Edge of the Heat 5 (8 page)

“OK,” Emma whispered into his shirt. “You get some sleep.”

“I will. I’m going in two seconds. But you guys have to promise me you’ll go on your honeymoon.”

Emma nodded eagerly, and her phone rang. She looked at it. “Vivian.” She answered it and slid into the kitchen.

Jerry watched her go and then addressed Craig. “Emma said you had a list for me?”

“Oh yeah, here.” Craig pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.

Jerry looked it over. There were 18 items on it. The first four read: 1. Did she rent a car? 2. Are there cameras at the apartment building? 3. Are there cameras outside the reception hall? 4. Did she take a taxi? Jerry nodded as he read.
This
is what Gagne should be doing. But would he? Jerry ticked off a few in his mind that he could check out himself. But could he really? Not being a cop would people even talk to him?

An idea came into his mind. He knew it was a bad idea, but he had to ask anyway.

“Craig, would it be super horrible if a civilian like me
borrowed
a friend’s badge. Say a police or FBI badge, not for personal gain but to investigate a crime?”

Craig nodded. “Yep, it would be more trouble than the person or the friend ever wanted to deal with if they were found out. But I know a way that nobody would get in trouble for, and it would work almost as good.”

Jerry leaned forward. His tongue snaked out and wet his lips.

“You can get fake press credentials. And as long as you use your real name and don’t access anything you shouldn’t like actual video, it’s not even a crime. And people will talk to the press even more eagerly than they do the police.”

Of course!
Jerry thought.
What a good idea.

“Thanks man, I owe you one.” Jerry stood up and put out his hand.

Craig stood up too and shook it. “Not even close Jer, not even close.”

“Lock the door on your way out, OK? And tell Emma I said bye. And have a great time on your honeymoon.”

Craig nodded. Jerry disappeared into his bedroom and fell asleep as his head settled into the pillow. His sleep was deep and dreamless and when he woke he knew what to do.

S
ara became fully awake in less than a second at the sound of footsteps stopping at her apartment door. Her dream evaporated into nothing. She rolled silently out of bed, fully clothed, and slid her feet into her shoes. She ran noiselessly out of the bedroom, through the sitting room and to the door, threading her eye to the peephole without touching the door itself. Just a maid, consulting her chart. Sara took a moment to watch the maid and make sure she was what she seemed, and then padded silently back to her room. 8:45 a.m. Time to get up anyway.

Surveillance the night before had gone well, although she hadn’t liked what she saw. The neighborhood was rough. The yard was non-existent. There were people walking outside even at 1 in the morning and almost nowhere to bed down and hide. The house was small, but every shade had been pulled. A parabolic microphone probably wouldn’t work, and neither would a laser microphone. She had forgotten to get Manny’s cell phone number from Jessica, and so she hadn’t been able to use her ultra-secret spy gadget that had cost her $550,000 two years ago and that the U.S. government wouldn’t even admit existed. They wanted to use the technology for themselves without the courts interfering, so they just denied that such a tool had invented yet and spied on whoever they liked with impunity.

She had an idea though, of how
it
could be done with little fuss and no mess, if she was willing to use the last of her business drug stash. She was. She could always get more. These days it was easy to get the worst street drugs that money could buy, even the drugs that are generally rare in the United States.

Sara showered and got ready for the day swiftly, checking her alerts, then gathering her things and heading out to implement her plan in her usual, merciless way. She put aside her thoughts of pimps and murder and walked swiftly in the unbearable heat until she found a used car lot just off the strip. Planet Reliable Used Cars took up prime real estate any casino would have paid millions for. As she walked in the front gate she saw at least 20 salespeople with customers and 5 or 6 without. Las Vegas visitors must love to fly in, buy a car instead of rent, and then what? Did they abandon the car? And did Planet Reliable manage to get the cars back somehow? However they did it, it was working for them.

Sara felt eyes on her and looked up in time to see 3 salesmen closing in on her. She picked up her pace and did a quick jog between rows, looking for a woman. Usually the woman weren’t quite as ... slimy, was the only word her mind could come up with.

She didn’t see any women, so she finally decided on a younger looking guy, in a blue suit with a striped tie. He looked different, fresher than his counterparts. She hoped he wasn’t a complete newbie or a complete jerk.

She strode to him, ignoring the other men and put out her hand. “Brook Barnes. I need a newer Toyota Camry with no problems, any color, and I need to be out of here in 45 minutes. Can you do it?”

The young man blinked. His hand went up on auto-pilot but his mind seemed to still be trying to process what she said.
Great
. She looked around. She’d have to choose one of these other guys.

“Yeah, yeah, I can do it,” he said quickly, seeing he was about to lose her. “I’ve got a gold Camry that’ll be perfect for you. And I’ll get you out in 44, Miss uh, Barnes.”

He squeezed her hand and held it too long. That was fine. It would help her if he decided he liked her.

“Perfect, let’s see it.”

He led her in through the maze of cars, took her on a short test drive, and in 58 minutes she was back on the street, driving her newer Camry that purred under her fingertips. Not bad. She hadn’t really expected to be able to complete the sale in 45, but she needed to give him something to shoot for.

After a heavy lunch, her next stop was a high end clothing shop inside a casino. Here she picked up 5 large silk scarfs, all in different colors, plus 5 drastically different pairs of sunglasses, and 5 different sun hats. She considered cutting her hair, and decided it wasn’t necessary, for now. She bought some hair ties, and 5 different shades of lipstick, plus a throw-away cell phone, then ran back to her car.

In the car, she tied her hair back, put on a silver pair of sunglasses with reflective lenses, and a large floppy sun hat. She used a hair tie expertly to connect the edges of a bright pink silk scarf and put it on like a flowing shirt over her dark tank top. Reaching in her bag she found a lipstick and applied it with a heavy hand. She looked in the mirror and imagined who this woman was that she was looking at.
Hint of a southern accent, lots of money, loud personality
. She tucked a silk scarf around her bag, changing its color, and changed the cross-body strap to a hand-carry strap.

Ready, she looked up gun stores on her phone and headed out. She pulled into the parking lot of the Smoke N Gun and strutted in, heading straight to the counter. She knew what she needed.

A white-haired gentleman with a Sig Sauer pistol strapped to his belt came to her. “Help you?” he inquired, sounding bored.

“Got any boot knives, sugar?” she asked, in a high voice that sounded strange to her ears. Men loved it though. Women hated it so when she dealt with women she used her normal voice.

He raised an eyebrow, his boredom gone. “Yes ma’am, let me show you.”

He led her down the cabinet to the knives and pulled out three wicked looking knives, placing them on the counter in front of her.

“Know what you’re looking for?” he asked.

She picked up a long, black knife with a razor sharp blade. “I’ll know it when I see it. Got anything like this but with grips?”

He thought for a moment then turned around, leaving her at the counter. When he came back out he carried a lightweight knife with holes in the handle and a super-sharp point. She hefted it in her hand and stuck her fingers in the holes. This was good. She’d abandoned all her weapons at her old apartment except the Ruger. She couldn’t wait to feel well-armed again.

“I’ll take 2 of these, honey.”

The man nodded approvingly and wrapped up her packages. She paid and got out of there, already looking up the next gun store on her phone.

She hit two more stores, never buying anything that she needed to provide an ID for, and hopefully providing a different persona to the security cameras and watchful gun-clerk eyes each time. She didn’t want to be remembered in case anything went sour with Manny and some too-smart cop sniffed around where he didn’t belong. She didn’t expect anything to go wrong with Manny though. He looked 100% soft and used to only dealing with women who didn’t fight back. He would be easy, especially if she played her cards right.

Done with the gun shops, she laid everything out on the seat next to her. The sun was setting outside and she wanted to go over her plan one more time. She was parked inside a large parking garage, on the 4th floor. Her car’s a/c kept her cool while she inventoried what she had.

2 boot knives with sheaths. Her small Ruger pistol with laser - the perfect concealed carry for a woman. A holster for it that would clip to her bra. 6 extra magazines for the Ruger, giving her a total of 43 easy access .380 rounds. A belt holster for the magazines. And her bag with her high-tech cell-phone sniffer and her no-tech drugs. She felt ready for anything. Well, maybe not anything, but certainly anything that a small-time pimp like Manny was likely to dish out. She’d seen his operation. It was barely an operation. Of course the women he was terrorizing might feel differently, she knew.

As she filled her magazines and put her holsters on, she felt a pang of some emotion in her chest she couldn’t identify. She pushed it away. Emotion wasn’t part of this job. Emotion got people killed.

Sara pulled out onto the street. She needed to make one stop to get Manny’s cell phone number and drop some things off to Jessica, and then she would get a few hours of sleep. Enough that she would be sharp. Even if it was a small-time, low risk hit, she was determined to be at her best.

J
erry’s eyes flew open at exactly 5:59 a.m. He swung his feet onto the floor and strode into the bathroom. Today would be a grab breakfast on the go kind of day. He had a lot to do.

By 6:45 he was on the road. His first stop was the Eller’s Mansion where the wedding reception had been held two night ago.
Two whole nights ago
- the thought made him sick. If Sara had been
taken somewhere
by someone (he wouldn’t quite let his mind say
kidnapped) anything
could have happened in 2 nights. (He wouldn’t quite let his mind say raped and murdered either, although those were the two words that tried to surface most often in the darkest parts of his brain.)

If Jerry were to be completely honest with himself, this wasn’t the first time he’d struggled with thoughts like these. When his mom didn’t come home from work that one night, so many years ago, the first thing he had done was call the restaurant that she’d waitressed at. She’d been due home at midnight, and Jerry and his dad had fallen asleep. When he woke up in the middle of the night and she still wasn’t there he made the call. When the hostess had found out what he was calling about, her voice took on a guarded quality right away. Jerry was only 16, but even he could recognize it. She knew something. Something that Jerry wasn’t going to like. But all she’d said was “your mom left when her shift ended.”

Jerry hadn’t known what to do. Should he call the police? When Jerry asked if he should call the police Darren Mansko had simply shrugged his shoulders.

Jerry did call. The young, male cop who showed up looked and sounded bored, as if he’d taken hundreds of calls just like this before and they all turned out to be nothing. Jerry had felt increasingly nervous with each question the officer asked. But he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the cop addressed each question to his dad, then seemed irritated when Jerry answered it. (Luckily his dad had given an approving nod every time Jerry had spoken.) Or maybe he’d already started to have an idea what his mom might have done.

The cop showed back up at 6:30 and told them there was an APB out for Cassie Mansko, but they shouldn’t expect too much from it, because she was most likely either holed up in a motel or taken off with her boyfriend. Jerry’s nervousness exploded into a dozen different emotions at the word boyfriend. Surprise. Anger. Disbelief. Fear. Anxiety. Sadness. He watched his father carefully, but saw nothing in his face but a quiet resignation.

Jerry listened to the cop talk and realized two things. One, the cop had already decided that his mother had just taken off, and two, there would be no more investigation. No follow up. This case was closed in this young, bored officer’s mind.

As the days became long and dismal and Jerry’s mother didn’t return, didn’t write, didn’t call, and her car didn’t turn up, Jerry tried to accept that his mom had abandoned him and his dad. But sometimes, especially at night when he lay in his bed, after helping his father into his own bed like he were a small child, he wondered: What if his mom hadn’t simply taken off? What if something had happened to her? Thoughts tried to swirl around in his head and suffocate him with their weight. Thoughts like
didn’t she love me? Even if she stopped loving daddy, did she stop loving me too?
He thought she had loved him still. But that, to him, meant that something happened to her. Because moms who love their kids don’t just take off. But if something happened to her, and he and his dad and the stupid cops didn’t even
look
for her, then they were the ones abandoning
her
.

Late at night, in the stillest, quietest hour, he would tell himself he had to do
something
. He couldn’t just sit here and accept that his mother, his sweet mother who had kissed him before bed every night, read him countless bedtime stories, soothed him to sleep when he was sick, listened to him talk endlessly about fishing, laughed at even his silliest jokes, had never taken a sick day, had never yelled at him in a fit of anger, and whose cool head could talk anyone out of an argument or a fight, had taken off forever without even saying goodbye. In those dark, mute hours, he could hear the words
kidnapped
,
raped
,
calling for help
, very clearly in his 16 year old brain.