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Dan shrugged. “Rats need homes. What can you do?”
“You are crazy.” She headed back toward the front of the nail salon. “I’ll have you know, Super-Duper Agent Daniel Maddox, that’s no longer my car. As of right now. We can go back to yours, and you can have your pals from the Bureau pick up the rodent palace. I’m outta here.”
Dan ran to her side, slid the gun back into the holster under his jacket, and reality slipped away. Slipped away? Yeah, right. It was zipping down the sanity highway, but what could he do? He’d been saddled with a beautiful but crazy witness.
She beat him to the car and stood at the passenger door. She crossed her arms. She tapped the toe of her stiletto-heeled sandal, as if she’d been there forever.
He unlocked the door. “Get in.”
“Yes, Mr. Gracious.”
Okay. It wasn’t the nicest thing he’d ever done. But he was frustrated, they hadn’t taught him how to deal with this kind of witness at Bureau training, much less law school, and she took too much pleasure driving him nuts. He slammed the door shut the minute her rear hit the seat.
And he had to keep her alive long enough to get convictions on her family and their dubious friends? He shook his head, rounded the vehicle, sat behind the wheel and peeled away, all without another word.
While he drove in silent mode, he continued to fume. Now he had to call Eliza, his supervising Special Agent. Not something a man—anyone—in his right mind would want to do. But from where he stood, he had no choice.
To be more accurate, Carlie had left him no choice. He didn’t know if he could keep her alive much longer. She refused to cooperate.
The next light turned against him. He sat and watched seconds crawl by. At his side, Carlie began to hum.
Dan hated humming.
And everyone had always called him laid-back. He scoffed. They oughta see the man he’d become post-Carlotta Papparelli.
She slanted him a look.
He ignored it.
The light turned green, so he drove on toward the safe house the Bureau had set up for Carlie in a massive, Lego block–type apartment complex.
Moments later he heard the faint whee-uhn, whee-uhn, whee-uhn of an emergency vehicle approaching from behind. He glanced in his rear-view mirror. The cherry light on the roof of the squad car strobed closer by the second. Dan pulled over to the shoulder.
“I hope no one’s hurt,” Carlie murmured.
Dan glanced her way. She’d closed her eyes, clasped her hands in her lap. Her expression, for once, was serious, intent. Somehow he knew she’d begun to pray.
Who for? The unknown—and only possibly injured—party?
Strange.
He merged back into the heavier-by-the-minute late-afternoon traffic. Carlie didn’t speak. Neither did he.
Then sirens started up again. They approached from his right, so he eased up to the left shoulder. This time, an ambulance zipped up and rounded the corner. In less than three minutes, three more squad cars, an additional ambulance and two fire trucks raced by.
“Must be big,” he murmured.
“I’m afraid so,” Carlie answered, her voice softer and more serious than he’d heard it yet. She really wasn’t that bad.
“I’m sorry.”
She made a startled sound. “What for?”
“I acted like a jerk back there. I didn’t need to slam the door on you.”
“Thanks for the apology, but I’m not totally innocent either. I tend to have a smart mouth, and I gave you a pretty hard time. I know you’re trying to do your job, and I understand you want to keep me alive, but I’m not used to all these restrictions. Besides, if the Lord wants me home at His side, then I’m ready to go.”
A chill went through Dan. “Don’t be so ready to croak, okay? You’re very young. You’ve a long life ahead of you. By the way, how old are you? I mean, I have all that information in your case file, but I don’t remember everything that’s in it.”
“I prefer to keep that piece of data private.” A touch of humor came back into her voice.
“Not for long. When I get back to my place tonight, you’ll be busted.”
“I’ll take what scrap of privacy I can get these days.”
With an air of comfortable companionship between them, they turned the corner three blocks away from Carlie’s apartment complex. As they approached, a nasty feeling took root in Dan’s gut.
A hideous orange glow tinted the blue sky, and clouds of smoke spread and hovered on the light wind. Right over the complex.
Dan slowed the car. At his side, Carlie caught her breath. His pulse pounded through him, throbbed in his temple.
Every one of his internal alarms detonated.
Which is what seemed to have happened to the structure, a detonation of some sort. All the emergency vehicles that had passed them no more than ten minutes earlier were lined along the backside of Carlie’s apartment building. A HAZMAT team had joined the party, too.
That nasty feeling morphed into a ravening certainty. Still, he had to know. “You stay here,” he said. “And I mean it, Carlie. Don’t move.”
She nodded, her eyes glued to the scene. Firefighters in their yellow suits ran around the trucks, some climbed the giant ladders, others helped people to the ambulances. Uniformed cops talked to a throng of civilians.
Dan approached an officer. “What happened?”
The woman turned to him and shrugged. “We’re not sure. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
A burly man in a white muscle undershirt and tan shorts walked up. “You wanna know what happened? I know what happened.”
Officer Shenise Davis turned keen hazel eyes on the guy. “So tell me what happened, already.”
“Easy there.” The guy’s bearded jaw pushed out. “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled up, you know?” He shook his shaggy head. “Kids! Anyway, there’s this blond broad who lives across from me, and either her gas line went nuts or something else did. All’s I know is the place went kaboom! The whole building shook like one of them California earthquakes. Smoke started to stink up my place, and I opened the door. Well, the babe don’t have much to go back home for—if she wasn’t home, know what I mean?”
Dan knew. Too well.
The walking, talking wealth of information ran a massive paw through the wild thatch on his head. “Either the explosion busted her place to pieces, or else the fire ate it all up.”
Although sure he already knew, Dan asked, “What floor was this?”
“Tenth, over in the middle section.” He pointed an arm heavy with dark hair. “See? The ladder’s up to the window to the right of the babe’s place. Mrs. Schulz is seventy-five. Sure, she’s got more vinegar to her than I got hair, but she can’t go running or nothing like climb down on her own. I figure they’re gonna have to carry her down….”
Dan gave what he hoped the officer and the verbose bear read as a nonchalant shrug, then walked back the excruciating distance between him and Carlie. He got in the car, turned the key, then shot her a sideways look.
“We’re outta here. Your friends and family came calling, and they left you a calling card. Of the exploding kind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t ask me where we’re going, because I don’t know. I have to call in, report this, check out what’s available and then get you there. We can’t stay here anymore. Someone bombed your apartment.”
And then she threw Dan for a loop—again.
Carlie chuckled. “And you gave me grief about my nails. Just be glad I wasn’t here. Face it, Danny Boy…er…Dan. I’d better get a manicure more often. It’s good for my health. My nails—you know, the ones you said were going to get me killed—just saved my life.”
TWO
Yes, she should be scared.
And yes, she was in serious danger.
But what could she do for herself? Nothing. So Carlie blocked out Dan’s griping and turned to the Lord.
Father, I’m not so good at this yet, but I don’t want to die. Don’t get me wrong. If You want me, I’m there. But if it’s not urgent, then I’d like to hang around here a little longer. The deal is, I don’t know what to do, how to avoid Dad’s and Tony’s slimy friends. And Dan? Well, he tries, but there’s a lot more of them than of us. So help us out here. Okay?
“You! Did you go deaf or something?”
Carlie shook herself. “No. I just had to…” He didn’t share her new faith, but with this latest development…He’d asked. “I had to pray.”
“Okay.” He looked way uncomfortable. “Well. That’s fine. Ah…we’re going to have to pull over long enough for me to make some calls, get an idea what we should do next.”
“Fine. What do you want from me?”
“Ah…nothing. I just figured you’d want to know why I was stopping when we need to get away ASAP.”
Carlie peered at her companion, but couldn’t read him, and she really did try. “Oh-kay, Mr. Secret Agent Man. I’ll be right here, seat belt on, ready for takeoff whenever you’re ready.”
He gave her another of his exasperated looks. She had come to identify and catalog 37 flavors of weird looks Dan Maddox used on her—she would’ve preferred the ice cream. Pulling over to the side of the road wasn’t the smartest thing to do. And yeah, yeah, she’d figured Dan as the Boy Scout–type right from the start. He’d never cell phone and drive. But the New Jersey Turnpike was no lonely country lane. Anyone could come along here and pop the two of them with the greatest of ease.
Ever since she’d helped Maryanne Wellborn, now Prophet, save her elderly father from dear brother Tony’s murderous intents, Carlie’s world had turned into a surreal series of images, each one weirder than the last. All because she’d agreed to testify against her father, her brother Tony and a bunch of their mob pals.
She’d also acquired her intense, good-looking blond shadow.
Carlie had never been so squeezed into a box. She’d called her father a tyrannical spoilsport during her high-school years. Then, after she married, Carlo gave her complete freedom—as long as she stayed out of his business.
That business, the same as her father’s and brother’s, was what landed her smack in the middle of this mess. She’d done everything she could during those years of marriage to ignore the signs, the same ones she’d ignored at home. What woman wants to admit her family, and the handsome, debonair older man her father insisted she marry, were all mobsters?
The driver’s side door opened. “Okay,” Dan said once behind the wheel again. “We’re on our way.”
“On our way where?”
“Some other place over in Pennsylvania.”
“Could you be a little more specific? That covers a big chunk of ground, you know?”
He gave her another of those worried looks. “It’s probably safer for you not to know too much about our plans.”
“Oh, sure. I might telepathetically transmit the location to Dad’s pals. Give me a break. What do you think I’m going to do? Hop out of the car—while it’s zipping down a highway—flag down some unsuspecting soul, then run and tell on you?”
“It’s telepathically, Carlie. And it’s safer for you not to know too much in case someone takes me out and they snatch you.”
“I like telepathetically better. And what you just said made no sense. If they snuff you—that’s so cool! I feel like I’m reading the script for a TV cop show. Yeah, if they snuff you, don’t you think they’ll just grab me from the passenger seat? I’ll be no more than a memory.”
His knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “Sorry. You’re right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t usually get this rattled on a case. I guess it doesn’t help that I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Are you an insomniac?”
“No. Just working a tough case—you.”
“Takes one to know one.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “What is this? Elementary school?”
“Beats me. It’s your game, remember? I’m just along ’cause you agency guys insisted I play. So where are you taking me? And I don’t mean that little piece of ground out on the back forty of New Jersey some call Pennsylvania.”
“Lancaster County.”
She turned as far as the seatbelt let her to better look at him. “Oh! Can we stop at the outlets? Please. I love shopping there. You get the best deals on just about everything with a label.”
Another weird look from Mr. Intense. “A bargain hunter mob wife? One who’s become their number one target?”
“Hey! They can get me just as easily in a store as in this car. And just because I could get my hands on Carlo’s and Daddy’s money, doesn’t mean I’m ready to pay more than I have to. That’s just stupid.”
“Okay. So you’re a thrifty mob wife—”
“Widow, remember? The hit on Carlo is what started all this.”
“You think I could forget?” He clamped his lips shut, swerved to avoid a maniac driver who cut them off from the right, then, once the nut was far enough away, changed lanes back to the right. Carlie clung to her seatbelt for dear life.
“By the way,” he went on. “What was the deal with that empty coffin you guys shipped to Italy? He was supposed to be inside, but when Italian customs agents X-rayed the thing, it was empty as…well, you get my drift.”
She sure did. He’d probably been about to say “your head” or pay her some other similar compliment, but she let him get away with the near-smear this time.
“There’s no ‘you guys,’ Dan. I never knew what went on day-to-day, and I absolutely, positively had nothing to do with the funeral home, the funeral and why or for what reason they shipped off the empty casket for an Italian burial. I just knew Carlo’d died. His uncle Louie handled all the details.”
He shot her a look Carlie didn’t like. He didn’t seem to believe half of what she said, but there was nothing she could do about it. The guy was the most suspicious critter she’d ever met.
He pushed the gas pedal, and the speed shoved her back into the seat. “What are you doing?”
“Getting off the Turnpike. This rush hour traffic is not my thing.”
“But you live and work in Philly.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like the traffic there.”
