On Thin Ice Read online

  It was barely past 9 A.M. the next morning when Sasha hung up the phone. She stood looking down at it for a moment before she turned away. Looking up, she found Mick propped up on one elbow in bed, watching her. “Mr. Dello confirms what you told me,” she informed him solemnly.

  “Yeah?” He rubbed long fingers over his bare chest while he studied her expression. “So how come you don’t you look any happier about it?”

  “I don’t know.” She came and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Running one slender finger back and forth over the bedspread, she studied its pattern of carnivorous-looking flowers as if it were the most interesting thing she’d ever seen and then finally admitted, “Partly, I suppose, I’m a little embarrassed to have been so wrong—”

  “Hey, given what you overheard, Sasha, you had every reason not to trust me.”

  Her clear, gray-eyed gaze raised from contemplating the bedspread to meet his. She was still troubled. “Yes, well, that’s pretty sporting of you, Mick, considering there’s another part of me that can’t help but feel you’ve still got some hidden agenda of your own that I’ve yet to find out about.”

  Oh, shit. Only years of practice kept the little zap of shock that trilled along his nerve endings from being revealed in his expression. For a brief moment he was tempted to tell her everything, to just lay it all out and see what she made of it. Hell, she might even be able to shed some light on the identity of the person running the drugs.

  Then he immediately shelved that idea. Yeah, and she might also send you packing, Jack—you wanna risk that?

  No.

  Far better to come clean later when his position in her life was more firmly entrenched, when the sex he’d once thought he could use to pry her drug secrets out of her had been more aptly used to ensure she remained his. Besides, confiding in someone outside his field of work contacts was contrary to every professional precept he practiced. So, looking her squarely in the eye, he charmed her with some of his most creative lying to date.

  And dismissed an uneasy nagging sensation that insisted he was going to pay for it later on.

  Karen Corselli was also on the telephone early that morning. By the time she’d concluded her conversation with the car rental people she was feeling restless . . . and contemptuous. That was just too easy.

  She still had to turn the car in, of course, but she didn’t anticipate a problem; the groundwork of having hit another car in a supermarket parking lot had been thoroughly laid. She would simply flutter a little and dither on ever so apologetically. Goodness, gracious, oh silly me, she didn’t know how her foot could have slipped off the brake that way.

  People were so easily led.

  She felt a need to go out and flex some muscle. Crossing to the bed, she knelt down, reached beneath it, and pulled forth a metal strongbox. Opening it, she fastidiously selected a small plastic bag of white powder and then remained kneeling there with a small smile curving her lips for a few additional moments. She had been such a good girl for the past couple of weeks; she really was due the opportunity to exercise a little power.

  An hour later she had turned in the car and if the people who worked the desk at Avis could have seen the pure steel in her expression as she stood outside the health department’s needle exchange, they hardly would have recognized her as the same woman. She was on the corner of Second and Pike, two blocks up from Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market. Having learned about this place by eavesdropping on the conversation of a couple of drug-savvy techs, she’d known as soon as she heard about it that she would undoubtedly find a reason to visit it some day. Opening the door, she went inside.

  The small downtown corner facility saw a brisk trade; Karen sat quietly in a corner for a while and watched as junkies dropped off as many as fifty used syringes and picked up fresh ones. It was not precisely a tourist attraction widely touted by the Seattle Downtown Association.

  But it was certainly one that was well suited for her purposes.

  THIRTEEN

  Much to Sasha’s relief, when queried by Mick the Washington State Crime Lab reported they had collected sufficient trace evidence from Amy’s clothing to run their tests. They were not forthcoming on what those tests revealed, but just knowing they had the necessary evidence to proceed was enough for Sasha’s peace of mind. She had been willing to give up her jacket if it would mean providing the authorities with a place for their investigations to begin where none had before existed, but in all honesty she was just as happy it wasn’t necessary.

  That was one problem off her mind. Now if only there weren’t so darn many others, all eager and willing to take its place.

  She’d thought she had already settled her paranoia regarding the coincidental timing and happenstance of her and Amy’s accidents, but there remained an uneasy little twitch deep in her stomach whenever she thought of them. Instinct was a thing she’d learned long ago not to dismiss out of hand, for nine times out of ten it seemed to be dead on the money. But where was she supposed to go with it in this instance? She didn’t for the life of her see how she could lend credence to these niggling sensations. They were so nebulous they could hardly even be called suspicions and they simply didn’t make sense.

  Nevertheless, they persisted.

  She went looking for Connie because Connie was a great one for talking matters through and helping her put her problems into perspective. But she wasn’t in her room.

  Damn. Sasha turned away from her friend’s door and walked slowly back down the corridor. Connie was probably off somewhere doing something fun with someone else. She tried not to let it bother her. After all, she’d been spending so much time with Mick lately she could hardly expect her friend to just hang around and wait for her to have a free moment. But what did she do now?

  She finally decided to take a cab to the arena where Lon was practicing. Like Connie, they hadn’t really talked much since she and Mick had started sleeping together, and she missed him.

  Lon was tickled to see her . . . at least part of him was. Another part was almost annoyed that she had suddenly chosen to show up. What, she didn’t have anything better to do today?

  Things hadn’t been working out the way Lon had envisioned. Okay, it had only been a few days but that was one character trait prison hadn’t managed to kick out of him—he was as impatient as ever.

  He’d put a lot of thought into what his future would be like during those endless days before his release. How he’d skate again, be with Sasha on a daily basis again. Like the old days. The one scenario he hadn’t in a million years anticipated was having to compete for her attention.

  Oh, sure, maybe occasionally with one of her girlfriends.

  But not with some solidly built roughneck who seemed to take great delight rubbing Lon’s nose in her sexuality. That wasn’t a subject he had ever cared to think about too closely. It had been easy enough to ignore with the only guy he’d known about, the one she’d lost her virginity to back in their competition days. Oh, he’d been aware of the substance of the situation, but he hadn’t had to deal with the details. No one had ever thrust the knowledge that she was sexually active in his face.

  Vinicor thrust it at him with both hands, making it impossible to ignore. Lon detested it. He’d spent too many years trying to keep men off her and the fact that she welcomed this guy in particular left him feeling helpless.

  “I’ve got to get some sort of balance back in my life,” she told him as they skated side by side, languidly performing an old routine. “I’ve been so enthralled by all this great sex that—”

  “Jesus, Sasha, do you mind?” Unconsciously Lon put a greater distance between them. “I hate to be the one to have to break this to you, doll, but your taste in men really sucks, you know? What do you see in him anyway? The guy’s hostile. Not to mention he’s so goddam arrogant it’s enough to make you gag.”

  “Arrogant to you, maybe. He makes me feel safe.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that.” And for all that the guy irri
tated him, it was something he truly could understand. Vinicor did seem extremely capable . . . and dead determined to put himself squarely between Sasha and the rest of the world. “All the same, let’s just leave it at that, huh? I don’t think I wanna hear about your sex life with him.”

  Sasha snorted. “Since when? Aren’t you the guy who always used to bug me for all the details?”

  “Yeah, but that was when I knew it was safe to do so because the whole world knew you didn’t have a sex life.”

  She cut her edges into the ice, coming to a halt. “You nasty little beggar! Just for that I think I’ll supply you with all those steamy little details that sure shocked the heck out of me at first, like how he likes to hold my ankles in his hands when we make love—”

  “Knock it off, Sasha! I mean it.” He shuddered. “Jesus, this is like having to hear some guy brag about screwing my sister.”

  She watched for a moment in utter enjoyment as, with a flush climbing up his neck, he looked everywhere except at her. Then she abruptly sobered. “He wants me to move in with him, Lonnie,” she said.

  He muttered an obscenity, then met her gaze with narrowed eyes. “You gonna do it?”

  “I don’t know.” She wanted to tell him about her conflicting emotions, how part of her ached to do exactly that, to move in with Mick lock, stock, and barrel, because she’d never felt this way about a man before and she wanted to see where it would take her. But there was another part of her that kept standing back to study the situation, afraid to trust that this man whom she was falling in love with wasn’t operating under false pretenses on some unknown level. There was no factual basis for the latter suspicion, but there was something Mick wasn’t telling her, something that she sensed but couldn’t quite put her finger on. And it scared her to death to think she might be putting her heart on the line for him, when maybe on Mick’s part it was all just a . . . joke or something.

  She longed to lay it all out in front of Lon, but in the end she kept her own counsel. What would be the point? He’d made no bones about not liking Mick, so she could hardly expect impartial advice from that quarter. And when it came right down to it, this was simply a matter she needed to work out for herself.

  So she simply repeated, “I don’t know.”

  And later wondered if that was the point where Lon began to pull away from her.

  Mick knew it had taken him too long, now that Sasha was no longer the primary suspect, to get around to wondering just who did have access to Lon Morrison’s never-recovered heroin while the man was still in prison. It should have been the first question to pop to mind once Sasha’s innocence was established, but instead it had taken him an entire day to narrow down the field. Damn. He was beginning to distrust his own professional acumen when it came to this case.

  But then he stacked it up against the combined intelligence of the suits and he felt like the DEA’s great white hope once again. The organization was going downhill fast and he was beginning to give some serious consideration to making this his last case. He’d threatened it before, more frequently in the past few years as bit by bit he had slowly grown disenchanted, but deep down he’d never really believed he’d ever see the day.

  This was no way for a grown man to make a living, though, not as the agency was currently being run. It wasn’t enough, apparently, to simply do his job. Increasingly, he had to work around grandstanding brass and bureaucratic posturing, and now, to top it off, they were sending out smooth-cheeked boys to deliver their messages. His most recent visitor seemed to have a difficult time distinguishing his ass from a hole in the ground.

  Jesus, he’d strutted across the lobby, shiny black shoes, close-buzzed hair, constipated gray flannel suit and all, as conspicuous as a whore at a Baptist christening. Mick, half afraid the kid would walk right up to him and address him as Special Agent Vinicor, had hastily murmured a glib excuse to the line skater whose problem he was trying to straighten out and melted around the nearest corner. Two seconds later his arm whipped out of a shadowed alcove near the elevator to yank the junior G-man away from the brightly lighted lobby.

  Mick had him up against the wall, with his forearm rammed against the young man’s Adam’s apple, before the kid knew what had hit him. Efficiently, he relieved him of his gun and stepped back, tucking it into the waistband of his Dockers at the small of his back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here bold as brass?”

  “I was told you weren’t in deep cover.”

  Mick stared at him in disbelief. “Does the word covert mean anything to you?”

  “Hey, they’re just a bunch of ice skaters.” The contemptuous curl of the other man’s lip told Mick his opinion of that.

  “Jesus, kid, are you an example of what they’re graduating these days? If so, it’s a scary thought.” Mick got a quick mental flash of his own opinion upon first joining the Follies in Sacramento; it hadn’t been that dissimilar. But, Jesus. At least he’d employed the full contingent of professional responsibility.

  His eyes were hard as he leveled them at the younger man. “There are basics you should’ve learned your first month in the academy,” he said coldly. “Foremost being that you don’t burn a hump’s cover because you’ve determined the degree of danger his target constitutes.” He saw that his lecture’s only result was to have the young man clench his sphincter a few degrees tighter, and Mick shook his head, rolling his shoulders in disgust. He thrust out a preemptory hand. “What have you got for me?”

  Sulkily, the young man passed him a small manila envelope. Ignoring him while he ripped it open, Mick scanned the contents. Then he swore with soft-toned, vicious creativity. His head snapped up and the heat in his blue eyes impaled the young bureaucrat where he stood. He crowded in, aggressively thrusting his face close to the other man’s, invading his personal space with impunity. “You trot your skinny ass back to McMahon,” he said furiously through his teeth, “and you tell him—” Abruptly he bit off his words, took a step back, and straightened. “No. Never mind; I’ll tell him myself. You’d probably just fuck it up.” Pulling the confiscated pistol from his waistband, he set it on the floor, used the side of his foot to sweep it beneath a snack-vending machine in the far corner of the alcove, and then turned and walked away.

  Letting himself into his room moments later he was glad, for the first time since he’d put the suggestion to her yesterday morning, that Sasha had refused to give up her room and move into his. At the time he’d been tempted to keep pushing until he got his way, but now he thought it was just as well that she wasn’t waiting for him in his room. Because for once in his life he was simply too angry to dissemble, and the phone call he planned to make needed to be placed from a location where total privacy could be assured. Twisting the lock that flipped up an OCCUPIED sign above the dead bolt on the outside of the door, he crossed to the phone. He reread the memo, crumpled the flimsy stationery in his fist, and flung it onto the bed. Sitting down, he read the accompanying report with more care than he’d given it down in the alcove, but upon reaching the end, tossed it aside with equal disgust. Nothing had changed. It still didn’t come close to justifying the memo.

  Those bastards. Mick snatched up the receiver and punched out a number. Snarling at the intermediaries between himself and his objective, he was ultimately put through to McMahon.

  He skipped past all the niceties and went straight to the meat of the matter, snapping, “What the hell is the meaning of this memo?”

  “And hello to you, too, Special Agent Vinicor,” McMahon said evenly. “Which part of it, exactly, don’t you understand?”

  “The part where some asshole in a three-piece suit, who has never laid eyes on the principals involved in the case, decides he knows better than I do about the facts I’ve gathered,” Mick promptly responded without a care to what his supervisor thought of his language or his attitude. Let McMahon fire him; it would save them all a lot of time and trouble. Hell, he’d make the lie he’d told Sasha a reality a
nd inform the Follies of the full scope of their drug problem, then get himself hired on as a consultant to show them how to get rid of it. As a civilian, there was a very real probability he could actually make a difference, something he had a difficult time doing in the DEA these days. “I requested information on current Follies’ employees who had a connection to the amateur figure skating circuit during the year preceding Morrison’s arrest. Seems simple enough, but what do I get instead?” His voice lowered in disgust as he snatched up the crumpled paper, smoothed it out, and read, “ ‘Continue covert investigation of Miller. Not convinced she has been cleared of suspicion.’ ” He had to pause to take a deep breath, surprised anew at the strength of the rage that coursed through him. “You want to tell me what you based that conclusion on?”

  “The report you yourself requested on Miller’s background, Vinicor.”

  “I’ve read the report, McMahon, and I don’t see a damn thing here that justifies having my recommendations disregarded or my request for additional information overridden.” He flipped through the pages slowly. “It says she was an average student who spent nearly all her free time at Ivan Petralahti’s compound. No trouble in school, no arrests, not so much as a freakin’ parking ticket.”

  “It says she was a slut.”

  A vein swelled in the side of Mick’s throat as his back teeth clenched tight. “No,” he disagreed coolly, forcing his jaw to unlock. “What it says is that she was rumored to have slept around—a rumor that’s entirely unsubstantiated from all I can see. There’s not so much as one confirmation here, not even one affidavit from a Kells Crossing male to give the rumor some teeth. Everyone appears happy to say she rolled onto her back at the drop of a hat, but—funny thing—no one admits they rolled with her. And, let’s see”—Mick flipped to the page he wanted—“a Mary Sue Janorowski states the rumors were so many sour grapes started by a handful of students who were eaten alive with envy over the attention that skating brought Miller in a little town with a depressed economy.”