Marilyn Pappano - Criminal Deception

Grateful for the thick-soled sandals she’d chosen in anticipation of a bike ride, she ran fast, hard, zigzagging around parked cars toward the entrance. They slowed her some, but with the benefit that they also slowed Wallace. She was halfway to the entrance, gaining ground, sirens sounding in the distance and racing closer. Please let them be in time , she prayed as she circled behind a monster SUV.

She caught the hint of movement an instant too late: a bare arm, tattooed beneath the short sleeve, muscular, hand clenched into a fist. She tried to swerve, tried to slow, but momentum pushed her forward, carrying her to meet the fist with its own momentum. The pain was instantaneous, nauseating. Her eyes filled with tears, her vision went blurry, her legs crumpled beneath her, and she fell, everything disappearing into blessed darkness.

Joe had never done any long-distance riding, but he found out that afternoon he could do nearly forty miles, the roundtrip distance between Copper Lake and the next town to the east. His calf muscles were fatigued and burning by the time he pedaled back into town, but he was no more tired than when he’d ridden out of the mall. Not tired, hungry, angry. Just numb. Physically, emotionally, mentally. He wanted to stay that way for a damn long time.

He’d passed the mall, refusing to look at the square building or the parking lot even in his peripheral vision. He kept his gaze narrowly focused on the pavement ahead of him, maintaining a safe, constant distance between his front wheel and the curb, so focused that when a car going the opposite direction spun around, tires squealing, and blocked both westbound lanes, he managed to stop only an inch from the vehicle’s rear quarter panel.

A. J. Decker jumped out of the car. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you for hours.” With the efficiency of the longtime cop he was, he located Joe’s cell in his pocket-turned off-and swore. “These things aren’t worth crap unless you turn ’em on.”

Joe glared at him. “If I turn it on, people call.”

Decker turned it on, waited for it to boot up, then shoved it in Joe’s face. “You think?” he asked sarcastically.

The screen showed thirty-eight missed calls. Jeez, and he’d been gone only three hours. He took the phone and started to check the numbers, but Decker snatched it back, closing it. “They’re probably all from us.”

In that instant, the numbness disappeared. Hands shaking, Joe removed his helmet, fastened the chin strap and dangled it from the handle bars. “Josh,” he murmured. The Boulder police had found him, and, being Josh, he’d done something stupid. Was he hurt? Dead? Oh, man, if his brother was dead because Joe had wanted to know if it was okay for him to have slept with Liz…

“When’s the last time you saw Liz?” Decker asked.

Joe blinked. “A few hours ago. A little after twelve. Why?” Had she gotten the word from her supervisor? Had she asked Decker to break the news because she knew he’d rather not see her again as long as he lived?

“Where?”

“At the mall.” Joe asked again, “Why?”

Decker’s expression was grim. “Apparently she’s been kidnapped.”

Kidnapped. The word didn’t compute. Not Liz. After he left, she would have gotten in her car and gone home. She would have checked in with her supervisor and, if there was a God in heaven, she would have packed up and left town. After all, she’d gotten what she wanted; she’d said as much. There was no reason for her to stick around. Not him. Certainly not their phony little affair.

“She’s not kidnapped. She’s just gone.”

Decker’s expression didn’t lighten. “911 got a call from a woman screaming that she was being kidnapped at the mall. We found Liz’s car parked in the lot. Her cell phone was on the ground behind another vehicle, and there was blood, both on the phone and splattered on the ground around it. What we can’t find is Liz. You have any idea why?”

The people and events of the last few days flashed through Joe’s mind with such intensity that his head hurt: Liz, Tom Smith, Ashe, Wallace, the near hit-and-run, the sex last night, finding out the truth today. There was little chance Smith or Ashe would have taken her; they were feds, too. They knew her; she knew them; she would have gone with them willingly.

Wallace? He’d tried to buy Josh’s location from Joe and failed. Was he capable of kidnapping Liz? Of course he was.

Was he willing to kill her?

He shied away from the question, from even the possibility that Liz was in Wallace’s, and therefore the Mulroneys’, hands. This was just another of her deceptions. Maybe the cops hadn’t been able to catch Josh in Boulder; maybe they thought if they pretended that Liz had been kidnapped, that her life was in danger, Joe would tell them something more. Not that he had anything left to tell, but why would they believe that when he’d lied to them all along?

But if it was real…His gut tightened. If it was real, would he trade Josh for Liz?

No matter how angry she’d made him or how badly she’d hurt him, there was only one answer. Not only yes, but hell, yes. Falling for her might qualify as the stupidest thing he’d ever done, but mistake or not, he’d be damned if he would let anything happen to her. He wanted her gone, out of his memory and out of his life, but not dead. Never dead.

“Joe?” Decker prodded. “Why would someone kidnap Liz Dalton?”

His head throbbed; his stomach churned. He could barely make his mouth move. “Because they think she knows where my brother is. They think she’ll tell them or…or I will.”

“Who are they? Why do they want your brother? Where is he?”

Sickly, Joe met his gaze. “A few hours ago, he was in Colorado. Boulder. Now…” He shrugged. Now it was anyone’s guess. Josh could have gone to ground in Boulder, hidden so well that not even a pack of bloodhounds could find him, or he could be well on his way elsewhere.

Decker stared back for a minute, then opened the trunk of the car. “Put your bike in here.” Together they heaved it in, though the trunk lid wouldn’t close. Joe slid into the passenger seat, remembering to fasten the belt only when the reminder dinged.

As Decker pulled back into traffic, he said, “I’m guessing you’ve got a long story to tell. First, though, check those missed calls. See if any of them aren’t from the cops.”

It was the seventh call, an out-of-area number. He punched the buttons to get to the corresponding voice mail, then switched to speaker phone as the message began. “Mr. Saldana, it’s Daniel Wallace. Since you weren’t receptive to my offer last night, I’ve raised the stakes a bit. I’ve got Ms. Dalton, but I’ll happily return her unharmed-more or less-in exchange for your brother. I’ll be in touch with you soon with the details.”

Something inside Joe died: the faint hope that this was another of Liz’s lies. The feds, he’d discovered-Liz, he reminded himself; she was a fed, too-weren’t above making complete fools of innocent people to achieve their goals, but they wouldn’t use the Mulroneys’ people to do it.

He would return her unharmed, Wallace had said. More or less . Joe’s gut clenched again, his fingers whitening around the phone. They’d found blood along with her phone. What had the bastard done to her? Obviously she hadn’t gone with him willingly, or she wouldn’t have called 911. Had he merely subdued her? Or worse? How much worse?

“Any other calls from him?” Decker asked as he turned into the police department parking lot.

Startled by the cop’s voice, Joe refocused on the missed-calls screen, then shook his head. Every other call had come from the police department, Decker or Tommy Maricci.