The Chase (13 page)

Jo and Sherry stood on the far side of the room, gawking at the now defunct door. The place was packed with what he assumed were counterfeit handbags.

He snapped his fingers toward the hallway. “You waiting for the building to blow? Let’s go!” Finally, they got their asses moving and Gabe pointed to the rear of the building. “That way.”

Through the broken window, he heard sirens. Fire department.

Jo scooted past him. “Holy cow. You were like the Incredible Hulk coming through that door. I about peed myself.”

Scared. People chattered when they were scared. No time for chatter.

“Move!” The women ran down the hallway to the stairs, their heels stomping and clicking against the cheap floor. “Hold on when you’re going down.”

Last thing he needed was one of them flying over a step. A minute later, Jo burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs.

“Away from the building,” Gabe yelled, and she took off toward the far end of the property. From there, they could make their way to the road and walk to the front.

He tromped to the parking lot, where firefighters went to work knocking down the fire.

Tom glanced at Jo, then Sherry. “Everyone okay?”

“Fine,” Jo said.

“Good,” Sherry said.

Gabe, though, was pissed. For safety, he handed Tom the shotgun. No sense giving in to temptation and using it on Jo. Considering she’d promised him she’d stay in her office. He’d deal with that later. “How did you get this address?”

“It was me,” Sherry explained. “One of the vendors gave it to me. Told me to pick up a Konklin watch here.”

An NYPD squad drove into the lot and Tom wandered over to talk to the officers.

Gabe shifted to Sherry. “Which vendor?”

She rattled off the name of the store and he waggled his fingers at her. “Give me your keys.”

“What?”

“Your keys. I’m borrowing your car. Tom will give you a lift back.”

“Whoa,” Jo said. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing to be concerned about.” But Sherry wasn’t moving. He gave her his best intimidating stare. The one that warned he didn’t want to be screwed with. “Keys. Now.”

Finally, she handed them over and Gabe strode to the car with Jo on his heels. “What are you doing?”

“Jo, back off. We’ll talk when I don’t want to strangle you. And take off that stupid wig.” He unlocked the doors and jumped into the driver’s seat.

Jo slid into the passenger side and dumped the wig on the floor. “I’m going with you.”

“Get out.”

“No.”

So fucking stubborn. This woman tormented him. All he wanted was to keep her safe, and time and again she threw herself into the fray. Every. Fucking. Time.

He dug his fingers into his right eye and rubbed. Massive headache. “You wanna come? Fine. At least I’ll know where you are and that you’re not getting your other hand broken or, hey, getting caught in a warehouse fire because some asshole wants you
dead
.” He punched the gas and stormed out of the lot. “What don’t you understand about this not being a game?”

She gasped and he glanced her way. Her blue eyes shot lasers and her long hair had come loose of her hairclip in certain spots. She looked steaming in a twisted way that reminded him how dumb it had been to get personally involved with her.

“I know it’s not a game,” she said. “But my investigator wanted to do this alone. I couldn’t let her do it.”

He hooked a left and headed for the bridge. “You have other investigators.”

“Actually, Mr. Know-it-all, at the time we didn’t. Mark was in Jersey and couldn’t get back in time. Lecture and yell all you want. It won’t make a difference. There’s no way—no way—I was letting Sherry go alone.”

“You could have kept trying to reach me.”

“Why? So you could scream at me? Besides, for all I knew we were just picking up a watch. My hope was that we’d find another location to pass along to the NYPD. I didn’t know it was a setup.”

Exactly his point. She wasn’t trained to deal with these situations. “You shouldn’t have risked it.”

She threw her hands up. “No kidding, Gabe. Thank you so much for telling me. At least give me credit for giving you the address.”

God, she never quit. “A damned good thing too or you’d be toast right now. And you’d probably still be yapping.”

She gasped again and—
whoosh
—all the energy got sucked out of the argument. He shot her a sideways look as they made their way over the bridge, but all he saw was part of her profile as she stared out at the water.

“Now you’re just being cruel,” she said. “Fine. Be an ass.”

He grunted and jammed his palm into the horn at some schmuck who’d cut him off. What was it about Jo that pushed every one of his buttons? Even after the marathon sex last night, he wanted her in a way that made his body ache. He loved the challenge of her, but he didn’t want to break her down. All he wanted was to keep her in one piece.

Why did keeping her safe take so much energy? Because she was high-maintenance, that’s why. He breathed deep, focused on the road and rolled his shoulders. After counting to ten, some of the tension eased.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He slid his gaze to her, but she kept her head turned.

“I accept your apology.”

Then things got quiet. Too quiet where Jo was concerned. He hated quiet Jo. With loud Jo, he always knew where they stood. Maybe they needed the silence though. To regroup.

He turned onto Tower Street where midday traffic piled everything to a crawl. Half a block down, he double-parked in front of the address Sherry had given him. He wouldn’t be here that long.

He shoved the car door open.

“Gabe?”

“I’m going inside.” He strode to the door, pushed it open and surveyed the interior. Garment racks and overstuffed shelves crammed the small space. Wherever he looked, cheap clothes and accessories greeted him. No knock-offs. Obviously, the proprietor had wised up and kept the counterfeit crap hidden. Probably in the warehouse that Jo almost became kindling in.

A woman behind the counter focused on his tactical uniform then stepped back. She’d obviously seen enough ESU guys to know he was NYPD. A few customers pawed through the garment racks, but nobody looked all that interested.

He turned back to the door and held it open. “Sorry folks, store is closed.” The patrons looked up at him and he waved them to the door. “Come back later.”

The woman behind the counter took off down a narrow hallway. Probably to summon her boss.

Just as Gabe was about to close the door, Jo stepped in. “What are you doing?”

“Getting information. You staying or going?”

A spark lit her blue eyes and burned right into Gabe.
That’s my girl
.

“Oh, I’m staying.”

He shut the door behind her and flipped the open sign to closed.

An older man, with thick gray hair and saggy skin came from a room off the hallway where the woman had just disappeared. “Can I help you?”

You sure can, asshole
. Gabe grabbed Jo’s elbow and dragged her to where the man stood. “You know this woman?”

The man concentrated on Jo. “No.”

“Take a better look,” Gabe said. “I think you do.”

The man looked again. “No.”

Gabe got close enough to the old guy to crowd him. “You sure? Because I think you sent her investigator to a building this morning to buy a fake watch.
I
think you sent them into that building, had them locked in and the place set on fire. That’s what I think.” He turned to Jo. “How about you?”

She nodded. “Yep. I’d bet he set the whole thing up.”

“Yeah, and lucky for him you two didn’t burn up in that place. Then he’d be looking at a double murder charge. Not to mention arson.”

“Don’t forget the conspiracy charges.”

Gabe snapped his fingers. “Right. I forgot about those.” He turned back to the old man whose veins bulged in his forehead. “At the very least, you’re looking at attempted murder. All roads point to you, pal. You’re the one who sent them into that building.”

The old man’s eyes bounced all over the place. Then he shook his head. At first slowly, then as the panic started to build, with more force.

“You wanna tell me anything?” Gabe said. “Or do we lock you up for attempted murder? Ever been in prison? How do you feel about being gang raped in the shower?”

“No,” the old man said.

Gabe cocked his head. “No, what?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“But you knew?”

Silence.

The woman rushed into the front of the store waving her arms. She was younger than the old man, but her eyes were frantic and her face was tight. She might have aged thirty years in the last five minutes. “They told us to send her there.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Jo touched his arm and came up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Mirandize them.”

Her words penetrated and he ran some options. What he was doing could get him into a shitload of trouble. Sure, he could say they were simply having a conversation and no, he was not harassing them, but the one thing he always wanted to be was a good cop. And he wasn’t sure this made him a good cop.

He didn’t regret it because Jo almost got killed, but wanting to protect those he cared about couldn’t be intermingled with his job. That was where the lines blurred, and he’d spent years trying to stay clear of blurry lines.

He had to remove himself from this equation. “Here’s what we’ll do, folks. I’ll get a detective down here to talk to you. You’re gonna tell those detectives everything you know about counterfeit merchandise, a guy named Kiki and that building my friend here almost lost her life in. In exchange, I’ll do what I can to keep you out of prison.”

—:—

Jo watched Tom walk into the conference room at police headquarters and drop a manila file folder on the table. He took the seat at the end, rubbed the heels of both his hands into his eyes and let out a breath that must have weighed thirty pounds.

She glanced across the table at Gabe. His shoulders were back and rigid in a way she didn’t see all that often. The look of a man waiting to get his butt handed to him by his superior.

Well, she wouldn’t let that happen. Even if it cost her a spot on the task force, she wouldn’t let him take the plunge alone.

Eventually, Tom dropped his hands and focused on Gabe. “I don’t know what you were thinking going into that store.”

She slid a sideways glance at Gabe.
Please stay silent
.

“You could have blown this whole thing to hell.”

Gabe jerked his head. “I know, sir. Sorry.”

“Fortunately, you took your head out of your ass and got a detective down there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom shifted to Jo. “You okay?”

“Yes. Fine. Thank you. And I’m sorry. I should have told Sherry to wait. I got ahead of myself.”

“Yeah, you did. And the mayor isn’t happy.” He turned back to Gabe. “With either of you. We’ll do damage control on that later.”

“Later?” Gabe asked.

“Yes. Later. Now, we’re about to execute a warrant on a building and separate private residence in Queens.”

Gabe sat a little straighter and Jo inched forward. This could be it.

The whale.

“What did the man from the store say?”

Tom flipped open the file and passed Gabe a photo. “He gave us a name. Donald Martinson. Apparently Mr. Martinson owns half the storefronts on Tower Street. His name isn’t on the deeds though. He’s the money guy. Kiki runs the day to day. The vendors pay little rent, but they are forced to sell the counterfeit items Martinson smuggles into the States. According to our witness, the smuggled items are kept in the location where the warrant will be executed.”

Gabe handed Jo the photo. Looked like a driver’s license photo showing Donald Martinson to be in his mid-thirties. His face held the fullness of someone carrying an extra thirty pounds. Jo studied his half-crooked smile, dark eyes and hair. The tilt of his left eyebrow. All of it, she committed to memory.

This was the person running counterfeit goods through Tower Street.

And they were about to nail his ass.

“So,” Tom said to Gabe. “You need to get briefed. We’ll do the hits simultaneously. One on Martinson’s house and one on the building where the stuff is stored. Jo, I’ll let you on-scene at Martinson’s house, but you stay across the street. Got it?”

She nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

“And, look, don’t screw with me on this. The only reason I’m even letting you on-scene is because the mayor wants a photo op.”

Wow. She’d been relegated to photo-op duty. She supposed, after her flagrant lack of following orders, she should be grateful.

Tom stood. “Let’s go bust this guy.”

—:—

Being a good little girl, Jo stood on the sidewalk one house down and across the street from Donald Martinson’s two-story home while ESU entered the residence. The afternoon sun shifted and she moved with it to absorb the miniscule heat it offered.