LITMIR.BIZ

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where everyone knew your name, and on this Sunday afternoon there were only two men seated at the bar watching a muted television showing a football game.

      U2 played softly overhead as Nick led her to a booth where he slid into one side, and she slid into the other. Immediately a saucy red-haired young woman with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose appeared at the side of their booth.

      “Hey, Nick,” she said and then offered Lara a friendly smile. “What can I get for you two?”

      Within minutes they each had a frosty mug of beer in front of them. Tension still knotted in the pit of Lara’s stomach from the visit to the Coles. She wasn’t sure if having a beer with Nick was a good idea or not. But, she definitely wasn’t ready to go home to her apartment and be alone with her thoughts.

      “Tough interview,” he said and took a drink of his beer.

      “The worst,” she agreed. “Thanks for doing it. I hate having to talk to people who have lost their children.” She took a long draw of the beer. “One of the horrible things of working undercover in the Moretti organization was knowing that he was trafficking children and not being able to do a damn thing about it without blowing my cover.”

      “How did you manage to hook up with the organization in the first place?” His dark eyes gazed at her curiously.

      Lara leaned back in the booth and took another drink of the beer before replying. Memories of that time rose up to form a lump in the back of her throat. She coughed and swallowed hard against it.

      “The FBI did a great job creating an alias for me, complete with a background as a minor arms runner in Chicago. I spent a couple of weeks hanging out in a bar that I knew several members of the Moretti syndicate frequented, and it was there I connected with the organization and was taken in, running guns for them.”

      She paused to take another drink and then continued. “I’m sure I was thoroughly checked out before being brought onboard. The FBI created a life for me that included an arrest for illegal gun sales. According to the fake records, the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, but it was enough to get me into the organization. Then it was just a matter of time, and slowly gaining everyone’s trust. I ended up working for the most reprehensible people who were doing terrible things, and I also discovered some of them had dualities to their personalities.” She finished her beer in two deep swallows. Don’t think about Andrew. Not here, not now. Not ever.

      “Yeah, but it’s not like a trained, professional agent like you would be taken in by some stupid sob story from drug dealers and human traffickers.” Nick gestured the waitress for another round of beers.

      “I never lost sight of the ultimate goal, but I’ll admit that a few of the people got a little bit under my skin with their stories. Like there was one drug courier who got into the business because his son needed expensive cancer treatments, and he needed cash to pay the medical bills.”

      She stopped talking as the waitress delivered their drinks. When the woman had left their booth Lara took a sip of the fresh beer and then shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about all of this anymore. We’ve got enough to deal with in the here and now.”

      For a long moment she was mired in the events of the past couple of days. Little Tina’s murder, Dunst’s execution and Lara Bowman sprawled dead on a jogging trail...an upward spiral of anger filled her.

      “I’ll tell you what will really piss me off,” she finally said aloud. “If we find out that Lara Bowman was killed only because she shared the same spelling of her name as mine.”

      A grad student, working to stay healthy, a woman with a bright future ahead of her and a man who had loved her...her life snuffed out by a knife in the heart because she had the misfortune to be named Lara. A heavy weight sat in Lara’s stomach.

      Again she was plagued by doubts. Was she smart enough to handle what might be coming her way? Was she really competent to do the job?

      She sighed and fought against an encroaching darkness from the past that threatened to consume her.

      Nick was silent for several long minutes and then finally spoke. “Five years ago my partner was killed because I wanted a sandwich.” His deep voice held a hollowness that rang a like chord inside her.

      “Jimbo, that’s what everyone called him,” Nick continued. “He was a big man, with an even bigger heart. Everyone loved Jimbo. He was constantly dieting, and on that particular night the last place he wanted to stop was at a deli shop, but I insisted. It was stupid and selfish, but I told him just to wait in the car, and I’d run in and grab my sandwich. I’d just paid for my order when I heard the gunshot.”

      He stopped talking for a long moment and then finally continued, his eyes focused into his mug. “Some bastard had crept up on the car and shot him through the head. He never had a fighting chance. We didn’t catch the shooter. We believed it was probably somebody we’d arrested at some point or another. Jimbo was dead because I wanted a damned pastrami on rye.” He looked up at her with haunted eyes.

      She didn’t speak. There was nothing she could say. Lara knew all about guilt, and there was never anything anyone could say to make it go away. Something like that was a mark on your heart forever.

      If his story was even true. Maybe he’d just concocted it in an effort to create a bond with her. Maybe it was an attempt to manipulate her into sharing her own deepest, darkest secrets.

      “Loss is always tough,” she said.

      He eyed her with open speculation. “I guess you learned that when you were young, with your mother’s murder.”

      His words ripped off the scab that was over the old wound in her heart. Lara stared down into her own mug as memories of her mother played through her mind.

      “She was an amazing person. She was beautiful and loving, and nothing was the same when she was gone.” She picked up her mug and took a drink in an effort to dislodge the lump that had once again risen in the back of her throat.

      She rarely accessed memories of her mom because it hurt too much, and she had so many questions about the senseless crime. “What about your parents?” she asked in an effort to take her mind off her own pain.

      Nick’s features tightened. “I’m not close with my father, and my mother is in hospice battling cancer.”

      “Oh, I’m sorry.”

      He shrugged, his dark eyes unreadable. “It’s life, right. You don’t have to like it. You just have to deal with it.”

      The problem was that deep in her heart Lara wasn’t sure she was dealing appropriately with anything. Although she sensed she and Nick had more in common than she’d initially believed, she still was afraid to trust him.

      She took another drink of her beer and then scooted out of the booth. “I need to go.”

      “But it’s still early,” he protested.

      “I’ve got some things to do...personal things,” she replied. Just as she’d needed to escape the Cole house earlier, a driving desire to get away from Nick filled her.

      He got up, as well. “Then I’ll drive you home.”

      She waved him back down into the seat. “Don’t worry about it. Finish your beer and relax. I’ll just get a cab.”

      The minute she stepped out of the pub a new overwhelming desire struck her. It was just after four in the afternoon, and if she hurried she could manage to get there before darkness fell.

      Don’t do it, a little voice whispered inside her head. But she rarely listened to the voice that held good sense, and she knew better than to try to stanch what had suddenly become an obsessive need.

      All she had to do was get home, grab her blond wig and fake identification, and she would be on her way to a place she wasn’t supposed to go, to a place that called to her with a primal need she couldn’t ignore.

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