The Perfect Ten Boxed Set

by Dianna Love

  There was a long pause and then Dyer ended the conversation. Girlfriend’s here for some afternoon delight. Gotta run. Or roll as the case may be.

  Celina rolled her eyes. Dyer always called his wife, Eliza, his girlfriend. To keep things fresh, he always said. After ten years of marriage, it must have worked. The two still acted like newlyweds. Does Eliza know about her?

  Shhh. Don’t tell. Celina could see Dyer’s thick eyebrows doing his Groucho Marx impression. Stay safe.

  She drummed her fingers on the table. Her suitcase sat on the bed, packed and ready to go, and she considered for the fortieth time that day whether to fly to California. There was no logical reason to do it. She didn’t have a position there and her apartment was sublet for the rest of the winter. She was stuck here in Des Moines whether she liked it or not.

  All was quiet. Dawn McBroom was on duty outside her door and Mike Sugars was downstairs in the foyer. Thomas Hawkins had been across the street all day. Cooper hadn’t stayed but he’d left his teammate to guard her. She didn’t know whether to feel irritated or relieved.

  No phone calls from Emilio. None from Dupé or Cooper. For several hours, she’d paced the floor, mad that she was so out of the loop. She’d tried calling Dupé. Her call was intercepted by the notorious Lana, who knew nothing about the fingerprint match nor did she seem to care about Celina’s situation.

  Standing to stretch, Celina walked to the picture window, staring out at the low-hanging gray clouds. It was early evening, but streetlights buzzed to life and shadows hung over the street below. “This sucks.”

  Ronni flipped off the TV, wandered over to the piles of photographs on the table. “I could drive you to HQ and let Forester baby-sit you.”

  Celina gave her a don’t even think about it face.

  “Why don’t you show me your pictures?”

  For the next hour, the two friends sat on Celina’s couch and went through her collection of photographs. Cityscapes were mingled with portraits. A group photograph of the SCVC taskforce, glasses raised in a happy salute, fell out of a handful into Ronni’s lap.

  She clucked her tongue. “That Thomas kid is a cutie. He do that Wheaties thing too?”

  Celina stared at the picture, seeing only Cooper, his glass raised but no smile lit his face like the rest of the group. “I took this the day after I arrested Londano. Dyer’s missing.”

  “The guy you were messaging? Who is he?”

  Celina told her the story about Cooper, Dyer, and Valquis. At the end, a sadness hung over her like the gray clouds outside. As soon as the Londano thing was cleared up, she would go see Dyer. She’d bring him a bottle of his favorite whiskey and sit with him. Talk and drink a shot. Laugh a little. Take his picture.

  Ronni yawned and started gathering up the photos. “I think I’ll make some popcorn and see if Mike wants any company.”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Celina said. “After I get out, I’ll make up a bed on the sofa for you.”

  Ronni nodded, yawned again. “Deal.”

  Celina dug out clean clothes from her closet and headed for the bathroom.

  Setting the water as hot as she could stand, she washed herself several times with her favorite body gel. She scrubbed until her skin was rosy and her fingers were wrinkled. She washed her hair for good measure and then stood in the stream of water and tried to unwind. Her brain was as tired as her body and the thoughts and images had finally started to slow down a bit after bombarding her all day. She needed sleep, which meant turning them off. All of them. Even the sexy Cooper ones.

  Hell with that. He might have left her high and dry, but there was no turning off those. She wanted to remember the way he looked at her over dinner the night before. The way he’d held her while they slept. Her anger at him had faded throughout the day and been replaced with the sadness she felt every time she thought about the chain of events that had led her to this moment. There were so many things she wished had turned out differently. Dyer. Emilio. Cooper.

  Dragging herself out of the shower, she dried off and smeared her skin with creamy lotion. The TV was back on in the living room and Celina could smell Ronni’s microwave popcorn. Suddenly her stomach growled. Wrapping her hair in a towel, she pulled on clean sweatpants and a T-shirt. Then decided to blow dry her hair. If she didn’t, it would be a funky disaster come morning. She had enough to face without bedhead added to the list.

  After five minutes, her hair was still more wet than dry and her stomach was starting to hurt it was so empty. She gave her head one more all-over blast, straightened, and pushed the hair dryer switch to off.

  She was running a pick through her hair when, BAM, something heavy thudded against the bathroom door. Startled, she dropped the pick in the basin. A rush of nerves tightened her stomach muscles.

  “Ronni?” Instinct made her grab her gun. “That you?”

  At first, all she could make out was the muffled sound of applause on the television set. Staring at the door handle, Celina pointed her gun at it. “Ronni!”

  What sounded like the brush of an open palm on the wood filtered through. A hint of shadow danced along the crack at the bottom. She called Ronni’s name again and then yelled for Mike. Nothing.

  Taking the safety off her gun, the trained FBI agent in her took over and squashed down the fear pulsing through her body. At Quantico, she’d favored obstacle courses over hand-to-hand combat, but at that moment, the cold, sleek metal in her hand felt as right as it ever had.

  Slipping the lock off the door, she moved to the side and turned the handle. Slowly, inch by inch, she let the door creak open a crack…then another inch…

  Ronni’s hand fell through the opening and Celina gasped. “Ronni.”

  She threw the door open. For a second, Ronni stood suspended, the door no longer propping her up. Her eyes were wide, mouth opened slightly. She looked at Celina with her surprised face as Celina automatically scanned her body, looking for blood, a wound, anything that would tell her what was going on. “Ronni, what’s the matter?”

  Her lips moved slightly. “Help me,” she whispered. The words bubbled out of her mouth on a faltering breath.

  And then she fell into Celina’s arms. Her weight caused Celina to lose her balance, tumbling backwards and sitting down hard on her butt with Ronni in her lap. Celina’s back hit the side of the tub.

  A knife handle stuck out between Ronni’s shoulder blades.

  Celina’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream. She scanned the room behind Ronni’s splayed feet, the gun following her line of sight. Popcorn lay in a trail from the bag where Ronni’d dropped it next to the bathroom door, through the living room, and out of Celina’s view.

  The front door wasn’t visible. A good chunk of the apartment was hidden as well. But she knew without looking what had happened to McBroom, Sugars and Cooper’s partner, Thomas. What should have happened to her.

  Frozen for a minute, her gaze slowly returned to the hilt of the knife. Carved from the antler of an elk, it was inlaid with ebony and silver. A collector’s bowie knife whose blade was now jammed up to the hilt in her friend’s back.

  Celina checked for a pulse. Her fingers trembled so hard, she could barely find the slow, faint throb under them. Hugging Ronni to her, Celina rocked her for a second. Then she gently laid her on her stomach and rushed for her cell phone. Gun still sweeping the area, she dialed 911. Her voice sounded flat and calm as she reeled off the information to the operator, and stalked toward the door.

  In the hallway, McBroom was out cold, but breathing. No blood or wound she could see. She rushed back to Ronni, ending the call with the 911 operator so she could hold her partner until the ambulance arrived.

  “Celina?”

  The man’s voice startled her and Celina jerked up her Beretta and aimed it at his face before recognition dawned. It wasn’t Emilio. It was a man who should be dead…Thomas Hawkins.

  His gun was out and he was crouching, shifting his eyes from Celina
and Ronni on the bathroom floor to the room behind him. His gaze swept over Celina again, holding for a long second on her shaking, gun-wielding hand. “Are you hurt?”

  Relieved to see Thomas was alive, a sigh of relief escaped her mouth. She lowered her gun, looked at Ronni lying in her lap. Don’t die. “I called 911,” she said, but her voice sounded too soft, too calm. “McBroom is hurt too.”

  Thomas leaned over, checked Ronni’s neck for a pulse. He disappeared into the living room. A few seconds later, he was back with the comforter off Celina’s bed. Celina and Ronni were suddenly covered with mandarin orange, marigold yellow and peacock blue daisies.

  On autopilot, Celina helped Thomas tuck the edges around her, around Ronni, and around the handle of the knife. She knew they dared not move her or remove the knife. Don’t die. “What about Sugars?” she asked Thomas.

  He ignored her question, scanning her face, checking her pupils like a doctor. “I need to know if you’re hurt.”

  There was excruciating pain cramping her stomach, and like Ronni’s blood seeping slowly through the layers of her cotton comforter, it spread, lancing her heart and bubbling into her throat. Yes, I’m hurt. I feel like I’ve just been drawn and quartered.

  Swallowing hard, she forced her shallow breathing to deepen. Her trembling fingers threaded softly through Ronni’s apricot colored hair. Another crazy daisy in bloom.

  “Did you see him?” Thomas asked. “Was it Emilio Londano?”

  It was a ghost. A psychotic ghost from my past.

  Over the next two hours, Celina would be asked about Londano ad infinitum by everyone from the lowliest rookies all the way up the chain of command to the head directors of the FBI and DEA. The only person who didn’t ask her if Emilio Londano had killed Sugars and left McBroom and Punto in critical condition that day in his second attempt to terrify her was Cooper.

  When The Beast finally called her and confirmed what she already knew—that Emilio had escaped by using his twin brother as a decoy—he didn’t ask questions, only said the words she’d hoped to hear from him for a different reason. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  FBI Headquarters, Los Angeles, California

  “Agent Punto is still in surgery.” Thomas’s voice was calm and clear over the speaker phone. Cooper was the only one in the conference room that knew he was shitting bricks. “The knife punctured a lung, may have nicked her spinal cord. We’ll know more in a few hours. Agent McBroom was hit on the head and received a concussion. Could be severe. Again, it will be awhile before we know the extent of his injury.”

  There were twelve of them in the room at FBI headquarters in Los Angeles; eight were part of Cooper’s taskforce. Twenty-four hours before, the Londano brothers hadn’t been a blip on their radar screen. Now, after one had risen from the dead and traded places with his twin, they had a dead agent and two fighting for their lives. Suddenly the Londanos were the only thing on their radar.

  “Bring me up to speed, Agent Hawkins. How was the other agent killed?” Lana Custov asked. Cooper’s previous unit chief had gone to the dark side. She was now a section chief for the FBI. She’d made it a point when she walked into the conference room to shake everyone’s hand but Cooper’s.

  “Agent Sugars apparently put up a fight and was stabbed with the same knife Agent Punto was stabbed with.” Thomas answered.

  “And where were you, Agent Hawkins?” Lana looked directly at Cooper.

  Cooper fought the urge to answer for Thomas, to save the kid the lashing he was about to get. He’d already prepped him for the meeting, prepped him so he wouldn’t come across sounding like a rookie even though he’d been in the SCVC for five years.

  “I was posted outside the apartment complex,” he answered. Nothing more. Good man. He was following Cooper’s instructions.

  “And you saw nothing?” Lana said.

  “No one entered or left the building from the front entrance.”

  Her eyes were still on Cooper. “What made you decide to investigate the situation if you saw nothing suspicious?”

  Thomas’s deep breath was barely perceptible. “Agent Sugars left his post at 0100 hours. I figured he was taking a leak. After five minutes, he did not return and I became suspicious and entered the building.”

  It was somewhat of a lie, Cooper knew, since he had the full story. When Thomas saw Sugars leave the entryway, he’d assumed the man was taking a piss because he, himself, was about to burst, and his Dew bottle was already full. Peeing on the neighbor’s tree seemed like a poor choice and since he’d been placed as a lookout by Cooper and not asked officially to cover the apartment building, he hesitated to hit Celina up for the use of her bathroom. He’d left his post, scooted between the buildings and peed in the alley. Rookie move, but every agent had been there at some point, and technically Thomas should not in any way be held responsible for what was, in Cooper’s opinion, the FBI’s screw up.

  Lana shifted her eyes to her boss, and the SCVC’s director, Victor Dupé. The aging leader sat at the head of the long table and met Lana’s cool gaze with one of his own. The director sat forward and spoke into the phone. “Agent Hawkins, run through the entire scenario for us from that point forward.”

  Thomas was silent for a second and Cooper knew he was remembering what he’d told him. Keep it simple, keep it neat, keep it short. The less said, the less skin your superiors can skin from your body.

  “I entered the building and found Agent Sugars dead by the stairwell. His throat had been slit from side to side in a fatal arc. I called it in and ascended the stairs to the third floor. In the doorway of Agent Celina Davenport’s apartment, I found Agent McBroom. She was unconscious. There was a trail of popcorn from her body to the bathroom where I found Davenport cradling Agent Ronni Punto on the bathroom floor. Agent Punto had the blade of a six-inch knife buried in her upper back area, next to her right shoulder blade. The blade had been inserted horizontally to her spine. She was unconscious and her breathing erratic. Agent Davenport was unhurt and had already dialed 9-1-1.”

  “Agent Davenport saw nothing?”

  “No, sir. She reports she took a shower and was blow-drying her hair when the situation occurred. She heard Punta fall against the bathroom door, which prompted her to open it. She did not see the perp.”

  “And where is Agent Davenport now?” Lana asked.

  “She is at a local FBI safe house.”

  “Thank you, Agent Hawkins,” Director Dupé said. “Stay put and keep us informed. I’ll check back with you in an hour with further instructions.”

  “Yes, sir. One other thing I think you should be aware of, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The media’s all over this. The Des Moines Register has it on the front page of this morning’s issue.”

  Dupé’s jaw clenched and Cooper felt his own tighten. “How did they get hold of it so fast?”

  “Agent Davenport told me she believes Emilio did it. She says it’s payback for what she, the taskforce, and in particular, the FBI did to him. He wants to show the world we’re all incompetent.”

  “Thank you, Agent Hawkins.” Dupé disconnected the phone and looked at Cooper. “You agree with Celina’s assessment?”

  Keep it simple, keep it neat, keep it short. “Emilio would love to see us sweat over this. Plus, it buys him leverage. While the locals expend time and energy handling the media, he can continue hunting Celina.” It made his gut crawl just to think about it. “He’s looking for revenge, pure and simple.”

  Dupé sat in silence, everyone else in the room following his lead, as he turned the situation over in his mind. Cooper hated sitting. It was a useless waste of time. He wanted to fly back to Des Moines, find Londano, and hang him by his balls. Grab Celina and hold her tight.

  But Lana was watching him. She loved knowing he’d screwed up and slept with his young former taskforce member. She was wondering how much of a relationship he actually had with Celina. She was
waiting for him to jump up, pace, and ping off the walls. Then she could drop subtle hints about his questionable actions. His character. His leadership abilities. It would be her greatest joy to kick him off the case this time around. Have him removed from his position as agent-in-charge of the SCVC taskforce.

  So he sat still, keeping his hands in his lap and his face blank.

  Lana threw out some questions. The others tossed ideas back and forth. How did Emilio successfully substitute Enrique for himself? Were people at the prison paid off? What does the State of California now do with Enrique? Are the warrants for his arrest still good after he was declared legally dead? How can we be sure it’s Emilio stalking Celina? And how do we stop him?

  The questions and answers went around the table, but Cooper purposely tuned most of it out and waited for Dupé to come up with a plan of action.

  “You’re quiet, Agent Harris.” Dupé sank back into his chair. “You must have thoughts about this. I’d like to hear them. What should we do to capture Emilio Londano?”

  Payoff for being patient. “We can play this game his way, or we can play it ours. First, we have to lure him back to California so he’s in our jurisdiction. Then we control the game board.” Several heads on both sides of the table nodded.

  “Lure him back?” Lana tapped manicured nails on the table. “Easier said than done.”

  Cooper tuned her out. “Once he’s in our jurisdiction, we set a trap and use what he wants as bait.”

  Lana raised a narrow eyebrow. “He wants revenge on the FBI, Harris. You going to use all of us as bait?”

  Cooper took his gaze off Dupé and looked her straight in the eye. She was always dead on with the details, but she could never grasp the big picture. Maybe she needed to spend time with Dominic Quarters and Chief Forester. “Don’t flatter yourself, Lana. He doesn’t want you.” Her fingers stilled. “He wants Celina Davenport.”