“Crap.” She dug the chargers out of her overnight bag and finally settled on the outlet in the bathroom, since it was the easiest for her to get to.
With purse in hand, she headed downstairs for coffee and breakfast. The restaurant was moderately busy, being on the tail end of the morning rush. She patiently waited for her server to bring her coffee and take her order, then sat back to read a
Miami Herald
that had been left on a room divider next to her booth.
She kicked herself in the ass that she’d missed their calls the night before.
Maybe this was a mistake.
Except that Mandaline had been spot-on about a bunch of things.
Then again, she knew she shouldn’t be trying to shoulder blame for her decision onto her friend. Libbie had wanted to come find her men, wanted any excuse to do it. Mandaline just happened to provide exactly the justification she’d been looking for.
She took her time eating and perusing the paper. After her third cup of coffee and nearly finishing her mushroom and swiss omelet, she was ready to go hunt down one or both of her men. Not to mention her stomach had settled again.
Except that when she tried to stand after signing the credit card receipt the waitress brought her, she realized how sore and tired she still was.
“Crap.”
She quickly consulted the maps tucked in her purse. One of them a highway map she’d bought at her first gas stop east of the Alley, the others printouts from Google Maps after she looked up Allan’s office address.
I’m not that far away.
She could call a cab to take her to his office. It meant she wouldn’t have to tax her already struggling brain, which didn’t seem to want to take the upper hand against her fibro fog that morning, or her achingly sore body with any more activities than she had to.
“That’s settled, then,” she mumbled to herself.
Her second attempt to stand proved successful. She made it to the front desk. The clerk called her a cab, which arrived in a few minutes.
It wasn’t until she was almost to Allan’s office building that she remembered both cell phones lying on the bathroom counter in her room, still plugged into the wall.
She laid her head back against her seat.
Frak.
Ben left Allan waiting for him in the stairwell of the parking garage while he retrieved the rental car. When he pulled up to the stairwell door, Allan dove into the backseat and kept his head down.
“We’ll go get your car,” Ben said. “Hopefully, no one’s found it yet. You stay down when we get there, and I’ll get into your car. Give me ten minutes before you get out of the backseat, and then you drive straight to the office.”
“Bullshit. I’m going to the house with you.”
Ben fought the urge to pound on the steering wheel. He’d quickly grown used to taking evasive maneuvers in busy Miami traffic and spent fifteen minutes weaving his way north before jumping on the Florida Turnpike to head south again toward the parking garage where he’d left Allan’s car the night before. They’d been using the garage for nearly two weeks, with no sign yet of any of Bianco’s men finding or following them there, but he’d felt the need to start using yet another one.
Paranoid, yes. But they were both still alive.
“Why the hell would she do this?” Allan asked from the backseat. “We told her it wasn’t safe.”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to spank her ass for it when we find her.”
“If we find her.”
Ben’s fingers clamped tightly around the steering wheel. “
When
,” he insisted.
Allan went silent for a few minutes. “It’s got to be rough on her. I don’t see why we can’t call her more often.”
“Look, this isn’t a perfect solution, I know, but it’s what’s safest for her.”
More accusatory silence from the backseat. Then, “I miss her.”
Ben tried to rein in his anger. “I miss her, too. Believe me.”
“I’m turning in my resignation this week.”
The announcement startled Ben so much he nearly missed his exit. “What?”
“Yeah.” Allan’s voice sounded quiet.
“But what about the trial?”
“I’m done. I’m sick of Miami. I used to think it’s what I wanted. I know we haven’t talked about this a lot, and I don’t know for sure what your plans are, but I’ve been thinking a family law practice in Brooksville sounds like a good idea. Now, I’m sure it is.”
An additional weight Ben hadn’t realized he’d been carrying suddenly rolled from his shoulders. No, they hadn’t talked much about it. He’d been too busy caught up with Libbie and then trying to get them back to Miami and keep them safe. “I think every law practice needs an in-house security specialist.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He rolled to a stop at a red light and forced himself not to look over the seat at his brother in case anyone had followed them. “I looked into what it’d take for me to get a PI license. I could also check into doing work for insurance companies. You know, claims work.”
“I know a certain sweet little baker who would enjoy your help in her shop.”
Ben felt a smile crease his lips. It felt like weeks since he’d smiled. “Yeah, I’d also thought about that.”
“Look at that, we both have baking to fall back on if our careers don’t pan out,” Allan joked, getting a laugh from his brother. “I never thought you’d ever give up being a cop.”
Ben urged the car forward when the light turned green. “Neither did I. But I never thought we’d ever meet a woman like Libbie, either. And I’ve given up enough of my personal life. I’ve lived, eaten, and breathed the Bianco crime family for the past three years. I’m ready to start living again. I’m too young for this shit. I want a family. And I also don’t want Libbie to get a call in the middle of the night like Mom did.”
“You mean it? You want a family?”
Ben felt his face heat. “Yeah,” he quietly said. “If Libbie does.”
It seemed like forever when Allan finally said, “Me, too.”
They reached the parking garage and Ben looked around. After parking on the second floor and waiting several minutes, no other cars came up. He moved to the fifth floor and shut the car off, leaving the keys in the ignition. Without turning around, he said, “Looks clear. Give me ten, then please, go to your office. Okay? I’ll call you if I find her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to your house. I want to cruise by first, see if there’s anyone watching it. See if she’s there, waiting. We lied and told her we were staying there, remember?”
Allan sounded angry. “Yeah, I remember. I also told you I thought that was a bad idea at the time.”
“Yes, you told me so.” Ben let out a sigh. “Happy?”
“No. Not until we know she’s safe.”
“Go to your office. Wait for me there.” He got out before Allan could say anything else, closing the door and pocketing the set of house keys as if they were the car keys, just on the off chance anyone was watching them. He found the stairs and took them, two at a time, down to the third floor where Allan’s car was parked. From the safety of the stairwell doorway, he hit the button on the key fob to start the ignition and waited. After two minutes, when the car didn’t explode, he slowly approached it, opened the driver’s side door, then closed it again without getting in and retreated to the stairwell, leaving it sitting there running.
After another two minutes he deemed it safe and returned to the car. He got in, quickly leaving the garage after paying cash.
Yes, an overabundance of caution, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Bianco stooped to desperate measures to get Allan and him out of the way. Using explosives wasn’t Bianco’s method, but there was always a first time.
And he didn’t want to be that first time.
What he hadn’t revealed to Allan was that he no longer had a permanent address. He had a triple storage unit in West Palm Beach with most of his things in it, and a month-to-month cash lease on an extended stay hotel studio room in Margate before he checked out when they left for Brooksville. When he’d realized the Bianco case was going to trial, he’d quickly packed and moved out of his rented condo, knowing he needed the ability to leave fast with little trace.
Bianco was not a man who gave up easily. A permanent address was far less important to Ben than staying alive and healthy and keeping his brother in the same condition.
He quickly drove to Allan’s house, in a middle-class suburb almost all the way to Coral Gables.
He circled the block once, twice, happy to see people didn’t park on the street around here, meaning less likelihood of someone watching the house at that moment.
He pulled into the driveway but didn’t pop the garage door. Walking around back, he didn’t see anyone inside the house, which he knew didn’t mean anything, but still was a good sign. He also didn’t see any signs of forced entry.
He returned to the front door and hurried in, shutting the alarm off.
Empty.
“Dammit.” No sign she’d been by, no note on the door, nothing.
While he was there he took the opportunity to grab a couple more suits out of Allan’s closet, then reset the alarm and locked the door behind him.
The only place he could go was to the office and to keep trying to call her.
* * * *
Allan forced himself to stick to the routines Ben had set up. He took an indirect route to the office, constantly checking his rearview mirror for anyone following him, and doubling back several times just in case.
All clear.
At the parking garage, he swiped his ID, which had Ben’s name on it even though it was his own picture, to get into the garage. Because of the case, his office had issued “Ben” a special employee access pass to go through the back entrance, avoiding the main public entryway and enormous, and extremely busy, lobby area. He nodded to the bailiff on duty at a desk inside, showing his pass.
The bailiff waved him through.
Yet another of Ben’s ideas, to keep everyone in his office thinking he was Ben, and that Ben was him. Ben knew the case as well as he did. Depositions were actually handled by the lead attorneys on the case, so they didn’t have to worry about any charges of impropriety should the ruse be discovered before the trial started. Once the trial started, Ben would completely disguise himself and Allan would go back to his normal appearance.
They’d even swapped wallets.
Only behind closed doors would Allan get on the phone and handle calls related to the case, Ben listening in from behind Allan’s desk. No one could tell their voices apart.
Well, maybe Libbie can by now
, he wistfully thought.
Ben, while still officially employed by the sheriff’s office, was only working behind the scenes doing support work and research on tech crime cases to keep him out of the office and out of harm’s way. He could work on his cases from anywhere he had an Internet connection.
Allan made it to his office without interruptions and closed the door behind him. His office assistant, thinking he was Ben, wouldn’t come in to bug him.
He started tackling calls to take his mind off the wait.
* * * *
Libbie stared at the enormous lobby behind the glass entry doors. As foggy as she felt, she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
I want to see my guys.
With that thought in mind, she got in line behind several dozen others waiting to pass through a metal detector to gain entry to the building. By the time she made it into the main part of the lobby, she already felt mentally exhausted in additional to physically, and she had to sit down for a moment to rest.
There were signs all over, people hurrying to reach their destinations, and an ever-present loud buzz of voices, cell phone ringers, and noise from the metal detectors and waiting people reverberating off the tile floors and through the large space.
She felt like crying.
Buck up. You can do this.
Her flare was worse than she’d originally thought. She hadn’t had fibro fog this bad in months. No doubt triggered by the drive combined with stress and exhaustion and loneliness and worry about her men.
She started with one large sign of office listings and scanned through it when she realized her brain didn’t want to pick out a pattern to the arrangement. She could read names and office numbers, but it just didn’t make any sense. Allan’s business card had a street address, but no suite or office number. And without her cell, she couldn’t call to have him come down and meet her.
Looking around, she almost smacked herself in the forehead when she spotted two uniformed bailiffs standing behind an information desk on the other side of the lobby. Libbie hurried over and waited her turn.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I’m here to see Allan Donohue. He’s in the State Attorney’s office.”
The bailiff nodded and said, “440.” He pointed. “To the left, elevator’s on the right, go left when you get to the fourth floor. Next.”
She put out a hand. “I’m sorry.” She offered him what she hoped wasn’t too pitiful a smile. “I’m…I’m not feeling good this morning. I have difficulty remembering things. Could you please write that down for me?” His eyes narrowed as he turned his attention more fully upon her. She took a deep breath. “Please? I have fibromyalgia and I couldn’t even drive this morning it’s so bad. I had to take a cab.”