Mistaken for the Mob. Ginny Aiken
She even sang along with Rebecca St. James’s latest on the radio. She parked, locked the car, ran through the ongoing rain to the food-court entrance and made a beeline for the cell phone and safety.
The young man had the papers ready for her. All Maryanne had to do was sign her name and give him a check. After a handful of directions, she felt confident enough to head home with the gadget and its instruction manual. On her way back to the car, she detoured by the frozen yogurt counter. She didn’t often indulge, but today she ordered a swirl cone. She didn’t want to choose between chocolate and vanilla.
Because of the rain, she opted to finish her treat at one of the food court’s small tables. Then, on her way to the great outdoors and the deluge, she tossed away her napkin and saw the man watching her from the sandwich shop line. She came to a halt.
J.Z. Prophet wasn’t besting her again.
Maryanne marched up to him. “I told you I’d call the cops the next time I saw you.” She pulled out her phone. “Watch me.”
He covered the gadget and her hand with his much larger one, his clasp gentler than she would have imagined. “It won’t do you any good. I know what you are—”
“What are you doing, J.Z.?” asked the other Uni-Comp clown, a bag redolent of corned beef in his hand. “You’re worse than a kid. You can’t leave well enough alone, can you? Do you want Eliza to charge out here and tear a strip off your hide—”
He stopped just when things were about to get interesting, when Maryanne might have learned something about the probably psychotic J.Z. But the two men glared at each other, and if it weren’t for the minor matter of her captured hand, she would have taken her leave. Instead, she looked from one to the other, only too aware of J.Z.’s warm clasp.
“Ahem,” she said.
The men turned.
“Would one of you please tell me which episode of the Twilight Zone you’re rerunning here?”
“Let her go,” J.Z.’s partner said.
J.Z. captured her gaze just as firmly as he held her hand.
“Who are you guys?” Maryanne’s fear fired up again. “What do you want with me? And don’t even mention computers. I know you’ve been following me.”
“Come on, J.Z. Let’s go.”
Maryanne smiled her gratitude at the blond man who didn’t work for Uni-Comp—she wasn’t dumb.
“Yes, J.Z. Let me go. I’ll go my way and you can go yours, and never the twain shall meet. Okay?”
“Let her go,” her pal—Don? Dan? Yeah, Dan Something—repeated.
J.Z. acceded, but a strange look she couldn’t read, not the anger she’d seen, maybe frustration, filled his eyes. “Watch yourself,” he said. “One mistake, and I’ll make my move.”
“Who are you?” she asked yet again.
“Tell her, J.Z. You’ve blown this out of the water, so you may as well tell her now.”
Maryanne’s eyes ping-ponged from one man to the other.
Dan muttered something else, this time nothing Maryanne could make out. He thrust his sandwich bag at J.Z. and rummaged in his back pocket. But instead of the wallet she’d expected, he extended a small leather card case toward her.
“What…?”
“Open it,” he said gently.
She did. Four words jumped out at her: Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Her head spun. Ice replaced her blood. The world tipped under her feet. “Why?”
“You’re under investigation,” J.Z. said in clipped tones. “You’re good, but I’m better. I’m going to get you and your mob pals, so say goodbye to freedom, your frozen yogurt and your little phone.”
Everything went black.
FOUR
“Are you satisfied now?” Dan glared up at J.Z.
J.Z. frowned down at the woman sprawled flat on the mall’s food-court floor. “Come on, lady. We aren’t playing games here—”
“Take her pulse, will ya?”
Dan’s expression gave him no alternative, so J.Z. went down on one knee, took the librarian’s wrist in his hand, and pressed to check for her heartbeat. To his surprise, it was weak and unsteady—just what one expected in a person who’d fainted.
He shook his head. “I told you she was good. I’ve never known someone who could faint on demand. I guess there’s always a first time for everything.”
Dan’s look of disgust hit him like a slap.
“Your compassion underwhelms me,” his partner said. “If you won’t help her, then at least give me a hand and keep this mob from crushing us.”
Only then did J.Z. notice the crowd that had gathered around them. Two sandwich-shop employees flapped their aprons in an obvious attempt to circulate air around Maryanne. A quartet of mall-walkers, senior citizens who exercised in the shelter of the covered mall, whispered among themselves, curiosity and pity in their lined faces. A maintenance guy stood to their right, both hands clasped around the mop’s wooden handle, the bucket-on-wheels contraption where it sat in danger of rolling and leaving him without support.
Heat rushed up J.Z.’s cheeks. “Okay, folks. We have it under control. Please move on so that we can take care of her.”
The onlookers dispersed, their backward glances full of reluctance, his sudden relief at their departure surprisingly strong. Did Dan have a point? Was he overreacting to everything about this woman?
“Think those weird guys there are some of them white slavers in the news?” asked a white-haired lady in lime-green sweats, her voice scissors-sharp as she resumed her laps around the shopping center.
J.Z. groaned. “That’s all we need.”
“What? For someone to report you for manhandling a helpless female? That’s probably what it looked like you were doing.”
“Look. I’m not going to drop the pressure on her. Sooner or later she’ll crack—”
“Either that, or she’ll crack up from your intimidation. Chill, man. You don’t even know she’s involved.”
He snorted. “Did you bother to read the profile we got last month? I’m telling you, the description fits her perfectly.”
“It also fits about fifty percent of the female population. That doesn’t mean they’re all mobsters, does it?”
“Don’t give me that. That fifty percent doesn’t have her kind of access to an old folks’ home where a bunch of seniors died after one of that fifty percent ordered their termination. And don’t forget the Laundromat’s demise.”
Maryanne’s eyelids gave a twitch. Good. She was coming to. But before he could say anything, Dan spoke.
“I’ll admit those e-mails look pretty bad, but any hacker can get into her account to cast suspicion on her.”
“Fine. Let’s assume that’s what happened.” J.Z. ran a hand through his hair. “Where’s the hacker who fits the profile? Who else has access? Who else is the typical ‘neighbor-next-door’ type who won’t raise suspicion? Who else does the dowdy, harmless librarian routine as well as Maryanne Wellborn?”
Dan’s ministrations were having results on Maryanne. Color seeped into her cheeks. With a split-second glance at J.Z., he asked, “Have you bothered to stake out the place?”
“Why would I need to?” J.Z. let his breath out in a gust. “We have the e-mails, the wealthy, dead seniors, the very dead—this time—Laundromat,