hung up rested. Rich brown hair fell forward over her face, veiling her features, but her body language spoke volumes. Her arms were crossed over her chest. The slender shoulders that had felt disturbingly fragile beneath his hands were slumped. She was breathing hard, visibly agitated. With that loose green dress hanging down to her ankles, she looked feminine, delicate, vulnerable.
Luke clamped down hard on another of those unwelcome spurts of concern. However downcast she looked, she was no innocent victim: her background was mob through and through. He’d done his homework: her dad Joseph had been a small-time hoodlum until he’d been shot dead in his own driveway when Christy was nine. Her mother Carmen worked in a cigarette factory and was mobster Vincent Amori’s longtime girlfriend. Twenty-four-year-old-sister Nicole was newly divorced from a hard luck wiseguy named Franky Hill and, with three kids under five, was basically a production line for a whole new generation of Future Mobsters of America. Twenty-one-year-old-sister Angela worked in a department store, ran with a tough crowd, and was a big-time party girl. Christy, a hard worker who had put herself through college and law school, came off at first look like the cuckoo in the nest. From everything he could discover, she’d kept her nose clean until she’d gotten involved with Donnie Jr., which was the Bureau’s code name for Michael DePalma,both because he looked kind of like Donny Osmond on a real bad hair day and because he was the son of Don John DePalma. Christy had been on the Bureau’s radar screen since she’d gone to work for Michael DePalma’s law firm two years ago. At first Luke hadn’t paid all that much attention to her. Then, as she’d started bedding the boss, he’d kept a closer eye on her. Now that Michael had flown the coop, Luke was convinced that she was the key to bringing him down.
The only problem was, he was starting to worry about her. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. What was clouding his judgment on this issue was that she was a …
“Pretty woman,” Gary steepled his hands beneath his chin and put into words exactly what Luke had been thinking.
“Yeah,” Luke agreed, definitely not wanting to go there with Gary. “So what happened to the briefcase? Tell me it’s somewhere you know it’s going to stay put for a while.”
Grimacing, Gary met his gaze. Without his brand-new partner having to utter so much as a word, Luke knew the score. He felt his blood pressure skyrocket. He’d already made the acquaintance of that expression—and it meant the news was not anything he wanted to hear.
“I lost it.”
“You lost it?” By the skin of his teeth, Luke managed to keep his voice even. Fixing Gary with a narrow-eyed gaze that fell just short of being a glare, he fought forcalm. Ohhmm, he thought, reaching deep down inside himself in search of the inner serenity he’d been assured was at his center in the yoga classes he’d recently attended as part of another surveillance effort. “How the—how could you lose it?”
“Well, see, you know how I was supposed to give you a heads-up when our girlfriend there started heading back home, then stay put and keep a lookout on the briefcase until you relieved me?”
Luke nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was trying, but the on-ramp to the nirvana highway remained maddeningly out of reach.
“She delivered the briefcase, all right, put it in the gray Maxima just like she was told, then started walking back down the beach. As soon as she got out of sight I started to give you a holler, but the damned transmitter wouldn’t work. It was dead as a doornail. I was afraid she was going to catch you in her house, but I didn’t want to leave my post, so I didn’t know what to do. I figured that the problem with the transmitter was probably dead batteries, but that didn’t really help because I didn’t have any fresh ones. Then I remembered I had
Luke clamped down hard on another of those unwelcome spurts of concern. However downcast she looked, she was no innocent victim: her background was mob through and through. He’d done his homework: her dad Joseph had been a small-time hoodlum until he’d been shot dead in his own driveway when Christy was nine. Her mother Carmen worked in a cigarette factory and was mobster Vincent Amori’s longtime girlfriend. Twenty-four-year-old-sister Nicole was newly divorced from a hard luck wiseguy named Franky Hill and, with three kids under five, was basically a production line for a whole new generation of Future Mobsters of America. Twenty-one-year-old-sister Angela worked in a department store, ran with a tough crowd, and was a big-time party girl. Christy, a hard worker who had put herself through college and law school, came off at first look like the cuckoo in the nest. From everything he could discover, she’d kept her nose clean until she’d gotten involved with Donnie Jr., which was the Bureau’s code name for Michael DePalma,both because he looked kind of like Donny Osmond on a real bad hair day and because he was the son of Don John DePalma. Christy had been on the Bureau’s radar screen since she’d gone to work for Michael DePalma’s law firm two years ago. At first Luke hadn’t paid all that much attention to her. Then, as she’d started bedding the boss, he’d kept a closer eye on her. Now that Michael had flown the coop, Luke was convinced that she was the key to bringing him down.
The only problem was, he was starting to worry about her. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. What was clouding his judgment on this issue was that she was a …
“Pretty woman,” Gary steepled his hands beneath his chin and put into words exactly what Luke had been thinking.
“Yeah,” Luke agreed, definitely not wanting to go there with Gary. “So what happened to the briefcase? Tell me it’s somewhere you know it’s going to stay put for a while.”
Grimacing, Gary met his gaze. Without his brand-new partner having to utter so much as a word, Luke knew the score. He felt his blood pressure skyrocket. He’d already made the acquaintance of that expression—and it meant the news was not anything he wanted to hear.
“I lost it.”
“You lost it?” By the skin of his teeth, Luke managed to keep his voice even. Fixing Gary with a narrow-eyed gaze that fell just short of being a glare, he fought forcalm. Ohhmm, he thought, reaching deep down inside himself in search of the inner serenity he’d been assured was at his center in the yoga classes he’d recently attended as part of another surveillance effort. “How the—how could you lose it?”
“Well, see, you know how I was supposed to give you a heads-up when our girlfriend there started heading back home, then stay put and keep a lookout on the briefcase until you relieved me?”
Luke nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was trying, but the on-ramp to the nirvana highway remained maddeningly out of reach.
“She delivered the briefcase, all right, put it in the gray Maxima just like she was told, then started walking back down the beach. As soon as she got out of sight I started to give you a holler, but the damned transmitter wouldn’t work. It was dead as a doornail. I was afraid she was going to catch you in her house, but I didn’t want to leave my post, so I didn’t know what to do. I figured that the problem with the transmitter was probably dead batteries, but that didn’t really help because I didn’t have any fresh ones. Then I remembered I had
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