Illicit intent, p.25
Illicit Intent, page 25
As she tried to corral her scattered thoughts she realized Tox wasn’t pulling his hand away from hers, he was dragging her behind the exterior stairs of a neighboring house. He tilted his head, and Calliope followed the movement. She caught the last of a group of men entering her home through the front door without the slightest hint of stealth.
“What now?”
Tox drew himself up to his full height.
“They think you’re dead.”
“What?”
“Whoever these guys are, they are linked to the hitter who shot Elizabeth Brewer in your living room thinking it was you. The assassin obviously reported to his employer the job was done.”
Calliope spoke in a frantic stage whisper. “But there’s nothing they could want! The FBI has the files I downloaded from the computer. The lab has the artwork.”
“We’re either missing something or someone else has been grossly misinformed. Either way, this ends now.”
Tox rose to his full height, checked the street, then pulled Calliope to him by her shoulders.
“Sweetheart, I know this is hard for you, but I’m asking you to wait right here. Judging by their weapons, these guys aren’t fucking around. Somebody’s gonna get dead, and if I’m worrying about you, that person could be me.”
He squatted down to eye level. “I love you. Please stay put.”
She nodded, mute.
He winked. “Be right back.”
Calliope stage whispered to his broad back as he moved away. “Did you just use an I love you to manipulate me?”
Tox did an about-face and was back in front of her in three strides. He held her by the upper arms and said one word, “No.”
Then he was off.
With her back to the street, Calliope watched Tox jog down the narrow path that separated the brownstones and disappear behind a six-foot stockade fence. He was the size of a bulldozer with the grace of a quarter horse. I love you. Where had that come from? She was the impulsive one. She was the spontaneous one. She was the one with no filter. Tox was deliberate, restrained, orderly. She really thought she’d be the one to say it first. Tox had hit her like a bolt out of the blue. She could have blurted it out sitting next to him on the tree branch, or lying on the quilt in her backyard, or snuggling on the yoga mat in her living room.
From the first time she saw him she knew Tox was a man who could make her feel like the only person in the room, like she was the one. She had certainly felt it; the words simmered inside her nearly every time Miller Buchanan walked through the door. It was a formless thought at first, a sensation, like a gravitational pull—a need to be in his orbit. She loved him. Yes, she affirmed. For the first time. For the only time. The momentous thought had her steadying herself on the wrought iron banister, the metal cold and hard in her hand.
Not unlike the cold and hard metal of the gun barrel she suddenly felt jabbing into the small of her back.
Tox moved quickly and quietly through the back alley and slipped through the open gate into Calliope’s postage stamp yard. The guy guarding the back door was smoking and peeking through the glass at his buddies in the kitchen, his sidearm holstered. Tox focused on his prey.
The bear was out.
With silent speed, Tox bolted up the concrete steps and snapped the guard’s neck. Smoke from the man’s last drag wafted out of his mouth like the dying wisps from an extinguished campfire. Tox peered through the glass as two men rifled through drawers and cabinets, one with his back to Tox, one out of sight. Tox squatted and removed the K-bar knife from the sheath at the dead man’s waist and eased the door open. He had the knife in the first man’s kidney before he was even aware of an intruder. The suppressed bullet lodging in the cabinet behind him signaled the end of his surprise attack. He threw the knife then dropped to the floor. He grabbed the first man’s Glock and then crab-walked behind the island to the second dead man, pulling the knife from where it had lodged in his throat.
Tox had survived worse odds with fewer weapons. He heard heavy footsteps above him and Coco’s frantic muffled barking. Two men were searching upstairs and apparently hadn’t heard the silenced weapon. He heard movement in the dining room and stepped over a body to peer around the half-open pocket door.
His gut clenched so powerfully, he wondered for a second if that first bullet had hit him after all. Calliope was on her knees in the dining room. A man Tox had never seen stood next to her with his gun to her head. The man was casually dressed but polished. He didn’t have a military bearing, but he seemed to know enough to know he didn’t need Calliope to shield him. A hair-trigger on the Browning semiautomatic could blow Calliope’s head off after Tox had shot the guy. Tox couldn’t risk it. On the positive side, the man couldn’t take the gun off of Calliope to shoot Tox; Tox would win that gunfight, and the man knew it. Heavy footsteps on the stairs told Tox he had maybe seven seconds to resolve the situation.
He did it in three.
In a calm voice, careful not to alert his target, Tox spoke two words: “Child’s Pose.”
Calliope executed the yoga position, dropping her forehead to the floor as Tox fired. The bullet found its mark. The man tumbled on top of Calliope sending an errant shot as the first reinforcement appeared in the doorway. Calliope grabbed the dead man’s hand, still holding the Lugar, and fired once, twice. Both shots went wide, but they served their purpose. The first man tumbled back into his partner. Calliope held the gun steady. Both men spent a microsecond taking in the scene and quickly decided there were better job opportunities elsewhere. As quickly as they had appeared in the doorway, they were gone; the black rubber from the screech of their tires marking their departure.
She wriggled out from under the dead man, careful not to look too closely at the carnage, and turned to Tox. He was leaning against the wall, face white as a sheet, pulling his belt around his upper arm with his teeth. The blood streaming down his arm and running off the ends of his fingers to the floor like an open faucet was … troubling.
“Oh, God.” She ran to him and took over pulling the makeshift tourniquet.
“Nicked the brachial artery. Gotta get this stopped.”
“I’m calling 911.”
“Let Coco out of whatever room they locked her in. She’s about to break down the door.”
Calliope raced to free her dog as she placed the call.
“Keep your phone out. I want to get pictures of these guys before the police get here. Twitch can figure out who these assholes are in half the time.”
Satisfied that the bleeding had stemmed to a steady drip, Calliope withdrew her phone and switched to the camera function. She tried not to look at the dead man’s face as she snapped the photo.
“Back up a bit, Cal. I want to get the gun and his arm tats in the shot. Any identifying features will help Twitch.”
Calliope took a step back, concentrating on the items in the background and not the corpse. On the screen of her phone, she could make out the gun, the blood, a dining chair, her open laptop on the table... Back up a bit. Help Twitch. She froze.
“Tox?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I think I know what they’re after.”
Calliope raced into the kitchen, peeked in the open drawer the first intruder had been about to search, and withdrew the broken disposable cell phone she had used that night at Gentrify Capital. She returned to the dining room and explained her theory to Tox. “That night you ran into me on the street?”
Tox nodded, too woozy to argue the point.
“Twitch called when I was in Van Gent’s office. She wanted pictures of the framed photos on his desk to see if she could get more information on his associates. I couldn’t get too close to the desk because there are cell phone detectors on the computers for security, so I had to stand back a bit.”
“I’m with you so far.” He set his good hand on his thigh, his breath shallow.
“The document on the computer that triggered the data wipe? It was up on the monitor when I took that picture. I think it’s in the shot.” She thought for a moment. “There must have been some kind of surveillance in the office.”
Tox nodded. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. Don’t say anything about that phone to the cops. Twitch gets first crack at it. You can say you figured it out after they left.”
Calliope nodded along.
“Everything else, tell the complete truth. They forced you into the home at gunpoint. They started ransacking the place. You don’t know what they wanted.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I’ll…”
And with that, Tox fell like a sequoia onto the dining room floor.
New York City
May 8
Calliope’s natural inclination toward movement was amplified exponentially in the fluorescent waiting room of New York Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital. It had taken both EMTs and two police officers to get Tox onto the gurney, their grave expressions disconcerting. “It was just an arm wound,” she had muttered. Another cop at the scene had explained the dire impact of the wound. “A severed brachial artery is almost as bad as cutting the femoral or carotid. A person can bleed out in under two minutes.”
When she recalled Tox’s urgent words, gotta get this stopped, she’d run to the kitchen and vomited into the sink.
She paced the narrow paths through the waiting room, passing by mothers with listless children in their laps, and a man who was complaining about the wait, that he just needed pain meds. She sat, got up again, paced, sat, stood, checked to see if the ficus in the corner was real—it was not. She tugged on her earlobe, checked the time, sat, stood, repeated… A hand on her shoulder had her spinning around. Chat removed his hand but kept it extended.
“Come with me.”
Calliope shook her head no and covered her mouth and nose with her hands. Chat gifted her with a warm smile, returning his hand to her shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay, Calliope.”
She took his arm, and Chat led her down the hall to a private area that looked more like a living room than a waiting room. Chat correctly perceived her confusion.
“The Bishop family has been very generous over the years.”
Ren was already in the room making a fancy cup of coffee from a single-cup machine. Steady and Cam were coming down the hall, no hint of their normal jocularity. Chat repeated his reassurance.
“He’s going to be okay.”
“You’ve spoken to the doctor?”
Chat ushered her into the room without responding.
Finn stood in the corner, arms crossed, staring at Calliope like she was going to try to pick his pocket. He blamed her. So did she. She turned away. She could only deal with so much crap at a time.
Three hours later, the group was still parked. Nathan had arrived from South Carolina, and he had spent most of the past hour on his phone. The rest of the group read or worked or took combat naps—except for Calliope who had walked the halls, practiced yoga stretches, cleaned a spider web from the corner of the ceiling, and watered the orchid on a corner table—live this time, unlike the ficus. If she stopped she had to process, so she didn’t stop.
“Jesus,” Cam nudged Ren. “It’s like watching a baby monkey explore its enclosure. A really, really hot baby monkey.”
“Tox will Frankenstein-walk from his hospital bed to kick your ass,” Ren warned.
Just then the weary vascular surgeon stood in the doorway. She cleaned her oval wire-framed glasses on her scrubs and wore a no-nonsense expression.
“He made it through surgery fine. The problem now is blood loss. He lost over two pints. That’s in the danger zone. Fortunately, the big guy has a blood volume of over eight liters, but we’re going to keep him for twenty-four hours. Blood loss like that can endanger the heart, the kidneys. He’ll need to be closely monitored.”
The men nodded. Nathan spoke. “How’s the arm?”
“Surprisingly good. He may experience some numbness, but I didn’t detect any nerve damage. He’ll retain full range of motion.”
Nathan nodded. “Visitors?”
“Visiting hours are over, but I spoke to the charge nurse. They’re going to make an exception. She nodded in Nathan’s direction. He nodded in return. “One at a time in the ICU.”
“Nathan set a gentle hand on Calliope’s shoulder. “She’ll go first.”
Calliope hurried down the hall behind the orderly the doctor had corralled. The young man held open the door to Tox’s room, and she entered.
It looked surreal, her invincible giant lying in the bed, IV and oxygen lines trailing from his body, his arm bandaged tightly to his chest, the crisp sheet folded across his torso. She walked around the bed in a U. She touched the rough stubble on his head, the scar at his eyebrow. She ran her hand along his good arm, down his leg. She squeezed his big toe.
It wasn’t until her third lap that she noticed it. His good hand, his left hand was patting the bed—just his fingers, pat pat pat. She sat on the end of the bed. His good arm slid up. She tipped her body slowly toward him until her head was resting on his pectoral.
“I love you, Miller.”
Tox didn’t speak or open his eyes or smile, but when she lifted her head, she saw his dimples.
She returned her cheek to his chest and for the first time in a very long time, Calliope was still.
New York City
May 10
“I could float my keys in this coffee, Twitch.” Steady set the cup of sludge aside. Twitch shrugged and took a big gulp, setting the cup a safe distance from her keyboard.
Ren knocked and entered, Calliope on his heels.
Cam and Chat looked up from their pow-wow, anticipating the update. Nathan Bishop sat behind his desk on the phone. He ended the call and ushered Calliope to the chair.
“How’s he doing?”
“Honestly? I thought he’d be one of those guys who ripped the IV out of his arm and left without permission, but he seems fine. They’re releasing him later today. I don’t get it. Who likes hospitals?”
“You’re forgetting to factor in a major component,” Ren commented. “Tox likes places where people bring him food.”
The amused agreement died down as Twitch dove in. “This is Loker Stillwater.” She flashed a picture on the screen of a man who could have been on the cover of Forbes. “He allegedly runs an organization called The Circle Brotherhood, or ‘The Circle’ and is suspected of having his fingers in a lot of very unsavory pies.
Steady quipped, “Why are these mysterious organizations always named after shapes? The Triads, The Pentagon? The Circle? They should name one The Hexagon. Now that’s a scary sounding shape.”
A balled-up piece of paper hit Steady in the head. Nathan got them back on track.
“Members of The Circle—Loker calls them his ‘sons’—identify themselves with a tattoo, a poker chip-sized circle on the inside right wrist. The tat will have concentric circles inside denoting achievements and rank in the organization. The guy Tox took out…” Twitch brought up a picture of the dead man’s wrist, showing a tattoo consisting of five concentric circles. Steady gave a low whistle. “Cops identified him as Marvin Wilkins, career criminal.”
Ren looked at Nathan. “So we know who. Do we know why?”
Nathan turned to his spritely tech guru. Twitch’s eyes danced. She pointed her index finger toward the ceiling then in a grand gesture for a programmer, flew it around and hit a button on her keyboard without ever taking her eyes off of Calliope. A blurry document popped up on the large screen at the end of the table.
“We did it.”
“I can’t see shit on that thing,” Steady complained.
“Wait for it.” Ren looked to Twitch who hit another button and the picture cleared.
Twitch smiled in triumph. “Calliope took this picture the night she was in Van Gent’s office. I asked her to get a pic of the framed photos on his desk so I could compile a list of associates. She had to back way up to avoid triggering the cell phone detector on the computer. This document was open on the monitor.”
“Looks like accounts.” Ren pointed at a row of numbers.
“Specifically the unique coding signature of the Cayman-Britain Bank in George Town, Grand Cayman.” Nathan nodded to his phone. “The Feds are communicating with the bank through local law enforcement and an embassy representative. The bank is cooperating.”
“Hot damn.” Steady clapped once, then frowned. “What does that mean exactly?”
“The US Government will seize the assets and, depending on how much money is in the coffers, try to repay Gentrify clients at least a portion of their investment.”
“How did these motherf—sorry Calliope—how did these gentlemen know about that picture?”
Twitch didn’t look up from her laptop. “Someone hacked Van Gent’s personal laptop. It was also on his desk. The hacker accessed the webcam and watched the whole thing.”
The guys all looked her way.
Nathan took over. “Best guess is Roman Block figured out something wasn’t kosher at Gentrify. He also realized he was a dead man if he lost the money he was laundering for The Circle. So he hired a hacker to find his money.”
Twitch brought up a spit-polished business journal picture of Roman Block.
“That’s the man who was in my house,” Calliope confirmed.
“But how would Loker Stillwater and The Circle have known that?” Cam challenged.
Steady connected the dots. “The hacker tells Roman Block about the cell phone, and Roman, in turn, tells The Circle to assure Loker he could recover their money.”
“And Roman Block wasn’t planning on leaving any witnesses.” Cam finished the thought.
“That explains the assassination of Elizabeth Brewer. Block wanted to tie up loose ends. The assassin sets up across the street but Elizabeth Brewer breaks into Calliope’s home, and the hitter confuses Elizabeth for Calliope.” Nathan voiced their conclusion.
“But Block still failed to get the phone and locate the money. So...” Ren mimed a gunshot to the head.
