Crossfire Christmas

by Julie Miller

  “Your team was like that for you, weren’t they,” she deduced. “They were your family, and you guys cared about each other—like brothers, you said. No wonder you’re so determined to get the man responsible for their deaths.”

  He nodded and faced her again while she opened a tube of antibiotic ointment. She didn’t have anything in that bag that could fix the wounds inside his head and heart. But there was something about the woman herself that seemed to find those hurting places inside him. She exposed them—probed deeper into a few, gently tended others and, somehow, made him feel a little better.

  No wonder he was so drawn to her. He really did need her. Maybe more than he’d ever needed anyone his whole life. If she thought for one moment that he didn’t know just how lucky he was to have her with him in this nightmare, then he needed to make that right.

  “Teresa...” He reached out to pull down the hem of her sweater, which his groping hands had bunched up around her waist. “I’m trying to do the right thing here. Not just by my men but by you, too. I may not be the smoothest guy on the planet. But I do know how to treat a lady right. I can’t tell you how much I want you. But this is the wrong time, wrong place—I may even be the wrong man.” Her hands stilled their work and rested on his shoulder. “I can’t offer you much of a future. I may not even be able to offer you next week. You deserve better than that.”

  She nudged aside his knee and stepped between his legs, winding her arms around his neck in a hug. “So do you, Nash.”

  His arms encircled her waist, and he rubbed his cheek against hers. “Yeah, well, I just want you to know that I’m grateful you’re here with me.”

  They held each other like that for several endless moments, her legs butting against the bed, her chest pressed to his, her strong, tender arms holding him close as she gently rocked him in her embrace. The sting of tears made his eyes feel gritty, but he refused to shed them. Grief, guilt and regret tore through him just as violently as those two bullets had. He’d been in survival mode for far too long. This ornery, petite, strong, irresistible woman had forced him into human mode. It hurt to care about the people he’d lost. It scared him to think about everything he could still lose.

  He buried his face against her neck and held on to her healing compassion for just as long as she’d let him.

  * * *

  A BING CROSBY holiday tune played softly through the static of the AM station Teresa had found on the radio. Other than the twenty-four-hour Christmas music playing in the background, it was silent as Nash polished off a sandwich and two cups of Teresa’s chicken noodle soup while they sat on the edges of their respective beds, facing each other.

  Part of his current aversion to conversation was savoring just how filling and delicious her food tasted, even under these crude conditions. Part of it was the nagging feeling that he really was growing weaker by the minute and wouldn’t be able to keep watch over her the way he’d promised. And part of it was his wayward thoughts, which kept reliving that kiss and imagining where it would have ended up if he was a whole man—imagining where this deep, unexpected bond he had with this woman could lead if he didn’t have a crooked cop and at least two cartel thugs breathing down his neck.

  Not even the late hour or the flyaway strands of dark hair that had pulled loose from her ponytail throughout the day could diminish her beautiful Latin vitality. Realizing he’d been staring, he blinked and looked away.

  But she had his number and was on her feet in an instant. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

  She took his empty cup and paper napkin in one hand and pressed the other to his forehead and cheek. He was sorry that touching him made her frown like that. He was sorrier when she moved away, taking her homey kitchen scent and her soft, firm touches with her. She set the trash on the table beside the thermos and reached into her bag. “I’m going to give you another aspirin, and then I’m putting you to bed. Sleep is what your body needs most right now.” She spun around and snapped her fingers. “And an ice pack.”

  She took a sharp turn from the trash can to grab her coat and headed for the door.

  “Wait.” Nash pushed to his feet and caught her by the arm before she reached the door. “You can’t leave. It’s dark out there. You won’t be able to see if anyone’s following you.”

  “I’m just going down to the office to get some ice. If I’d thought of it sooner, I’d have gone when we first arrived.” She nudged him, encouraging him to sit back down. When he refused to move, she patted his arm. “There are lights on each of the buildings and streetlamps out front. I’ll be there and back before you even miss me. Unless you’d rather go to the hospital?”

  “Nicely played, Peewee.” Nash covered her hand with his. “Okay. I’m not getting much better on my own. We’ll risk the ice run.”

  While she zipped her coat and put on her gloves, Nash pulled his gun and went to the window. He peered out through the drapes. What was it, maybe twenty, thirty yards to the office door? When she stood beside him with the ice bucket, he looked through the peephole to make sure things were quiet in every direction before he turned out the interior lights and opened the door. “I’ll watch you from here. Go straight down the sidewalk and back. Don’t speak to anybody. If you’re out of my sight for more than twenty seconds, I’m coming after you.”

  “You could be resting while I’m gone,” she suggested.

  “It’s not a negotiation.”

  “What else is new? I’ll be quick.” She flattened her palm at the center of his chest, maybe thanking him for the little taste of freedom, maybe reassuring him that she’d be back, before she turned around and hurried away.

  Nash grinned as she power walked those short legs beneath the glow of the Christmas lights hanging from the gutters. Lurking in the darkness of the doorway, with his gun down at his right thigh, hidden from view of anyone outside, he counted how many rooms at the motel were occupied and familiarized himself with the vehicles parked there. There were two pickups with ladders and gear boxes that probably belonged to construction workers or a road crew. There was a tank of an old sedan with some kind of medals hanging from ribbons on the rearview mirror. There was what he assumed was the manager’s car parked in front of the office and a sporty little muscle car caked with ice and road grime that had come from Colorado.

  But there were no black SUVs cruising past on the street. He saw no one peeking through a window blind to follow Teresa’s movements or note him standing in the shadows beneath 6A’s plastic garland.

  He couldn’t believe how good the brisk night air felt on his face and in his lungs—until he started to shiver with the chills. He knew he should go get his coat, but he wasn’t about to leave his post. Still, the moment the office’s glass door swung shut behind Teresa, Nash sagged against the doorjamb and exhaled a puffy cloud of breath in the frigid air.

  Maybe he should let her call her brother again and have her request protection from the vaunted Detective AJ. Her family had to be going out of their minds with worry if they knew about the shoot-out near her apartment. If he felt this weak, this weary, he wasn’t going to be any good to her, much less capable of going toe-to-toe with a traitor.

  And if anything happened to Teresa because of his failing, he might as well be a dead man.

  Nash’s cell phone rang, and he straightened against the door frame again to pull it from his pocket. Since only one person had this number, he had no qualms about answering. “Hey, Jake. What do you got for me?”

  Jake Lonergan might not have remembered his life as a DEA agent, but he sure remembered how to give a mission brief. “Made all your calls. Everyone in the Houston office knows you’re alive and knows you’re in the wind. Captain Puente says he and a Cruz Moreno have already booked a flight into KCI Airport tonight. They asked for your contact info. Both said it was vital that you get in touch with them if I hear fr
om you again.”

  Nash trusted that Jake hadn’t given him away. “Did they give you a hard time?”

  “They both pumped me for info on your location and condition, but I wasn’t in a talkative mood.”

  Stubborn cuss. The Jake he knew had never been much of a talker. “What else?”

  “Puente confirmed that the Gracielas have men in the area.”

  “That’s not news. Did he say how many?”

  “He wasn’t sure. He thinks even Berto Graciela himself is en route to find you. Sounds as if Santiago Vargas maligned Berto’s name, saying he had no business leading the cartel if he didn’t even know he had DEA agents working for him.”

  Nash checked the time and started counting down the seconds until Teresa needed to reappear at the office door. “Vargas has no room to talk. He didn’t know, either. Not until Puente or Moreno or whoever it was sold us out.”

  “Captain Puente said Vargas hasn’t been seen for a couple of days. There’s no word of any hit on him going down, either.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What if Vargas is in K.C., too?”

  “Both of them? Here?” He almost laughed. So who was back home running the drug-smuggling business?

  “What better way to show the cartel who really gets the job done than by serving up your head on a silver platter?”

  Nash swore under his breath. Didn’t that just make a man’s day? Knowing two ruthless drug-lord wannabes and a potential army of well-armed thugs had joined him here in Kansas City for a deadly reunion? “What did they say about Tommy Delvecchio?”

  “No details yet. Apparently, there’s some kind of holdup at the medical examiner’s office with the bodies from the warehouse. Neither Puente nor Moreno could tell me what the problem was. I can ask Spencer to look into it.”

  A pulse of light bounced off the palm trees by the pool, drawing Nash’s gaze. A car must have turned the corner and was coming down the street toward the motel. “Is that your friend at KCPD? Did you talk to him?”

  “Yeah. Spencer Montgomery. That conversation went about as well as you thought it would.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He says that AJ Rodriguez is personally investigating the break-in at Teresa’s apartment. I don’t think he bought her story about staying with a friend for a few nights.”

  Just what he didn’t need. A big brother with a beef and a badge. “Does he know if AJ has figured out anything?” he asked.

  “Not yet.” Jake’s answer wasn’t reassuring. “But Spencer said AJ worked several years on a drug task force, doing undercover work. He knows all the same tricks you do. If anyone is going to piece together what’s going on, it’s Rodriguez.”

  “Ah, hell.” That wasn’t just any car coming down the street. It was a black-and-white unit from KCPD. No lights flashing, no sirens blaring. But it was pulling into the Seaside’s parking lot.

  “Nash?”

  He pulled back into the darkness of the room and closed the door, leaving just a few inches open to see out. His toes tapped anxiously inside his boots as the squad car pulled into the parking space right beside the manager’s car. Nash’s gaze shot over the two uniformed officers climbing out of the vehicle to the office door. “Teresa?”

  “Talk to me,” Jake urged, understanding that something had put Nash on alert.

  “We may have company. Keep me posted. Talk to you later.” Nash disconnected the call and jammed the cell into his pocket. The need to take action, to dash across the parking lot to get her out of there, jolted through his legs. “Come on, darlin’.”

  There she was. She appeared in the glass doorway, pushed it open. Nash’s breath locked in his chest. But she never made it out the door. One of the officers said something to her and pointed back inside the office. Her gaze breezed past Nash’s position before the officer’s bulky frame blocked her from view.

  Nash’s pulse kicked up a notch. What the hell was going on? Had they been discovered? Had that slimy manager somehow recognized Teresa from a news story or description her brother had put over the wire and called it in for some kind of reward? While the first uniformed cop ushered Teresa back inside the office, the other pulled back the front of his coat and braced his hands on either side of the utility belt at his waist, scanning the motel and parking lot. Nash quietly closed the door and moved to the window to watch the office and cops through the drapes.

  The second officer left his position at the black-and-white and walked toward building A. Nash glanced back at his go bag. What if these weren’t cops at all? What if the mole had somehow gotten wind of the vehicle switch they’d made at the Shamrock Bar and reported Nash for auto theft and marked him as a fugitive? He could arm himself to the teeth and take both men out. But there’d be a lot of witnesses, maybe even a few innocent bystanders who’d get hurt.

  Nah, if they’d come for him, he’d surrender peacefully. He’d take his chances in lockup. No way was he going to put Teresa’s life in more danger than he already had.

  The cop batted at some of the Christmas decorations when he stepped up to the first door. But as he strolled down the sidewalk, Nash could see there was nothing nonchalant about his purpose here. The older officer glanced at the license plates of the two construction trucks. When he stopped in front of Jake’s silver pickup, Nash pulled back from the window and flattened his back against the wall, waiting for the knock at the door.

  Thirty seconds, maybe a minute, passed before Nash heard the man’s boots on the cold concrete. Once he was certain the cop was moving on, Nash returned to the window to see him walking on to building B. Was that a misdirection to get him to drop his guard and reveal himself? Or were the officers looking for someone else?

  Wouldn’t that just be his luck? Nash eased out a tense breath, beginning to suspect the latter, when the officer circled around the white Impala with the ribbons hanging from the mirror. Then he turned his mouth to his shoulder to report something on his radio—probably to his partner.

  Raised voices and movement at the opposite end of the motel pulled Nash’s gaze back to the office. The first blue suit was coming out of the office, holding Teresa and the manager both by the elbow. The young man released her and exchanged a few words. The complaints were coming from the gray-haired manager, whom the officer had handcuffed. “Come on, darlin’, get out of there.”

  But Teresa stood there hugging the ice bucket and shivering in the cold while the cop put the old man in the backseat of the cruiser. Her gaze came straight to 6A, even paused at the window as if she could see him there—asking him what to do, perhaps warning him.

  The young officer slammed the car door, startling her. When she whipped her head around, he said something to dismiss her and she scuttled out of the way. While she stepped onto the sidewalk, the young cop jogged straight across the parking lot.

  He ran past Jake’s truck as Nash heard pounding on another door. The first cop announced himself as KCPD and ordered the occupant to open up. In the midst of shouts and protests, Teresa approached their room. But to his surprise, she walked on past, not letting the uniformed officers know her destination, not giving him away.

  She was well past 2B when the officers dragged two half-dressed teenagers out the door. They put them both into the Impala with some serious kind of lecture, because the lanky boy kept putting his hands up in the air instead of starting the car. Once the engine was running and the kid was nodding yes to everything the older cop was saying, the younger cop went back to their black-and-white. He picked up his partner and they followed the teens out of the parking lot.

  As soon as the drama left the Seaside Motel parking lot, Teresa ran back to the room.

  Nash was there to open the door before she could knock. He pulled her inside and locked it behind her. “What the hell?”

  She set the bucket on the
table beside the door and paced the length of the room and back. “Apparently, Mr. Moscatelli rented one of his rooms to a pair of minors. At first the officer said they were looking for a couple who hadn’t registered under their real names. He asked me if I’d seen anyone.”

  Hence taking her back inside the office. “Did he threaten you in any way? Did he seem suspicious of you?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Man, she was pale beneath the cold red apples on her cheeks. Whatever had happened had scared her. “The manager pointed to us in the registry, but then Officer Britt got a message from his partner about a license plate and he told me to get back to my room. I thought they were coming for you. For us.”

  Nash holstered his gun and stopped her when she turned to pace away again. “They were here to escort those teenagers home. The police probably got a call from a concerned parent.”

  Teresa nodded. “Officer Britt’s partner said something about finding ‘the boyfriend’s’ license plate number.”

  So they’d tracked the kid’s car. “Did the officers recognize you?”

  “I don’t think so.” She was visibly shaking as she unzipped her coat. “I didn’t know either one of them.”

  “Did they ask for your name?”

  “Yes. Teresa Smith. Right?”

  Relief warred with pride. Nash palmed the back of her neck and kissed her, hard and quick, thanking her for being smart enough to think on her feet and protect them both from discovery. “Thank you, Mrs. Smith.”

  As quickly as she smiled at his praise, her forehead knotted with concern. “You didn’t need another stressor like that. Get to bed before you fall over.” She shushed him when he started to protest. “I need you healthy, okay?”

  He nodded, feeling the clammy chills that had probably alarmed her. “Okay.”

  In five minutes flat, she’d given him another aspirin, removed his boots and pulled the blanket and bedspread over him. She made an ice pack out of one of the hand towels and placed it on his forehead.