Undercover Connection, page 15
She’d been right; he was no gunslinger himself; he was completely inept. His gun went flying and he let out a yelp that made him sound like a wounded kitten.
She straddled him, pinning him down. “Where’s Kari? What have you done with her?”
“What have I done with her?” He seemed stunned.
“You bastard, what have you done with her?”
It would be unethical, but...she was still playing a role. She’d taken him, and she meant to get the truth from him, beat it out of him if she had to. She could get away with this—one high-class escort worried about another, attacking a man...
But just as she was about to deliver a good right to his jaw, she heard her name called.
She looked up.
Kari was standing in the archway to the next room.
At the same time, she felt strong arms wrap around her waist, drawing her off of Connor. She twisted and fought and turned—
Jacob!
Jacob, stopping her, when she had the man down... “Let me go!” she demanded furiously.
“Jasmine, Jasmine, it’s all right, you don’t understand!” Kari cried. She rushed over to Connor, going down on her knees and trying to help the man up.
Astonished, Jasmine turned to Jacob. “What in God’s name is happening?” she demanded, wrenching free from him. “Has everyone gone mad?”
Jacob turned and closed and locked the door and then looked at her.
For one moment, she felt extreme panic. Were they all in on it? Was Jacob a turncoat, had he somehow tricked the federal government, was this all...?
No! She believed in him, she knew him, knew this couldn’t be.
“I admit, I don’t fully know myself,” Jacob said. “But we need to give Mr. Connor a chance to explain.”
Connor was up on his feet, standing next to Kari—who was protectively holding his arm. “What is going on?” Connor asked.
“You first,” Jacob told him.
“I’m just a citizen,” Connor said. “Trying to...do the right thing.”
Kari spoke up then, passionately. “Donald’s daughter came to Miami Beach and wound up modeling with the group.” She let out a long breath. “She was found dead on the beach. Drug overdose.”
“I hire them to get them out,” Connor whispered.
“But...but...” Jasmine began.
“Nan, my daughter, talked to me. She was frightened. She said that she couldn’t forget what she had seen, and she was afraid that someone knew she knew about the cocaine, and...then she was found dead. She wasn’t an addict. She didn’t do drugs. I called the police—there was an investigation, and it went nowhere. The officers tried, but Nan wasn’t found anywhere near the club, she’d been out with friends, she’d said she was leaving, and...they killed her. I know they killed her. And I couldn’t get justice, so—”
“Donald made arrangements for me to get away—far away. Hide out, and then start over,” Kari said softly. “I wanted to get ahead so badly, be rich and famous...be loved. I did things I’m not proud of. And I couldn’t see any way out. But... Donald is a savior!”
“I need some kind of proof,” Jacob said. “And if this is all true, Mr. Connor, I am so sorry and, of course, so grateful, and you’re a fool, as well. You’re risking your own life.”
“My life does not matter so much anymore,” Connor said flatly. “I have proof—our airline tickets. I was taking Kari to London tonight and then on to Yorkshire, to settle her with my family there.”
Jasmine stared at them all, incredulous. And then it hit her. Connor’s daughter...dead.
“Mary,” she murmured.
“Mary?” Connor said. “Mary Ahearn?”
Jasmine stared at him.
Connor smiled. “Lovely young woman. She tried to help me find out which one of those horrible people was responsible for Nan’s death. She tried to find out what was going on.”
“So, you gave her a death sentence, too,” Jasmine whispered.
He shook his head, looking a bit confused but still smiling. “Mary is alive and well. She’s at my estate in Yorkshire, happily working on a play she’s been longing to write. Of course, she’d love to be acting, and she’s very fond of British theater, so she just might want to stay on. I asked her not to contact anyone from her former life until we were sure she was safe.”
Jasmine would have fallen over. She felt Jacob’s strength as his arms came around her.
He was staring across the room at Connor. “We will have to verify your information. And I hope you’re telling the truth. If so, I swear to you, we will get justice for your daughter. I’m setting you up with an agent to get safely out of the country. I don’t think you’ll be bothered tonight—there’s too much else going on right now.”
“Why did you call me? Why did you hang up?” Jasmine demanded of Kari.
“My—my phone died! I figured I’d call you and let you know I was leaving as soon as possible,” Kari said. “And then we were getting my things, and Donald promised he’d come back and get you out, but he thought you were safe, that Jacob might be a criminal, but he’d be watching over you and then somehow, he’d get to you and—I’m so sorry!”
“One thing, please,” Connor said.
“What?” Jacob demanded.
“Who the hell are you people?” Connor asked.
Chapter Twelve
It felt odd that it had just been that afternoon that Josef Smirnoff had been lain to rest. The ceremony at the club had taken place, and Jacob had ushered Kozak out in an ambulance, pretending the man was at death’s door.
While Jacob and Jasmine were at Connor’s suite, Kozak had gone into the hospital—and then out another door. He had immediately been ushered out to a FBI facility out west in Miami, in a little area with scores of ranch houses built in the 1970s, heading west off the canal that bordered the Tamiami Trail all the way across the south end of the peninsula to Naples, Florida.
Agents watching the hospitals—the beach hospital where Kozak had first been taken and the county hospital with the trauma center where he’d supposedly been brought later—had kept up with Jacob; Jasmine had been in touch with the MDPD who had in turn been in touch with the Miami Beach department, and everyone was on alert in case another attempt was made on the life of their new informant.
The entire inner core of Kozak’s circle had arrived at the beach hospital, only to be assured that everything was being done, but that no one could see Victor Kozak. They had left together, but now Ivan and Natasha were back at the club with only Antonovich to watch over the doors. Natasha had been a mess, so Jasmine and Jacob were told—and had to be sedated when she was told that Kozak was on the verge of death.
Jacob had received many calls from both Ivan and Natasha, but he had told them both that he also had been kicked out of the hospital for having grown too insistent on seeing a man when an intensive care crew was busy trying to save him.
It was well after midnight by the time Donald McPherson Connor and Kari Anderson had been escorted to the airport—and safely onto their plane. Jasmine had gone from being ready to rip the man’s throat out to being his best friend—they’d wound up talking and talking.
Kari had told her she’d wanted to say more, but she couldn’t. She’d been afraid of what Jasmine might say or do, not at all certain that Jacob wasn’t on the rise through the gang—or that Jasmine wasn’t already completely beneath his control.
Connor had spoken about his own grief and then about dealing with it in the most constructive way he could.
“You really took chances,” Jacob had told him.
“Not so much. I wasn’t in on anything. I was just a client. Not someone making money—I was someone giving them money.” He paused and shrugged. “And money is something I have. But it means nothing when you don’t have the ones you love to share it with.”
Jacob had to admit, he was a bit in awe of the man himself. Grief and loss often destroyed the loving survivors; Connor had channeled his resources and himself into saving others.
Naturally, Jacob hadn’t immediately trusted what he heard, but with the information Connor gave him, the FBI offices were able to verify his story. The man did own a huge estate in Yorkshire. In truth, he had a title. He also held dual citizenship and spent as much time in the States—recently in the pursuit of saving the lives of young women—as in Great Britain.
And so it was two in the morning when Jacob and Jasmine returned to her apartment. She didn’t seem the least bit tired. She was keyed up and alive, filled with energy.
“She’s all right, Jacob! Mary is fine. She’s in England...and I’ve been so, so afraid!”
He was sitting on the sofa, wiped out. She’d been all but flying around the room. In her happiness, that flight took her to fall down on his lap, sweeping her arms around him, her smile bright and her eyes as dazzling an emerald as could ever be imagined.
Her touch removed a great deal of his own exhaustion.
“She’s alive, and you have to meet her. Oh, Jacob, to think I wanted to skin that man alive, that I thought he was part of...” Her voice trailed off and she frowned.
“What?” he asked, reaching out to stroke back a long lock of her hair.
“We’re no closer to the truth. Nan Connor was afraid because she was a witness to a huge cocaine deal. But we don’t know who saw her, and there’s no way we can find out. We’re pretending that Kozak is dying, but none of the gang has risen up to try to take over.”
“Jasmine, as far as I know, they wouldn’t dare do so. They don’t believe that Kozak is dead as of yet, and they won’t dare play their cards until they do.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“Everything is in motion. I don’t even call the shots from here on out. I’ll go out tomorrow to interrogate Kozak, but it’s going to be up to men with much higher positions than mine to determine what our next steps are. Kozak was grateful just to be alive.” He paused, looking at her. “That was an amazing save tonight—the poison in the vodka. How did you know?”
“When he talked about his special reserve, it occurred to me that he’d be the only one drinking it. I’d hoped I’d find out who had brought the bottle and handed it to the bartender, but the guy was from the catering company and he said the bar had been set up when he got there, with the instructions that the special reserve stuff was for Kozak and Kozak only.”
“Impressive.” He smiled, watching her eyes. “You are a veritable beast. I thought you were going to rip Connor’s head off. We’re lucky you didn’t shoot. He had a gun, right? You need to slow down—you could have gotten yourself killed.”
“I could see he didn’t know what he was doing with the gun,” Jasmine said. Then she frowned. “How did you know that he wasn’t going to kill anyone?”
“The agent watching him, Special Agent Daubs, Miami Criminal Division. He’d overheard Connor and Kari talking. And he watched them. Said he was a pretty good judge of men, and I guess he was.”
“I’m glad,” Jasmine said softly.
“So now, once again, we wait. Tomorrow, I’ll spend some time out with Kozak. And you and Jorge and others will be on the beach, waiting, ready to move if anything does break—play your part. But don’t go anywhere near the club.”
“I still have my uniform.”
“If they call you, let me know right away. And for now—”
“Tonight?” she asked seriously.
“Sleep would be on the agenda.”
“Ah, yes, sleep.”
“Perhaps some rigorous exercise to speed the process,” he suggested.
“We are still playing roles,” she murmured.
“Jorge did say we were method actors.”
“We can always work on method,” she whispered.
Jacob wondered vaguely what it was about a special woman, that her slightest whisper, the nuance in her words, her lightest touch, could awaken everything in a man. There was no one in the world anything like her, he thought.
She stood, reaching for his hand. He rose, smiling. In the bedroom, they both saw to their weapons first. They barely touched, shedding their clothing in a hurry.
He went down on the bed, patting the mattress, and for a moment, she stood, sleek and stunning as a silhouette in the pale light from the hallway. She moved with grace, coming to him, and then she was next to him, in his arms, and if anything, they were more frantic that night to touch and to tease and to taste one another. To make love.
Later, when they should have been drifting off to sleep, she rose up on an elbow, looking at him, empathy in the ever-brilliant sheen of her eyes. “Forgive me, but...”
He knew what she wanted to know. So, he told her about growing up in Miami at first and moving to New York. Falling in love with Sabrina in high school, college, the service...
“Going off to the Middle East,” he said. “She was always so worried about me. And she was vibrant. Full of life. We were happy. I’d done my service and I knew I wanted to head into the FBI Academy. I was certain I’d make it. We never thought... Well, she was diagnosed, and three months later, she was gone.”
“I am so, so sorry.”
“It was over ten years ago now,” he told her, rolling to better see her face, stroke her cheek. “But you...hmm. Can’t figure how you manage to be unattached. Of course, Jorge told me that you do have a tendency to shut a guy down before he can ask you out.”
“Jorge talks way too much.”
He laughed softly and pulled her into his arms. “That’s all right,” he told her. “I’m not an easy man to shut down.”
She grinned, indicating their positions. “I didn’t try very hard to shut you down.”
He laughed and she was in his arms again.
* * *
SHE WAS NO good at waiting. She would never make it full time in undercover work.
Jasmine actually tried to sleep after Jacob left. His phone had rung far too early, letting him know that a car was coming to take him to the safe house where Kozak was being guarded. But sleep was impossible. She made coffee, washed and dried her hair and was tempted to try to do her own nails, since she had a rare moment of downtime. She reminded herself how incredibly happy she was—how grateful.
Mary was fine, alive and well. Kari was fine, too. They’d met a man who was trying to prevent future wrongs.
Still, someone within the gang was truly cold-blooded. At least eight people were dead because of the person within who considered murder to be a stepping-stone to criminal power.
If only Jacob were there to bounce her theories off of. They worked well together. Even when they were just playing roles. But the roles had become so much more. She’d found someone who seemed to really care about her, who could be with her, for all that she was, for what she did.
These roles would come to an end. That didn’t mean they had to stop seeing each other, but her life, her work, was here. And his life and work were in New York.
It was foolish to think about the future. In the middle of this, she couldn’t even be certain that either of them had a future. She had faith in herself and faith in him and all their colleagues—but no one entered into law enforcement without recognizing the dangers.
Worrying about the future was not helping her keep from crawling up the walls.
She couldn’t call a friend and go out. She was still undercover. And Jacob had told her not to go near the club.
She was on her third cup of coffee when she realized that she could call Jorge. She was so antsy she’d probably annoy him, but Jorge never seemed to mind. As the thought occurred to her, she felt her phone ring.
“Jorge!”
“Hey, gorgeous, whatcha doing?”
“I was about to call you. I’m waiting. Doing what I was told to do. Climbing the walls. Being such a desperate cop I’m ready to watch a marathon of Desperate Housewives with you.”
“Well, I have a reprieve for you. I’m on my way. All sanctioned. Come out to the corner. I’ll be by for you.”
“Perfect. Jeans okay?”
“Jeans and sneakers. Great. See you in five minutes.”
“This is cleared with Captain Lorenzo—and the FBI?”
“Yeah, we’re supposed to be heading to a music venue controlled by the gang. Top groups. Acting like normal people. Waiting like the rest of the folks around us, finding out if Kozak is going to make it. Gauging their reactions.”
“Okay!” Jasmine rang off and shoved her phone into her cross-body handbag. She hurried out, carefully locking her apartment, all but running by the bathers out by the pool, aware of the bright sun and the waving palms.
A car pulled over to the curb; it wasn’t a car she knew, but an impressive SUV. FBI issue for work down here?
Jorge rolled down the passenger-side window. “Hop in!” he said cheerfully.
“Where did you get the car?” she asked.
“City of Miami Beach,” he said. He was smiling broadly, but she frowned. Something about him didn’t seem quite right.
But while she and Jorge might never have discussed their personal lives, they were solid working partners. They always had one another’s back. He would die for her...
It wasn’t until she was inext to the car that she realized Jorge wasn’t alone in the car.
There was a man in the back, but Jasmine’s focus went to the fact that he had the business edge of a serious knife against the throat of a woman he’d shoved down in the seat. The young woman was trying desperately hard not to snuffle or cry out, with that blade so close to her artery.
It was Helen Lee, the sweet and lovely young woman with whom she and Kari had shared the runway.
Helen was absolutely terrified.
The man with the knife smiled. She was not entirely surprised to see who it was.
“Welcome, Jasmine. Now, Jorge, drive. And no tricks, no running us off the road. You wouldn’t want my hand to slip. You wouldn’t want to see this blade slice right through Helen’s throat, would you? Jorge—drive. Now. Jasmine, smile. Please. It will keep my hand so much steadier.”
