Redemption Key (A Dani Britton Thriller) (24 page)

“Not far enough, apparently.”

She said it with a little smile and Booker felt another rush of heat.

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

Then she laughed. “I’ve been thinking about you too.”

Booker wasn’t so far out of the stream of human interaction that he didn’t catch the edge in her tone. Was this a mistake? Should he have kept his presence a secret, watched Dani in private for a while? This wasn’t like him. He didn’t stammer and blush like a schoolboy.

But then, he didn’t get to meet girls like Dani.

Except when he was hired to kill them, and that was a different story.

Dani sighed and swung the bucket she carried into the deep bar sink. When she reached forward to turn on the faucet, he saw the starburst of scars across her shoulder. He didn’t think. Before he knew it he stood on the rungs of the stool, stretching long across the bar to put his fingertips on the jagged white lines. When his fingertips touched her warm skin, he felt her jump, her muscles twitching along her back.

2:08pm, 104° F

It was only the crack of a metal bolt against her knee that shocked Dani enough to keep her from leaping onto the counter. She wouldn’t
have screamed. She couldn’t have. Her throat had closed to the point of suffocating her.

Some part of her, some insane part of her mind that had had enough of the adrenaline and the suspense, had made her turn her back on Tom. It had wanted him to touch her, had wanted him to lunge and do whatever it was he planned on doing. It was the same part that wanted Bermingham’s shipment to show up, wanted dawn to get here and to find out once again if she was going to get shot or strangled or have to run for her life.

“What happened?” His voice was reverent as his fingertips traced the knotty scars.

She didn’t turn around. She didn’t think about what his fingers felt like.

“What do you think happened? Don’t you remember?”

“I remember you going over. I hit my head pretty hard.”

At that she turned, stepping close to the bar, following him as he dropped back on the stool. “You hit your head pretty hard?” She spit out the words as she climbed on a shelf, lifting herself so she bent over the bar into his face. “Let me see.”

He didn’t back away from her, but his eyes widened. “What?”

“Let me see where you hit your head. Let me see the scars.”

“There are no scars.” He ran his fingers over his cheekbone and around his eye. “This was all rebuilt. They did it from the inside so there wouldn’t be any scars.”

She was close enough to bite him. “Well that was awfully nice of them.”

Could he see how much she wanted to bite him? To give him a scar? Was he afraid of her? This time he didn’t have a knife; she didn’t have a bullet wound in her leg. This was her territory and she felt stronger than she’d ever felt in her life. Did he see that? Is that why he seemed to tremble when she moved closer to him?

Or was it something else?

Something wet and cold bounced off the back of her neck and Dani spun around back onto the ground. Down by the kitchen Peg made a show of drying her hands on her shorts, flickering her glance up toward the deck door. Dani looked that way too in time to see the enormous figure of Bermingham walking hard and fast across the floor.

He didn’t even pretend to greet her. Instead he stood right at the corner of the bar, staring squarely at Tom. He leaned forward, thick forearms sprawled on the bar, long fingers nearly reaching Tom’s drink, staring into Tom’s profile.

“Everything okay here?”

“Everything’s fine,” Dani said. “There’s—”

He shot out a finger and wagged it in her face. “I’m not talking to you.” Dani flinched. Bermingham hadn’t looked to see how close his hand had come. Tom had seen it. He watched it as Bermingham brought it to point at him. “I’m talking to you, friend.”

All that nervousness or whatever she had seen in Tom’s body language disappeared under a subtle settling of his shoulders. The change came on so smoothly she almost laughed. Talking with her made him nervous. Being cornered by a man the size of Bermingham put him at ease. There was absolutely no upside to this situation.

Unless they killed each other.

Dani stepped back against the bar sink and folded her arms.

“I noticed the way you decided to reach across the bar to touch my girl. I noticed she didn’t like it much. I wonder if you’d mind not doing that again.”

Tom said nothing, just looked over at Dani with a little smile Bermingham couldn’t miss.

“Oh. Oh. Unless . . .” The Canadian had turned back to her. He stood straight, his huge hands gripping the edge of the bar. “Is this another friend? You’ve got a lot of friends, Dani.”

She didn’t look at Tom. “He’s no friend of mine.”

“I’m a paying customer,” Tom said.

Tom drummed his fingers on the bar before turning to smile up at the Canadian. Tom wasn’t a big man. Though sinewy, he looked downright slight next to the gangster. Bermingham had at least six or seven inches on him. He had a bad temper and a worse reputation, but Dani knew—and not from hearsay—what Tom was capable of. Seeing him move so slowly, that little smile on his full lips, brought her nightmares to life in full color.

Bermingham didn’t see it. He turned to Dani. “You all right? You want me to stick around? Get rid of this guy?”

Now there was a question.

Tom wiped his fingers on his drink napkin and slid from the stool. Bermingham leaned on an elbow and watched him.

“I assure you,” Tom said, “there’s no need to get territorial. If you’ll just point me to the restrooms, I’ll freshen up and then settle my bill.” Bermingham pointed and Tom walked off, smiling.

“You okay?” he asked her once the men’s room door had closed. “This really isn’t the time to be making new friends, Dani. I don’t like strangers around during a deal. Understand?”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t hear him. All she could focus on was the wrinkled bar napkin Tom had dropped, and the metal Jinky’s key beneath it.

2:18pm, 105° F

Caldwell finished his drink in one pull and poured another.

Oren found it difficult to swallow. “Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

“I think I’m being set up. And I think they’re using you to do it.”

“Who?”

“The Bureau.”

Oren forced down his vodka. “You’re being set up by the FBI? For what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He rolled the glass across his palm, staring at the vodka. “This is all too tidy. Bermingham, whatever the hell the Wheelers are moving that brought him all the way down from Canada, your girl showing up and getting cozy. I know you think I’m being paranoid about her connection to Bermingham, but—”

Oren cleared his throat. “I’m not so sure you are paranoid. They know each other. Dani says it just happened, that she didn’t know who he was. She’s pretty convincing. But if you have something that says otherwise, I’d like to hear it.”

“Shit.” Caldwell fumbled his drink, his fingers trembling. “Shit.”

“You’re going to have to do a little better than that, man. What did you find out?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I ran Dani’s name and got squat. I ran the kid’s name. Got nothing but society gossip. You know what else I got?” He poured again. “I got a visit. From my SAC. Not a phone call. Not from my SSA. My SAC paid me a visit in person.”

“Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“It means God himself stepped down from heaven to check my emails. Special Agent in Charge Tomblin Richter doesn’t make office calls. He’s my boss’s boss’s boss. He’s the Jesus of Miami. He tells the hurricanes when they can roll in. Do you hear me? He ‘stopped by’ my office for a little chat. With me.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked what my interest was in Danielle Britton.”

The look on the agent’s face made that sentence far scarier than Oren thought it should be. “And what did you say?”

“I lied out my ass. Said someone had recommended I talk with her about a case I’m on. I had to stand there pretending this was
situation normal as he asked me if I’d found anything and then told me it was probably for the best that I hadn’t.”

Considering the fact that he had a six-foot-five mountain of dangerous Canadian less than two hundred feet away in his units, Oren found it difficult to see the danger in Caldwell’s interoffice crisis. It must have shown on his face because Caldwell started explaining.

“Look, if I step out of line, my SSA will call me in, the Supervisory Special Agent. It happens all the time. She’s my boss. If it gets serious, like the time I had to explain about Bancroft and all those diamonds—you remember that?—I get called down by the ASAC, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge. That’s bad. That got me suspended, remember?”

“Yeah, of course I do. You drank a month’s worth of profit that week.”

“Yeah, being dressed down by the ASAC is not a good time.”

“And so,” Oren struggled to follow, “being called by the SAC, not his assistant, means you’re in bigger trouble? For looking up a file that has nothing on it?”

Caldwell rubbed his eyes. “You’re missing the point of all this. It’s not just a matter of who dressed me down, it’s why. If Dani has no file with us, if there’s nothing to report, how did they know I was looking for her? Why does the highest-ranking agent in Miami care that I looked into a woman who has absolutely nothing on file?”

Oren couldn’t think of a good way this could go. “Because . . .”

The agent nodded. “Because she has a file. And whatever is on it is important enough and dangerous enough to restrict it. And whoever is restricting it is powerful enough to have the top man in my division find me and tell me to drop it. Whoever they are, they can make my SAC their errand boy. Now you’ve got a girl in your bar who has that kind of juice in her past and she’s on hand when
one of the most wanted men in North America just happens to be doing a deal so big that the fucking Wheelers are squealing? You tell me that my bosses haven’t put two and two together and come up with a big fat implication for you? And if you’re implicated and I’m sitting on my ass at your bar not blowing the whistle, I’m implicated. You see what I’m saying?”

“Oh shit. I suddenly feel a strong urge to sail to Cuba.”