By Hook or By Crook Page 6

  He hadn’t.

  Worse still, the sub broke Jesse Dykeman’s collarbone.

  Damn. Phil had made big plans for that punk Dykeman, and now his career was on hold before it had begun. More importantly, he’d directed his assistant to bet heavily on Dykeman.

  Shit. Eager to curry favor with powerful men, he’d bragged to several of the most dangerous men in the Vegas underworld that Dykeman was a safe bet, too. If those guys had lost money, they’d be pissed at him for sure. Certain his assistant had placed the bet regardless of Dykeman’s last-minute change of opponent, he confirmed it with a quick call.

  “Is everything okay, Mr. Cantor? Did I do something wrong?” Jerrie, his assistant, asked nervously.

  He couldn’t bring himself to yell at her for following his orders. Jerrie annoyed him with her perpetual fluttering, but she was the best damn assistant he’d ever had, even if he wanted to curse her efficiency at the moment.

  “Never mind,” he growled, hanging up.

  How much had his friends lost? Probably a ton, and they weren’t the kind of guys who took losing lightly. Would they come after him? Maybe, and all because some dumbass had a pang of conscience at the last minute and decided he didn’t want to throw the fight.

  But it wasn’t over yet. He’d make sure of it. He would take care of Pock and send the whole city a message they wouldn’t soon forget. You didn’t screw around with Phil Cantor and get away with it.

  “Get a refill, babe, and put it on my tab. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The girl pouted, but she didn’t waste any time flagging the bartender down, he noticed. He escaped to the bar office and kicked the manager out, nearly slamming the door on the man’s foot. Cantor didn’t own the place, but one look at his face had convinced the manager to leave without further protest. Everybody at the Bellisimo treated Phil Cantor with respect. Soon, everybody in Vegas would.

  He dialed Ramirez. He needed a certain kind of help on this one, and Ramirez was the right guy for the job. Ramirez answered on the first ring. Quickly, Phil explained the situation.

  Ramirez swore. “I told you that puta was trouble. I know about these things. My mama did Santeria. She knew things, too. She read cowry shells and communicated with Oya, goddess of the whirlwind. She passed the gift along to me.”

  Phil rolled his eyes. Ramirez had been with him for years, ever since they started out together running numbers rackets and loan-sharking. Phil scarcely noticed Ramirez’s freaky talk about Santeria goddesses and spells anymore. It had creeped him out at first, but he’d stopped listening after a while. That mumbo-jumbo could bug the shit out of him if he paid attention, so he never did.

  “Like I need your opinion. We’ve got to get him. The fight manager said some guy and a girl were poking around, asking questions about him.”

  “And you think they know where Pock would have gone?”

  “They’re the best lead we have. Get on them, and don’t let them get away.”

  “You got it.”

  The finality in Ramirez’s voice reassured him a little. He clicked off the call and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. Smoking wasn’t good for you, but what the hell, he thought with a humorless laugh. He didn’t expect to live a long life anyway.

  ****

  Indian Springs sat in the vast desert like a bleak outpost of civilization. Only a small army installation kept the tiny town from total obscurity. Ivy looked disbelievingly at her watch, realizing they’d been in Vegas a mere hour ago. She glanced at Joe.

  “I like to drive fast,” he said with a shrug. “Got any complaints?”

  “Not if it means we can find my sister faster, I don’t.”

  Plugging the address for the credit card swipe into Joe’s cell phone GPS, they located the gas station in about ten minutes. They entered to the ding of an electronic door chime and browsed the aisles for a few minutes until the short line of customers had dissipated.

  The chubby young clerk pushed his glasses a little higher on his shiny nose and stared expectantly. He reminded Ivy of a graduate assistant in one of her master’s classes, the one who had pestered her to meet him for coffee after class several times. Suspecting he knew her net worth, she’d politely declined. Repeatedly.

  “We’re looking for a couple who might have passed through here a few hours ago. Were you on duty then?” Joe asked as he put a couple of granola bars and bottled waters on the counter.

  “Maybe.”

  Ivy stared. “You aren’t sure if you were working a few hours ago?”

  “I think this enterprising young man is trying to tell us that a little cash might improve his memory.” Joe didn’t trouble to hide his sarcasm as he handed a twenty to the clerk.

  “Twenty bucks doesn’t help my memory that much.”

  Joe held up another twenty, but yanked it back when the clerk reached for it. “You get nothing else from me until I hear something useful. The guy would have been a big guy, tattoos, a tough guy. Close-cropped hair. The girl would be pretty, with long blonde hair. Both in their twenties.”

  Ivy pulled up a photo of Daisy on her cell phone and showed it to the clerk. “It’s my sister.”

  The clerk looked briefly at the phone. “Yeah, I remember her. The guy with her was a big tough guy, like you said.”

  “How did she seem?” asked Joe.

  “She was cute.”

  Ivy shot a sidelong glance at Joe, who scowled. His patience was about to run out. So was hers.

  “Look, dick, did she seem upset? Were they angry, or fighting? Scared?”

  “Hell, no, they were all over each other. I almost told ‘em to get a room, you know?” The clerk grinned. He’d obviously enjoyed the spectacle her sister had apparently made of herself. Lovely.

  Daisy had always been up-front about her sexuality, in a way that often made Ivy uncomfortable. Ivy preferred to keep bedroom activities in the bedroom, thank you very much. Frankly, she’d never been unable to wait for privacy.

  “Did they say anything about where they were going?” Joe asked.

  “Nah, not really. Although, come to think of it, the girl was kind of screwing around, and the guy said something about it. He wanted to get back on the road.”

  Screwing around. Well, that sounded like Daisy. At least if she’d been hanging all over Pock, she was probably okay.

  “One more thing. Do you remember when they were here?”

  The clerk squinted as he thought. “I guess it would have been about two, three hours ago, something like that. I didn’t really pay close attention.” The door chime behind them dinged as two men entered, and the clerk’s eyes shifted to them. “Can I have the money now?”

  “You’ve been very helpful.” Joe handed him more bills. “Twenty more for you, ten for the food, and put twenty on pump number two.” The clerk took the money without comment, sliding some into his back pocket and putting the rest in the register.

  Outside, Ivy climbed into the passenger seat, shivering in the cold desert night, while Joe filled the Jeep’s tank. She placed a quick call to her dad, bringing him up to speed on events so far.

  “Ivy, you didn’t need to accompany Joe. I’m paying him very well to take risks. You should have stayed back at the hotel, or better yet, come home.”

  “Come home? And leave Joe out here?”

  “He can handle himself.”

  “And I can’t? You must think I’m helpless, that I can’t handle a little inconvenience.”

  “Ivy, please. I’m just trying to keep you safe. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you to be running around the desert with some security consultant you barely know.”

  His mention of Mom cut deep. Somehow, he always seemed to bring her up when he needed to manipulate Ivy. Somehow, whatever he wanted Ivy to do was always just what Mom would have wanted.

  “Dad, I’m not some ivory-tower academic who has been sheltered from the real world.” Her dad’s silence made his skepticism obvious. She took a deep br
eath. “Okay, maybe I have been somewhat sheltered,” she allowed, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything for myself. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to Daisy while I was back in a suite at the Bellisimo.”

  Her father didn’t see her point, she could tell, but she reassured him as best she could and then ended the call. After she hung up, she realized that she’d ended the call for once. Usually, he expected her to hang on the line until he dismissed her. She took satisfaction in the small victory. She had very few against her father.

  A movement in the parking lot snagged her attention—Joe, circling around the only other vehicle in sight, a shiny black Acura. It must belong to the men who were now in the gas station, but she couldn’t imagine why he’d be interested in it.

  As he climbed into the Jeep, bringing a cold blast of air with him, she asked him why he’d been studying the Acura.

  “Don’t know.” He tossed a bag into the back seat. They were on the highway again in a matter of moments. “But it had Clark County plates. That’s Vegas. Two guys in the middle of nowhere, who happen to be out here at the same time we are. Maybe nothing. But I thought I’d check them out, just in case.” He pulled out onto the road, eyeing the Acura in his rearview mirror.

  It reminded her—as if she needed a reminder—that they didn’t know exactly what they were getting into.

  “Do you think Daisy and Pock are in danger?” she asked.

  She sounded as uncertain as a child, but she couldn’t help herself as she voiced the fear that had been haunting her for several hours now. Oddly, saying it aloud for the first time seemed to calm her.

  He reached out and took her hand. “I don’t know for sure. But they’re both adults, and Pock sounds like a pretty tough guy who can take care of himself, and Daisy too, if he has to. There are worse guys to be on the run with than an MMA fighter.”

  Ivy recognized reassurance when she heard it. He meant to offer a truce from the running battle of verbal sniping they had engaged in since they met. She squeezed his hand in response. For a moment, they held each other’s gaze wordlessly. He didn’t say anything, but she sensed his calm confidence, and that was enough.

  As the moments passed in the Jeep’s dark interior, though, she felt the clasping of their hands turn into something different. She became aware of the roughened skin on his palms and the warmth of his grip. She had to concentrate to keep herself from brushing her thumb across the roughened heel of his hand.

  He wasn’t right for her. She knew that. Determined to ignore whatever weird awareness was blooming between them, she snuggled deep into the seat and closed her eyes, but somehow never extracted her hand from his grip. The warmth of his hand and the thrum of road noise worked on her like a lullaby. She fell asleep within minutes, still holding his hand.

  ****

  When she awoke, white was everywhere. Day had broken, but the only thing she could see through the windows was a luminous blur of wind-driven snow. The gathering drifts crept across the black-topped highway like waves cresting on the beach.

  “How long did I sleep?” she asked.

  He glanced at the dashboard clock. “Few hours. I got another call from Sheila while you were out. Pock and Daisy used their credit card at a diner in western Nevada. Looks like they’re going into the mountains.”

  “Will we be okay in the snow?”

  Joe smiled. His teeth flashed bright against his dark, shadowed jaw when he smiled, and the sight made her stomach flutter in spite of herself.

  “I would consider the mission to be a serious failure if we die. We’ve got four-wheel drive, so we’ll have good traction. I picked up some bottled water and granola bars at the gas station for emergency supplies. My cell phone is a satellite phone, so we’ll have coverage anywhere we go. The rental agency put chains in the back—we’ll put ’em on if we have to. And if things get too bad, we’ll get off the road.”

  She only heard one thing in his litany of reassurances. “Granola bars?” Her stomach growled fiercely in response.

  He pulled one from his coat pocket and handed it to her. “Happy breakfast.”

  She fell on the bar—a chocolate chip one, thank God—with true hunger and wolfed it down in moments. She thought of asking for another, but decided against it. Best to ration their supplies when they weren’t sure what the next few hours held.

  During lulls in the snowfall, she caught glimpses of the surrounding landscape and realized it had changed radically while she slept. No longer surrounded by flat desert in every direction, they were now in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The road rose steadily, and the barrenness of the desert had given way to spruce and pines.

  As they continued their ascent, Ivy noted more snow starting to accumulate on the highway in wind-sculpted drifts. The Jeep’s tires strained and slipped as they gained and lost traction.

  “The snow is getting worse.” She didn’t bother to hide her anxiety.

  “We’ll be okay.”

  Inexplicably, she found his confidence reassuring. For a man whom she’d only known for a day, she put an inordinate amount of trust in him. She remembered what he’d said about Pock—that there were worse guys to be on the run with than an MMA fighter. Obviously, a private security consultant wasn’t a bad choice, either. Despite all her anxiety about her sister, Joe Dunham made her feel safe.

  As they traveled higher into the mountains, the road tangled and turned back on itself, with steep cliffs inches from the pavement. The skimpy guardrails wouldn’t keep the vehicle from plunging over the side if Joe lost control. She cast an eye at Joe, whose hands seemed calm on the wheel. Ivy clutched the armrest. They came to a small lookout and rest stop. Joe pulled in. Ivy exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Time to put on the chains.”

  Ivy took advantage of the break to slip inside and use the restroom. When she came out, Joe had the Jeep jacked up and was fastening a spider web of cables onto one of its tires.

  Ivy, who had never so much as changed a wiper blade, couldn’t help but be impressed by his competence. How did people learn to do these things? He pulled the cables tight around the tire and fastened them with another, circular cable. His breath frosted in the cold mountain air.

  Feeling useless standing there watching, Ivy offered to help. He shot her an assessing glance. “Have you ever done this before?”

  No, and it looked hard. She lifted her chin. “No, but how hard could it be?”

  He lifted one brow but said nothing, pointing to the front tire. “Go ahead and get the chains on that tire while I tension these.”

  She approached the tire with a mess of interconnected chains in her hands. How hard could it be? She had years of higher education. For Joe, the chains seem to lay out nicely in a webby pattern. For her, they jumbled together and got caught in a snarl. She took a deep breath. This was no harder than figuring out a particularly arcane reference in an ancient manuscript. Just calm down, take your time, and the answer will come to you.

  She spread the chains out on the ground and straightened out the trouble spots, working carefully, trying to make it resemble a circular web. One kink in particular gave her difficulty, but at last she’d smoothed out everything. She draped the chains over the tire, adjusting as needed until everything was in place. She sat back on her haunches, surveying her work with satisfaction.

  Joe noticed her evident pride and grinned. “If you get tired of medieval art, you could always go to work at a Pep Boys.”

  The thought surprised a laugh out of her.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “If my father could see me now, I doubt he would approve.”

  “So? Your father isn’t here, and you handled those chains like a seasoned mechanic.”

  The praise warmed her cheeks.

  “I doubt that, but thanks.”

  She went to work on the next tire, and they developed a good system, with he
r putting the chains on and him following behind to tighten them with the tensioner. The snow fell harder as they worked, and she struggled to maintain a grip on the wet, slippery chains.

  Joe, on the other hand, did the task effortlessly. When she commented on his skill, he simply nodded.

  “I should know how to chain a tire. I lived outside of Denver for a few years as a kid.”

  “How in the world did you end up in Chicago?”

  “I kicked around after high school. Liked Chicago and ended up going to University of Illinois, the Chicago campus. I put myself through college working security. When I graduated, I joined the police force.”

  “You were a cop?” she asked.

  “For seven years. Then I got out of the business and starting working as a consultant.”

  “Why?”

  He laughed, a dry sound without humor, and said nothing for a moment. “The Chicago Police Department invited me to leave.”

  “You mean you were fired?”

  “Something like that.”

  It didn’t make sense to Ivy. The man got under her skin, true, but he had an air of competency and efficiency that she couldn’t help but appreciate. She couldn’t see him getting fired. “Were you a bad cop?”

  “No.”

  “Did you break any laws?”

  “No.” He punctuated the clipped syllable with a scowl, but didn’t elaborate. The chain slipped off the tire, a rare mistake by Joe that told her this conversation rattled him.

  Reluctant to press on, she changed the subject. “Don’t you miss your family in Denver?”

  “Don’t have any there. My sister lives near Redding, California, now. She emails me once in a while. That’s about it.”

  “What about the rest of your family?”

  “Don’t have any.”

  She nodded and spoke without thinking. “I guess that explains why you don’t have much sense of family.”

  He paused in his work, giving her a stare-down that would make bolder women blanch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”