06 Fatal Mistake Read online

  “I can’t take Scotty out of here now, Eric.”

  Sam’s pager went off, as did those belonging to Gonzo and Cruz. She checked hers. “Wow, the entire MPD is being put on tactical alert.”

  “What for?” Nick asked, as a feeling of unease came over him.

  “The expectation of rioting.” She pointed to the field. “Look.”

  As he glanced at the action below, uniformed police officers stepped onto the field, armed with serious-looking weapons.

  “Special response team,” Sam said with a note of pride in her voice.

  “They were already here?”

  “Hell, yeah. These days we’ve got to be ready for what happens if the team wins—or if it loses. People go batshit crazy either way. They must be expecting big trouble if they recalled everyone.”

  His stomach plummeted at the thought of the city erupting in violence and his wife being smack in the middle of it.

  “I’m going to drop Christina and Alex at home,” Gonzo said to Sam as he hustled his family from the skybox. “I’ll see you at HQ.”

  “Me too,” Cruz said, holding Elin’s hand as they headed for the exit. “Thanks for the great seats, Nick.”

  “Gotta go,” Sam said with a kiss for Nick and a hug for Scotty. “Try not to take it too hard, buddy. No matter what happens, there’s always next year.”

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks for bringing me to the game. It was exciting to be here, no matter how it ends.”

  “That’s the way to be,” she said. “I’ll see you guys at home.”

  “Um, Mrs. Cappuano,” Eric said. “We’d prefer that you remain with us.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Sam said with her trademark cheeky grin. “But I’ve got a job to do, and so do you. You take care of my guys. I’ll take care of myself.”

  Nick tried very hard not to get in the way of her job, but he had a bad feeling about what might happen in the city if the Feds lost. “Sam—” The steely stare she directed his way killed the thought before he voiced it. “Be careful out there, babe.”

  “I always am.” Nick’s eyes were glued to her as she said goodnight to her dad and Celia and hugged her sister. He wanted to go after her and find a way to make her stay. But when duty called, as it often did, Sam always went.

  “Senator?” Eric’s second inquiry was more urgent than the first.

  Nick glanced at the field to find the outfield covered in trash and team security surrounding Willie Vasquez as they led him to the dugout, presumably to get him out of harm’s way. Didn’t the fans know the Feds had three more outs and only needed one run to tie and two to win? It could still be done.

  He glanced at Scotty, who watched the scene on the field with a mix of confusion and anger. “I don’t understand. Why are they doing this? The Feds still have three more outs. The game isn’t over.”

  “I don’t get it either, buddy. Listen, Eric wants to get us out of here in case there’s trouble.”

  “Before the game is over?”

  “Yeah, he wants to go now.”

  “Will they get to finish the game?”

  “As soon as they get the fans settled. We can watch the end on TV at home.” All at once, Nick was anxious to get the hell out of there, and more important, to get Scotty the hell out of there.

  “Okay.” Scotty took a last look at the field before he let Nick guide him toward the exit.

  The rest of their party followed them to the elevator, which the Secret Service had secured for their descent. How they did that—and the many other things they did with seemingly effortless authority—was a source of constant fascination to Nick.

  “I’ll make sure Shelby gets home,” Derek said in a low voice that only Nick could hear over the conversation in the elevator.

  “Oh, thanks. That’d be great. You seemed to have a good time tonight.”

  Derek focused on Maeve, who had a spit-soaked fist jammed in her mouth. “What’s a good time anymore?”

  Nick ached for his heartbroken friend. “It’s nice to see you out.”

  “Thanks for asking me. I don’t mean to be a downer.”

  “You’re not. You know we all want to help. Any way we can.”

  “And I appreciate that. I don’t know what I would’ve done without my friends and family the last couple of months.”

  “Any thoughts about going back to work?” Derek was deputy chief of staff to President Nelson, who, like Nick, was up for reelection next month.

  “After the election, if he wins and if he wants me back. I can’t even think about wading back into the action at this point.”

  Nick patted his friend’s back. “He’ll win, and he wants you back. He’s already told you that.”

  Derek shrugged. “Not sure my heart’s in it anymore.”

  “Give it some time. Don’t make any big decisions.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  Over Derek’s shoulder, Nick watched Shelby play peekaboo with Maeve, making the little girl laugh.

  Her laughter drew a small smile from her dad. “Life goes on, right?”

  “You’re going to be okay, Derek.”

  “Keep telling me that. Maybe one day I’ll believe it.”

  “You got it.”

  Chapter Two

  The Secret Service agents moved swiftly to usher Nick and his friends to their vehicles. Nick and Scotty were escorted to the large black SUV that had been getting them around for the last two months. Watching Scotty buckle in, Nick was amused by how well the boy had adapted to not only a new family but also the nuisance of around-the-clock protection.

  “Sorry about all this, pal.”

  “All what?”

  “Having to leave the game before it’s over, the Secret Service, all the hassle.”

  “Seriously? It’s awesome. My new friends at school think I’m someone important because the agents follow me around.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t worry, it’s cool.”

  “Would you tell me if it wasn’t?”

  Scotty took a moment, thought about that. “If I thought there was something you could do about it. It’s not like you’re thrilled with the Secret Service hanging around.”

  Nick had been quite vocal about his dislike of being shadowed everywhere he went. “It’s annoying as all hell. I didn’t appreciate my freedom until it was gone.”

  “Imagine what it’d be like to be president.”

  “Yeah.” He’d thought about that quite a lot since the convention and the subsequent buzz about him running for president in four years.

  “Do you ever wonder... Nah, never mind.”

  “Wonder about what?”

  “People talk, ya know?”

  Nick eyed him warily. “And? What do these people say?”

  “That my new dad might be president someday and what would that be like. You know, for me.”

  Scotty was so sweet and considerate, not unlike the twelve-year-old Nick had once been. Nick had lived in constant fear that his grandmother would get tired of having him around and send him to a foster home, so he’d been on best behavior at all times. “What do you tell them when they ask you?”

  “That I have no idea. How could I know what that’s like until it happens?”

  “Good point. Would you want to find out?”

  Scotty’s big brown eyes got even bigger. “Are you going to do it?”

  “I don’t know yet. But like you said, there’s a lot of talk. It has me thinking about what ifs.”

  “What does Sam say?”

  Nick’s laugh was a low rumble. “Mostly she sticks her fingers in her ears and says ‘Lalalala, can’t hear you.’”

  Scotty cracked up. “I can so see her doing that. It’s because of her job, right?”

  “In part. If anyone would chafe against the restrictions, it’d be her. She’d go nuts being followed around all day. I can’t, for the life of me, picture her living like that.”

  “True.”
<
br />   “And since I can’t live without her...all the talk might be a moot point.”

  “What’s a moot point? What does that mean?”

  “It means there’s probably no point in talking about it when it can’t really happen without Sam being on board.”

  The divider window opened and Eric turned in the passenger seat to face them. “Sorry for the delay, Senator. We’re stuck in traffic.”

  “Any word on the game?”

  “It’s over. The Feds went down swinging in the bottom of the ninth.”

  Scotty let out a tortured groan. “We were so close.”

  “They’ll be talking about this one for years to come,” Eric said with a sympathetic smile for Scotty.

  “Poor Willie,” Scotty said. “He must be so upset.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Nick agreed.

  “I’m going to write him a letter. When we get home, I’m going to write to him and tell him I don’t blame him. Accidents happen, even to Major League ballplayers.”

  Nick’s heart swelled with love. “I think that’s a brilliant idea, buddy.”

  They shared a smile that made him so very grateful for the boy who was now his son. Soon enough the adoption would be official. Nick couldn’t wait for that day.

  * * *

  Sam arrived at HQ pissed off about being called into work on a night she’d planned to spend with her guys. They got so few free nights together, especially during Nick’s campaign, that she tended to be greedy about every one. She sauntered into the situation room where Chief Farnsworth, Deputy Chief Conklin and Detective Captain Malone were consulting with the lieutenants who ran the Special Response Team and Patrol Division.

  She took a seat next to Detectives Dani Carlucci and Giselle “Gigi” Dominguez, the two third-shift officers under her command. “Well, this blows, huh?” Sam said.

  “You said it, LT,” Gigi said. “All over a stupid baseball game.”

  “Too bad people don’t go nuts over homelessness or something that matters,” Dani added.

  “I was just saying that same thing to Christina,” Gonzo said as he took a seat behind them.

  Freddie came in with Detectives Arnold, McBride and Tyrone.

  “The gang’s all here,” Sam said, nodding to each of her detectives.

  “The Feds have lost the game,” Farnsworth announced to groans. “The Special Response Team is handling crowd control in and around the stadium along with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies who were already on standby in case we needed them. It’s my belief that we’re going to need them tonight. Everyone listen up as Deputy Chief Conklin hands out assignments.”

  Conklin gave out the special radio channel the Operations team would monitor during the night and mentioned the cameras the Special Response Team had trained on the stadium were showing increasing unrest in the area. He went through the roster, doling out orders. Everyone became a patrol officer on a night like this, when the city was overtaken by the unruly masses working out their frustrations over a game gone wrong.

  “That’s it, people,” Conklin concluded, after he’d given other tactical instructions. “Let’s hit the streets and be careful out there.”

  Sam waited until the others filed out of the room to approach the brass. Her partner, Freddie Cruz, had been sent out with McBride and Tyrone, leaving with a quizzical look for Sam.

  “You forgot someone,” Sam said to Conklin.

  “No, I didn’t.” He glanced at Farnsworth. “I’ll let you handle this one, sir.”

  Farnsworth waited until Conklin and Malone left the room before he met Sam’s intent gaze.

  “What gives?” she asked.

  “I need you here, helping with command and dispatch.”

  “With all due respect, sir, that’s a bunch of happy horseshit. Tell me what’s really going on.”

  His steel gray eyes hardened. “I could point out that you’re being insubordinate, Lieutenant Holland. Again.”

  “You could but you won’t. What’s the real story? Why am I being wrapped in swaddling clothing all of a sudden?”

  “You know why.”

  “Arnie Parsons is in jail! This is getting ridiculous! My husband and son have Secret Service agents following them around everywhere they go. I’m being kept off the street.”

  “Because you refuse to take the threats seriously. Whether you choose to believe it or not, Parsons has a ton of supporters. Your investigation squashed their dream of seeing him in the White House. They blame you.”

  “Um, hello, he’s a murdering, scheming scumbag, and he squashed their dreams.”

  “You know that, and I know that, but try and tell them that.”

  Arnie’s disciples had taken to the internet and social media since his arrest to denounce the detective who’d tied the murder of Victoria Kavanaugh to Arnie Parsons and his sons. Most of their vitriol had focused on Sam as the detective who’d uncovered the scheme, even though the FBI had made the actual arrests.

  “Until the furor dies down,” Farnsworth said, “you’re off the streets.”

  “Even if there’s a homicide?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “I need a nice juicy murder to sink my teeth into. It’s been weeks and weeks with nothing good to work on.”

  “You’re sick, Holland, you know that?”

  “That hurts my feelings.”

  “What feelings?” he asked with a laugh. “Help with dispatch, help with command, help with the reports and don’t step foot outside this building without my knowledge, you got me?”

  The man she’d once called Uncle Joe rarely pulled rank on her. In fact, he let her get away with everything except murder itself in running her investigations and her division. Because he was often so accommodating, she decided to accommodate him. For now. But this coddling shit couldn’t continue much longer without her losing her mind.

  “Fine,” she said to his back as he left the room. “But after tonight, we’re having a conversation about my clipped wings.”

  He waved to indicate he’d heard her, and Sam kicked the trash can out of frustration. She hated being sidelined due to worries about her safety. Why didn’t anyone think she was capable of taking care of herself? She’d been a cop almost thirteen years! And here she was relegated to desk duty on one of the most intense nights the department had seen in years. It wasn’t fair.

  And while it might not be fair, it was happening, so she put aside her frustration to go figure out where she was needed. In the dispatch area, she was drawn to the bank of televisions repeatedly broadcasting the ball sailing over Willie Vasquez’s head as the commentators talked about a moment that would land in the baseball history books, right next to Bill Buckner’s famous bobble that cost the Boston Red Sox a World Series victory in 1986. “This might even be worse than Buckner,” one of the broadcasters said grimly.

  Her gaze shifted to the next television where Metro Special Response officers were in crowd control formations outside the stadium. Other images included a car on fire, another lying on its side, a shattered storefront and angry mobs of people in the streets.

  All over a freaking baseball game.

  Choking back her dismay over what was happening to her city as well as her inability to do anything about it, she buckled down to help out in central processing, which was overwhelmed with people being dragged in off the streets by increasingly irritated police officers.

  Wanting to drown out the roar of the voices in the station as well as the disturbing images coming from the TVs, she put in her earbuds and let Bon Jovi take her away from it all as she typed reports and tried to stay focused on the menial tasks involved with processing hundreds of arrests.

  An hour later, a nearby flurry of activity caught her attention as a man wearing a navy blue jacket with bold yellow FBI letters on the back scuffled with an unruly prisoner who continued to resist arrest right up to the last minute. Sam tugged out her earbuds and went to offer assistanc
e in subduing the man.

  The agent caught her gaze, and Sam gasped at the sight of Special Agent Avery Hill’s golden brown eyes.

  “Agent Hill,” she said, haltingly after they succeeded wrestling the man into central booking. “We meet again.”

  “Unfortunate circumstances.”

  “Are there any other kind in our line of work?”

  That drew a slow, sexy smile from the man who’d been less than circumspect about his crush on her. Sam cleared her throat as a flurry of nerves made her feel stupid and dismayed. She hated the effect he had on her as she had absolutely no interest in him. “What’re you doing here? I thought you were relocating to the West Coast or Outer Mongolia or some such place after we closed the Kavanaugh case.”

  “That was the plan,” he said in the honeyed Southern accent that made the toughest of women want to swoon. Not Sam, though. She liked to think she was immune. “Director Hamilton had other plans for me.” His self-deprecating smile exposed an adorable dimple on his left cheek. “Meet the new agent in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division at headquarters.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, thunderstruck by the news. “So you’re staying in town?” And closer now than he’d been when he worked out of Quantico. Awesome. Wait until Nick heard this news. He’d tuned into Hill’s interest in Sam the first time he met the agent and was none too happy about it.

  “Appears that way.” He gestured to the guy he’d brought in. “I offered to transport for Officers Beckett and Dempsey. They had a full car. They should be right behind me with the paperwork.”

  “Lots of that to do tonight.”

  “I’m surprised to find you here and not on the streets.”

  “You and me both,” she said with a snarl. “Freaking Arnie Parsons and his freaking threats have gotten me a pair of severely clipped wings.”

  “Oh, that sucks.”

  “No kidding. You helped to nail him too. I don’t see him threatening you.”

  “You’re much more famous than I am,” he said with a teasing grin.

  “Screw you.”

  He raised a brow and seemed to be considering the offer. “Well, I’d better get back out there. Word is the president is calling in the National Guard to help with crowd control. Never seen anything like it in my life.”