The Perfect Ten Boxed Set

by Dianna Love

Celina breathed an exasperated sigh. “Short skirts, big brains. I get it.”

  “Yeah.” His smile was warm enough to make butter slide off pancakes. “You’ve got the brains, and a pair of balls to go with the smarts, but you don’t wear enough short skirts.”

  He wanted to kiss her; she could see the look in his eyes, but Celina could also see Thomas walking toward the Tacoma behind Cooper’s head. “About the other night,” she said again.

  Thomas rapped his knuckles on Cooper’s window. Cooper straightened, saw Thomas, rolled down the window.

  “Oh, hi, Celina.” Thomas, surprised and confused, leaned down to look at her. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Of course I came.” She reached for the door handle and bumped her cast. “Ouch, shit.”

  “Here, let me get that.” Thomas ran around the front of the Tacoma.

  “Why don’t you sit tight for a minute,” Cooper said. “Let me check it out first so I can prep you.”

  Celina took a deep breath. She called on all her mental abilities to affect her professional, unemotional face. “I can handle it,” she told him with more flippancy in her voice than she intended. Thomas opened her door and she gave Cooper the chin up nod that he was always giving her. “Let’s go.”

  Cooper met her at the front of the Tacoma, stopped her with hand on her arm. “You know JFK’s brother, Bobby?”

  “Sure. Attorney general who fought organized crime in the labor unions before he went on to be a U.S. Senator and then a presidential candidate. He was assassinated like his brother.”

  Cooper nodded. “Robert Kennedy valued courage above all other human attributes.”

  “Courage,” Celina repeated, the word filling her mouth.

  “Yes.” Cooper squeezed her arm and handed her a set of gloves. “Courage, Celina.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Celina stood in the ring of men surrounding Chief Forester’s body and felt her insides draw in tight. Her stomach, her heart, her entire circulatory system, seemed to recoil and shrink, as if each could run back to the Tacoma without the rest of her body. Her feet felt like they were stuck in cement as she stared at the sight in front of her. Fidelity, bravery, integrity, she chanted the mantra in her head. Courage, courage, courage.

  Chief Forester’s huge body was naked, spread-eagle on the dirt. His hands and feet had been chained to stakes driven into the ground. Deep gouges caused from his struggle against the chains ringed his wrists and ankles. Blood from the knife wounds on his body had dried and caked in places on his skin; flies buzzed around.

  Chunks of skin had been ripped out. The ground next to his body was stained a dark brown from more blood. Words had been roughly carved into his chest, his stomach, his thighs.

  FBI slut.

  Next.

  Fear.

  Pain.

  A bloody lump of a body part was bagged and sitting on the ground next to the body. A woman, a Mexican medical examiner, moved around the body, stepping over the bag, and directing a crime scene investigator, also Mexican, to change angles and shoot close-ups of the carved words. The men watching were a mix of American and Mexican law enforcement officials.

  The area had been sectored off in a grid-by-grid search for clues to the perpetrator’s identity and evidence to use against him. He’d left his calling card behind; a hunting knife was bagged and tagged and being passed around the circle to Cooper. Along with it, a Taser, no doubt used to subdue Forester in order to kidnap him. As the bloody knife landed in Cooper’s hands, Celina clamped her jaw down, covered her mouth, and turned her head away. Fidelity, bravery, integrity.

  Hands touched her shoulders. Glancing around, she saw Thomas behind her. He gave her shoulders a little squeeze.

  “Do we have a time of death?” Cooper’s voice sounded loud and far away. Celina’s ears seemed to pull in and join the rest of her insides in trying to run back to the Tacoma.

  The medical examiner maintained her crouched position, attention on the body. “I would place it around four to five hours ago, but we’ll know for certain once I get his body back to the lab and do a thorough examination.”

  A man in cowboy boots and a navy blue jacket spoke. “As soon as the Mexicali’s here release the body, he’ll be transported back to Carlsbad for our coroner to perform his own examination. I’ll fax the results to your office, Harris, as soon as I have anything substantial.”

  Cooper nodded and Celina tried to remember the man’s name, found she couldn’t. He was American, a detective that she’d met at the hotel after the man had attacked her, but her brain would not bring up his name. She concentrated hard on his face, trying to retrieve it, trying to avoid looking at the Chief.

  “Cause of death obvious?” Cooper again.

  The Mexican woman looked up, her gaze evaluating Cooper now. “Not obvious.” She stood, giving Cooper the opportunity to return the evaluation.

  Celina did her own eval. Short hair expertly combed to frame her strong jaw line. Subtle lip liner to emphasis her full lips. A sweep of blush across her cheeks to highlight her dark eyes. Beautiful.

  “But probably exposure,” the woman finished.

  Brainy. Intellectual.

  Fidelity, bravery, integrity.

  “Exposure?” Thomas was incredulous. He pointed to the bag on the ground next to the body. “He got his balls cut off. The birds picked him apart. He bled out.”

  Celina’s eyes went to the bag on the ground next to the Chief’s body, grim understanding mixing with horror. She felt the world tip slightly, felt her knees dip.

  Thomas’s hands tightened on her shoulders.

  “He lost a generous amount of blood,” the medical examiner said, still directing her comments to Cooper. Her English sounded smooth and mellifluous with her soft Spanish accent even though she was talking about murder. “But the cuts, with the exception of the castration,” —every man in the group flinched— “were superficial. In cases like this one, exposure is the ultimate cause of death.”

  “Our Mexican friends found him thanks to the crows.” The American detective rubbed his fingers over his mustache. “It was like a Hitchcock movie. Just hope the Chief was dead before the birds started on him.”

  “That I won’t know for sure until I do the autopsy,” Miss Coroner said.

  Celina stared at the horizon. The Chief had been tortured, carved with a knife, castrated, and left to die alone in the desert.

  With birds eating his flesh.

  Because of her.

  Her stomach heaved and she broke free of the circle, half-running, half-staggering as she gave into her body’s demand to exit stage left.

  Thomas called her name. She heard Cooper tell him to leave her be.

  She stumbled back to the Tacoma. Setting her hands on the hood, she ignored the pain in her right wrist and braced herself for her stomach’s revival. Luckily, she hadn’t eaten since the previous night.

  No one needed an audience when they were puking. All sets of eyes, including Cooper’s were on Forester’s body. All except Thomas’s.

  Thomas, who had tried to impress Celina with the story about his waterfall-tramping rescue.

  Thomas, who had wondered how and why Cooper had ignored Celina’s flirting and open invitations to share her bed.

  Thomas, who had wished out loud he had been sleeping in the same room with Celina.

  Hell, even here at the site of Forester’s murder, he’d tripped over himself to open Celina’s car door.

  And now, Cooper knew, his young partner wanted more than anything to rescue the damsel in distress over at the Tacoma.

  Thomas had fallen for Celina. Hard.

  Cooper took a deep breath, tried to concentrate on what the medical examiner, Roxanne Navarrette, was saying to him. Previously, she’d worked with a taskforce responsible for ports of entry along the California-Mexico border. From Mexicali to Tijuana and down to Ensenada, Navarrette had seen the results of drug trafficking, violence and bribery…hundreds o
f murders in Mexico that had spilled over into Southern California. She had on more than one occasion given Cooper and his SCVC group extensive access to her files of victims murdered by the Arrellano-Felix organization as well as the Londano mafia.

  But what he really wanted to do was box Thomas upside the head.

  “This cell phone,” Navarrette held up another of her department’s bags, “was stuffed in the victim’s mouth.”

  “It’s Agent Davenport’s,” Sam Pressfield told Cooper. “That’s how we initially ID’d the body.”

  “Any fingerprints?” Cooper took the bag from Navarrette.

  Rueben Guerrero, a Mexican police detective who’d worked with Cooper’s group on the Londano case, spoke up, “Dusted and sent back to our lab. Because of the current events, the department has deemed this a priority one. Results should be coming in shortly.”

  “Appreciate it.” Cooper removed the phone from the bag with a gloved hand, flipped it open.

  “The only incoming calls were from you and Celina’s mother,” Pressfield said. “There was your message about the take-down at the Palomino Apartments, and another six messages from Mrs. Davenport.”

  Cooper stared at the screen. It was a picture of the ocean with a lone runner on the beach. A man, shirtless, stood silhouetted against the setting sun.

  It was him. Even though he always ran in the morning, except when he’d been out all night on a stakeout. Then he ran in the evening.

  The picture didn’t show the details of his face or the tattoo in his right shoulder, but Cooper knew it was him anyway.

  “Hey.” Thomas was suddenly looking over Cooper’s shoulder at the phone, “That’s—”

  “Celina’s phone,” Cooper interrupted. “Yes.” He pushed a couple of buttons looking for the call log. “Any outgoing calls?”

  Pressfield shook his head no.

  And then the phone in Cooper’s hand rang. Private caller. Cooper tapped the answer button, but said nothing, listening. Waiting for the caller to identify him- or herself.

  The caller obliged. “Give Celina the phone,” the man’s voice was rough and accented.

  Londano.

  Cooper made eye contact around the circle, and two hand motions later, every agent and officer had his gun in hand and was scanning the area.

  “Emilio, buddy. You have to talk to me instead.”

  “Give her the phone or Valquis will kill her where she stands.”

  Cooper grabbed Thomas by the sleeve and propelled him toward Celina. “If you wanted her dead, you would have done it already.”

  A shot rang out over the desert. Dust puffed into the air a foot to the left of Cooper’s feet. He pulled up short and stared in the direction it had come from as the rest of the group started scrambling for cover. A cliff, little more than a hill, was southwest of him. Londano, or at least Valquis, was close enough to spit at.

  Thomas had already grabbed Celina and pulled her to the ground, using the SUV as a shield. Cooper crossed the last few feet to her, his attention never leaving the hill. He crouched next to her and she looked at him, her eyes saucers in her face. Emilio? She mouthed and he nodded his head.

  Her fingers trembled as she reached out to take the phone with her left hand.

  Courage, Cooper mouthed back at her. He hit the speaker button.

  She took a deep breath. “Stop shooting. I’m here.”

  “You belong to me,” Emilio said. “And because of your betrayal, you must be punished.”

  Celina’s eyes narrowed. Cooper looked her in the eye and mouthed, ask him what he wants.

  But she looked away. “If you want to punish me,” she countered, “than let’s have a go at it. You and me. One on one.”

  Emilio laughed without humor. “That would be too easy, Celina.”

  Now she straightened her back and Cooper almost took the phone away before she could say something stupid, like…

  “Scared of me, Emilio?”

  …issue a challenge.

  Emilio snorted, a partial laugh.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Celina said. “You sent Valquis to nab Chief Forester, because you’re afraid to come face-to-face with me yourself. You know I’ll get you, just like I did that night on the beach.”

  “Your chief screamed your name before he died.”

  Celina stiffened, gripped the phone harder. “Except this time,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard, “I’ll use my gun and I won’t just point it at you.”

  She paused, eyes still narrowed, staring past Cooper, past Thomas, seeing something Cooper could only imagine. “This time, I’ll shoot you. Not to kill, just to wound. You’re a man in name only at this point, Emilio, because this time, when I show you up? When this FBI agent takes you out? You’ll have a very large scar between your legs as a daily reminder of who you messed with.”

  Emilio did not laugh this time. “You will die, begging for your life just like the others, Celina. But not until I’ve tattooed your body like I did your chief’s. Not until I’ve violated every inch of you.”

  The phone went dead.

  Celina, still in her trance, handed it to Cooper. Then before he could say anything, she rose to a standing position…

  And took two long strides out from behind the Tacoma into the scrub brush, raising her arms to the sky. Cooper reached for her leg, but she dodged him. “Here I am, you chicken shit, son of a bitch,” she yelled, moving away from Cooper, away from his protection.

  She ran another half dozen quick, forceful steps out into the open. “Make true on your promises. Come and get me. I’m right here. Take me out. Right now. Do it!”

  Shit, Cooper thought. This is not what I meant when I told her to have courage.

  Thomas was up and moving as fast as Cooper. The two were neck and neck, but Cooper reached Celina a split second sooner. Thomas raised his gun, ready to cover Cooper’s back.

  Cooper picked her up by the waist and twirled her around so his back was toward the sniper rifle.

  All the other agents, including the coroner, were in guarded positions. Guns were drawn and covering Cooper as he ran Celina back to the truck, set her firmly down in the dirt, and crouched behind the vehicle, pulling her down with him. They were both breathing hard.

  Celina stared at the ground.

  “What the hell was that?” Thomas spit at Celina. He was back at the side of the truck, too, both hands on his gun pointed over the hood. His hands shook slightly.

  Yep, his new partner was in love with Celina. Waterfall tramping like he’d never experienced before.

  A small sound came from her lips and Cooper glanced at her. She was jerking in air, hyperventilating as she tried to get control of her emotions.

  “No one…else….dies,” she said, looking up at Cooper. Something had definitely changed in her eyes. They were hard, no longer as innocent as they had been minutes before.

  He patted her leg. “Okay.” He really didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to comfort her somehow, but there was nothing he could do. She’d just challenged Emilio to a one-on-one confrontation.

  She nodded her head. “Except Emilio.” Her eyes, trance-like again, stared at the ground. “He’s…mine.”

  Cooper patted her leg again and realized his own hands were shaking.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Carlsbad

  Cooper’s house was vintage midcentury-modern Southern California. Nestled in the side of a steep granite cliff, the 1950’s one-story looked over scrub brush and palm trees at the bottom. Its roofline blended with the texture of the cliff rising behind it. As the Tacoma wound its way up the inclined drive, the sun was setting in the West, orange and pink waves bathing the terracotta stones around the front French-style doors.

  It had been hours since Celina had seen Chief Forester’s body. After Emilio’s phone call, the manhunt had kicked into high gear. A helicopter flew over the open ground and the nearby hills. ATV’s and dune buggies covered the desert area, searching for any trail
. Forensics teams covered every square foot radiating out from Forester’s body in a grid-by-grid search.

  Sara Rios arrived, taking Celina on foot to examine the site believed to be ground zero. They assumed Valquis had been the one to shoot at Cooper, but they weren’t sure. Either way, both men had been present, so Sara and Celina searched on hands and knees with at least a dozen other agents until they uncovered a hole in the ground…an opening to a tunnel.

  The Londano mafia as well as others had used tunnels under the U.S.-Mexican border for years. Structurally unsound and too small for shipments of drugs, the tunnels’ main purpose was for escape. Emilio had planned well. He’d brought Chief Forester to that specific area to kill him and lie in wait for the multi-agency gathering to take place before him. Celina’s presence had been an unexpected but pleasant surprise and he’d used it to its full-court press advantage.

  By the time Sara and Celina found the entrance to the tunnel, Emilio had an hour lead time on them. Not knowing where the tunnel ended, not knowing what was waiting for anyone brave enough to crawl inside, a tactical unit had been called in. Another hour wait.

  The two men who’d entered on the Mexico side of the border lost radio contact with those above ground at least a dozen times. Every time their end went silent, Celina’s stomach cramped. Every time radio contact was restored, she hugged herself. No one else dies became her knew mantra.

  The tunnel spanned north less than ten miles, ending abruptly at a cave-in. Consensus was that Emilio had intentionally caused the cave-in, but Celina held out hope he’d been crushed in it.

  Back in Carlsbad now, Cooper drove into the carport, shut off the SUV. He’d brought her here, to his home, to stay the night. He hadn’t asked her permission, hadn’t so much as discussed it as an option. He’d simply loaded her into the massive black vehicle and driven back across the border.

  Late afternoon traffic between San Diego and Carlsbad gridlocked sporadically, making the drive back to the surf town slow. Neither of them spoke, comfortable with the silence that enveloped them, but lost in their own thoughts of Emilio Londano’s and his partner’s whereabouts.