Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8

CHAPTER THREE

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Nick and Lara finally headed back to 26 Federal Plaza. Two NYPD detectives working the Tina Cole murder case had been summoned to take Sheila into custody, and Nick and Lara had spent a couple of hours out on the streets around Dunst’s house, asking questions and reconfirming impressions they had already received.

Dunst was known in the neighborhood as a blowhard, a wannabe. He was a loser whose only claim to fame was that he’d supposedly once had ties to the Moretti crime syndicate. But according to Cass and people they talked to on the streets, there was absolutely no evidence to support that Sean had ever been anything but a petty criminal and dope dealer.

“I’d like to know who orchestrated Tina’s kidnapping and set up her potential sale. Aside from the fact that somebody killed him, I don’t believe Dunst had the brains to pull something like that off on his own,” Lara said as they crossed back over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“He obviously didn’t have the stomach for it, either,” Nick replied. “Guilt apparently drove him to that ledge this morning.”

“And a highly skilled sniper made sure he wouldn’t give us any real information once he got off that ledge,” Lara replied in frustration. “If I’d known about the stamp while I was up on the ledge with him, I would have definitely asked him a lot more questions.”

Although fear simmered deep inside her, she refused to give into it until they had more concrete information. She’d learned to live with fear the entire year she’d worked deep undercover. In many ways the feeling, coupled with a hard edge of anger, had become a familiar, almost comforting emotion.

“Who kills a kid to save her?” Nick asked incredulously. “And what kind of a woman thinks something like that is okay?” His deep voice was rife with judgment.

Lara had once had a black-and-white sense of judgment, too. But, during her year undercover she’d met too many people who were not necessarily evil, but rather lost souls whose backgrounds had never given them a chance to do much of anything other than make bad choices. She’d learned how easy it was to fall off the straight and narrow.

“Maybe a woman who is already living a fate worse than death,” she replied thoughtfully. “We know Sheila is a stripper. I would guess that she probably also prostitutes on the side. Who knows what her childhood might have been like? It’s obvious she lost her self-respect and any sense of worth she might have had a long time ago.”

“Are you defending her actions?”

“Not at all.” She felt his eyes on her, but she remained staring straight ahead. Still, she felt the need to say something more. “I just saw a lot of bad things when I was undercover. I can’t begin to explain the depravity, the utter soullessness of some human beings.”

“That’s why I love what I do, getting the evil off the streets and into prisons. Isn’t that why you do it? Or is it because of your father? I heard somewhere that he was a highly decorated New York detective?”

“He was.” The last thing she wanted to talk about, the very last person she wanted to think about was her father, who had passed away several months ago, four years after he’d been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

“Then I guess crime fighting runs in the family,” Nick replied.

“That’s about all that runs in the family. At least Dunst didn’t stamp her,” Lara said, not so subtly letting Nick know that she had no interest in a conversation about her personal life and wanted to stick strictly to the facts of the case.

“We need to dig deeper into Dunst’s life,” Nick replied, obviously getting the message.

“Whoever he was playing with weren’t just petty criminals. The shooter who took him out wasn’t some shmuck with a rifle and a little bit of good luck. That shot took an extraordinary amount of skill.” Lara looked out the passenger window. The darkness outside seemed to creep into her soul.

“You know, it’s very possible that this had nothing to do with Moretti,” Nick said. “It could be the work of another gang trying to gain territory control and deliberately misleading us with the stamp.”

“I suppose that’s possible.” She hoped that was the case. She had too much to lose if Moretti decided to seek revenge against her.

“Want to grab something to eat before we get back to headquarters?” Nick asked. “There’s a great bar and grill not far from here.”

“No, thanks. I don’t mix business with pleasure,” she replied.

His lips turned up in what was quickly becoming a familiar grin. “It’s nice to know that you think eating a meal with me would be pleasurable.”

She frowned at him with a hint of irritation. “I’ve had a long day, I could be in a really pissy mood if I thought about it for too long, and I just want to get home and get a good night’s sleep before starting again in the morning.”

Boundaries. She definitely needed to set strict boundaries with Nick, especially tonight when she was feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.

She’d hoped to never hear the name Moretti again, and she’d been immersed in horrendous memories and terrifying questions about him and his potential reach from prison for most of the day.

“All right then,” Nick said when he’d parked his car in the underground garage dedicated to FBI and other official vehicles. “Then we’ll start fresh in the morning?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lara agreed. She got out of his car and walked away from him without another word.

* * *

As the train whooshed from station to station toward her Upper West Side apartment and the lights flickered off and on, Lara refused to think about anything until she was safe at home and behind closed, locked doors.

She departed the subway and then walked the two blocks to her apartment building. “Evening, Jerry,” she said to the night doorman who stood just outside the front entrance.

“Good evening, Ms. Grant,” he replied and unlocked and opened the door for her.

“Have a nice night,” she said as she slipped inside and headed for the elevators. Thankfully, she met nobody on her way up to her twenty-fourth floor apartment. She didn’t make nice on the best of days, and this definitely hadn’t been a stellar day.

She breathed a sigh of relief only after she’d unlocked her apartment door, deposited her keys on the small table in the foyer and stepped onto the thick beige carpeting in the large living room.

She’d decorated the space minimally...a black sofa and chair, glass-topped coffee and end tables and a large flat-screen television mounted to the wall.

There were no photos, no sentimental knickknacks, nothing to personalize the place she now called home. That’s the way she liked it. No pictures or trinkets to evoke memories of her childhood or anything from her past. There was really nothing much there worth remembering.

She headed for the bathroom, wanting more than anything a long hot shower and then a good night’s sleep. Hopefully, she wouldn’t suffer one of the nightmares that had plagued her since she’d stopped her undercover work.

After soaking beneath a pulsating spray of hot water for a sinfully long time, she got out, toweled off and changed into a short navy nightshirt and then headed into the bedroom.

As with the living room, this space was equally impersonal. A king-sized bed, a black lacquered dresser and two matching nightstands that sported contemporary lamps in shades of black and beige, and that was all. The only time it became more personal was when she placed her badge, her gun and her cell phone on the nightstand on the side of the bed where she slept.

She turned off the overhead light and crawled beneath crisp white sheets and closed her eyes, but her tense body refused to relax into the pillow top mattress.

Her brain was in overdrive. Who was behind Dunst’s actions? Who was the mastermind behind his kidnapping of a young, innocent girl? He was obviously supposed to stamp her with the Moretti insignia and then sell her. To who? And who had killed him?

She tossed and turned for several minutes and then got out of bed, knowing from experience that sleep would be elusive until her brain quieted down. She left her bedroom and poured herself a glass of whiskey and then, as an afterthought, carried not only the glass but the bottle as well with her to the sofa.

Was it possible, as Nick had suggested, that another gang was at work and trying to throw off the investigation by mimicking the trademark tattoo? She made a mental note to herself to ask Cass to research all of the gangs working in the area and which one might be following in the footsteps of the Moretti operation.

She took a deep drink from the glass, the burn of the alcohol spreading welcome warmth through her. Unable to sit still, she sprang to her feet and began to pace.

Back and forth she walked in front of the coffee table. The events of the day fired off in her head like a fast-paced movie, only she didn’t have the luxury of a vicarious thrill. This was her life and not a Hollywood blockbuster with a predictable plot and a happy ending.

She’d gone undercover to infiltrate the syndicate in an effort to locate the elusive leader known only as Moretti. For five long years the FBI had chased dead ends in an effort to find the man whose name was whispered with both fear and adulation by the men and women who worked for him.

In the year she’d been undercover she’d cultivated a closeness with the handsome arms broker, Andrew Moore, in an effort to gain the information she needed.

As her undercover role of arms dealer, rising up the ladder from running guns, she’d finally learned of the place and time when Moretti and both high-level and some medium-level operatives were meeting. She’d contacted the FBI, who had swept in and successfully made the arrests.

Lara had gone to a safe house for almost a year, and she’d believed she’d never have to worry about any Moretti operatives still working in either Chicago or New York or anywhere else.

She moved to the window and cracked her blinds to peer out and down at the streets below. Were there people out there right now plotting her destruction...her death?

She twirled the blinds back closed, refilled her glass and slumped down on the sofa. She hoped Nick was right, that this was all some sort of a copycat thing going on.

She frowned as she thought of her new partner. She wished she had a better read on him. Throughout their time together that day he’d exhibited a faint lack of trust in her and her abilities. She had a feeling his brief displays of flirtatiousness came easily to him and was a default that hid far deeper secrets.

Could they work together as an effective team? She didn’t know. It was too soon to tell. All she did know for sure was that she wasn’t at a place in her head to trust anyone. There were times she didn’t even know if she could trust herself.

With this troubling thought in her head she downed her drink and headed back to bed.

* * *

“Eve.” The name she’d used while undercover echoed in her brain. “Eve!”

She came awake and bolted to a sitting position with a sharp gasp. She fumbled for her gun, and at the same time her cell phone rang, and she realized that somehow in her dream the ringtone had become Andrew Moore’s deep voice calling her by her undercover name.

She grabbed the phone and saw that it was just after seven in the morning. Russo’s number. “Victoria?” she said as she answered.

“Lara, I need you to go to a crime scene in Central Park.”

Lara turned on her bedside lamp, opened a drawer and pulled out a pen and paper. “Where?”

“By the reservoir on a jogging trail around Ninety-Third Street. Local authorities are already on the scene but have been instructed not to touch anything until you and Nick get there. I’ve already contacted Nick.”

“What kind of a crime?” Lara wasn’t sure why she’d be sent out to Central Park on another case instead of continuing to work the Dunst case.

“A murder, and from what little I got from the officers on the scene, it’s probably tied to Dunst.”

Lara’s heart dropped to the floor. “On my way,” she replied. She wanted to ask Victoria a hundred more questions, but the only way to get answers was to get to the scene as quickly as possible.

Within minutes she was clad in a long-sleeved white sweater that hugged her slender body and a pair of her expensive black jeans that fit her like snakeskin, but also had enough stretch to allow her to move easily.

With her gun in a shoulder holster and her badge and cell phone fastened on her belt, she grabbed a black suede jacket and left her apartment.

Her heart thundered in time with every quick step she took toward the elevator. The murder was tied to Dunst? How? Dunst was dead. What was going on? Somehow, someway she had the terrible feeling that a thread of something evil had begun to unravel.

She touched the butt of her gun beneath her jacket for reassurance. Where would the thread lead? And how much of the fabric of her life would be destroyed as it continued to unstitch?

CHAPTER FOUR

Lara took a taxi to Central Park, knowing that parking there would be a bitch, especially with a crime scene on the popular jogging trails that surrounded the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.

The autumn-colored leaves on the trees in the area would have made a beautiful backdrop, if not for the fact that she was headed to a murder scene.

It was relatively easy for her to find the right area. A wide perimeter had been set up by more than a dozen of New York’s finest.

One of the cops was dealing with joggers who appeared on the trail, turning them away and instructing them to take another path.

Nick was already there, and he approached her before she even got a chance to flash her badge at the nearest stony-faced officer.

He motioned her ahead and then stopped and stood far enough away that she couldn’t see the victim or the actual crime scene. “What have we got?” she asked. “Victoria mentioned a murder.”

Nick nodded. No sexy grin this morning. No charisma oozing from him. His eyes were dark and flat, and he was definitely in the pissed-off yet professional zone every cop or FBI agent went to when confronted by a murder victim. He might have a charming side, but she suspected this was the true Nick Delano, with hard edges and a dangerous power that he kept tightly controlled.

“Young blonde female clad in running clothes and shoes. Another early morning jogger found her on the trail. He’s being held in the back of a patrol car for us to question,” Nick said.

“How was she killed?” Lara asked.

“The medical examiner isn’t here yet to make a final determination, but it’s obvious she was stabbed in her chest.”

Lara frowned in confusion. “Victoria said something about this potentially being tied to the Dunst case. What’s up with that?”

Nick’s well-defined jawline tensed, and as he took her by the elbow she caught the smell of minty soap and a pleasant, clean-scented cologne.

He propelled her forward. “I think it’s better for you to see the victim to answer your question about the connection with Dunst.”

Lara steeled herself as ahead on the trail she spied a prone figure in a bright pink-and-yellow jogging suit and matching shoes.

Pink and yellow...such bright and cheerful colors to die in. They got close enough to see the victim’s eyes staring straight up and the bloody mess on her chest.

“Weapon?” Lara asked curtly. Stabbed in the chest while going for a morning run. Knife? Ice pick? What had been used to steal this young woman’s life? The weapon could say a lot about the killer.

“Not found yet,” Nick replied. “Officers have been combing the area, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was taken away by the killer. Otherwise, it would have just been left in her chest.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with Dunst,” Lara said.

“Look on her right cheek,” Nick said, his voice deeper than usual.

The victim’s face was turned just enough that Lara had to walk around the body to get a look at her right cheek. When she did, a gasp of shock escaped her. Stamped onto the youthful, clear skin was the unmistakable MM insignia. It had obviously been done with the same kind of ink pad and stamp that Dunst had had in his pocket at the time of his death.

She turned a startled look at Nick. “What in the hell is going on here?” It was a rhetorical question. Nick didn’t have an answer. She didn’t expect one.

She scanned the area. There wouldn’t have been a lot of foot traffic or eyewitnesses at around six or six-thirty in the morning, but there would have been a few early birds on the trails.

Still, it should have been difficult for the killer to stab the victim and then bend over her prone body to take the time to stamp her cheek. The killer had to have looked as if he belonged on the trail, which meant he would have probably been clad in some sort of running clothes.

“Any ID found?” she asked the nearest cop.

“We were told not to touch anything until you arrived,” he replied.

Nick bent over the body and carefully plucked a slim wallet from one of her back pockets with gloved fingers. He opened it. “Laura Bowman, twenty-three years old.”

Lara winced. Twenty-three years old and her life was finished, cut short by a knife from some perp. “Call it in, and let’s see what Cass and the others can find out about her background. Meanwhile, I’m going to interview the man who found her.”

Lara headed toward the patrol car where a man sat in the backseat. She tried not to think about the ink imprint on Laura Bowman’s cheek. Right now she just needed to get information and not attempt to process any of it. There would be time for that later when they had more facts at hand.

James Carlson was a thirty-six-year-old fitness freak who loved to run in the early mornings when he didn’t have to contend with the hobby runners. He worked as a trainer at a well-known gym and was still pale and shaken as he told Lara about nearly running over the dead girl.

“I’ve been jogging along these trails for the past five years, and I’ve never seen anything like that poor woman,” he said. “I’ve seen drunks and druggies and homeless people scurrying away as the sun came up, but nothing that even comes close to this.”

“Have you noticed her on the trail when you’ve run here before?” Lara eyed Carlson from the top of his short brown hair to the tip of his light gray running shoes.

The person who found and reported a murdered body was always the first suspect, but she didn’t see a speck of blood or any sign to indicate that he’d had anything to do with the killing.

It would have been difficult to stab the victim and then lean over her to stamp her cheek without getting some blood transference. He also couldn’t fake the ashen color of his face or the utter horror that emanated from his pale gray eyes.

“No, I’ve never seen her before this morning, but I started out a little later than usual today,” he replied. “Just my luck to decide to have an extra cup of coffee and be here a half an hour later than normal.”

“Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

He shook his head. “No, it was just me...and her.” His face took on a new paleness and he looked as if he might puke. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. God, I don’t think I’ll ever get this out of my head.”

She spoke to him a few minutes longer, and then, after getting his contact information, she let him go. She didn’t believe he was the perp. Her gut told her he was just some luckless guy who had happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

By that time the medical examiner had arrived, and she joined Nick who stood several feet away to let Dr. Herman Boze do his job.

“You okay?” Nick asked her.

Lara looked at him in surprise. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“You keep rubbing your arm. Did you bump it or something?”

Lara realized she was rubbing her arm. Over and over again...obsessively...compulsively. She quickly stopped and stared at the stamp on the victim’s cheek. She could just blow Nick off, tell him she’d bumped it and leave it at that, but instead she opted for a little bit of honesty.

“When I was undercover I was tattooed with that same insignia on my arm. The actual tattooing wasn’t so bad, but getting it removed was a long, extremely painful process.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Nick said softly. There was genuine empathy in his voice and in his dark eyes.

“Yeah, well that was then and this is now,” she replied with a forced toughness in her tone. The last thing she wanted to do was reveal any weakness to anyone, especially her new partner. She didn’t want or need empathy from anyone. What she needed was answers.

It was close to noon by the time the body had been removed and the area had been thoroughly searched by the officers on scene. Dr. Boze’s initial assessment was that she had been stabbed twice in the heart, and her body temperature indicated that her time of death was around six-thirty or so that morning. He’d have more information for them after he conducted a complete autopsy.

“Did you drive here?” Lara asked Nick as everyone began to disperse from the area.

“Yeah, why?”

“I took a cab. Can I catch a ride with you back to headquarters?” Lara asked.

“Sure,” he agreed.

Minutes later they were in his car and headed back to check in on what the team had found out about the new victim. Lara was quiet, still haunted by the vision of the stamp on the young woman’s face.

* * *

When they arrived, only Mei and Ty were at their cubicles working on their computers. Victoria was probably in her office. Cass would be in her tech room where dozens of computer monitors lined the walls.

The area was set up like a pod, with the large open center area holding cubicles that were the agents’ work spaces, and Cass’s room, Victoria’s office, several conference rooms and a break room shooting out like arms from an octopus.

Xander came out of the break room, a coffee cup in his hand. “What’s up?”

“We need a meeting,” Lara said.

Nick knocked on Victoria’s door, and when she answered he requested the team get together in the conference room to discuss the morning activity and share information that everyone had dug up on the latest murder.

It didn’t take long for everyone to be seated at the conference table. Nick and Lara filled them in on what they had discovered.

“What were you able to find out about the victim?” Lara asked Cass.

“She was twenty-three, a grad student at Columbia and lived in an apartment nearby. No criminal record of any kind, and according to the social media I checked, she was a vegan and had a long-term relationship with a boyfriend named William Goldman who works as an investment banker.” Cass looked up from her laptop. “So far she’s clean as a whistle, and it’s hard to believe she’d have anything to do with that scumbag Dunst or any of his creep acquaintances.”

“Mei and I have already interviewed William Goldman,” Ty said. “We met him at his office at the Winthrop Investment Group. He told us that they had been dating for four years, and he appeared genuinely devastated by her murder, said he’d told her time and time again that she shouldn’t run alone in the park at that time of the morning. But she thought he was just being a ‘worrywart’—his phrase.”

“He told us he left his apartment building at around six-forty-five this morning to go to work. Apparently he’s hungry and driven and even works on Saturdays. The doorman at his place confirmed his time of leaving the apartment,” Mei added.

Lara frowned thoughtfully. “There’s no way he could have gone to Central Park, killed his girlfriend at six-thirty and then gotten back to his apartment, cleaned up and dressed for a day of work by six-forty-five.”

“And the doorman was on duty all evening the night before and swears William didn’t leave the building at all until he left for work this morning,” Mei replied.

“Apparently William is a creature of habit. He works six days a week, spends most of his evenings with his girlfriend in his apartment and then on the weekends they go out to dinner on Saturday nights. We went over his whereabouts for the last two weeks, and nothing unusual jumped out at us. We’ll continue to work to confirm his movements in the days and weeks before the murder, but I’d say he’s pretty well cleared off the suspect list,” Ty said.

“I not only didn’t find anything to connect her to Dunst. I also didn’t find any connection to the Moretti organization on any level,” Cass added.

“Then why was her face marked with the same stamp that was found in Dunst’s pocket?” Nick asked and looked around the table.

“And who murdered her? She has to have some sort of connection to Dunst or Moretti. Otherwise none of this makes any sense,” Ty added.

“Nothing has made sense since I went out on that ledge to talk Dunst down yesterday morning,” Lara replied. Had it only been yesterday? It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d been talking to Sean Dunst while an unusually cold September breeze blew through her to chill her bones.

Xander had been silent throughout the conversation, occasionally sipping coffee from a black-and-gold ceramic mug. He set his mug down and leaned forward.

“Why are we all wasting our time digging into the vic’s background and chasing down alibis for her boyfriend or anyone else? We all know why she was killed. It was because her name was Lara. Moretti now knows that Lara is FBI and busted him, and now he’s playing with her. He’s having some fun at her expense.” Xander leaned back in his chair and took another sip from his cup.

Lara shot a quick glance at Nick, who was sending a death glare at Xander. “Yeah, right, that’s hilarious,” Nick said, his deep voice sounding oddly strained.

“I don’t understand,” Lara said, her eyes still on Nick. “I thought her name was L-A-U-R-A.” She hadn’t seen the vic’s ID, only Nick had looked at it.

Xander shook his head. “Her name was L-A-R-A. Just like yours.”

“I didn’t want that information to cloud your mind while we did the initial investigation,” Nick replied, his gaze not quite meeting Lara’s.

Wrong answer. Lara averted her gaze from him as a fiery anger lit inside her. How could she trust a partner who kept things from her? He’d just committed his first sin against her—withholding information. If he thought she would tolerate crap like that, then he was sadly mistaken.

“But Dunst was killed before Lara’s face was splashed all over the news,” Mei exclaimed. “Dunst had to have known Lara was in New York before that.”

Xander frowned. “You’re right.”

“I’d say right now we’re still in the dark,” Ty replied.

Lara was horrified at the thought that the poor young woman on the jogging trail might have been murdered...stabbed in the heart, simply because she had the misfortune of having the same spelling of Lara’s name.

Was the knife through the heart a special message just for Lara? Was Moretti reaching out despite his prison bars to taunt her, to torment her?

“Lara, I’m sorry,” Nick said.

“Bite me,” she replied vehemently without looking at him.

Victoria spoke for the first time. “Everyone calm down and play nice.” Lara knew the words were meant specifically for her. She stared down at the table as Victoria continued. “Maybe it’s time for Mei and Ty to go to Long Island and feel out some ofMoretti’s crew incarcerated there and see if they might know something about what’s going on now.”

“If Moretti knows about what’s happened, if he’s somehow responsible for it, then he is probably expecting a visit from somebody from the FBI,” Lara said and looked up at Victoria.

“He’s probably expecting a visit from you,” Xander replied.

The thought of facing Moretti again was like a fist punch to Lara’s stomach. She’d thought she was done with all of this. She’d hoped to never have to talk to or see any of the members of the syndicate again...especially Moretti.

“If he’s hoping for a visit from Lara, do we really want to give him what he wants?” Nick asked. “Or is it better to leave him twisting in the wind and frustrated for a while?”

“I think Mei and Ty talking to his operatives is a good place to start, but if Moretti wants to talk to or see me, then I think maybe it’s better to just let him wait a bit,” Lara said.

She wasn’t sure if her decision was what was best for the team or because of her reluctance to have anything to do with the man who had done so much damage to so many people, the man who was a master manipulator and the face of evil.

“Then for now we wait on having any contact with Moretti,” Victoria replied.

“Let’s just hope there’s not another victim while you’re waiting,” Xander said to Lara.

Jerk. She glared at him.

Still, she could only hope for the same thing. If indeed this was all tied to Moretti, she definitely didn’t want anyone else getting killed or hurt if his ultimate intended victim was her.

She successfully fought against the shiver that threatened to waltz up her back at the very real possibility that Moretti was pulling strings and playing sadistic games to make sure that she was utterly and completely destroyed.