Chapter 21

The minute I’m on the street again, suffocated by the Manhattan crush of bodies, I start walking toward the subway, aware that I’m being followed, the weapon at my ankle like a cozy, cuddly blanket on a November eve. I weave through the crowd, aware of a figure to my right rear side. With a turn of a corner, I gain a glimpse of him: average height, dark hair, unattractive, and rather hard-looking from a distance. I don’t have a handle on nationality, but since I have a feeling he’ll be my shadow for the rest of the day, I’m sure I’ll get my chance to figure it out. Kane, no doubt, is behind this, but then again, his employee died the night I arrived. Someone is afraid of the path I’m leading law enforcement—and perhaps Kane—down.

That someone could easily be a member of the Romano family, who’d have access and resources to hire an assassin, but like Kane, I’d think they’d have their own people. Unless . . . ~Fuck.~ I stop walking. Both the Romanos and Kane himself might hire an outsider because it’s not what would be expected. It’s not Kane, I remind myself. He was sideswiped by those photos this morning, but I’m damn sure not going to start that war I feared when I first heard the Romano name by telling him they could be in the mix.

I start walking again, removing my phone from my purse and dialing Murphy. “Talk to me, Agent Love.”

“There’s something big going on here.”

“~Big~ is a vague term used for things like food and generalization. Big Mac. Big deal. Big—”

“I think someone hired an assassin and now they’re covering it up. Maybe the Romano family. Maybe someone I have yet to identify.”

“Why do you think Romano?”

I go through the details of the case and then dive in for the save. “I need to help Harrison. What can we do?”

“He’s now your informant. We’ll protect him.”

“Informant cops die.”

“Not if it’s never known. We’ll protect him and clear his name if you prove he’s been set up.”

“Great. So while I’m dealing with an assassin and numerous setups, I should prove he’s innocent.”

“You might be surprised how solving one crime makes everything else collide in a brilliant way.”

I really hate him right now. “Tic Tac has full authority to do whatever I need him to do, correct?”

“Tic who?”

“Jeff,” I say. “He has authority to get me what I need.”

“He does, within reason.”

“Within reason?” I ask, knowing that translates to hands tied with a ball in your mouth, and not for pleasure.

“It’s not a limitation, Agent Love. If you need something he can’t give you, call me. I have to get to a meeting. Stay in touch and stay safe.” He hangs up, and my phone immediately rings with Tic Tac on the caller ID.

“What do you have for me?”

“The detective you asked about—”

“Was shot and is on leave.”

“So much for my kudos.”

“Kudos,” I say. “Who shot him?”

“Some nobody thug with a list of at least ten arrests.”

“And Nelson Moser?”

“Shot one of his partners who got in the line of fire in a shootout. Nasty stuff. Other than that, he looks squeaky-clean.”

“He’s not. Dig deeper. And see if you can connect the thug you mentioned to the Romano family.”

“I tried. No go.”

“Of course not. Where are we on finding Woods?”

“His phone still doesn’t ping. He still hasn’t touched his credit cards or touched his bank accounts. He’s either dead, or he’s well funded and smart. Oh, and I got those fingerprints in an early delivery and ran them immediately. The only hits were you, a Maria Rodriguez, your brother, and Kane Mendez. Is that what you expected?”

Considering Maria is my maid, who I remotely buzzed inside each visit, and my brother and Kane had been there often before I left . . . “Unfortunately, yes,” I say. “All can be explained.”

“Back to Woods. I can’t connect him to Cynthia, but he has an ex-girlfriend, and in her case, there are plenty of phone records. She’s also on a cruise. Interestingly, she left yesterday.”

“Of course she did.”

“Find out if she has any connections to Romano or Nelson Moser.” I fight mixed loyalty but remind myself I have a job to do, and now Greg’s job is on the line, too. “Check for connections to the Pocher family or anyone working for Pocher.”

“The billionaire? No. Not the—”

“Yes. Him. I know this is a big job so start with the man himself and work backward from his closest confidants down. And Kane Mendez as well.”

“The Mendez whose fingerprints I ran?”

“Yes.” I inhale and let it out. “That one.”

“The Mendez of the Mendez Cartel?”

“Technically Kane hasn’t been proven to be a part of the cartel,” I say, unable to stop myself from doing what I always did in the past: defend him when I’m not sure he deserves that gesture. “Focus on him and his business,” I add. “I need any connection you can find between him, Woods, law enforcement, the victims, you name it.”

“Pocher, Romano, and Mendez.” He whistles. “What are we in here?”

“I’m not even sure any of these families are involved, but if these murders were done by an assassin, it makes sense to look at the two largest crime families in the area.”

“One of the victims worked for Mendez. It makes perfect sense, but Pocher is an odd addition to the list.”

Any comment I make to that could incriminate my father and brother, so I move on. “That list of people who connect to all three cities is too big. I need you to narrow it down. Do your tech thing. Probability. Crossing paths. That kind of thing.”

“Thanks to Murphy, I got help, so I’m on it.”

“Interesting,” I say. “Maybe we aren’t tied and gagged.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Get me stuff.” I hang up and double-step toward the subway, my shadow still on my heels, my destination the expected: every place Woods has ever set foot, and while yes, I will find what has been set up for me to find, I’m a profiler. I’ll use that skill to build a picture of his life that I can use to support or reject him as an assassin and the guilty killer.

Heading down the stairs, I head to a row of machines to buy a pass for the day. My man goes to another terminal to buy a pass for himself, his longish black hair hiding his face, his skin tone covered by an army-style green jacket. I grab my ticket, moving forward and through a gate, and I don’t stop until I’m on the lower platform where my train will arrive. I know the moment the man arrives, and I wonder if he really thinks he’s discreet. I wonder if there is someone else in the crowd, an additional tag who ~is~ discreet, who I’m missing by hyperfocusing on this guy.

The train arrives, and a pack of about twenty riders rush off the car while another thirty, including me, replace them. I move to the end of the car where I have a view of the entire compartment and lean on a wall while my new stalker remains a few feet away, holding on to a bar. He’s an odd bird who doesn’t scream any nationality. He could be white, Italian, Mexican. He could work for anyone.

The car starts to move, and I remove my phone from my coat pocket and debate texting Kane and asking him if this guy is with him. But if he’s not, Kane will send backup I don’t need or want. And if he is, I’ll just find a new reason to be pissed off. I stick my phone back in my pocket, my mind on Kane’s reaction to those photos. These cases are connected to that night. They’re connected to~ me~. There is something in front of my face that I’m missing. Something that must have been there all those years ago. My mind goes back in time, to the bar where it all seemed to take place. Kane was supposed to be gone, but Kane came home. I have wondered many times whether I’d be alive today had he not. My gaze lifts to my stalker again, but he, of course, refuses to make eye contact, and I flash back to the bar, to that night.

~The bartender offers me another drink, but I have a bottle of champagne and a Bloody Mary I’ve hardly touched. Alexandra is still at the end of the bar, cozying up to her movie-star fuck while I watch over her, like she needs a guardian angel to get her laid. I grab an olive off the bar and down it, eyeing the dark-haired man at the end of the bar who’s been there the entire time I’ve been here. He’s not from around here, and something about him bothers me. He’s not looked in this direction, though I have a sense of him being aware of me. I don’t like it. I will him to look at me, and suddenly he does, his dark eyes meeting mine, the absence of any emotion in his chilling. He stands up and tosses money on the bar and then leaves, but I am left with the lingering sense of discomfort, almost foreboding.~

I blink back to the present, my stalker still where he was, my mind on that man at the bar. He wasn’t the one with the tattoo, but could he be Junior? And now that I know Greg is safe, I’m reminded of my morning with Kane and his obsession with the note on my window. Why is he so damn obsessed with that note? It’s a thought I don’t get far with as the subway car stops, the doors opening, and to my surprise, my stalker exits before me. I follow him, but he disappears into the crowd, and like that night, I have that sense of discomfort. A sense of déjà vu.

***

The day ticks on, and the sense of being followed never leaves me, though there are no obvious offenders, nor has my dark-haired stalker reappeared. Also notable in my book is that my phone has remained silent from those who should be behind making some noise: Eddie doesn’t call me. Alexandra doesn’t call me. Neither does anyone in my family, or Kane. It seems to me that no one likes the questions I’ll ask or the answers I’ll demand. But I charge onward, traveling from address to address, looking for people who knew Woods, with random calls from Tic Tac as we dig for clues.

By four, I’m sitting in a Starbucks, feeling really fucking frustrated. It’s clear at this point that whoever is behind all of this prepared well for investigators. No one who knew Woods seems to be around. Even the tenants that rented office spaces near him are either closed or gone on vacation. At this point, there’s no profile I can create on Woods beyond a generalized surface outline. I grab my file sitting next to me, and I open it, staring down at the image of the tattoo. Thinking of how Kane had stared at it, the stony man he had become.

The tattoo is the answer to every question I’ve asked. I believe that, and if I wasn’t too close to this, I’d be at tattoo parlors right now. And why am I hiding from the tattoo, anyway? If I’m doing what everyone expects me to do, then tattoo parlors are exactly where I’d go. In fact, ~holy hell.~ I have an excuse for going to them now that won’t bring attention to my past that I didn’t have before.

I google “top ten tattoo parlors in NYC” and pull up a list, keying each address into my phone. I have four hours until I have to be at Penn Station for a three-hour ride home. I decide this is a time to spend some of the money I inherited and never spend. I dial a charter service and book my own chopper for nine o’clock at a different airport than Kane uses. I ask them to list my reservation under a fake name that won’t allow Kane to find me. His people might follow me, but it will be too late when I get there to allow him to intercept. Though his silence is deafening today. I rattled him and Kane rarely gets rattled.

Once my ride is secure and my bank account is guaranteed to be $4,000 lower by the time I leave the city, spent on a private flight sans any other passengers, I gather my things, push to my feet, and head for the door.

***

It’s place number eight that directs me to a place off West Twenty-Eighth that sits next to Scores Nightclub, a topless bar. The neighborhood, once a bit rundown, is now peppered with shopping, but the side street where Reggie’s Tattoo Parlor sits has side alleyways and riffraff here and there. The kind of area a girl gets looked up and down and readies her knee for placement. And, of course, it’s just past dark, because what fun would it be to go to a place like this in the daylight?

I approach the front door to find a less-than-impressive operation, especially after some of the high-end, salon-style places I’ve visited. The front desk that was a shiny gray horseshoe number at the last place is a simple, glass-encased cabinet not more than ten feet long here. Behind it, four reclining leather chairs are occupied while artists work on customers, while a fifth sits empty. The walls are papered with overlapping, thumbtacked, eight-by-eleven-inch sheets with tattoo designs on them.

A twentysomething chick with bright-purple hair and a nose ring and ink everywhere on her pale skin approaches the counter to greet me. “What’s up?” she asks, giving my Chanel coat, a choice I’ve regretted more than once since hitting the parlors, a once-over. I have, however, made it work for me.

I approach the counter and smile. “I’m nervous,” I say when I’ve never been nervous a day in my life. “I’m a tattoo virgin.”

“No kidding?” she says, smacking her gum.

“I’m ready to dive in, though. Be a rebel. That kind of thing.”

“Yeah. Well, rebel that you are. We have a three-month wait.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay. They say you should wait for the best and all, but I just want to find the right artist. I heard there was a guy named Mel that’s really good.”

“Mel!” she shouts so damn loud I cringe. “Mel!”

“Jesus,” a tall, fortysomething man with blond dreadlocks says, appearing beside her. “Mel isn’t here. How have you been here all day and don’t know that?”

“Sorry, Reggie.”

“Oh,” I say. “You’re Reggie.”

“I am, sweetheart. What can I do you for?”

“I heard Mel does amazing Virgin Mary tattoos. Does he have samples you might show me?”

“Any tat he’s done is duplicated on one of those pages on the wall. His is the last booth. Feel free to give his work a look.” He motions me behind the counter, and I waste no time darting around the counter and making my way to that corner. I start scanning artwork, lifting pages, and searching high and low, but I cannot find a Virgin Mary.

“You can look at this book, too,” Reggie says, walking over to me and setting a binder down. “You might find it there.”

He walks away, and I pick up the book and start flipping pages. Halfway through the book, I glance up to find an old man with long, gray braids and sunburned skin standing against the far wall, his gaze locked on me. “Why do you want a Virgin Mary?” he asks.

“It means something to me.”

“What does it mean?”

“Does it matter?”

“Does she bleed for you when no one else does?” He smirks and then turns away, disappearing down a hallway.

Adrenaline surges through me and I stand up, setting down the book to follow him down that hallway. I round the corner just in time to watch the alleyway door open and shut. I rush toward it but when I push the door, it jams, like it’s being held from the other side. “Damn it,” I say, rushing back into the salon. “Who was that man?”

“Who?” Reggie asks, looking up from a tattoo he’s giving.

“The old guy with the braids,” I say.

“Didn’t see him.”

“Anyone know him?” I ask.

They all give me blank stares. I rush out the front door and cut right, turning down the tiny walkway leading to the back of the building and rushing toward the back alley. Pausing before I round the corner, I remove my weapon from my ankle holster and insert it into my coat pocket. Cautiously, I turn the corner, my path now illuminated by a streetlight and paved with uneven stones, a dumpster to the left.

I start walking, making my way toward a connecting alleyway, cautiously approaching that dumpster and then another, when suddenly the old man steps out from behind it. “You want me?”

My hand flexes on my weapon. “Yes. I do. What do you know about that tattoo?”

“It’s a blood tattoo. It bleeds because you bleed.”

“What does that mean?”

“It bleeds because they are dangerous.”

“Who?”

“The people they work for.”

“What people?”

“Go home before you bleed. Before your family bleeds.”

He turns and starts to run away. I start running after him, but we both stop abruptly when a black sedan squeals to a halt in the roadway in front of us and just beyond the alleyway. In a blink, two men are out of the passenger-side doors, both in ski masks and all black. Both pointing guns at me.

“Get in the car,” one of the masked men grunts at the older man, who does as he’s told, while my hand closes around my gun and I hope for an opportunity that never comes. The two masked men back away and slide into the car, which starts moving before one of the doors is even shut. I race after it, determined to get a license number, and round the corner in time to watch it speed away, but there is no plate on the bumper.

The old man’s words replay in my mind: ~It’s a blood tattoo. It bleeds because you bleed.~