“First, let me ask you a question. Did Dunst have a phone on him when he died?” Lara asked.
“Negative, no phone was found.”
“Then make sure your men do a thorough sweep of the hotel room to see if he left one there,” she said. “Now, what did you find on him?”
“A black ink pad and a wooden stamper.”
Lara frowned and looked around the table at the others. An ink pad? She stared back at the phone. “What did the stamp look like?”
“I just sent you a photo.”
Lara quickly checked. The past collided with the present, creating something close to madness inside Lara’s brain. “Thanks for the info,” she managed to say and then ended the call.
The photo showed a letter M superimposed over an upside down M. She turned to show everyone the image. Everyone except Victoria looked at her expectantly. “That’s the insignia of the Moretti crime organization.” Lara’s voice was flat, not reflecting the raging turmoil that twisted her gut. “Everyone who worked for Moretti or who was trafficked by him had that symbol either tattooed on their arm or someplace else on their body. Dunst was connected to Moretti.”
“Why would low-level Dunst have something like that in his pocket? Did he use it on the little girl?” Ty asked.
“Negative,” Cass replied. “According to the autopsy report Tina had nothing like that on her body when she was found.”
Lara barely heard the conversation of suppositions and possibilities as it swirled around the table. An icy chill had taken over her entire body.
She feared that the ghosts she’d dreamed of chasing her in her nightmares were now very real monsters, and they had finally found her.
Getting to Brooklyn from Manhattan was a bitch at just after five o’clock in the afternoon, especially if you didn’t take public transportation. Lara rode shotgun in Nick’s company-issued black sedan, and for the first five minutes in the car neither of them spoke.
Lara was still trying to process the shock of the ink pad and stamper found on Dunst, and Nick’s sole concentration was on maneuvering in and around whizzing taxis, belching buses and the honking horns of tourists who had no idea how to drive in the snarl of vehicles at rush hour.
When they hit the Brooklyn Bridge, Nick cast her a sideways glance. “We spent almost an hour this morning talking before you were called away, and you never mentioned that you were instrumental in taking down members of the Moretti crime syndicate?”
There was a tone in his voice that made her believe he might have already pegged her as either being arrogant or secretive. While the first was definitely false, the latter was partly true. She did have secrets that only a handful of people would ever know, but that had nothing to do with her partner relationship with Nick or the job they now worked.
She stared out the passenger window. “It was a tough job, and after that I went into lockdown for a long a time. That was equally tough.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He cut her another quick glance. “Ah, a woman of mystery.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just a part of my past I’d rather forget. I deal in the here and now.” It was the only way she could function.
“If we’re going to work well as partners, then we need to trust each other. You can trust me, Lara.”
She turned in her seat to give him her full attention. “Those are just words, Nick. Trust is earned by action, and I don’t know you well enough yet to invest my complete trust in you.”
“I’m an open book. What you see is what you get,” he replied easily.
She eyed the scar on his temple, his sharply defined handsome features and the darkness of his eyes. “Yeah, right,” she said drily.
“Tell me about the team. Since I had to leave unexpectedly, I didn’t really get a chance to get to know them. What I do know is that we were all handpicked for this new unit, and I know both Victoria and Cass from working with them in DC. Tell me what you know about the others,” she said.
“Mei is smart and tough. She also speaks several languages. We were partners a few years back. She’s good. Ty has a ‘particular’ sense of humor, but underneath, he’s solid. He’s divorced and has no children. Xander comes from a wealthy background and has a five-year old daughter, but he’s never married and definitely isn’t afraid to speak his mind. They obviously all have specialties that brought them to Agent Russo’s attention. She handpicked us all for a reason.”
“And what’s your specialty?” Lara asked.
“That’s easy. Definitely my charisma,” he replied with a sexy grin.
She narrowed her eyes at him. She was not amused. “If you’re watching my back, you’d better bring something more than charm to the table,” she retorted.
His smile vanished. “Tell me what you know about Russo. You said you worked for her in DC. What’s her story? What kind of a boss is she?”
“She’s widowed and has a nineteen-year-old daughter. Anna is a sophomore at Columbia, and Victoria is very much a proud mother bear. She’s also very intelligent and can be one tough lady, but she’s fair. She has high standards and expects her agents to produce results.”
“Then we’d better figure all of this mess out. I wouldn’t want to let the boss lady down on our very first assignment.” He paused a moment and then continued, “I hope you aren’t rusty after the year off duty.”
Lara’s back stiffened. He might be hot to look at, but he was definitely treading in total jerk territory. “Don’t worry about me,” she said tersely and turned her attention out the passenger window. “On my worst day I’m still a better agent than most.”
At least that’s what she needed to believe. The Moretti case had shaken her confidence to the core and kept her from sleep on far too many nights.
Cass had pulled up Dunst’s current address, a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The four-story residence had been his childhood home and had been left to him when his parents had died several years prior.
Much work had been done in Bedford-Stuyvesant to clean up the crime and decay in the neighborhoods, but there were still areas where the drug dealers and gangs ruled the streets, and people didn’t leave the relative safety of their homes after dark.
Unfortunately, it was on one of those streets that Dunst had lived. Dunst had died not only with an ink pad and a stamper in his pocket, but also a key ring. The key ring had been delivered to Lara and Nick by an NYPD officer just before they’d left to check out Dunst’s digs.
Dunst’s place was located in the middle of a street of row houses, all of them showing the signs of hopeless neglect and economic hard times.
“It’s hard to believe there are million-dollar homes and condos just a couple of blocks from here,” Nick said as they departed his car.
“According to Cass, he lived here alone and has no family. It would be easy to keep Tina in here and nobody would ever know she was here.” She had to focus on the job and not the fact that her partner apparently already entertained some doubts about her ability.
Lara pulled her gun from her shoulder holster as Nick got out the keys to open the door. Knowing that Dunst had been a drug dealer and criminal, there was no telling who or what they might find inside.
“I should be the one with the gun drawn,” Nick said.
“You have