sort of liked her.

“Thank you.
Congratulations on the wedding,” I said to her and Vince.

She leaned into Vince,
and he stopped glaring at me long enough to smile with her.

“Thank you,” she
gushed. “We’re really excited.”

The waiter arrived, a
college-aged kid who was likely an athlete of some kind, and asked me about
something to drink. It was tempting to order a couple shots of whiskey and a
margarita, but I didn’t want to further distort the impression I was making. I
ordered water.

“And are you guys
ready to order dinner yet?” he asked.

“Well,” Vince chimed
in, “
we
are.”

I forced a smile and
picked up the menu.

“We can wait another
minute,” Ellmann said, shooting a look at his father.

“No, it’s fine,” I
said. “Just come to me last.”

I felt Ellmann’s hand
on my knee, giving me an encouraging squeeze.

The waiter seemed
rather taken with Natalie, and he did a poor job hiding it. He was practically
drooling when he asked her for her order. Ellmann tensed beside me, and Vince
appeared to have found someone he disliked more than me. Actually, the longer I
watched him, the more it felt like he disliked everyone he saw. He may have
been good looking, but he was seriously lacking in the charm department. How
had he enthralled so many young women?

I chose the first
thing on the menu that looked good, then the waiter collected them and left,
but not before smiling back at Natalie. 

Susan asked Natalie a
question, and I leaned over to Ellmann.

“Think you might be
able to help me later?”

“That depends.”

“It’s not a big deal,”
I said. “I just need to see some security camera footage.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Yes.”

“And which security
cameras would those be?”

“The ones outside
First National Bank. It’s where Dillon attacked Vandreen. The attack would have
been recorded by at least one camera. I’m sure the police pulled the footage
during the investigation.”

“No promises.”

“I’ll take it.”

“And what are you two
whispering about?” Susan asked, grinning.

“Work stuff,” Ellmann
said.

“Oh, Zoe, are you a
cop, too?” she asked.

“No. I’m a bond
enforcement agent. But Ellmann helps me out sometimes.”

“His name’s Alex,”
Natalie said crisply.

I was pretty sure she
didn’t like me. Great. She could take a number.

“Nat, please,” Ellmann
said.

The waiter returned
with unnecessary refills and lingered, talking with Natalie longer than
necessary. When he finally left, Ellmann shot a dark glance at his back. Vince
was already staring daggers at the kid.

“So, what’s a bond
enforcement agent?” Susan asked.

“On TV we’re called
bounty hunters.”

“Oh, how exciting! You
both have such important jobs.”

Natalie scoffed.
“She’s not even a real cop.”

“She’s an important
part of the criminal justice system,” Ellmann put in, annoyed at his sister.

Actually, Ellmann just
seemed annoyed. Usually Ellmann is very even tempered. He doesn’t normally
react emotionally or make emotional decisions, even though he has very strong
emotions and is very passionate. He’s very rational and practical. Tonight,
everything seemed to be rubbing him the wrong way. I wasn’t sure what the
problem was.

“Now you, son,” Vince
said. “You’re the one with the big-time career, working for the FBI on your big
case.”

“I’m not working
for
the FBI,” Ellmann said. “I’m working
with
them.”

“Same difference,”
Vince said.

“What’s the big case?”
Natalie asked.

“A Fort Collins
socialite and benefactor was murdered. Her case is connected to a string of
similar murders across the state and a couple others.”

“Is that why the FBI’s
involved?” Susan asked. “Because she was someone important?”

“Everyone’s
important,” Ellmann said, his tone a little short. “And no, it isn’t because of
the Marks case. It’s because the cases are spread out over multiple states.”

“Wait,” Natalie said.
“Marks? Caroline Marks?”

Ellmann and I both
turned to look at her. He nodded.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Caroline Marks is a
huge art collector. Her collection is worthy of the best museums. She
particularly favors Russian art. It’s too bad she’s dead. I wonder what will
happen to her collection.”

I saw something flash
on Ellmann’s face before he pulled his cop face on. It happened too quickly for
me to know what it was.

The conversation moved
away from mine and Ellmann’s work, which was fine with me. And fine with
Ellmann, too, given his current disposition. When our food came, Susan was
talking about how she and Vince met. While the waiter passed out plates, I
leaned over to Ellmann again.

“Are you okay?”

He looked up at me,
then he put his arm on the back of my chair and touched my hair, stroking it
away from my face. He smiled and nodded.

“Yeah. It’s been a
long day.”

I understood then. I
mean, I
really
understood. There was no way I could have spent a day in
the car with my family and two people I’d never met before.

I put my hand on his
leg and squeezed encouragingly.

“By the way,” he said
softly, “I had someone run that plate you gave me. The only Cadillac with those
letters in that order is a silver sedan registered to Aaron Shelton. Only
address they came up with is a post office box. Best we can figure, it’s an
alias.”

We dug into our food
and the talking slowed. I was also busy thinking. Aaron Shelton was probably an
alias. Danielle Dillon was probably using at least one alias. Someone had
probably been following me. There was more going on than I understood right
now, which might not have been saying much since I understood almost nothing.