Andrew Gross - One Mile Under

Wade’s fists dug into the table so hard Dani thought it was going to collapse. “You don’t know what you’re stepping into, girl …”

“This is him, Wade!” Dani jabbed her index finger onto the photo of the car. “That’s who killed Trey. And if you don’t act on this, so help me, I’ll take it to the Aspen Times or to Dave Warrick or anyone else who will listen to me and makes sure it’s in the hands of someone who will. You don’t have six deaths here to worry about here, Wade—you have six murders.” She pressed her finger on the photo again, right on the plate. “And here’s your murderer!”

“I want you out of town,” Wade said, his jaw twitching, his chest heating up with frustration and anger, everything about him suddenly different.

This whole thing had hit a whole new level of seriousness for him now. A combination of being threatened by this crazy girl and the fear of what might happen to her (or him! ) if she continued on. His conversation on the phone last night had made it clear. I’ll handle it, he’d promised them. I’ll make it go away .

He knew he’d better damn well deliver.

“You’re not taking this anywhere.” He pulled the photo back to his side of the table and crumpled it into a ball.

“You think I’d be dumb enough to put my only one down in front of you.” Dani leered at him. “I have more.”

“Then I’m telling you, as the head of this investigation and as someone who cares about you, Dani, I want them all handed over now.” He reached across and grabbed the envelope out of her hands. “You’re going to get out of this town for a while and let me do what I’m paid to do. In the meantime”—he took her roughly by the arm—“you’re coming with me.”

“What do you mean, I’m coming with you?” She tried to pull herself away. He clamped on tighter. “Wade, you’re hurting me!”

He dragged her into the station house and then through a door in the back where they had four holding cells.

“Are you crazy …?” Dani glared at him, trying to writhe out of his grip. “Get your hands off me, Wade! You’re doing what— throwing me in jail ? This is insane. You can’t stop me from talking to people. You’re sitting on something. Just like you did with Mom.”

“I’m putting you somewhere where I can make sure you’re not interfering with my investigation until your father comes, or whomever the hell else I can get to talk some sense in you and take you out of here. Trust me, it’s for your own good.”

“My father? On what charge?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what charge! Obstructing an official investigation. Illegally obtaining government property. On the charge that it’s for your own damn good, Dani. Whatever I can think of that holds you here for a couple of days.”

“Are you nuts? Wade, please, how long do you think that’ll last?”

“As long as it takes to call your dad and get him to come out here.” He pulled her into the area where there were four holding cells. None of them were occupied.

“I’m not gonna stay here, Wade.”

“You damn well are going to stay here! You’re over your head here, Dani, and I’m doing this to protect you, not hurt you. Whether you know it or not.”

“ Protect me? ” He pushed her in an open cell and closed it with a clang behind her.

“Yes, protect you, Danielle,” Wade said, breathing heavily now.

“You’re making a mistake here, Wade. Not about me, but about Trey. And Rooster. And whoever that car belongs to.”

“Maybe so.” Wade walked away and hung the key on the wall. “But I’ve made ’em before. Sooner or later, one’s bound to catch up to me.”

It had been too long.

The muscles were getting weak, the stomach a little flabby. A month back, long about Frenchman’s Cay, he’d stopped doing his morning crunches. The urge to find himself again, to get back into something, the next chapter, grew more and more restless inside him. He kept asking himself, what was next? To go back to his old job? To Talon, the global security company he was a partner in? He’d taken a month leave to nurse his wounds and bring himself back to life and just extended it kind of indefinitely. Now the wounds had healed; the dime-sized holes where the bullets had found him were now just scar tissue, mostly hidden by the tan. But what do you do when you’ve brought down a worldwide financial conspiracy whose reach led to the doorstep of the president’s own cabinet? Become a talking head on the TV news shows? Go on the speakers’ circuit? Just sail? These past two months, he couldn’t answer that question.

The first month, he didn’t even bring it to mind.

The month Naomi had joined him.

Hauck gazed out in his trunks and shades at the exquisite turquoise sea, white waves lapping gently onto the shore, from the tiny cove he was moored in with no other boat in sight, and didn’t care that there was no breeze.

That first month they just drifted. He didn’t want money or fame. He’d just wanted to help people. That’s why he became a cop in the first place, right? After the death of his youngest daughter. That’s how he put the pieces together back then. How he made his amends. But there were never enough amends. So he just sailed. Until it found him. He knew one day it would.

The day this came down:

“Ty, I’m not sure where this email finds you. But I need your help …”

He had spent the past two months on a thirty-eight-foot skiff he’d rented in Tortola, bonefishing and just sailing around, letting his beard grow out. After he and Naomi Blum exposed the Gstaad Group and helped bring down the secretary of the Treasury, Thomas Keaton, who’d conspired to mastermind the series of events that brought on the worldwide financial meltdown. He just couldn’t take a slap on the back for a job well done and a bonus check, and go back to his desk in Greenwich, Connecticut. Even the high-profile job that it was, handling corporate and governmental security issues with global connections. He couldn’t just sit in a larger office, gladhanding prospective clients, using his newfound notoriety to land new business like some ex-home-run hitter at a baseball card show. The money didn’t mean much to him, either, a guy who always figured he’d retire on a detective’s pension.

The first three weeks, Naomi was with him. From her small office at the Office of Financial Terrorism at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., they followed the trail of Hauck’s friend April Glassman’s murder all the way to the top of Naomi’s very department, to the president’s right-hand man. And once the dust settled and the headlines stopped, the wounds healed, they sailed for a month from isle to isle. They let the boat just drift in the open sea and made love on the deck, on the forestairs, under the stars, whenever the urge hit, and wherever it took them. They pulled into small, festive ports and ate spiny lobsters or tilefish on the beach and danced to reggae bands in thatched-roofed bars, full of Red Stripe beer and Pyrat Rum.

Sometimes they would just sit on deck and watch the sunset, or the sunrise. And wonder why real life had to be any different.

Then she went back to D.C. Now, head of the Financial Terrorism office.

And he just continued to drift. What was next? What had meaning to him? She would send him texts; some cute, recalling their time together. Some sexy. She would refer to his scars and the many times he’d been shot. He’d write back that he loved to play the five chords from the opening of Philip Glass’s Music in the Shape of a Square that were tattooed on her butt. The result of a Princeton degree in musicology, before she went into the Marines.