Ace Is Wild (35 page)

“Flip,” she shouted, her eyes never leaving Daniel’s, “Pierce is escaping. Come down here and shoot him.”

“Now who’s being unreasonable?”

“I learned it from you.”

Daniel heaved a sigh and slogged through the water, now ankle deep on him. “I ought to leave you here,” he muttered, attacking the plastic tie around her wrists with a pocketknife.

She twisted around as far as possible, putting her body between him and her wrists. “Just give me the stupid knife and go away.”

“Stop fighting me or I’ll have to knock you out.”

“Going to use the Vulcan death grip?”

“I was thinking something more earthly. Like a bullet. Or a pocketknife.”

“Convenient.”

“Save it—unless you think your tongue is sharp enough to cut you out.”

Vivi didn’t like it, but she had to let him at her plastic-tied wrists—him and his pocketknife, which must have been pretty dull since it took a solid two minutes and three nicks before he sawed his way through.

The boat was foundering pretty badly and listing to port, or maybe starboard, by the time she was free. Daniel waded over to the hatch and heaved himself up the steps. He reached down for her, but she made it to the deck under her own steam.

“There’s no point trying to start the engine,” Daniel said.

Vivi was already climbing over the side of the boat.

“What are you doing?”

“Swimming to shore,” she said, stopping mid-climb, one leg over the railing.

“What about Flip?”

She shrugged. “What about him?”

“He’s in no shape to swim.”

“Just leave me to die,” Flip moaned, looking like he meant it.

“See? He wants to die. And you wanted me to shoot him. Several times. So it works out for everyone.”

“We can’t just leave him to drown.”

“We?” Vivi gave a slight, derisive snort of laughter. “There is no
we
, Ace.”

He didn’t say anything, not about their partnership anyway, and his silence on the subject was all the confirmation she needed.

“Your life is on the line, too,” he reminded her when she swung her other leg over the railing. “Flip can tell us who’s behind the murder attempts.”

Vivi jumped over. She didn’t give a damn about the murder attempts anymore. She probably would tomorrow, but for the moment, all that mattered was distance. Time would be the real healer, but that wasn’t within her power to change.

“Where are you going?” Daniel yelled from the deck, which was all but underwater now.

“I’m swimming to shore,” she yelled back.

“It’s at least a mile. You’ll drown.”

“Well, that’ll make your day.”

There was a splash behind her. She spun around and there was Flip, jammed into a life preserver, floating listlessly in the water. Daniel dove in, grabbed hold of the rope around the preserver, and began to sidestroke, Flip bobbing along behind him like a paisley cork.

“Shouldn’t you be holding the rope in your teeth?” Vivi asked Daniel. “It’s more macho that way.”

He didn’t look amused. “You could help.”

She rolled onto her back, kicking lazily with her feet, preserving energy. “You’ll make it. I’m sure.”

“I thought you couldn’t get a reading . . .” he trailed off.

Their eyes met, held. Daniel looked away first. She could have told him she’d only meant that she knew he’d get to shore because he wouldn’t let himself fail, but best just to let the matter go, she decided.

That was surely what Daniel intended to do.

BY THE TIME DANIEL GOT HIMSELF AND FLIP TO THE wharf, Vivi was long gone. She hadn’t even left a water trail. True, there was no way to know where she’d actually climbed onto shore, but it still ticked him off.

He hauled himself out of the water and dragged Flip out, both of them flopping on the littered, weedy wharf. Daniel just needed a few minutes to catch his breath. Flip probably would have preferred death. He was flat on his back, propped up by the life preserver under his armpits, listing to one side with noxious fluids running out of his eyes, nose, and mouth, thanks to the regular, weak heaving of his stomach. Not going anywhere until Daniel was ready to carry him. Daniel not only didn’t want to carry him, Daniel was inexplicably torn between getting answers from Flip and leaving him on the wharf like storm-wrack so he could track Vivi down.

It wasn’t a tough choice—hell, it was no choice at all. Vivi would still be around when—if—
when
he went looking for her. If he left Flip alone, he’d be gone as soon as he could drag his perky ass off the dock.

And yet there Daniel was, the answer to his problem not three feet away, and what was he doing? He was carrying on a debate between getting those answers and going after Vivi. She’d lied to him, and why had she lied to him? Because she didn’t trust him. After all her big talk about blind faith, she’d had none in him. Otherwise she would have told him about her history with Sappresi. Sure, Daniel thought, he’d have been angry, and sure he’d have been suspicious, but . . .

He sat up and slicked his dripping hair out of his face. How about that bomb she’d dropped on the boat, he said to himself. He could be pissed off about that, right? Her claiming she had feelings for him was just a cheap ploy to get around her utter failure to predict what was going to happen . . .

His house. She’d destroyed his house. And smashed up the back of his car, not to mention getting his laptop and phone blown up . . .

Nope, no matter how he looked at the whole stupid fiasco, he couldn’t make any of it Vivi’s fault. Sure, she was irritating and stubborn and probably crazy, not to mention overly emotional. Then there was her tendency to lie. Even in extreme circumstances and with the best of intentions, that was a deal breaker for Daniel, especially when the lie involved a tie to organized crime.

Still, she hadn’t put him in this situation—she’d put herself in, but his involvement was someone else’s idea. And if he was being honest, he had to admit his life had been a damn sight more exciting in the last two weeks. Of course, that was due more to the murder attempts than to Vivi. It didn’t change the fact that they were better off without each other. It didn’t change the fact that going after her now would be a mistake. And it didn’t change the fact that the life and death stuff needed to end.

Best, he decided, to concentrate on the part of that list he could actually do something about. That meant getting Flip to rat out his coconspirators. Daniel would be out of danger then, and so would Vivi, which meant she’d be off his conscience and his mind.

Easier said than done.

First he had to get Flip to Washington, D.C. The Boston P.D. would have been a lot more convenient, but he didn’t have any clout with local law enforcement, and there’d be all that jurisdictional crap to wade through. It would take days to get Flip transferred to FBI custody, not to mention the wear and tear on his patience, waiting for the two factions to stop marking their territory and start acting like they were on the same side.

It meant touching Flip, not a pleasant prospect since Flip was wearing a good portion of his last three meals. Daniel hauled Flip to his feet, shimmied him out of the life preserver, and braced his shoulder in the other man’s armpit. Flip slid down to the concrete, wet noodle-style. Daniel took hold of his collar and started to drag him.

“Hey,” Flip protested weakly, “these are designer jeans. You’re scuffing the label.”

Daniel stopped walking. He didn’t let go of Flip’s shirt. “Get to your feet or there won’t be any label left. Or skin on your ass.”

Flip waved him off and crawled to his hands and knees, then wobbled his way upright. It was slow going, but Daniel prodded Flip along until they found a payphone that worked. A half hour later, a government car showed up. Black and boring, Vivi would have pronounced it. Daniel was more interested in the method of propulsion. He would have preferred a helicopter but he had to take what he could get and be grateful. On the downside, a car meant wasted hours. On the upside, it had a comfortable backseat, so Daniel showed up in Washington at least partially rested. Flip showed up cuffed, smelly, and sullen.

“Jesus,” Mike Kovaleski said when Daniel walked into his office. He put his arms up like he might hug Daniel, then thought better of it and settled for a crushing handshake. “Man, we thought you were dead.”

“The bomb?”

Mike nodded, taking his seat behind the desk in his cluttered little office. “ Your personal effects and the woman’s were found in the rubble, and since it’ll take time to excavate . . .” He spread his hands.

“You figured we were dead,” Daniel finished.

“Yeah, so what happened?”

“It’s a long story.” Involving a nymphomaniac, a two-bit hustler, and a psychic. Some day Daniel figured he’d laugh about it, but it was going to be a while. Thankfully, he had something else to concentrate on. “The guy I brought in, you’ve got him on two counts of attempted murder and two kidnappings, at the very least. I need to know who hired him, and I don’t care if you have to make a deal.”

“Too late for that. A lawyer arrived about an hour before you did, knew this clown was coming in. Already has a gag on him.”

“Who hired the lawyer?”

“Won’t say, claims it’s confidential. And don’t ask me to crack their records. You know more about that attorney /client privilege bullshit than I do.”

Daniel sat back, searching his personal repertoire of case law and coming up empty. No judge would let them breach confidentiality on a fishing expedition. If he didn’t have a solid suspect, he wasn’t getting a warrant for the lawyer’s records. “What about the boat?”

“Any idea where it went down?”

“Only generally.”

“We can send down a diver, but I wouldn’t hold out hope that the registration will do us any good. It’s probably stolen.”

“Run Flip for known associates,” Daniel suggested.

Mike sighed and fired up his desktop, feeding in the name Frances Llewellyn Ipswich.

“No wonder he goes by Flip,” Daniel said.

Unfortunately, nothing came up, no wants, no warrants, no previous arrests.

“Shit,” Mike said, “this guy hasn’t even lifted a pack of gum. And it’s not like there could be two people with that name.”

“Either he’s never been caught, or he’s new at this.”

“I’d go with the latter—for him and his pal—since they’re complete fuckups. Lucky for you.”

“Yeah, lucky for me,” Daniel said absently, his mind already worrying at the problem of how to get something useful out of Flip.

Mike was on the same page. “We’ll find a way to get him to talk,” he said. “You do your lawyer thing, start digging and keep digging ’til you find out what kind of toilet paper this jackass uses. Something’s bound to pop along the way. You know the drill.”

“Right,” Daniel said. “Too bad we can’t use one of those on Flip.”

“Yeah,” Mike said with another sigh, “the good old days. On the other hand, we can send him someplace really choice, give him a couple of days in the general population, and see how he likes that.”

Daniel snorted. “Hell, for Flip, prison will probably be a lot like a singles’ bar.”

Chapter 24

MOST OF A WEEK HAD PASSED SINCE VIVI HAD LEFT
Daniel swimming for shore, towing Flip behind him. She’d hung around, lurking in the shadows of an abandoned warehouse, long enough to make sure they made it to shore, and then she’d gone home.

Daniel hadn’t called. Not that she’d expected him to. He wasn’t still angry over her betrayal; he’d put her in his past. It was how he operated. Well, the hell with him. She refused to waste any time mooning over Daniel Pierce. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, what with the weekend a couple days off. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic in her neighborhood on weekdays, and since her few regulars didn’t realize she’d come back, they weren’t showing up, either. She could have called them, but she was sadly lacking in initiative. Which was not mooning behavior, no matter what anybody else might think. It was self-defense. Calling him would only be asking for rejection.

No way would Daniel want her around after discovering her connection to Anthony Sappresi. Right was right, for him, and wrong was wrong. And she was wrong; he’d been waiting for her to prove it all along, and she finally had.