She let out a squeal, her chubby fingers curled around the collar of Nickels' navy blue SWAT t-shirt. A gold band glinted on the hand that anchored the baby to Nickels' side. She grinned, crinkling the corners of her whiskey-colored eyes. Michael tried not to look at her. Tried not to think about what she meant.
“Not here. I'll forget to tell her you stopped by.” Nickels moved to shut the door but Michael was faster. His hand shot out and gripped the doorframe. At the same time he jammed his foot in its path. Nickels expression went from annoyed to angry in the blink of an eye. “Honey,” he shouted over his shoulder before turning his carefully guarded expression back in Michael's direction.
Sabrina's friend, Valerie, appeared a moment later, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “What is it?” She looked through the open door, her expression turning from puzzled to something more difficult to define. “Michael.” She whispered his name a moment before she stepped through the doorway and wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder.
He went stiff, looking at Nickels in hopes of finding some help but there was none to be had. The cop watched the two of them, his expression softened slightly as he held on to the baby in his arms just a bit tighter.
It was suddenly clear but before he could comment, Val raised her face from his shoulder and looked at him. He envisioned her as she was the last time he’d seen her—small and naked, being dragged along a dirt path by a man who intended to kill them both.
“No scar?” she said, studying the side of his face where David Song had sliced him with a scalpel.
“No. I got lucky,” he lied. It’d taken a few surgeries for FSS’s plastic surgeon to repair the damage Song had done but the result was worth it. It was as if his confrontation with the man who’d stalked and murdered three women before turning his attention toward Val and Sabrina had never happened.
Almost.
“I’m glad. You’re way too pretty for a scar.” She smiled at him, taking a step back. “Sabrina called a while ago. She’s at the hospital, following up on a case she’s working.”
“Thanks,” he said, lifting his gaze to look at Nickels for just a moment. “And congratulations. Both of you.”
Val gave him another smile. “Thank you,” she said, pulling the baby from Nickels grasp and into her arms. “For everything.” She turned and said something to her husband before disappearing back into the house.
24
Cofre del Tesoro, Columbia
January ~ 2009
Michael looked at the young woman sitting beside him. Lydia had taken her shoes off as soon as she sat down, her brown toes digging into the pale sand, face turned up to the sun. Just beyond them, Christina played tag with the tide, running after it only to turn and scurry away from it the moment it turned, giggling all the while.
“You should smile more often.”
He turned to find Lydia watching him. “If I did, people would know the truth.”
“What?” Lydia said, grinning at him. “That you’re human?”
He laughed, shaking his head. The girl had gotten bold in the months that she’d been sneaking down to the beach to join them. Her initial fear had evaporated quickly, leaving an intensely curious nature. There was nothing she wouldn’t ask and he’d found that there was little he felt uncomfortable telling her. “Yeah, something like that.”
The laughter died between them, fading slowly until there was nothing by silence. “What is the truth, Michael? Why are you here?”
He looked away from her, watched Christina zig-zag back and forth across the sand, her peals of laughter tinkling like bells. “There’s nowhere else for me to go.” He hadn’t meant to say it but once the truth escaped him, more followed. “I can’t go home and what I was doing…”
“The killing.” She said it softly, her face tipped down to catch his line of sight.
He finally turned to her, looked her in the eye. “Yeah. The killing… it was killing me.” He nodded. “So instead, I let your husband pay me an obscene amount of money to play on the beach and read bedtime stories.”
“Do you miss it?” she said, genuinely curious.
“Miss what?”
“Home,” she whispered the word, transforming it into nothing more than a wistful sigh.
He thought of Frankie—the only home he had left. “Yes, I do. What about you, Lydia? Why are you here?”
She cut him a sidelong glance. “I live here.”
He laughed, in spite of himself. “Okay, smartass. Maybe what I mean is, how did you get here?”
She lifted her shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, her mouth quirking into a smile that did nothing to hide the tears that glittered in her eyes. “I don’t know… this isn’t where I’m supposed to be. I was very young when Alberto found me, working in my father’s coffee fields. He was charming. Said the right things… he was so polished, even as nothing more than his cousin’s gopher, you could see he wanted more. He paid my father three hundred dollars—before I knew what had happened, I was married and taken away.”
“Your parents sold you?”
Her lips pursed, her dark eyes clouding just a bit. “Columbia is not like America. Here, choice is a luxury… men like Alberto are the kind of men you say no to.”
He looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? None of this is your fault,” she said. She looked at her daughter, now building one of her sandcastles a few yards away, and suddenly her smile became genuine. “Besides, without Alberto, there would be no Christina. For that alone, I have no regrets.”
“Do you love him?”
She thought quietly for a moment, so long that he was starting to regret asking before she finally answered. “There was a time, in the beginning, when I hoped that I would learn to… but no, I don’t. I can’t,” she said, looking up at him. “What about you? Was there ever someone special?”
Now it was his turn to think. “Yes.”
Lydia drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. “Tell me about her?”
Michael looked out across the ocean, seeing, not the water, but the small East Texas town he grew up in. “She was a few years younger than me. I didn’t see her very often—usually when my parents dragged me to church or when I stopped into the diner where she worked. They had this video game—Millipede—I used to play it all day just so I could see her …” He grinned in spite of himself. “I don’t want to even think about the amount of money I wasted on that stupid game.”
She smiled at the memory he’d shared with her as if it were her own. “You must have liked her very much.”
His grin faded away, memories taking root. “I did… but she had a boyfriend and I was…” he struggled to find the right words for what he’d been back then. “not someone she took much notice of.”
Lydia frowned. “Did you love her?”
It was the same question he’d posed toward her only minutes before and it gave him pause, just as it did her. “I wanted to be good enough for her.”
She gave him a look that said she understood full well that he’d managed to avoid answering the question. “Were you? Good enough for her?”
He shook his head. “I tried but could never quite manage it.”
She gave him a sympathetic look. “Perhaps when you finally leave here, you can find her again.”
He looked away, casting his gaze across the ocean. “She was murdered a few years after I joined the army.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago,” he said, shutting the door between himself and a past he couldn’t change, even though just thinking about it, what Melissa must have gone through, twisted his insides. He looked up, his gaze scanning the cliff line high above the island’s private beach. In the distance, he could spotted lone figure standing at its edge. He couldn’t tell who it was but its sudden appearance tightened the skin along his nape. “It’s getting late, you should head back.”
She follow
ed his gaze and caught sight of the figure just as it turned and moved out of sight. “Do you think—”
“Don’t worry about it, just be careful, okay?” he said to her, forcing himself to ignore the niggle of apprehension that slid down his spine. It wasn’t Alberto—he’d been away for weeks now and showed no signs of returning. His private helicopter was still sitting on its pad waiting to be called for a pickup.
“Okay,” she said as she stood. “Thank you for letting me see her.” She thanked him, without fail, every single time they met on the beach; no matter how many times he told her that her gratitude was unnecessary.
“There’s nothing to thank me for. She’s your daughter, Lydia,” he said.
“You’re wrong, you know—you are more than good enough,” she said before turning away, refusing him the chance to answer.
He watched her kneel down next to Christina and speak softly, the little girl looking up at her and nodded. She flung her shovel down and threw her arms around her mother’s neck while Lydia pressed her lips to her cheeks and hair.
Finally, she stood, giving him a small wave before disappearing into the trees.
25
San Francisco, California
2015
The name, Dr. T. Patterson was embroidered on the lapel of his white lab coat but Sabrina would be willing to guess the real Dr. Patterson was dead in a janitor's closet somewhere. She couldn't pinpoint one exact reason she saw him for what he really was. Maybe it was the way his eyes slide around the room as if looking for potential threats. Maybe it was the way he stood; feet shoulder width apart, in a defensive stance that belied years of combat training. Maybe... but she was pretty sure it had everything to do with the fact that the slight bulge on his hip told her he was strapped under that stolen coat.
Standing at the foot of the boy's bed, he pretended to read the chart, nodding his dark head as if he knew what he was looking at. He flipped the page and flashed her a glimpse of the back of his hand. A tattoo—some sort of gang tag. That clinched it.
The muscle in his jaw jerked and he gave her a quick glance. He knew he was made.
Shit.
The guy dropped his shoulders and reached for his waist, the chart clattering to the floor.
Sabrina stood, lunging over the bed to grab onto the tray of food and flung it like a Frisbee. It flew the short distance, cracking him in the chin. He stumbled back, stunned. But it wouldn't last. Fisting her hand in the boy's hospital Johnny, she yanked, intent on pulling him out of bed and dragging him to safety before the bullets started flying.
The leather cuffs strapping him to the bed had other ideas.
Pulling her SIG off her hip, she took aim, while her free hand flew to a set of straps and started to work. The boy was no longer pretending to sleep. His eyes were yanked wide, the blank stare replaced by one of stark terror. Twisting his wrist inside the cuff, he struggled against it. Something buzzed the back of her head, burning a path in her scalp, seconds before she heard the ssk of the silenced round. No time.
Diving, she angled her body across the boy and returned fire. Blood burst across the white lab coat at his shoulder and side. Staggering back, the guy took aim again. “No estoy solo, puta.”
She fired again, this time hitting center mass. His body jerked—the gun clattering to the floor. He fell back into the wall, leaving a trail of blood as he slid downward.
Wasting no time, Sabrina turned to free the boy. He'd managed to work himself loose and was jerking on the second set of restraints. As soon as the cuff was loose she pulled him out of bed, shoving him into the space between the wall and the nightstand. “Stay,” she said, hoping her tone would keep him in place.
Footsteps and shouts echoed down the hall.
No estoy solo, puta. I'm not alone, bitch.
People were coming. Among them would be someone looking to finish what his partner started. She reached across the bed and used the control panel to kill the fluorescent overheads. The only light came through the window in the door. She looked down at the boy. He sat much like he had when she found him. Knees pulled up to his chest, face no longer terrified. He looked blank. Resigned to the violence he'd been plunged into.
Something warm and thick squirmed down her spine. She swiped at it with her free hand. Brought up fingers that were sticky and dark—darker even than the gloom that surrounded them.
Blood. She'd been shot
“It's gonna be okay,” she said, more to herself than him. There was a Pip in the waiting room. He'd heard the shots, would secure the floor. Whoever was out there wouldn't get past him but if he did...
She held her gun steady on the door and waited.
26
The elevator opened onto chaos. Nurses and doctors running in every direction. Patients shouting. Alarms going off. Instinct pushed Michael's hand to his hip, had him lifting the Kimber .45 out of its holster. He stepped into the hall, gun held tight against his thigh. Something was wrong, but until he knew what, waving a gun around wasn't a good idea.
A nurse was cowering under the charge desk a few feet away. "What's going on?" he said, flashing her the borrowed badge on his hip to speed things along.
“Gunshots. Four of them.”
Shit. Where was Sabrina? The boy—what was his name? “Alex. Alex Kotko. What room?”
The nurse pointed a shaky fingering. “Five-nineteen.”
Turning in the direction she’d indicated, he brought the gun up. “Call the police.” He walked swiftly, the barrel of his gun trained in front of him. The hallways had emptied, patients’ doors were closed—some were barricaded. He passed the waiting room. The flat screen on the wall showed the mid-day news to a deserted room.
Five-nineteen. He took a quick look through the small observation window in the door. The room was dark.
“Sabrina,” he said loudly. No response.
He pulled the door open, light fell across the bed. It was empty. “Sabrina.” He said it again as he stepped into the room. Finding the light switch, he flipped it on. She was standing on the other side of the bed, SIG aimed, steady-handed, at his face.
She held the gun on him a second longer than necessary before dropping it to her side. “What took you so long, O'Shea?” Her voice trembled just a bit. The sound of it, the fact that she sounded glad to see him, slammed his throat closed.
“Traffic,” he said, letting his gaze slide to the man on the floor. The blood-soaked scrubs and lab coat said he was a doctor. The 9mm outfitted with a silencer on the floor next to him said he was something else entirely. Blank eyes, lids at half-mast, aimed at the door as if he'd died while waiting for someone.
Michael nudged him roughly with the toe of his shoe before looking up at Sabrina. She was still watching the door. Before he could ask, she said, “He told me he’s not alone. There's another one out there—”
“There's no one. I did a sweep.”
Jamming her gun into the holster strapped to her hip, she turned and reached down to haul up the boy. “Then he's on his way.” Blood matted the back of her hair.
Without thinking, he grabbed her, started running his hands over her arms and back. She tried to push him away but he ignored her, kept probing. Lifting her hair off her neck, he revealed a thick trail of blood, originating from her scalp. The deep furrow at the base of her skull wept red—the edges of it singed black by the heat of the bullet. He stalled out, felt his lungs go tight in his chest. Another half an inch would've killed her.
She pushed his hand away with a hiss. “I'm okay.” She looked at the boy. “You have to take him. Get him out of here before more of them show up.”
He almost laughed. “I'm not leaving you here.”
“I can handle it, you have to go—we only have a couple of minutes. The Pip Ben
left—”
“What? There's no one here.” Alarm bells started clanging around in his head.
“Yeah, there is. Crew cut, dark suit, big as a house. I know a Pip when I see one.” She
angled her head to look out the window. “He was in the waiting room. I saw him when I got here.”
The fact that she'd just described one of Shaw's rent-a-thugs to a tee disturbed him on about a hundred different levels. “Sabrina, there's no one here,” he said. Something was wrong. Very wrong, but he didn't have time to sort through what she was telling him—not right now.
Crouching, he turned toward the boy and spoke to him in Russian and the boy nodded. Michael reached for him and pulled him forward, led him over to the man slumped against the wall. He spoke again. Ben was right—his Russian was a bit rusty but he got his point across just fine. The boy studied the dead man for a few seconds before he nodded, his answer carried on quavering tones.
“What are you saying?” Sabrina said.
“I'm asking him if he recognizes him.”
“And?”
Dropping a hand on the boy's shoulder, he spoke to him quietly. The boy looked up at him and nodded again, his face a pale mask, tight with fear. “He says this piece of shit is one of the men who sold him.” He looked at her before continuing. “The only problem is that our dead friend here doesn't work for Reyes.”
He expected her to ask him who Reyes was. She didn’t. Further proof of just how deep she’d waded into this whole mess. “Then who does he work for?” she said, her eyes bouncing from the body on the floor between them to find him.
It was commonplace for those within cartels and other criminal organizations to brand themselves. Tattoos were used to tell others who you were. Who you worked for, the rank you held. How many people you’d killed.
Michael studied the tattoo that covered the back of the man's hand. A Fleur de Lis. He'd killed plenty of men with that same tattoo—recently. Those alarm bells in his head got a little louder. “A man I killed thirty-six hours ago.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 9
