Chapter Thirteen
Mia wiped furiously at the tears pouring down her face. Her escape was no good if she crashed the car and killed herself and Neville. The dog was making heaving, panting noises in the back seat, and Mia realized their grief would probably sound much the same to anyone who heard them. She might just have broken Neville’s heart as well as her own.
The first time in her adult life she’d ever told someone other than her parents that she loved them, and then she’d sicced her dog on him and stolen his car. She wasn’t going to be winning Girlfriend of the Year anytime soon.
She pushed the thought out of her head. She’d done the best she could. This way Hudson didn’t have to go back into danger. He could just make some excuse to the gang—say he’d been arrested or something—and wait until she turned herself in and gave them her evidence about Abe. His identity would still be protected, and he could keep doing the job he loved.
Besides, she was pretty sure there were rules about cops consorting with felons, which is exactly what she’d be, once she was charged for her part in the murder. It had been a foolish pipe dream to think anything could come of her feelings for him.
She wrapped her hands more tightly around the steering wheel. She couldn’t afford to think of Hudson. He would have called in by now and police would be looking for her. She was a huge target wheeling around in his car, and she had something she had to do before she turned herself in.
She cranked up the radio and forced herself to start singing to the old ’80s tune that came through, then rolled the back windows all the way down. Neville loved to hang his head out into the wind and she was headed in the direction Hudson would least expect, so she figured they were safe enough until she could swap out the car.
But Neville didn’t move to the window. He stepped off the seat and curled himself into an impossibly small ball behind the driver’s seat where she couldn’t see him. She didn’t bother wiping at the new batch of tears—she just kept blinking them away, trying to clear her vision enough to keep the car between the lines.
#
Hudson spat out a mouthful of blood and used his tongue to test if his teeth were still intact.
“You can keep pounding me ’til you break your other ’and, Gio. I don’t know where she went.” His words were thick, but distinct enough. And true. Mia had found her own phone in his pocket, but the house had the only signal for kilometres, and he hadn’t given her the password so she’d had to use his, but she’d made so many searches he had no idea which breadcrumbs to follow.
Which was, no doubt, exactly what she’d intended. She’d reserved bus and airline tickets to three different locations across Canada, made hotel reservations at six different spots—none of which matched the ticket destinations. And since those bookings there’d been not one credit or debit card transaction to track. Mia was in the wind.
Gio slammed the mallet into his thigh and Hudson grunted. He should have taken the pain shot Mitch had offered. Or he could use the code word that would bring in the listening team who were waiting to bust the warehouse. He’d known he was going to have to pay a price for showing up without Mia, but seeing Abe had cared enough about controlling Mia to risk blowing his cover by trying to take her off the mountain, Hudson’d thought there was a chance he might show up again.
It was literally the only way he could think of to try and bring Cain/Abe out of the woodwork. Because not only had Mia dropped off the radar, so had Abe Larson. He’d apparently blown off all the meetings in his diary and no-showed at a fundraiser the previous night. Hudson’s gut was telling him they were running out of time. Especially as the crime analyst had discovered Abe was the president of the corporation that had commissioned the lucrative environment study that had brought Mia back to the west coast.
He’d lured her here. Given the disappearance and demise of the other witnesses to the murder, they had to assume Abe had decided to eliminate Mia as well. And if he wasn’t here trying to beat Mia’s location out of Hudson himself, he had to consider the possibility that Abe already knew where Mia was and was setting up his final move to take her out.
“You stupid frog. How did you think this would go? You just turn up here like you didn’t lose one of Cain’s things? And my hand’s not broke. I’m just mixing things up a little.” Gio had his right thumb hooked into the V-neck of his shirt to keep his hand elevated.
Hudson looked at the swelling and bruise already starting to form across the back of the thug’s hand. He spat again. “Is broke. You should get to ’ospital before it swell too much and they can’t fix it.”
Gio glanced at his hand and winced, then shot a suspicious look back at Hudson. “Really?”
He nodded, ignoring the fire it lit in his head. “Really. I know guy back ’ome. He break ’is, wait too long. They have to wait and rebreak.”
He made a crunching noise in the back of his throat, and Gio paled. He studied his hand and suddenly picked up his jacket. “Raj, I’m gonna go get this checked.”
“Good idea. I’ll tell Cain you were appropriately enthusiastic.”
Gio’s eyebrows drew together, then relaxed, and he smiled. “Hey, thanks, man. See you in a bit.”
Raj sighed and shook his head. He picked up the rubber mallet Gio had been swinging at various parts of Hudson’s body and walked behind him. Hudson tensed and tried not to jump when he heard a clatter on the workbench. He swivelled his head when he felt something tugging at the ropes that bound his hands, then rubbed his wrists tentatively when Raj re-emerged and tossed the line into a garbage pail.
Hudson lifted his chin to indicate his appreciation.
Raj shrugged. “Gio’s enthusiasm sometimes blinds him to reality.”
“What reality is that?”
“That he’s a moron and is going to die a slow, painful death.”
Raj’s comment surprised a laugh out of Hudson, and the expression on his face as the pain hit seemed to elicit a laugh from Raj. The two subsided after a minute into a sort of manly communal silence.
“Cain is going to kill her if he finds her,” Raj said.
Hudson stiffened. He nodded slowly.
Raj cupped his elbow with the opposite hand and rubbed his chin as he sighed. “I think I might have let her go too.”
“I didn’t let ’er go. I fall asleep.” He shrugged, palms up, tried for a smug grin through the pain. “It was good night.”
Raj waved off his comment and walked to one of the filthy windows. “Sure, sure.” He stared blankly at it for a few seconds before walking to a small fridge near a table covered in fast food wrappers and girly magazines. He opened the door and pulled out two beers. He handed one to Hudson and popped the tab on the other. “You really like her, though, right?”
Hudson kept his head down and studied the can before nodding and tipping half the beer down his throat.
“But you had to know she didn’t want you.” Raj extended the hand holding the beer and gestured back and forth between them. “Guys like us, we get a certain type of woman, and that’s just fine for what it is. But they’re not the kind you want to marry, not the kind you want around every day, raising your kids and stuff, right?”
“You’re right ’bout that.” He lifted his beer to toast. Mia was nothing like the women he picked up in bars, or the female cops he hung out with as cover, or anyone he’d ever met, really. Mia was the only woman he’d ever even thought about waking up beside, or making a brand-new person with.
“I got a girlfriend,” Raj said quietly, looking straight at Hudson. “The right kind of girl. And she’s pregnant. I’m gonna be someone’s daddy, you believe that?” A faltering smile lit on his face then disappeared just as quickly. “I want to marry her, make it legit, you know? Be a family. But she said she’s gonna take the baby and go. Says she don’t wanna be raising a kid with a man like me.” He drank the rest of the can, crushed it. and sent it neatly onto an overflowing pile in the corner. “And you know what, man? I can’t blame her.” He shook his head. “I been with Cain a long time.”
Hudson went still and tried to arrange his features in a neutral expression. This was the first time Raj had ever acknowledged he was more than a slightly higher-ranking grunt. He hoped fervently that Mitch and the team had their electronic ears wide open and recording.
Raj continued, “I was still kid in school when I started dealing weed for him. He paid for my tux, a truck limo for my prom, a hotel room for what came after.” He made a pumping motion with his fist and gave Hudson a nostalgic smile. “I thought I had it made. Thought I had a career. And who was it hurtin’? A little weed? Hell, it’s legal some places now.” He sighed and scrubbed at his jaw again. “But something changed, man. He changed. Now it’s hard drugs, bigger deals, more suppliers, stuff that kills people.”
He shook his head again. “What the hell kind of father I’m gonna be? Probably dead before I’m forty, kid got no role model, probably follow right in my footsteps. Nah, she’s right to take that baby to her mom. Family’s everything, dude. You gotta do what’s right.”
Hudson nodded and finished his beer. Raj’s story was touching, but it was his last few comments that had started the wheels grinding in Hudson’s brain. Family’s everything. The first search Mia had made on his phone was to find the update on the kids missing on the mountain. They’d been recovered, safe and sound, by a party mounted by the parents when the Search and Rescue teams refused to start looking because of the weather. One of the fathers had broken his arm during the rescue, but they brought their kids off that mountain in the middle of the same storm he and Mia had experienced.
Family was everything for Mia. Of course. He knew where Mia had gone. Now he just had to get out of here before Gio returned with a brand-new cast to beat him with.
“What you gonna do?”
“What you mean? I told you, she’s gonna take the baby to her mom. Raise him there.” That same uncertain smile lit Raj’s face for another second. “It’s a boy. I tell you that part?”
Hudson shrugged, pretended it was a casual thought. He hoped Mitch was listening hard. “Or maybe you make yourself the kind of person she wants to be ’er baby daddy. Boy needs ’is daddy, non?”
Raj laughed. “Yeah, and just how would I do that?”
“Ah, I don’t know, man. I jus’ thinking out loud.”
Raj was pacing, focused on something Hudson wasn’t seeing. He rose cautiously from the chair he’d been tied to and stretched his arms overhead. “You know, you make me t’ink of something Raina say. I ’ave idea where she go. I’m gonna go look.”
Raj nodded. “Yeah, sure. Just be back here tomorrow morning. We’ve got to deal with that last shipment and a new load of product.”
Hudson nodded and strolled to the door, fighting the urge to run to his car.
As soon as he was out of sight of the warehouse, he used the covert phone to tell Mitch to call off the bust and set up a traffic stop on Raj’s car. If they played it right, they might just have themselves the one informant who could lead them straight to Cain. To Abe, and the end of Mia’s life of hiding in the shadows.