didn’t. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that she did, and that the man she knew wasn’t a criminal, and that she had been drawn to those eyes before.
She shivered suddenly, looking at him.
He didn’t like blood and guts—that’s what Dillinger had said.
Maybe he was a thief, a hood—but hated the idea of being a murderer. Maybe, just maybe, he did want to keep them all alive.
“Hey!” she called back to the huddled group of captives. “I know everything about the house and all about Anthony Green and the gangster days. Just hold tight and be cool, please. I can do this. I know I can do this!”
They all looked at her with hope in their faces.
She gazed at Barrow and said, “They need water. We keep cases of water bottles in the lower cabinet of the kitchen. Go through the music room and the dining room and you’ll reach the kitchen. I would truly appreciate if you would give them all water. It will help me think.”
But it was Dillinger who replied.
“Sure,” he said. “You think—and we’ll just be the nicest group of guys you’ve ever met!”
Nick Connolly—known as Barrow to the Coconut Grove crew of murderers, thieves and drug runners who were careful not to share their real names, even with one another—was doing his best. His damned best.
Which wasn’t easy.
Nick didn’t mind undercover work. He could even look away from the drugs and the prostitution, knowing that what he was doing would stop the flow of some really bad stuff onto the city streets—and put away some really bad men.
From the moment he’d infiltrated this gang three weeks ago, the situation had been crazy, but he’d also thought it would work. This would be the time when he could either get them all together in an escape boat that the Coast Guard would be ready to swoop up, or, if that kind of maneuver failed, pick them off one by one. Each of these guys—Dillinger, Capone, Floyd, Nelson, Kelly and Schultz—had killed or committed some kind of an armed robbery. They were all ex-cons. Capone had been the one to believe in Nick’s off-color stories in an old dive bar in Coconut Grove, and as far as Capone knew, Nick had been locked up in Leavenworth, convicted of a number of crimes. Of course, Capone had met Nick as Ted—Ted Johnson had been the pseudonym Nick had been using in South Florida. There really had been a Ted Johnson; he’d died in the prison hospital ward of a knife wound. But no one knew that. No one except certain members of the FBI and the hospital staff and warden and other higher ups at the prison.
None of these men—especially “Dillinger”—had any idea that Nick had full dossiers on them. As far as they all knew, they were anonymous, even with each other.
Undercover was always tricky.
It should have been over today; he should have been able to give up the undercover work and head back to New York City. Not that he minded winter in Miami.
He just hated the men with whom he had now aligned himself—even if it was to bring them down, and even if it was important work.
Today should have been it.
But all the plans he’d discussed with his local liaisons and with Craig Frasier—part of the task force from New York that had been chasing the drug-and-murder-trail of the man called Dillinger from New York City down through the South—had gone to hell.
And the stakes had risen like a rocket—because of a situation he’d just found out about that morning.
Without the aid, knowledge or consent of the others, for added protection, Dillinger had kidnapped a boy right before they had all met to begin their takeover of the Crystal Estate.
It wouldn’t have mattered who the kid was to Nick—he’d have done everything humanly possible to save him—but the kidnapped boy was the child of Holden Burke, mayor of South Beach. Dillinger had assured them all that he had the kid safely hidden somewhere—where, exactly, he wasn’t telling any of them. They all knew that people could talk, so it was safer that only he knew the whereabouts of little Adrian Burke. And not to worry—the kid was alive. He was their pass-go ace in the hole.
That was one thing.
Then, there was Dakota Cameron.
To be fair, Nick didn’t exactly know Kody Cameron but he had seen her—and she had seen him—in New York City.
And the one time that he’d seen her, he’d known immediately that he’d wanted to see her again.
And now, here they were. In a thousand years he’d never imagined their second meeting would be like this.
No one had known that Dillinger’s game plan ended with speculation—the vague concept that he could kidnap Dakota, take her prisoner—and hope she could find the stash!
Dillinger planned the heists and the drug runs; he worked with a field of prostitution that included the pimps and the girls. He had South American contacts. No one had figured he’d plan on taking over the old Crystal Estate, certain that he could find a Cameron family member who knew where to find the old mob treasure.
So, now, here he was—surprised and somewhat anxious to realize that the lovely young brunette with the fascinating eyes he’d brushed by at Finnegan’s on Broadway in New York City would show up at the ticket booth at a Florida estate and tourist attraction.
Craig Frasier, one of the main men on the task force Director Egan had formed to trace and track “Dillinger,” aka Nathan Appleby, along the Eastern seaboard, spent a lot of time at Finnegan’s. The new love of his life was co-owner, along with her brothers, of the hundred-and-fifty-year-old pub in downtown Manhattan.
Nick and Kody Cameron had passed briefly, like proverbial ships in the night, but he hadn’t had the least problem recognizing her today. He knew her, because they had both paused to stare at one another at the pub.
Instant attraction? Definitely on his part and he could have sworn on hers, too.
Then she’d muttered some kind of swift apology and Craig’s new girlfriend, who’d come over to greet them, explained, “That’s Kody Cameron. She’s working a living theater piece with my brother. Sounds kind of cool, right? And she’s working here part-time now, making the transition to New York.”
“What’s living theater?” Nick had asked Kieran Finnegan.
“Kevin could tell you better than me,” she had explained, “but it’s taking a show more as a concept than as a structured piece and working with the lines loosely while interacting with the audience as your character.”
Whatever she did, he’d hoped that he’d see her again; he’d even figured that he could. While Kieran Finnegan actually worked as a psychologist and therapist for a pair of psychiatrists who often came in as consultants for the New York office of the Bureau, she was also often at Finnegan’s. And since he was working tightly with Craig and his partner, Mike, and a cyber-force on this case, he’d figured he’d be back in Finnegan’s, too. But then, of course, Dillinger had come south, met up with old prison mates Capone, Nelson, Kelly, Floyd and Schultz, and Nick—who had gone
