Relentless Pursuit (8 page)

Remy had thought the same thing after talking to the Captain.  Things weren't adding up and this whole scenario stunk—like a set up.

“They didn't find any spent shell casings at your place.  Can you remember anything else, maybe what the gun looked like?”

Jennifer glared at him, disbelief written across her face.  “Are you kidding?  No, I don't remember what the gun looked like.  It was black.  It was a gun.  I was kind of busy looking at my brother, worried he was dead.  Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Dial it back, sweetheart.  I'm just trying to piece things together.  It's my job, remember?”  He rolled over to face her, narrowing the space between them.  His hand slid along her cheek, his thumb rubbing small circles on her soft skin. The movement was meant to offer comfort.  He stared into her big blue eyes, which at the moment were glaring daggers at him.

“We need to get some sleep.  In the morning we'll make some plans.  I've got a few ideas of where we can head.  You'll be safe, I promise.  Shut off the light.”  She turned and flipped it off, plunging the room into near darkness.  A faint sliver of light spilled through the split in the curtains, bathing the foot of the bed in a dim glow.

They lay side by side in the king-sized bed not touching, but both unable to sleep.  Jennifer tossed and turned.  Remy knew the instant she began crying, silent tears flowing.  Sobs wracked her body even though she fought letting them escape.  She turned on her side, facing away from him, as though trying to spare him the anguish tormenting her.

Remy rolled onto his side, scooting closer against her back, wrapping his arm over her and throwing his right leg across hers, pinning her body against his.  She stiffened against his hold and started to protest.

“Shh, little one.   Go to sleep.  I'll take care of you.”  She gave a little hiccuping sigh and relaxed.  Within moments she'd drifted off to sleep.  Remy knew, with her body cuddled against his, it was going to be a long sleepless night.

Chapter Seven

D
ubshenko glared down at the unconscious man lying on the floor.  He'd had such high hopes for Carlo.  Instead, he'd betrayed him. 
Idiot
.  Nobody crossed Vladimir Dubshenko and lived to tell about it.  Carlo thought he'd been so clever letting his package get away.  He drew back his foot and placed a well-aimed kick into his ribs.  Too bad he wasn't awake to feel it.  Not to worry, though, he'd make sure the bastard felt every ache, pain and bruise before he finished what he'd started earlier.  Carlo didn't know it, but he was a dead man.

Dubshenko couldn't help but be impressed, though.  Carlo had been smart enough to wear a vest.  Otherwise, he'd already be dead from the shot to the heart.  No way could he have survived a gunshot at that close range without protection.  They'd found the vest soon after he'd been knocked out in the limo, once they'd left Jennifer's house.

Ah, sweet Jennifer.  She'd held such promise.  Such a meek, biddable woman.  The perfect candidate for his special buyer.  Long, golden blonde hair flowed past her shoulders in waves. Big, sapphire blue eyes that sparkled with life and joy.  A figure most men would die to get their hands on.   She wasn't one of these anorexic, stick figure women Hollywood and the press seemed to glorify.  No, Jennifer would be the perfect handful of glorious breasts, and ample hips to grasp as a man rode her from behind.

Damn it.  I wanted a piece of that before sending her on her way.  Stupid bitch.  If only she'd minded her own business everything would have been perfect.

He didn't normally sample the merchandise, but he'd have made an exception for her.  There was something innocent and fragile about her, it brought out something he'd never felt before.  He shook his head.  It didn't matter now.  Plans change and he'd adapt.  He always did.

He'd shown her picture to a prospective buyer who'd been ecstatic.  Her coloring and demure appearance came highly prized by certain connoisseurs.  Fortunately, he'd worked with this collector before and convinced him to wait a few more weeks, take the time to prepare a special gilded cage for his latest acquisition.  Maybe this whole debacle could be salvaged.  Carlo'd better be able to tell him where to find his other little birdie who'd flown away, and he'd retrieve her before too much damage could be done.  Taking Jennifer away from Carlo would be the ultimate punishment; the agony he'd inflict on him as he expounded in minute detail exactly what his beloved sister would suffer at the hands of her new
master,
the icing on the cake.

He'd put out feelers throughout the community.  Nobody hid from him—not for long anyway.  His contacts at the New Orleans Police Department hadn't reported in yet, but after the explosion the night before he wasn't surprised. They'd better not take too long, though.   He didn't have time to waste.

Dubshenko glanced back down at Carlo, lying unmoving and prone at his feet.  Before this was over, he'd basically kill three birds with one stone.  Jennifer, sweet Jennifer, would make him a small fortune with her sale, and she'd disappear never to surface again to testify against him.  Carlo would suffer greatly and die for his betrayal.  And last but not least, Detective Remy Lamoreaux.  The unrelenting thorn in his side; the boil on his posterior.  It was time to eliminate the meddlesome cop once and for all.

Dubshenko laughed out loud at the thought.  He'd take care of disposing of the good detective himself.  After all, he'd sealed his own fate by making this personal.

Chapter Eight

One week previous

C
arlo eased up to the interior wooden door, eyeing it with a jaundiced eye.  He pressed his ear against it, and could make out voices—at least two.  He'd seen Dubshenko and his bodyguard walk inside the abandoned warehouse less than five minutes before.  He'd been following the pair for the last two hours, which was damned annoying.  He'd rather be at his favorite hangout having a beer with his buddies, instead he was sweating his ass off following the Russian drug czar around.  Still, he needed to be cautious, not lose his edge.  If he wasn't careful they’d catch him and there would be hell to pay.  The least of which his boss would nail his hide to the wall, and probably have his sorry butt tossed back into prison.

Lucky for him, Dubshenko didn't have a clue Carlo worked for the DEA and he planned to keep it that way.

He scanned his surroundings, up and down the narrow hallway, trying to find an alternative access to the office Dubshenko and his bodyguard currently occupied.  Two doors on the opposite side of the hall, but no egress to the one place he needed to get into.  Damn it!  Who was Dubshenko meeting?  It had to be important for him to be this secretive—and this cautious.

Carlo slammed his fist against his thigh, frustrated with the whole lousy situation.  Why choose an abandoned warehouse?  Dubshenko owned a half dozen buildings in and around the Greater New Orleans area, so why here?  This was way outside his comfort zone.

Wait.  He looked up at the ceiling.  It was one of the acoustic tile drop ceilings most office building had, with metal grids and individual panels placed in row after boring row.  One of the panels sat askew, a fissure of blackness peeking through the two inch opening.  Could he somehow get up there without making any noise, or alerting anybody else to his presence?  He was in pretty good shape, but hauling himself up by upper body strength alone—that would take some doing.  Could he?  Only one way to find out.

His fingertips eased into the opening created by the acoustic tile until he was able to grasp the edge, curling his fingers around and lifting up.  He slid the tile along the metal grid until the darkened opening gaped like a maw, causing him to lose himself in the blackness.  He wrapped his hands around the metal grid work, pulling downward to test the flexibility and strength.  Would it hold up to his body weight?  With a sigh, he wrapped his hands around it, as close to the center as possible, and pulled his upper body toward the opening.  Biceps strained against his weight, the muscles burning as he shifted his weight, wriggling his body through the opening.  It was a tight fit, but he finally popped through to the other side.  His lungs sucked in a huge breath of air while he looked down at the floor.  Some dust had fallen through the opening onto the concrete floor below when he'd worked his way through; hopefully nobody would see it and start investigating.

Fortune favors the brave because mercifully above the drop ceiling with its thin acoustic tiles, the ceiling joists were thicker, wooden slots well able to hold his weight.  Easing along the wooden rafters, he made his way to his left toward the office where Dubshenko was meeting with someone.  Who that somebody was seemed pretty damned important to Carlo since this was completely out of character for Dubshenko. 
He
always called the shots.  Meetings were always on his turf.  Yet here he was at the bidding of somebody else.  Anybody yielding that much power over the most feared mobster in New Orleans made him a definite person of interest.

With an awkward half crawl, have squat-waddle, Carlo made his way along the beams strictly by feel since visibility was nil.  With a grimace when his knee hit a brace he wasn't expecting, he figured he'd crawled far enough to be directly over the office.   Now, he had a new problem to contend with; could he move one of the acoustic panels aside without making any noise, or being seen?  If they spotted him, he was a dead man.

He crawled further along the ceiling joist, having decided that moving a panel on the side of the room seemed more prudent than trying for one in the middle.   It was nearly black as pitch up in the enclosed space, barely enough light to see his fingers in front of his nose.  Carlo grabbed his cell phone out of his back pocket and slid his finger across the screen, and it spread enough light to illuminate the immediate area around him.  With his right hand, he slid his fingertips around the edge of the tile, holding the phone face down against his thigh in case the small amount of light it provided showed up when he moved the panel aside.

He didn't dare move it much, though.  It slid for a couple of inches.  The tile made a little scraping sound against the metal groove of the grid, and he froze.

“What was that?”

Crap, they'd heard
.

“Probably just rats, my friend.”  Oh, yeah, that was Dubshenko's voice.  Carlo recognized it immediately.  After all, he'd heard it enough times over the last several months.

Dubshenko snapped his fingers at his bodyguard.  “Go check it out.”

Footsteps echoed as the bodyguard left, and Carlo’s breath caught in his throat.  Damn it, had he put the ceiling tile back in place in the hallway?  His frantic thoughts retraced his steps before he exhaled a sigh of relief.  Whew!

He tried again to inch the ceiling tile a little further. A gentle slide like the caress of a hand against silken skin, easing the edges seamlessly one more inch.  This close, the voices were distinct and clear.

“Is everything in place?”  That was the voice of the stranger.  Man, what he wouldn't give to see his face.  His voice was vaguely familiar, but Carlo couldn't place where he'd heard it before.

“No worries, my friend.  Everything is planned down to the tiniest detail.  There will be no problems.”

Something was wrong.  Off kilter.  It sounded like Dubshenko was taking orders from this stranger. 
Who had that kind of juice on the Russian mobster?
  He leaned forward and angled his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the mystery man.  Dubshenko's distinctive blond head came into view.  He faced directly toward Carlo, so there was no mistaking him.  The other man's back was to him.  Tall, impeccably dressed in an expensive navy blue suit even in the sweltering heat of a Louisiana summer night, especially inappropriate for a visit to an abandoned warehouse.  Fancy black loafers.  His dark brown hair was styled, one of those thousand dollar haircuts only the rich and fabulous could afford.

Carlo's gut instinct, the family knack of knowing when trouble was barreling head first into your path blared a warning, screamed at him—run!  He couldn't.  Whatever was going on directly beneath him was huge, maybe the big break in the case he needed to close it once and for all.  This might be the single most important piece of evidence he'd ever get against Dubshenko.  Carlo wanted this piece of dirt put away for the rest of his life.

He jerked at the vibration in his hand, almost losing his balance on the narrow ceiling joist.  He'd forgotten all about his phone, since the screen had gone dark.

The phone!

It took videos.  Why not tape the meeting taking place directly beneath him?  The big wigs at the DEA had all that fancy equipment; they could analyze it once he got the hell out of there.

With the glide of his finger across the screen, he started recording.

# # # # #

Current day

Carlo took shallow breaths, fighting against the blackness that threatened to overwhelm him again.   That sorry bastard Dubshenko and his bodyguard had discovered the bulletproof vest when they'd hauled him out to the Dubshenko's limo.  He knew he'd end up with a gigantic bruise from the impact of the bullet.  That sucker hurt like hell, but at least he wasn't lying dead in a pool of blood on the living room floor.  Things were looking up.

He bit down hard on his bottom lip to keep from crying out as he eased onto his side, and cracked open one eye.  He didn't recognize the room where he lay sprawled on the bare concrete floor.  The last thing he remembered was Dubshenko coldcocking him in the back of the limo, and then it was lights out.  He tried to gauge where he might be from the sparse surroundings.  With all Dubshenko's holding across the city, he could be just about anywhere.

There was nobody else in the room, but he knew guards wouldn't be far away.  Dubshenko wouldn't leave him unguarded.  It was too important for him to find out where his precious package ended up. 
Fat chance
.  He'd never tell that sorry bastard how to find the girl.  She was safe—at least for the moment.