Ace Is Wild (38 page)

“I think you should come in and sit down, Ms. Foster—”

“Vivi.”

“Vivi. This promises to be a very interesting conversation.”

Patrice led the way into a sitting room beautifully appointed with antiques. Vivi preferred her worn, mismatched furniture; at least it meant something to her.

“I haven’t seen Daniel in a couple weeks,” Patrice said, taking a seat on a Queen Anne chair. “I haven’t talked to him, either, except that once, and then he rushed me off the phone. I’m a little hurt.”

“He’s been busy trying to stay alive,” Vivi said, dropping onto a Chippendale love seat.

Patrice gave a soft breath of laughter. “I can’t believe he hasn’t ended that nonsense by now . . . You’re working with him, right?”

Vivi shrugged. She could have told Patrice the truth, but the pretense that she and Daniel were still a team had to be maintained. “Does it bother you that Daniel is confiding his problems to me?”

“Not at all. I was actually wondering if he—if you have any suspects.”

“As a matter of fact,
we
do.”

Vivi didn’t miss the way Patrice pressed her lips together.

“So he trusts you. In a matter of days?”

“Has it only been days?” It felt like a lifetime. “I know it doesn’t seem fair—”

“Fair!” Patrice sat back, hands white-knuckled on the arms of her chair, fighting her temper. Her temper won. “Is it fair for some tattooed bimbo to sashay into Daniel’s life and take over after I spent the last seven years getting him to open up?”

“Open?” Vivi glanced around a room that looked like it was kept in order by a maid with OCD. “I can see how a repressed social climber like you would think that.”

“I put in all the work to gain his trust.”

“So you could kill him.”

Patrice made the you-must-be-crazy face.

“That would be really convincing for anyone else,” Vivi said. “You covered your tracks pretty well, but you’re going to tell me everything.”

“Suppose I’m not in a talkative mood.”

Vivi took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Let’s start with family,” she said after a moment. “Your uncle Joe, specifically.”

Patrice made a non-drawing-room-approved noise in the back of her throat. “Joe Flynn is a big, dumb Mick who thinks he knows what’s going on. I’m running circles around him.” A small, humorless smile curved her lips. “And now you’d like to trot off to Daniel to tell him some interesting fairy tale you concocted in your strange little mind. He won’t believe you.”

“No, but he’ll believe you.”

“I don’t have anything to say to Daniel.”

“Not even that you’ve got me tied up somewhere, and if he wants to see me alive again, he can come and get me in person?”

“You’ve been watching too much television.”

“You got this idea from television?” Vivi said. “And here I thought you came up with it all on your own. I’m so disappointed.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Forcing your hand. I know you’re behind the contract.”

“You know . . .”

“And I know you want to get your hands on Daniel too much to let me walk out of here.”

“If that were true, it would be really stupid to take you prisoner with the FBI listening in.”

Vivi lifted up her T-shirt.

Patrice raised an eyebrow. “Nice bra,” she said.

“It’s one of those Victoria’s Secret ones. I have trouble finding my size, but this one is perfect.”

“And not hiding a wire. How about the jeans?”

“I’m not taking my pants down for you. I’m no fan of law enforcement, so why would I put my life on the line to help them?”

Patrice took a moment to consider that. “I don’t get it. If you’re so sure I ordered a man killed—a man I truly like, by the way—why would you come here, unarmed and with no backup?”

Vivi shrugged. “Daniel wants to know who’s trying to kill him. I’m giving him the answer.”

“Because you have no proof.”

“Not at the moment, but I’ve already planted the suggestion that you’re behind this.”

“Daniel trusts me.”

“Do you believe that? Or do you think he’ll eventually take a good, hard look at you? Not to mention he could ask Flip.”

Patrice thought that one over, lips pursed, mulling over the probability that Flip would keep his mouth shut,
and
that Daniel would trust her enough to ignore Vivi’s warning. It was too much to take on faith. “Hatch,” she yelled.

Hatch came out of the depths of the house, two hundred pounds of muscle barely regulated by severely underutilized brain cells. He grinned at her—at least Vivi thought it was a grin. His teeth were showing, but his eyes were still cold and dead.

Patrice stood, and Vivi took a deep breath. This was where it got dicey. She’d known she was walking into danger, but facing it now was scarier than she’d imagined.

“You know what to do,” Patrice said to Hatch. “I’m off to make a date with Daniel.”

“Big mistake,” Vivi said, hoping she looked as calm and confident as she sounded. “He’ll be ready for you.”

“How? He doesn’t know where you’re being held.”

“He’ll figure it out.”

“Very good. That almost sounded convincing.”

Vivi laughed. “If you think I have any doubt, then you haven’t been paying attention.” But she was worried. She was taking a hell of a chance with her life, not to mention Daniel’s. But it was the only way to end this thing so that he had a fighting chance. And it was Daniel’s risk to take. He didn’t have to come after her.

But Vivi knew he would.

Chapter 26

DANIEL WAS SITTING IN HIS CAR, IN HIS DRIVEWAY,
staring at the plastic-shrouded front of his house and thinking it was a pretty good metaphor for his life at the moment. He was bare-assed in the wind, with just enough knowledge to make him feel secure when really there was nothing between him and complete disaster—and that included self-control.

His hands fisted around the steering wheel, he struggled to breathe and keep his chest tight at the same time, to hold in the anger and the fear, the complete and utter impotence that wanted to explode out of him in a burst of sound and fury directed at anyone or anything that got in his way. He needed the anger, and the fear, needed to focus them on the right person at the right place and time. And he’d make sure there was a little left over for Vivienne Foster.

If she was still alive to yell at.

She had a gun to her head, aimed by her own hand. And his. He had to face that. She’d called to tell him about Patrice, and he’d been stupid enough to throw a challenge in her face.
Get a motive,
he’d said. Might as well tell her to jump off a bridge. Or a roof, because hell, he was jumping after her, wasn’t he?

Wanting a motive, or a shred of proof, before he believed one of his few friends was trying to plant him wasn’t the stupid part. Saying it to Vivi was. She didn’t think like other people. Not to mention she had something to prove to him, and since he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t accept paranormal confirmation, she’d gone to get it the only way she could. She’d let Patrice take her hostage. And the gun that was aimed at her head? It was in Hatch’s hand, and the guy didn’t seem particularly sound of mind. The guy seemed like he held a grudge, and if Vivi thought Daniel enjoyed violence, she was in for a real eye opener with Hatch.

That thought led to another red-hazed, heart-pounding struggle for control that Daniel might have lost if the phone on the passenger seat hadn’t buzzed. He flashed back to the jail cell, to the last call he’d taken. From Patrice.

He snatched up the phone. It took a few precious seconds to focus on the readout, and then another second to rein his frustration back in before he answered it.

He managed to sound almost calm.

“Mike told me you were leaving Boston today,” he said to Tag Donovan by way of greeting.

“Alex and I are at Logan Airport, waiting to board,” Tag said back. “She has an assignment to do her photojournalist thing in Iraq. I’m going along to make sure she doesn’t have an unfortunate run-in with a sniper or suicide bomber. Speaking of which, I’m glad you didn’t get blown up. Alex, too.”

“Nice to know I’d be missed,” Daniel said. And it was interesting to know it mattered to him, when he’d always told himself it didn’t. “You’ve been talking to Mike.”

“I’ve been talking to Vivi.”

Not a news flash that gave Daniel the warm fuzzies. “Sappresi—”

“She told me about that,” Tag said.

“Zukey—”

“And that. And that you two were on the outs over it. You don’t really think she’s to blame?”

“Don’t you?”

“I think Tony Sappresi is to blame, and since you’re putting his ass in jail, problem solved.”

“It’s not a matter of blame,” Daniel said, “it’s a matter of trust.”

“So I guess that means you don’t want to know that Vivi asked how I would go about figuring out who was behind the contract.”

“And you told her . . .”

“I told her to go back through the events, see if anything popped. And then she asked me how I’d handle whatever popped.”

“Jesus,” Daniel said, not needing to ask the obvious. Tag was an FBI agent. There was only one way to handle this kind of situation. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I give myself up or she dies.”

“Shit,” Tag said, making the leap from his conversation with Vivi to hostage crisis. “You give yourself up and you die,” he pointed out to Daniel. “Her, too. You know the score. And you know the protocol.”

“The protocol doesn’t mean squat when it’s someone you . . .”

“Yeah,” Tag said into the silence. “Been there, done that.”

Tag had been in a similar situation, with Alex held at gunpoint. He’d pulled a Rambo and gotten her out. The difference was, Alex had been the target in that scenario. If Tag had waited, she’d be dead.

Vivi was only a hostage. Daniel should have called the FBI, he should have stepped out and let them handle it. But Patrice wanted him. Anyone else showed up, or she even got wind the authorities were involved, Vivi was dead.

Flip hadn’t rolled, either. His lawyer—or rather Patrice’s lawyer—had arrived in the nick of time and put a muzzle on him, good and tight. Since there was nothing but Daniel’s word to prove Patrice had anything to do with Vivi’s disappearance, she’d walk. And he’d wind up dead sometime in the near future.

“You still there?” Tag wanted to know.

“Yeah,” he said, disgusted, angry, but mostly exhausted. He was fucking worn out trying to keep up with Vivi, mentally and physically.

“When and where?” Tag asked.

“Tomorrow morning, early. They’ll contact me and set up the meet.”

“It’ll be somewhere deserted, a place where a murder, and probably torture, wouldn’t be noticed. Why tomorrow?”

“So I can sit around and wonder what’s happening tonight.”

“Which you’re not going to do—sit around, I mean.

Whoever you’re up against is stupid enough to give you the time to get ahead of this thing. Work whatever leads you have and figure it out. You have leads, right?”

Daniel exhaled heavily. “Just the one Vivi gave me. Patrice Hanlon.”

“Ouch.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Alex doesn’t like her,” Tag said, sounding like a shrug went along with the observation.

“Another sound reason for thinking the woman is capable of murder.”

“Maybe not to you,” Tag said, “but I’ve learned to trust her judgment.”

Truth be told, it carried weight with Daniel, too. He hadn’t known Alex Scott as long—and certainly not as closely—as Tag. But she was one of those people who just seemed to know. Alex didn’t talk a lot, but she listened, carefully, and her bullshit meter seemed to be pretty damn accurate.