Sleepwalker (39 page)

“I went ahead and made lunch, too,” Tina added. “Chicken salad. I
hope you like it?” Mick answered affirmatively, and Tina turned back to what she was doing. “It beats Jason’s favorite, which is bologna. Probably because all you have to do is slap packaged meat between bread and eat.”

Both of them laughed. Mick took an appreciative sip of coffee. It was really good, and she felt really good. Rested, restored and … happy. When she contemplated the undoubted reason why she was feeling so good, warmth radiated inside her like her own little personal sun. All she had to do was glance out the window at that beach, and she started glowing all over again.

“So Jason runs a shipping company?” Mick asked as she took another sip of coffee and Tina set a plate that included a sandwich and some kind of fruit salad in front of her. She was dying to know more, but she wanted to be delicate about it. The last thing she wanted was for Tina to think she was trying to pump her for information, even if she was.

Tina nodded, settling back against the counter with a cup of coffee in her hands. Her own meal, a sandwich and fruit salad like Mick’s, sat on the counter beside her.

“Tradewinds. We’re all partners in it. Local producers contract with us to ship their products worldwide. Jason runs it because he likes having something to do. He’s got a couple of other businesses, too. Jelly, on the other hand, is perfectly content to play golf between jobs, and I like to cook. Actually, I’ve started a catering company: Bon Manje. It means ‘good food.’”

“I’m sure you’ll do great with it.” Mick meant that sincerely. She had just taken a bite out of the chicken salad. “This is delicious.”

Looking almost shy, Tina smiled. “Thanks. It’s something I always wanted to do. Who would have thought, way back when I was working for Uncle Sam, that I’d ever get the chance?”

Mick’s antenna went up: this was information she could use.
Sampling some of the fruit salad—bits of apple and citrus in some sort of sweet dressing, fantastic—she tried not to appear overly interested.

“You worked for the U.S. government?”

Biting into her own sandwich, Tina nodded. “I was a tech analyst. With the FBI. For eight years. Then I got fired.” Shrugging philosophically, she took another bite out of her sandwich. “Bad at the time, but it worked out for the best.”

“What happened?” Mick concentrated on her meal in an effort not to appear as fascinated as she felt.

“An operation went wrong, and I was one of the people who got the blame.” She made a face. “I don’t regret it, though. If everything had happened like it was supposed to, Jelly probably would have died. He and I weren’t involved at the time, you understand. Just goes to show, the Lord really does work in mysterious ways.”

Mick tried not to choke as a piece of apple went down the wrong way. “Did Jelly work for the FBI, too?”
And what about Jason?
was what she wanted to ask, but she was still feeling her way.

Tina laughed. “I guess. In a manner of speaking. He was Jason’s CI—confidential informant. Jason busted him running guns, then cut him a deal where he could stay out of jail if he worked for him. I only set eyes on Jelly once before the crap hit the fan. I thought he was a low-life scum.” Tina’s fond smile underlined the obvious fact that she had since changed her mind. Mick mentally brushed that aside: at the moment, the focus of her interest was not Tina’s and Jelly’s love life.

“Jason busted him?” Trying to keep her tone casual, she munched chicken. Extrapolating, blending in everything she had learned about him, from her suspicions about his law enforcement roots to evidence of fairly extensive, if sloppy, martial arts training, Mick hazarded a guess: “When he was an FBI agent?”

Tina nodded. Then she frowned, looking suddenly wary. “You’re
trying to find out about our backgrounds, aren’t you? I keep forgetting you’re a cop. Jelly said I shouldn’t trust you.”

Meeting Tina’s eyes, Mick felt a little guilty. Probably some people would have considered what she had just been doing taking advantage of the other woman’s friendliness. That was because, actually, it was. Sighing, she put her sandwich down. “The truth is, I’m interested in
Jason’s
background. But not because I’m a cop. Because … because …” To her own disgust she found she couldn’t put the reason into words. It was too new, too amazing. But the result left her stammering like a sixteen-year-old girl in the throes of her first crush.

“You have a real thing for him, don’t you?” The frown left Tina’s face. “I knew it the first time I saw you looking at him. Like you wanted to jump his bones right there in the dining room.”

“I did not,” Mick protested, indignant.

Tina’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes, you did. Don’t worry about it, though. He was looking right back at you the exact same way.”

“I’m trying to figure him out,” Mick confessed, giving up on subterfuge. “I would never do anything to hurt him, or you, or Jelly, you know. Or repeat anything you told me to anyone. I just … I need to understand how he came to be a—”

She broke off, perceiving almost too late that it might have been a little offensive to refer to Jason as a thief in the presence of his accomplice, also a thief.

“Robber?” Tina finished, eyeing her.

Mick nodded.

“He’s a good guy,” Tina said. “One of the best ever. That’s the thing you got to understand.”

“I know that. I could tell that from the first.”

“When you were judo-ing the heck out of him?” Tina giggled. “Oh, yeah, Jelly told me all about that.”

Mick smiled a little sheepishly. “Maybe not quite as soon as that.”

Tina gave her a straight look. “All right. I’m going to tell you about us. But if you ever let him know I did, or tell anybody else …”

Tina would have looked comical as she drew her hand theatrically across her own throat except for the fact that Mick wasn’t entirely sure she was kidding.

“I won’t,” Mick promised. “I swear.”

“Okay, then. Let’s see.” Tina wrinkled her nose, remembering. “When I got fired, Jason did, too. He was an FBI Special Agent, a newby, I think he came right out of college or something. He’d only been with the Agency for a few years. I didn’t just do computer analysis for him. I worked for a group of them, the junior ones. We were with the Chicago office. Chicago’s where we both are from. Jelly, too. Jason was gung-ho to make his mark, and he was investigating this gun trafficking operation, where this gang was smuggling guns out of the country by way of Chicago and then on up through Canada. I was helping him track the operation online. Jason busted Jelly, and Jelly was giving him information on when the big shipments were coming through, but Jelly was starting to sweat it because he thought maybe some of the guys were getting onto him, you know? And he was right, although nobody knew it at the time. Jason had this other informant on the inside, a guy he knew from high school, one of those neighborhood-buddy-gone-wrong types. Greg Zenner was his name. So the word comes down to Jelly about this huge gun shipment coming through, Jelly passes it on to Jason, Jason sets up this major sting, multiple agencies involved, enough firepower to take out half the city, really big. He gets his guy inside, Zenner, to wear a wire so there’s evidence on the ringleaders. It’s all set up, the guns are about to be delivered, everything’s go, Jason and all these men are in place armed to the teeth, and then it’s all just called off. Last minute. Abort operation. I hear through the grapevine that it’s because the ATF is also tracking this shipment to see where it ends up, and
we’re stepping on their toes or something. But apparently word leaked back to the ringleaders that there was a mole inside, and they were going to shoot Zenner right there, and Jason could hear it all going down over the wire. So he and some men went in there to get Zenner out despite being told to stand down, and it just all went south from there. A shoot-out, the ATF’s plan spoiled, total fiasco. It didn’t even save Zenner, really. He got shot in the back on the way out and ended up being paralyzed. So Jason got fired for disobeying an order, I got fired for being too close to Jason, Jelly got a contract on his head for being Jason’s stoolie, and Zenner got paralyzed. After the dust settled, Jelly was broke and needed to get out of town. Jason was broke and feeling responsible for the whole mess, including what had happened to Zenner. Zenner was broke and paralyzed. I was just broke. And depressed. And out of a job. Jelly’s the one who came up with the idea of turning robber. He knew where the gun smugglers kept their cash, and he told Jason about it, because there needed to be two of them to pull the job off. I ended up coming along to be the driver. I was scared out of my mind the whole time, but they got it done just easy as that. A million dollars, I still remember.” Tina clasped her hands under her chin and gave Mick a misty smile. “I get sentimental—it was our first job.” She took a breath and shook her head. “So Jason gave half of it to Zenner, to help take care of him, and then the three of us got out of town and kind of lay low for a while. But Zenner went through that money fast—a paralyzed guy without good insurance can burn through half a mil like nobody’s business—and to tell you the truth, so did we. Jason still had connections—so did Jelly, of a different sort—and between the two of them they knew about the drug runners and the crime syndicates and what was going down and where the cash was. Once you know what you’re looking for, the fake company names they’re using, that sort of thing, it’s easy to track what’s happening where on the web. So we all kind of located a likely target, and we pulled another
job—some of it went to Zenner, the rest we split—and then Jason had the great idea that maybe we should do this for a living. I mean, those criminals had a lot of cash, it was all dirty, from crimes, you know, just laying around, and the best way to throw a monkey wrench in their operations was to take their profits. So that’s what we decided to do. Jason took care of Zenner and his family until he passed away a few years ago, and we all took care of our families—Jason supported his mom until she died last year, and he has a sister in California he makes sure is all right—and we took care of us. I mean, nobody else is going to, and stealing from crooks isn’t really stealing at all, is it? It’s just one more facet of the war on crime. At least, that’s what Jason says.”

Tina wound up on such a righteous note that Mick had to smile.

“I’m not sure everybody would agree with that, but I see your point,” Mick said. “So how did you three end up here? On Grand Cayman?”

“We came for the financial system. Cash is a problem a lot of places, you know, banks report it, everybody reports it, but not here, especially not if you’re a resident, which we are now. And if you have legitimate businesses, you can put your money in the bank and go about your business and nobody thinks a thing about it.” Iggy raised his head right then and let out a harsh, guttural hiss. Mick refocused on him in a hurry.

“Oh, he just wants more apple.” Tina apparently had no trouble interpreting Mick’s expression for the alarm it was, and her tone was reassuring. Scooping up what looked like the leftover makings of her fruit salad from the cutting board on the counter, she dumped more apple chunks in his dish. “Where was I?” she asked, straightening. “Oh, yeah, Grand Cayman. We came for the banks, but we stayed because Jason fell in love with the place.”

“It is beautiful,” Mick said, once again trying not to watch Iggy and kind of/sort of succeeding.

Tina eyed her.

“You do see that if Jason wasn’t a real stand-up guy he wouldn’t have gotten fired and none of us would be where we are, don’t you? I mean, he could have just let Zenner be killed. He could have left Jelly hanging in the wind. Those were his orders. But he went in for Zenner, and he didn’t abandon Jelly. In my book, he’s a hero. Me and Jelly, we’d do anything for him.”

Mick wasn’t sure she’d go quite as far as Tina in calling Jason a hero, but she no longer totally condemned him for what he did, either. Stealing was a crime, and he was a thief who would be charged with multiple felonies if he was ever arrested, but stealing dirty money from criminals made it different. Made it better. Didn’t it? God, she had to stop thinking like a cop, at least where Jason—and Jelly and Tina—were concerned.

“Mick?” Tina looked worried, and Mick realized she’d been silent a little too long.

“I really admire the fact that Jason was loyal to the people who depended on him,” Mick said, and she realized even as she said it that it was true. If there was good and bad in the story she had heard, that at least deserved respect.

Tina took that as an endorsement of her point of view and nodded. Looking relieved, she glanced down at Mick’s plate, where half the sandwich and a good portion of the fruit salad was still uneaten, mostly because Mick had been so enthralled that she’d forgotten all about it.

“You know, if you don’t want that, it’s okay.”

“Oh, no, the food is wonderful! It’s just that I was so interested I forgot to eat.” Mick smiled at Tina and picked up her sandwich again. “Thank you for telling me that. I really appreciate it.”

“If you’re going to be with Jason, you should know what kind of guy he is. He really deserves some—”

The back door opened without warning, and Jelly walked in. He was wearing plaid shorts and a red polo shirt with a baseball cap. Clearly he
and Tina were accustomed to treating Jason’s house as their own, and he probably did the same with theirs. Here on the island, he made Mick think of a banty rooster: small, with bright plumage, and full of basically harmless bluster. When she had first encountered him in Uncle Nicco’s house, he had seemed like bad news all the way through.

His brows snapped together the moment he saw her. He grunted a greeting.

Mick smiled at him and gave him a little wave.

Okay, so they weren’t exactly friends yet.

“Back so soon?” Tina asked as he approached her while skirting Iggy, who, having finished his snack, trudged away.

“I only played nine holes today.” He kissed Tina on the cheek, picked up a chunk of her apple salad and popped it in his mouth, then looked at Mick semi-distrustfully. “I would have gone home, but I saw your car out front. You ladies been chatting?”