The Black Sheep And the Princess. Donna Kauffman
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they both yelled simultaneously.
Rafe grabbed Mac by the arm, and they lit out across the empty warehouse floor at a dead run, leaving behind Frank’s makeshift office and whatever trail of evidence might still be there as they headed for daylight. It never ceased to amaze Mac what a good punch of adrenaline could do for a bum knee. He ran like a track star, with the far more agile Rafe only a half step ahead of him. They made it maybe ten yards through the gaping hole in the wall before both of them were bodily launched across the remainder of the cracked-cement parking lot when the rest of the warehouse went up in a second explosion.
Fortunately a cargo-sized Dumpster stopped their abrupt exodus before they both went flipping into the Hudson River.
It took a minute or two before his head stopped ringing from the impact. He groaned and rolled over. “We need to be right on his ass,” Mac croaked out, lying half on his side, legs sprawled, one elbow jammed under the Dumpster. “You go get the car.”
“I’m missing a shoe,” was Rafe’s only response. “It was Italian.”
“Well, then, that does it. We certainly can’t be chasing bad guys, hopping around on one designer loafer.”
Rafe ignored the jibe, as he pretty much always did. It was true he took a fair amount of care with his appearance and an unfair amount of grief for it. It was just, when contrasted with Mac’s Fashion-by-Goodwill sensibility, well, it made for good ribbing material.
“You know, when we tracked Frank as the go-between, he was just a paid schmuck too stupid to know the trouble he was involved in. I didn’t like the guy, but as long as we got Doris Fortenberry her urn back, it was live and let live as far as I was concerned.” Rafe swore again and went digging for his shoe. “Now, it’s personal.”
Mac dislodged his arm and righted himself, leaning back against the Dumpster, hoping he’d get most of his hearing back at some point. He flexed his jaw and tried to make his ears pop. “You know, I thought when we started working for Finn, our lives would improve and we’d deal with a better class of people.”
“We do,” Rafe reminded him, still digging. “These days our clients actually deserve our help.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mac gave up trying to pop his ears and resigned himself to feeling as if he was living underwater for the time being. As a police detective he’d spent most of his days tracking down scum who preyed on other scum. And those were just the cases he actually made progress on. Sure, there were the redeeming cases, too: A child saved, a teenager kept off the streets, a mom able to bury her child with some peace of mind, knowing the killer was behind bars, unable to hurt anyone else’s kids. He’d taken redemption where he’d found it.
Now, however, he got to choose his own clients, and all of them deserved justice. With the extended resources of Trinity behind him, he could make sure they always got it, too. One way, or the other. He usually liked it when getting the job done included the “other” part. Today? Not so much.
“Of course, that’s what I thought when I took that job with Hightower, too,” Mac said.
Rafe snorted as he dug through the debris and trash that had collected under the Dumpster. “I told you working high-end security systems for a tight-ass white-collar agency wasn’t for you. We’re not white-collar guys, Mac. Never were, wouldn’t want to be.” Grimacing, he straightened with his missing shoe in hand. It was covered in…something. “We just dress better than our blue-collar compadres.” He brushed off the Dumpster scum with a piece of crumpled newspaper, then glanced down at his partner. “Some of us, anyway.”
“Very amusing.” Mac winced as he rolled to his knees and pushed to stand. “At least when I worked for Hightower and NYPD, no one tried to blow me up. In fact, never once did I get shot across a parking lot like a cannonball.” He made a cursory effort at brushing the soot and grime off his pants, then gave up with a shrug. “Toss a coin. Heads gets to chase down Frank and beat his sorry ass until he tells us where the hell the crates went, and tails gets to call Doris Fortenberry.”
But Rafe wasn’t answering him. He’d smoothed open the newspaper he’d been cleaning his shoe with and was reading something.
Mac turned his head, trying again to pop his ears, then paused. “Shit. I hear sirens. We gotta roll.” He looked at Rafe, who was still engrossed. “Come on, you can find out how the two-headed alien baby survived being raised by wolves later.”
Rafe continued to read, ignoring him. Finally Mac reached out and snatched the paper from him.
“Hey!” Rafe protested, trying to grab it back. “Wait, don’t—”
“They start putting nude photos in the Times now or what?” Mac joked, flipping the paper over.
“Mac, it’s not—” Rafe broke off when the smile on Mac’s face died a swift death. He sighed and shoved his shoe back on.
Mac wasn’t paying him any attention. Actually, he’d forgotten his partner was even there. Or, for that matter, that the two of them were standing on an old shipping pier in the Red Hook District of Brooklyn, having just narrowly escaped death.
He’d taken one look at her picture, and the words “Camp Winnimocca” in the caption beneath, and been instantly transported to another time, another place, where he’d also narrowly escaped death, albeit a far more protracted one. Otherwise known as his childhood.
“Hard to believe Big Lou finally kicked the bucket,” Rafe said, in a lame attempt to lighten the sudden shift in mood.
Mac absently thought that if Louisa Sutherland, the severely elegant owner of the elite retreat for children of the very wealthy, had ever heard them call her that, she’d probably come back from the grave just to kick their sorry asses. At the moment, he’d welcome the chance to kick back.
He skimmed the headline again: SUTHERLAND HEIRESS GIVES UP FORTUNE TO INHERIT FAMILY LAKE PROPERTY.
“This makes no sense,” he muttered, mostly to himself, as he reread the article. “Why would Kate do something so stupid for a place she hated?”
“We were teenagers the last time we saw either her or Shelby,” Rafe needlessly reminded him. “Who knows what’s gone on since then. I’m surprised we never heard about Louisa dying, though. She really climbed the social register over the years.”
Mac wasn’t. Unless it was case related, he didn’t read the society columns, much less follow the Town and Country set of Washington or New York. Hell, he’d been surprised when the Sutherlands’ secretary had tracked down Donny Mac’s long-lost son a decade ago to tell him his father had died. Mac had been on the force in those days and not impossible to find, even though he hadn’t spoken to his father since the day he’d left home.
He wouldn’t have thought they’d go to the trouble to locate the camp handyman’s next-of-kin. Though by the time they had, his father was already in the ground, courtesy of the state. Mac had handled the requisite legal and financial details, such as they were, over the phone, and paid someone else to handle whatever was left. He’d never gone back. He had no regrets. Then, or now.
Rafe and Finn figured into the only memories from his past that he’d bothered to keep alive. If not for those ten weeks spent with them every summer, Frank probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to try and blow him to smithereens today because he’d have long since been dead.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding gruff even to his own ears. Stupid to get emotional over something that had nothing to do with his life anymore, and hadn’t since the day he’d turned eighteen. Doubly stupid to let Kate Sutherland still have any effect on him at all.
“Hard to believe she would swap her entire inheritance with Shelby’s for a place she’d barely stepped foot in back then,” Rafe said, cleaning the rest of the muck off his shoe. “Hell, you’d think they’d be in a race to see who could sell it to the highest bidder and split the profits.”
“Says here Kate plans