Yeah, he’d rather have had her pissed off at him any day.
A few minutes later he pulled into a parking space on the street, situating the vehicle near the small lot that served the bar. Only a few cars filled the spaces now, since the sun hadn’t set yet. But in another hour, the club would be crawling with every stripe of punk imaginable out for a good time on a Friday night.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go in together.” Vanessa blurted out a thought that—surprisingly—mirrored his own.
He wanted to find out who’d taken his car last night, but not at the expense of Vanessa’s safety.
“How about I go in and ask the questions on my own? If I’m not out in ten minutes, you can call for every cop in the city to haul me in. Deal?”
“I just meant we might look too much like law enforcement if we go in there together.”
“So I’ll go in alone.” He didn’t care what her reasons were for not going in together—he’d jump on any opportunity to keep her safe in the car.
“Unless we went in there like a couple.” Her eyes slid over his chest. Lower. Then back up to his face. “Sort of all over each other. Then we wouldn’t look like cops.”
“Appealing as it sounds to be all over you—an assignment I could fulfill with ease, by the way—I think we’d still raise a flag just because of our clothes. We look too out of place to hang out here.”
“Not enough bling?” Her smile didn’t begin to ease the worries gnawing at his gut from picturing her in a hangout like this.
“Either that, or we need to go the other way and look a little more street smart. People around here are either struggling to make a living or their pockets are overflowing with money skimmed off everyone else.” He scruffed up his hair just enough to blend in, then un-tucked his shirt.
He watched Vanessa start to do the same when a car driving into the Raven Club parking lot caught his eye out the window.
A way-too-freaking-familiar car.
“Wait.” He grabbed Vanessa’s hand to halt her flurry of movement in the seat beside him. “One of my partners just drove into the lot.”
Sinking deeper into his seat, he dragged Vanessa with him.
“McPherson?” she whispered as she watched, even though there wasn’t much of a chance anyone would overhear them inside the car.
“No. Vercelli. You never spoke to them?” He hit the button to lower the power window on her side of the car, opening it just a crack.
She shook her head, eyes still trained on his business associate who fell firmly into the “bling” category as he stepped out of his Lexus and walked toward a side entrance to the Raven Club. “My assignment to find you came from higher up.”
Tension threaded through him as they watched his partner—a guy he’d gone to college with, a guy who’d been a frat brother, a guy he’d trusted. Mark didn’t make it to the back entrance before the door swung open, revealing a tall kid in a wrinkled tuxedo shirt and crooked tie.
Mark’s nephew.
Recognition pummeled Alec, hitting him from all sides at once as he put the pieces together. The vaguely familiar eyes of the carjacker last night. The presence of his partner in the Bronx when Alec had never known Mark to set foot out of Brooklyn.
He didn’t realize he’d started swearing under his breath until Vanessa jabbed him in the leg.
“Shh.” She cocked her head at a strange angle to put her ear closer to the crack in the window.
Too bad Alec had all the evidence necessary. Then again, he didn’t need to make a case against the guy who was supposed to be his friend.
He only needed to get even.
Fury flooded his veins as he remembered the brute force the carjackers had used on Vanessa. The way her soft skin has been torn away from her spine when they’d dragged her across the street.
They were in as much danger—and more—than even he’d realized.
Starting the car, he didn’t much care if Mark saw them leave. The important thing was to get Vanessa out of here before Alec lost it and took out his alleged good friend right here on Tremont Street for all the world to see.
“What are you doing?” Vanessa turned her face to the side, mouthing the words at Alec as he squealed out of the parking space and into a U-turn on the street. “We didn’t even get to question anyone at the bar.”
“I take it you don’t recognize the punk in the bow tie?”
Hitting the gas, he swerved around a parked truck and ran a light just as it turned red.
“The kid who looked like a waiter?”
“That kid waved a 9 mm in your face last night, Vanessa. I hope your partner is still on duty because you can tell him you just found your carjacker.”
“Definitely not kidding.” He slid onto the entrance ramp for the Bruckner Expressway without too much hassle now that dusk was falling and traffic had thinned out. “Vercelli must have hired the kid to follow you after he made the bogus complaint to the NYPD about me embezzling funds.”
“And I led him right to you.” For the first time, she regretted doing such a good job on the force. What might this guy have done to Alec if he’d been alone last night on that dark alley in the Bronx?
She shuddered with the thought.
“Lucky for me, you’re going to be able to back up my story with the police department.” He seemed content to let her off the hook, his tense muscles relaxing the more distance they put between them and the Raven Club. “You’ve seen enough now to know that at least one of my partners wants me dead, scared or in jail. You can make arrests. Convict the bastards.”
“With what? My say-so?” After seeing the way her sister’s case had dried up into nothing, Vanessa wouldn’t risk letting Alec’s enemies walk away. “We don’t have physical evidence yet. We need to find your car. Scare up a paper trail.”
“You’ve got the disks.” He jerked a thumb toward the back seat where he’d stored the package they’d taken from above his ceiling tiles.
“Which may or may not have survived the temperature fluctuations of being stored near the ductwork. And beyond that, we know how easy it can be to tamper with that kind of data. Convicting your partners of anything is going to require more time. More legwork.”
“Fine. But let the police do it. I’m ready to go into the cop shop with you now that my uncle’s behind bars and you’ve seen my partners’ got it in for me.” Downshifting for a patch of gridlock around a construction site along the shoulder of the expressway, Alec glanced over at her. “They won’t try to arrest me if we have reason to question the evidence offered up by my partners, right?”
“Right. In theory.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He checked his rearview mirror, probably watching to see if they’d been followed. The way she should be doing.
Her objectivity and professional distance seemed to be slipping away from her by the hour, distorted by the presence of emotions she’d never felt before, twisted even further by her unease at being in this part of town.
Thankfully, they’d be leaving the Bronx behind soon. The exit for a bridge back to Manhattan was just a couple of miles ahead.
“I’m a little worried about why my lieutenant sent me out after you in the first place without asking me to look into McPherson Real Estate and the legitimacy of your partners’ complaint. I’d just assumed he’d done the homework and thought we needed to bring you in. But since he didn’t bother and still had me come after you…”
“You think there’s corruption in your department?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to guarantee they’ll let you go without having more evidence to back up your claim.” She didn’t think the head of their precinct would be involved in anything illegal. No way. No how.
But she couldn’t deny a small niggle of worry about Lieutenant Durant looking out for some of his own investments if he’d allowed McPherson to press their claim without checking into the details behind it.
“Well I’m not going back into hiding.” He sped past the exit that would take them to Manhattan and continued south toward Queens. “I’m buying back my freedom one way or another, and if the cops won’t help me reclaim my life then I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.”
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t help but visualize the gun she knew was secured at his waist. How far would he go to recover his old life?
“I mean I’m going to call on my personal resources to get the evidence we need and put these guys behind bars.”
“And you’re going to find evidence in Queens?” She squinted up at the signs overhead, wondering what on earth he had in mind.
“LaGuardia. I’ve got a private plane out there and I can have a pilot meet us at the airport within half an hour.” He peered over at her from the driver’s side, his dark eyes intense. “Welcome to the world of high finance, Vanessa. You’re about to get a bird’s-eye view of the world you walked away from when you turned your back on the MBA.”
“Ready?” Alec nodded toward the aircraft, the bright halogen lamps ringing the boarding area casting the whole bizarre world of a corporate magnate in a surreal light. She’d had dreams that looked sort of like this. Only there hadn’t been a guy with a gun carting her aboard the plane.
“Ready for what?” The stresses of the last twenty-four hours had taken a toll on her clear thinking, clouding her brain with an assortment of worries mixed up with her past. “I have no idea where you’re going and for all I know, you could be trying to flee the country. I’d be ten kinds of an idiot to get on that plane with you when I’m just supposed to be locating you and bringing you into the station for some questions.”
“And why would I head to the border
now
after I’ve been hiding under my uncle’s nose in the Bronx for six months while he was still a free man?” He slipped his hand beneath her hair and massaged the back of her neck with soft, subtle pressure. “I’ve got a place in the Hamptons, close to where Sergio keeps his mistress. We can ask Donata some questions, find out where they’re keeping my uncle and figure out if he’s been scheming with my partners or not.”
She rested her palm on the metal handrail to the stairs leading up to the plane, wading through too many thoughts to name. The idea of meeting a woman who had the hots for Alec held zero appeal. Of course, the idea of him going to speak with Kittykat alone sort of sucked, too.
“And you want me to go with you, even though Sergio is in jail? I could go back to the precinct now. Find out more about what the police have on your uncle. Possibly we could talk to him while he’s safely behind bars.”
“The threat to you is stronger than ever since my partner knows we’ve joined forces.” He gripped both her shoulders, steadying her while he broadcast the reality she didn’t want to see. “He obviously wants me out of the business, and my share is worth a hell of a lot of money. He’s in too deep to let us walk away now.”
Vanessa felt herself relenting, knowing she had no choice but to see this thing through with Alec. She didn’t understand how her life had gotten tangled up with his so fast, but she also knew she wouldn’t walk away until he was safe from the web of deceit woven around him by people he should have been able to trust. Like his partners, she was in too deep now. Committed to a cause.
Because surely it was the cause and not just the man himself that had her wearing disguises, calling in sick to work and now—good God—jumping on a plane to the Hamptons.
“Any idea why this guy you’ve worked with for years would turn on you?” That part bothered her, contradicted her understanding of human nature—limited though it might be.
As much as she resented the violence in the part of town where she’d grown up, at least you knew who the enemy was. Gangsters advertised their allegiances in the colors they wore, the tattoos they branded on their bodies. But in Alec’s world, the enemy remained more subtle, showing up in your own family or among your friends.
Alec peered out over the tarmac where a few other private jets waited. Squinting against the halogen lights, he turned toward the parking area where cars dropped off the privileged few who could take advantage of this kind of luxury.
“Could we discuss this once we are airborne?” He lowered his voice even though the pilot had disappeared inside the plane. “I’m paying this guy by the hour and I’ll be glad to put some distance between us and Vercelli. He won’t know where we’ve gone until we land, and even then it will take him a while to catch up.”
But would she be safer to take off for parts unknown with a mysterious man who carried a gun and cursed in multiple languages? Add in his major sex appeal and the fact that one night with him had dredged up emotions she didn’t even know she possessed, and Alec Messina was a very dangerous man.
That didn’t stop her from climbing the stairs to the Cessna, though. One way or another, she would help Alec gather whatever evidence necessary to see justice served.
But as Alec pulled up the stairway and locked the door, effectively sealing them inside the passenger compartment all alone, she didn’t have any illusion that she would be safe.