Operation: Midnight Rendezvous

by Linda Castillo

  His kiss was raw and primal.

  Inside Jess, fear and desire clashed, like steel dragged across rock at a high rate of speed, shooting sparks high into the air.

  It was crazy, considering what they were about to do, but she kissed Madrid back. Turning her back to the danger that lurked outside, she allowed herself to revel in the feel of his mouth against hers, his hands on her body. “What was that for?” she asked when he pulled back.

  “Luck.”

  “If that was for luck,” she said breathlessly, “I’m afraid to imagine what’ll happen when we finish this.”

  Taking her hand, Madrid stepped out into the darkness of midnight, ready to face the devil in his den. She followed, her mind numb to the danger. Instead, her mind was reeling, her body vibrating with the aftershocks of his kiss. It was silly to think about an inconsequential kiss when they were about to risk their lives. But there was nothing inconsequential about the way Madrid had kissed her.

  There would be consequences…

  LINDA CASTILLO

  OPERATION: MIDNIGHT RENDEZVOUS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Linda Castillo knew at a very young age that she wanted to be a writer—and penned her first novel at the age of thirteen. She is the winner of numerous writing awards, including the Holt Medallion, the Golden Heart and the Daphne du Maurier and she received a nomination for the prestigious RITA® Award.

  Linda loves writing edgy romantic suspense novels that push the envelope and take her readers on a rollercoaster ride of breathtaking romance and thrilling suspense. She resides in Texas with her husband, four lovable dogs and an Appaloosa named George. For a complete list of her books, check out her Web site at www.lindacastillo.com. Contact her at books@lindacastillo.com. Or write to her at P.O. Box 670501, Dallas, Texas 75367-0501.

  Books by Linda Castillo

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  871—OPERATION: MIDNIGHT TANGO

  890—OPERATION: MIDNIGHT ESCAPE

  920—OPERATION: MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN

  940—OPERATION: MIDNIGHT RENDEZVOUS

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Jessica Atwood—Accused of a murder she didn’t commit, she fled the police with her best friend’s little boy in tow. But the police weren’t the only ones looking for her—or the child. Can she find out who framed her and clear her name before the real killers finish the job they began?

  Mike Madrid—The MIDNIGHT agent was Angela’s former partner—and lover. Determined to find her killer, he lays down his badge and vows to find the killer and bring them to justice. But he soon finds himself falling for his number one suspect.

  Angela Matheson—The MIDNIGHT agent and young mother was murdered while working deep undercover as a dirty cop in the small, coastal town of Lighthouse Point, California. Did she get too close to discovering the idyllic town’s dark secret?

  Nicholas Matheson—A special-needs child witnessed his mother’s murder. Unable to speak, he must now rely on his mom’s best friend to keep him safe from the bad man.

  Sean Cutter—Head of the MIDNIGHT Agency, he deemed Mike Madrid too emotionally involved to work the case. But when Madrid turns in his badge and goes rogue, Cutter has no recourse but to let him go.

  Norm Mummert—The chief of police of Lighthouse Point, California, he is a by-the-book cop determined to find the person responsible for the death of one of his officers. Or is he?

  Jake Vanderpol—The MIDNIGHT agent and personal friend Mike Madrid called upon as a last resort. Will Jake risk his career and reputation to help his fellow agent?

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Jessica Atwood ran blindly through the darkness. Around her, rain poured down in icy sheets. Trees and brush slashed at her face and clothes; mud sucked at her shoes like quicksand. She plowed through the branches and fought her way through the heavy brush, her labored breaths rushing between clenched teeth. Her lungs burned as if they were on fire, but she didn’t stop.

  She would die before she let them hurt the boy.

  Gripping his hand tighter, she ran. Behind her she could hear them shouting. Razor blades of light cut through the night as the powerful beams of their flashlights sought her. In the distance she could hear the dogs baying. Gaining ground. Death knocking on her door.

  “Come on, baby,” she panted. “Run for me. Run!”

  When Nicolas didn’t respond, she squeezed his hand. Vaguely she was aware of him crying. She wanted to hold him, tell him everything was going to be all right. But there wasn’t time. They were running for their lives.

  Terror was like a wild beast turned loose inside her. She knew their pursuers would kill them both if they caught them. She couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let them kill an innocent child. Somehow she had to save them.

  Or die trying.

  The first gunshot exploded like a bomb. A scream tore from her throat when a branch fractured less than a foot from her head. Shoving Nicolas ahead to keep him out of the line of fire, she darted left and took him down a ravine at a reckless speed.

  “Run!” she panted. “Please, baby. Faster!”

  They hit the foot of the gully in an all-out sprint. She glanced back to see one of their pursuers at the top of the ravine, silhouetted against the night sky. Terror ratcheted into something wild and unwieldy when she saw him raise his rifle for a shot.

  Oh, dear God, no! she thought, and picked up speed. An instant later something struck her left arm with what seemed to be the force of a missile traveling at the speed of light. The impact spun her around, and the violent shock of pain sent her to her knees. A second later the report shattered the night.

  “Mah-mah. Mah-mah!”

  She glanced at Nicolas, at the tears and mud that streaked his face. He needed her. She had to be strong. She had to get them through this. Angela would have wanted that for her son.

  “I’m okay, honey,” she said.

  “Mah-mah.” He reached for her, his face crumpling. “Mah-mah!”

  “It’s going to be all right.” Cradling her injured arm, she staggered to her feet. Pain clutched her like a giant, bony hand, and dizziness descended, but she shook it off and grabbed Nicolas’s hand.

  “Come on,” she whispered.

  Animal sounds tore from her throat as she stumbled over rocks and tree roots and loose dirt. She lost her footing twice, but somehow managed to stay upright. At a dangerous speed they descended into a second ravine. Midway down, Jess’s foot caught on something and she fell, screaming when Nicolas’s hand was torn from hers. She went into a wild tumble, rocks and tree roots battering her body, but all she could think about was Nicolas, alone and in danger.

  The earth disappeared beneath her then, catapulting her into a free fall. Jess knew that when she landed the impact would surely kill her. Instead, her body slammed into water. The sudden sharp cold shocked her system and she went under. As the strong current pulled her downstream, debris hit her and the churning water tumbled her. Stifling a scream, she sucked in a mouthful of water and began to choke. Panic gripped her. Fighting it, she kicked her legs hard and fast a
nd an instant later her face broke the surface.

  “Nicolas!” she screamed.

  She struggled against the powerful current, but the force of the water swept her along the jagged bank dotted with rocks and tree roots. She tried to look around, but all she saw was darkness and rain and black, swirling water.

  “Nicolas!”

  But when she reached for his hand all she felt was the cold grip of the river. All she heard was the whisper of death in her ear.

  Chapter One

  Mike Madrid knew something big was going down the instant the call came in on his secure line at four o’clock in the morning. The call itself wasn’t unusual, considering he worked for a top secret agency. He knew it was bad when Sean Cutter refused to give him details over the phone.

  “I want you at MIDNIGHT headquarters by oh five hundred,” Cutter said.

  Madrid made the drive from his apartment in an upscale Washington, D.C., neighborhood to the top secret MIDNIGHT Agency headquarters in record time. He’d expected Cutter to have already assembled the team for whatever assignment had warranted the call out, but he found only one man in the room. When Sean Cutter looked up from where he sat, Madrid suddenly knew this wasn’t about an assignment or a mission. It was personal.

  “What happened?” he asked without preamble.

  “Sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit down.” Madrid’s heart began to pound. “I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  Cutter leaned back in his chair. Within the depths of his eyes Madrid saw knowledge. He saw regret. Caution. Worst of all he saw a damnable amount of sympathy. “We lost an agent last night.”

  “Who?” But even before Cutter answered, he knew.

  “Angela Matheson.”

  The name struck him like a brass-knuckle punch. Disbelief and grief tangled inside him, but Madrid didn’t let himself react. A master at schooling his expression and body language, he stood perfectly still, his face carefully blank, his eyes level on his superior.

  “You sure?” he asked after a moment, surprised his voice sounded so normal when he was coming apart inside.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “She was on assignment in Northern California. Deep undercover work.”

  “Are you being vague on purpose?”

  “You know how it works.”

  A deep-cover operative himself, Madrid knew all too well that the fewer people who knew about an operation, the better the chance that the agent’s cover would remain intact. He shouldn’t take Cutter’s silence personally, but he did.

  “Did someone make her?” he asked. “Blow her cover? What?”

  “We don’t know the details.”

  “I’m not in the mood to be stonewalled.”

  “Then stop asking questions I can’t answer.” Cutter sighed tiredly, and Madrid realized the other man had been up all night. “Look, I didn’t want you to hear about this secondhand. That’s why I called you in.”

  Madrid didn’t want this to be about emotions. It was about the loss of an agent. But he could feel the emotions burgeoning inside him. “You put someone on it?”

  “I did.”

  “Who?”

  Cutter frowned.

  Madrid smiled, but the stretching of his lips belied the emotions slashing his insides to bits. “You know better than to try to lock me out of this.”

  “I know better than to assign an agent something when he’s too personally involved.”

  “I’m not some damn rookie, Sean. I can handle it.”

  “No dice, Mike.”

  Fury joined the chorus of emotions singing through him. “What about the boy?” Nicolas, he remembered. A sweet kid with special needs.

  “Missing.”

  The word hit him like a punch. Angela had loved that kid more than anything in the world. He wiped his wet palms on his slacks. “Why would someone take her kid? Was it a kidnapping? What?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  Liar. “Do you have a suspect?”

  Cutter’s jaw flexed. The silence that followed spoke more than a thousand words.

  “Witnesses? Anything at all to go on?”

  “We think the boy witnessed her murder.”

  The knot in Madrid’s chest tightened. Poor kid. “Aw, man.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cutter said after a moment.

  The last thing Madrid wanted was sympathy. “If you want to make me feel better, give me this assignment.”

  Cutter grimaced, softened. “Mike, I know you and Angela were…close.”

  “It was a long time ago. She was a friend. That’s all.”

  Judging from the look on his face, the other man wasn’t buying it.

  Madrid didn’t waste his time asking any more questions. Cutter wasn’t going to tell him what he needed to know, and time was of the essence if he was going to bring that boy home. There were multitudes of ways to glean information, a task Madrid had always been very good at.

  Reaching into his jacket, he removed his MIDNIGHT identification badge from his wallet. Next he tugged the Beretta .380 from his shoulder holster and set both on the conference-room table.

  Cutter shook his head. “Don’t do this, Mike.”

  “Then give me this case. Tell me what I need to know.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Damn it, this isn’t about revenge.”

  Another smile twisted Madrid’s mouth. “It’s always about revenge,” he said, and walked out the door without looking back.

  MIKE MADRID WAS LIKE a bloodhound when it came to tracking killers. Once he had the scent, there was no stopping him. After speaking with Cutter, he went back to his place and began calling in favors. He put his not-so-aboveboard computer skills to work and hacked a secure database the feds had deemed unhackable. Within hours he had a name.

  Jessica Atwood.

  Twenty-eight years old. Waitress. Recent messy divorce. From Phoenix. No children. No immediate family. She and Angela had gone to college together some ten years ago. Atwood didn’t have a record, but Madrid knew that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of murder. Under the right circumstances everyone was capable of murder. The burning question now was what did she want with the kid?

  He caught a flight from D.C. to Sacramento and drove straight to the small town of Lighthouse Point on the coast. Located on Luna Bay, the town was a shipping port and as picturesque as a turn-of-the-century seascape.

  Surprisingly, no other MIDNIGHT agent’s were in sight. Some could be there, undercover, he knew but in his mind, the MIDNIGHT Agency should have been all over this. After all, one of their own had been taken out by a killer.

  “I can’t believe Angela is gone,” chief of police Norm Mummert said with a shake of his head.

  The chief’s office had been his first stop. Madrid had identified himself as an investigator with the U.S. attorney’s office out of San Francisco. Thanks to his vast stock of fake IDs, he had the credentials to back it up. But no one had questioned him.

  “Angela was a police officer?” he asked.

  “One of my best.”

  “Tell me about Atwood,” Madrid said.

  “She seemed nice enough. Pretty and young. She was staying with Angela. From what I understand they went to college together.”

  “They were friends?”

  Mummert nodded. “I made some calls and found out Atwood had some trouble back home.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Divorce. Things got ugly. She took some money and ran. She needed a place to stay. Angela opened her door.” He shook his head so hard his jowls shook. “I never had Atwood pegged as a killer.”

  “Do you have evidence that she is?”

  The chief looked at him as if he were dense. “She attacked my officer with a knife and made off with the boy. Her prints were all over the place, including the murder weapon.”

  “Motive?”

  “Hard to tell. We suspect she was after the child. It
’s the only scenario that could even begin to explain this terrible tragedy.”

  Mummert was a rotund man with sagging eyes and a drooping lower lip. Even though Angela had been murdered less than twenty-four hours ago, he looked as if he’d been up for a week. “Angela was like a daughter to me. She was a good police officer and a friend.”

  “Any idea where Atwood is headed?” Madrid asked.

  The chief sighed. “I’ve got every available officer working on this. The state police have put out an APB. I swear it’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Maybe she had an accomplice who picked her up.”

  “We were pretty quick setting up roadblocks. I don’t think that’s the case.”

  Having gleaned all the information he was going to get here, Madrid rose and extended his hand. “Thanks for your time. I’ll be in touch.”

  On the sidewalk in front of the police station, Madrid looked around the small town of Lighthouse Point and wondered what Angela had been doing here. She’d been posing as a police officer. He wondered if her assignment had gotten her killed. The old emotions taunted him with unexpected force—emotions he would be a fool to acknowledge when he had a killer to find.

  He got into the rental car and started the engine. He’d already been to the crime scene, seen the bloodstains and the trashed house. Though he’d processed dozens of crime scenes over the years, this one had shaken him badly.

  Putting his hands on the steering wheel, he looked around the small town. “Where did you run?” he whispered.

  He knew where Atwood had last been seen. The area had been thoroughly searched by cops on foot and in a helicopter equipped with infrared. Scent dogs had been deployed. The police were baffled that she’d escaped.

  But Madrid had a distinct advantage over other law enforcement officials. An advantage not even his fellow MIDNIGHT agents possessed. He’d known Angela Matheson on a personal level. He knew her hopes. Her dreams.