Heroes In Uniform (181 page)

Gage.

She listened for the sound of the shower then penned a note to him.

Went out.

* * *

Paul Considine owned a couple of night clubs in Manhattan. Clubs that were completely legitimate. Mallory had never been to one of Considine’s clubs but as she went through the double glass doors, she saw that the hype hadn’t exaggerated. The decor was posh with glittering chandeliers and expensive rugs over marble floors.

The club boasted upscale entertainment with shows that featured top dancers, singers, and comedians where it was rumored even top government officials had been known to bring their spouses.

One more thing the club had, and the thing Mallory was most interested in, were the security cameras. They were everywhere and though discreet so as not to be eye sores, they were visible. Mallory went to the bar in one of several restaurants that made up a part of this club. Spotting one of the cameras, she went to stand beneath it. She tilted her head back so her full face was exposed.
Smile.

Three hours later, she’d made the rounds of both of Considine’s clubs, always sure to stroll beneath the eyes of the lens. Satisfied that she’d splashed her face around enough, she went home.

As soon as she inserted her key in the lock, Gage pulled the door open so abruptly she grabbed the wall to regain her balance.

She returned her arm to her side. “Hello.”

His gaze sharpened as he looked at her, taking her in. His face was stark with worry. “Are you all right?”

She felt a stab of guilt at that, but she didn’t regret what she’d done. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“
If
you worried me?”

“
That
I worried you,” she amended.

He rubbed a hand down his face and blew out a long breath. “Where did you go? And why did you go without me?”

Mallory closed the door slowly. The soft thud hung in the air as she took a moment to respond. “I went to Considine’s clubs.”

“You went where?” Gage shook his head as if he hadn’t heard her right or comprehended the words.

“Paul Considine has two clubs in the city. I went to both of them.”

Gage’s eyes slitted. “We’ve been doing all we can to keep you safe from Considine and you’re telling me that tonight you went to him?”

His tone had Mallory straightening her spine. “Not to him. To his places of business.”

Gage clenched his jaw. “What—to flaunt yourself under his nose?”

She crossed her arms. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Wasn’t it? Then why didn’t you take me with you?”

Mallory lifted her chin but remained silent.

Gage grasped her shoulders. “I’ll tell you why, because you wanted him to focus solely on you.”

“I want Considine to feel heat. He’s not getting enough of that. If he starts to feel pressured, he’ll make a mistake. Maybe one we can use to find the women.”

Gage’s grip on her tightened. “Are you out of your mind?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a trained agent.”

“Is that what the feds teach? To pull stunts like this one?”

Mallory glared at him. “I know what I’m doing.”

His eyes went so dark, she saw her own reflection. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you take unnecessary risks.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“The hell it’s not. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

She could feel heat coming off him, a combination of anger and frustration. She was feeling the same, though in her case, anger won out. “That’s not going to happen.”

His body tensed. The muscles in his shoulders and arms strained. “No, it’s not. Not on my watch.”

She leaned toward him and tilted her head all the way back to look up at him. With the significant differences in their height, it was the closest she could come to getting in his face. “We’re no longer at the cabin. I’m not on
your
watch.”

She shoved his shoulder. He stepped back.

* * *

Mallory spent the time since her fight with Gage in her bedroom with her laptop. Angry. Sulking. No, not sulking. Well, maybe. Gage had inadvertently struck a nerve.

With a long, drawn out sigh, she set the laptop onto her nightstand and went to find him.

He was at the window. The snow had stopped and outside the sky was dark but for the city lights twinkling.

“You were right before,” she said.

He turned and faced her. “Right?”

“When you said that I deliberately didn’t take you with me to Considine’s clubs. I did want him to see just me rather than both of us. I wanted to show him that he hadn’t intimidated me. That I would not allow him to intimidate me. To control me. I needed to prove that to myself.”

Gage put his arms tight around her and drew her up onto her toes. “You don’t have anything to prove to anyone.” He kissed her as if it had been years rather than hours. Mallory clutched his wrists, feeling the same.

A thud came from outside in the hall. Gage pushed her behind him and removed his gun from the small of his back. Mallory’s purse was on the table and she withdrew her own gun. Gage took up a position to one side of the door. Sound carried from the hallway. A woman’s voice then another.

“Here let me help you, Mary.”

“Thanks.”

Not the sound of assassins, Mallory thought.

“I don’t know why they don’t double bag the heavy stuff. This always happens.”

Gage peered out through the peep hole, then turned away from the door and returned his gun to the back of his jeans. “Two women. Crouched over an assortment of cans and jars on the carpeting.”

“Just a woman who dropped her groceries.” Mallory felt relief at that and then anger. “I hate this. I hate jumping at every sound. What did I tell you about not wanting to let Considine intimidate me.” She set her weapon on the coffee table, then pushed her now slightly damp bangs off her brow. “If he could see me now.”

Gage went to her and took one of her hands in his own. “You’d be an idiot not to be afraid. Not to be on your guard.”

“This is personal between me and Considine.”

“Personal, how?”

Mallory drew a deep breath. “The summer I graduated from high school, I took a five day trip to Manhattan. Me and Cassie, my best friend.” Mallory shook her head slowly. “Best friends doesn’t adequately describe how we felt about each other. Cassie and I weren’t related by blood but she was my sister in every way that mattered. We were done with finals and wanted to blow off steam. We were set to start college a couple of months later and wanted to kick up our heels before we had to buckle down.” Mallory paused. “The night before we were due to go home, Cassie disappeared.”

Gage squeezed her hand. “What happened?”

“We were doing the club thing. Having a good time going from club to club. We wanted to hit as many as we could in the time we were in New York. So we could say, hey, we’d been there. We weren’t drinking heavily. We both knew to keep our wits about us and we weren’t looking to pick up anyone for more than just a dance or two. It was fun. Harmless. Before we’d gone out that night, as we had on the previous nights, we’d said that we wouldn’t separate.” Mallory lowered her head. “But we did get separated. The crowd thickened and I lost sight of her. I didn’t think much of it at first. I figured she was somewhere in the club. I took out my cell phone and called her. Her cell went to voice mail. Not surprising if she couldn’t hear her phone ringing with all the noise. I began making my way through the mob, looking for her. But an hour later, I couldn’t find her.”

Mallory’s throat closed as memories of that night returned and emotion swamped her. “I checked the restrooms and then went to check outside the club, in case for some reason she’d stepped out there. When I didn’t find her, I waited. Eventually, she would need to leave there. I kept trying her cell. She never picked up. The crowd eventually thinned as the night wore on and I checked inside the club again. At that point, it wasn’t hard to see that Cassie wasn’t in there.”

Mallory swiped a tear that fell onto her cheek. “The cop who took my frantic call told me that unless I had evidence of foul play, he couldn’t file a missing persons report for forty eight hours. Cassie was nineteen. An adult. She could come and go as she pleased. He suggested that she’d met someone and would return soon. He asked me if I’d been back to our hotel. I hadn’t and he suggested I check back there. She wasn’t at the hotel.”

Mallory’s voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “I called home. Cassie’s parents and my parents flew in from Chicago. An investigation began, but Cassie wasn’t found.

“Months went by without any word. I missed that year of college. After she disappeared, each time the phone rang or a car pulled into our driveway, I was terrified that her body had been found. I know most people want to know what happened when a loved one disappears, but for me as long as no body turned up, I could hold onto the hope that she’d be found and brought home.

“And then one day the call I’d been fearing came. Cassie’s body had been discovered. Her identity confirmed. She was found in a city in Asia. In a Dumpster.”

Gage brought her against his chest. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I’m sorry, baby.”

Mallory put her arms around Gage’s waist. Her eyes welled with tears, soaking into his shirt. “Cassie had been a victim of human traffickers and sold into slavery.”

“Were her traffickers ever caught?”

Mallory swallowed to clear the tears that clogged her throat. “To this day, we don’t know who trafficked her or who she was sold to. Her killer was never found.”

“That’s why you’ve been tracking the disappearances of young women all these years,” Gage said gently. “You’re trying to find the people who sold Cassie.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He knew that he’d drawn the correct conclusion.

She raised her head from his chest and looked up at him. “And now, I finally have a lead to a human trafficking operation.”

“You think Considine is the one who abducted Cassie.” Gage said it as a statement not a question.

“Yes. I can’t let him do the same to those twelve women. I won’t.”

Gage took her face gently between his broad palms. “You’re doing all that can be done. Wilder will be apprehended and through him, Considine. Because of you, Considine’s operation will be shut down.”

Mallory swallowed the last of the tears and straightened her spine. “It has to go down that way, Gage. He has to be made to pay for what he did to Cassie. I have to give that closure to her parents. I need it for myself.”

His eyes became shadowed. “I hope having that gives you what you need.”

She sensed they were no longer talking about her. “Why were you at the cabin, Gage?”

He lowered his arms, releasing her. “Let it go, Mallory.”

“I would, if you could.”

He was silent for so long, Mallory was afraid he would remain so, but he began to speak. “Six months ago, I was working on a case involving a drug cartel. The bust was big and we arrested several top people including the guy who ran the operation. During his arrest, the leader opened fire. Took down a couple of our guys. I took him out.

“It was a clean kill. Internal Affairs cleared me. Used necessary force, etcetera. The guy I shot had a brother who was his second in command. The brother got away before we could arrest him. We couldn’t find any trace of him and with his business severely crippled, if not entirely wiped out, we believed he’d left the country for parts unknown. I believed that.”

Gage’s features went taut. His brows lowered over his eyes that darkened with pain. “I was married at one time. My ex-wife and I have been divorced for longer than the marriage lasted, but out of that mess we got twin boys. It was my weekend with them. The boys wanted to go to the zoo. I never saw it coming. One minute we were watching the monkeys and the next my sons were on the ground, bleeding. Dying.”

“Gage . . .”

He shuddered and bent his head. He fell silent, his throat working. “The brother of the man I’d killed was the one who shot my sons. I shot and killed him right after he fired those two shots, but it was already too late. Ben and Josh died instantly. They were four years old.”

Tears fell onto Mallory’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Gage.”

“After my sons were killed, I couldn’t do the job anymore. Didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be around anyone. Mitch had a cabin he used during summer months. He offered it to me for as long as I wanted it. I closed up my house in Washington. Would have resigned my position with the police department, but my superior wouldn’t accept my resignation. Gave me leave instead.” Gage closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, his expression was so pained, so raw, it took her breath. He stared directly into her eyes. “My call. My lapse in judgment cost my son’s lives.”

Mallory’s voice broke along with her heart. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Gage.”

Her cell phone rang. Once. Twice. She allowed it to ring and put her arms around him.

He stiffened. “You should get that.”

Mallory didn’t answer the phone and she didn’t release him.

“You need to get that,” he said.

Not wanting to crowd him, Mallory took the call. It was York. Billy Wilder was in custody.

Snowbound: Chapter Ten

A light rain was falling, turning the snow on the ground to slush when they left Mallory’s apartment. Gage activated the windshield wipers and in the absence of conversation, the swish swish of the blades moving across the glass became the dominant sound in the car.

He pulled in to the lot of the Bureau office. Mallory popped the door latch, then noticed he hadn’t done the same. “Aren’t you coming in? This is what we’ve been waiting for.” But she noticed his expression was grim and she felt a frisson of alarm. “Gage?”

“I’m going to park the car here for you and take a cab to pick up the truck.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay, but I can drive you once this is done with Wilder.”

“I’m picking up the truck and driving to the cabin right after. Now that Wilder is in custody, Considine will have no reason to come after you. You’re safe.”