Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel(58)

He looked at me, and I could see the checked anger in the set of his mouth. “Do you know what this means?”

“Probably,” I said. “We think it relates to the polonium.”

“I’m listening.”

“When I was with Special Forces,” Ranger told Morelli, “I had an encounter with an SVR agent named Vlatko. He’s an assassin and an interrogator, and he’s in this country on some sort of mission. He used Rangeman for a practice run. I’ve tracked him to the Russian consulate in New York, and have some leads, but he’s still in the wind.”

“What has this got to do with me?” Morelli asked. “Why do I have a heart on my kitchen counter?”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Ranger said. “It was left for Stephanie. He’s targeting her because she’s worked for me. Eventually he’ll come after me. In the meantime, he’s playing with the people around me.”

“Do the feds know about the Vlatko connection?”

“Not from me,” Ranger said. “But they followed all the same initial leads that I followed. Since they don’t share their information with me, I have no idea where they’re at in the investigation.”

“If it’s a human heart, it has a body somewhere,” Morelli said. “At the very least, it needs to be tested and registered as a crime.”

We all looked over at the kitchen counter. No heart. Just a watery smear of blood and a trail of drops on the floor leading into the dining room. We followed the drops through the dining room and into the living room, where Bob was gnawing on the last remnant of the heart.

“Bad Bob,” Morelli said, shaking his finger at Bob. “That’s not Bob food.”

Bob obviously had a different opinion, because he snatched the mangled piece of meat and ran upstairs.

Morelli ran after him, there was a lot of yelling and growling, and Morelli came down empty-handed.

“He ate it,” Morelli said.

I was horrified to the point of gagging. Ranger stared down at his shoe, making a monumental effort not to laugh. And Morelli stood hands on hips, staring at the bloody splotch on his rug. The splotch sort of blended in with the rug pattern and various other food and beverage stains.

We were all carrying guns, and no one wanted to say the wrong thing and start World War III, so no one said anything.

“This never happened,” Morelli finally said.

“I didn’t see anything,” Ranger said.

I agreed. “Me either.”

Morelli turned to Ranger. “If anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible.”

“Understood,” Ranger said.

“Excuse me?” I said. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. And I’m responsible for my well-being. Is that clear?”

“No,” both men said in unison.

“I have to get back to Anthony before he wrenches his own thumb off,” Morelli said. “He’s no Mr. Fix-It.”

Bob slunk down the stairs and stared up at Morelli with soulful eyes. He was sorry he’d eaten the evidence.

“That was bad,” Morelli said to Bob. “You know you’re not supposed to eat off the counter.”

A shoestring of drool hung from the side of Bob’s mouth, his eyes got glassy, he planted his four feet, and GAK … he barfed up the heart.

“Maybe you can still test it for DNA or something,” I said to Morelli.

Ranger grinned. “You’re going to need a snow shovel to get that up.”



Morelli and I were snuggled together on the couch, watching television, when Lula called.

“We just got out of the movie,” she said. “He’s getting one last tub of popcorn for the ride home, and then we’re going to start to waddle out to his car.”

“He has a car?”

“It’s his dad’s. I wouldn’t put him in my Firebird on account of he’d ruin my suspension system. Anyway, I thought I’ll get him to take me home, and I’ll get him out of the car with the promise of sex. And if that don’t work, I’ll tell him I got pot roast and gravy upstairs. Soon as I get him out of the car, you can jump out from the bushes in my front yard and snap the cuffs on him.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, and disconnected.

“What’s a plan?” Morelli asked.

“Stanley Kulicky is FTA, and Lula just had a date with him. She’s going to hold him over at her house until I can get there.”

“Have you seen him lately? He must weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Yep, he’s a big boy.”

“Bring the extra large flexi-cuffs.”

“Check.”

Lula lives in a low-to-no-income neighborhood that has a lot less crime than Stark Street. There’s some gang and drug activity and a bunch of fourteen-year-old pregnant girls, but Lula is happy with the rent, and the commute to the office is manageable. She lives on the second floor of a small lavender house with elaborate trim that was just recently painted pink. For the most part the house is graffiti free.

I parked the Buick one house down and waited with the engine running, the windows up, and Morelli’s Glock on my lap. The neighborhood didn’t worry me, but Vlatko had my intestines in knots. I’d picked up two Rangeman tails when I left Morelli’s house. One was now parked directly behind me, and another drove past me, made a U-turn, and parked across the street.