Kareem would find her eventually. But she wouldn’t make the job easier for him by leaving a trail of bread crumbs to her motel door.
Shit, shit, SHIT.
“Oh, no.” Making a show of it, she rummaged through the wallet, and then through the pockets of her purse. “I can’t find ... Oh, no. Oh, man. I think I left it at the quickie mart at the gas station. I got snacks. Oh, man.”
Mr. Friendly wasn’t moved by either her keen acting skills or her plight. Staring at her with indifferent eyes and looking like he was anxious to resume his nap, he said the dreaded words: “I need to swipe your card. In case of property damage.”
Right. Because if she, say, spilled coffee on the disgusting carpet in this dump, God knew it would be up there with a fire in the Sistine Chapel in terms of human tragedy.
“I understand.” She smiled to show there were no hard feelings. “Why don’t I give you cash for two nights? Will that cover it?”
Another yawn. “We need to swipe the card. It’s policy.”
This had been the end of the matter at the last two motels. The insurmountable brick wall that sent her scurrying back to the Tercel with her tail between her legs. But not this time, buddy.
She was at the end of her rope. In the last twenty-four hours, she’d taken her final nursing exam, tapped into her precious secret savings and bought the lemon that passed for a car, driven and hidden said car near campus, then walked back to the used car lot and driven her Mercedes home. There, she’d stayed in her room while Kareem threw himself an impromptu and celebratory dinner party following his acquittal on money-laundering charges, stayed in her room a little while longer while the DEA raided and tossed the house, left her husband for good, and spent the last couple of hours driving around, trying to find a motel that didn’t require a credit card and also wouldn’t subject her to devouring by bedbugs.
It was late, and she was beyond exhausted, physically and emotionally.
This fool was not going to keep her from getting a room.
Anyway, he was only a man who had no idea who he was dealing with. Kira was a pro. Hadn’t she just spent the last several months matching wits with a sociopath?
So, she planted her elbows on the counter, leaned in, smiled ruefully, and turned on the charm, calling on an inner light that didn’t much feel like shining at the moment. He noticed.
A telltale flush crept over his cheeks, and his watery hazel eyes brightened with interest before dipping to where her coat gaped open over her chest. She could have told him she didn’t have any cleavage worth ogling, but why bother?
“I’m really sorry,” she murmured. “I know it’s late, and you’ve probably had a long day, and you’re only doing your job.” Here she paused to fix him with a look of worshipful hope, as though only he and, possibly, Jesus himself, could save her now. “But I’m really in a tight spot here, and I swear I won’t be any trouble. Please help me. Please.”
As luck would have it, another wave of dizziness hit, forcing her to close her eyes and hang on until it passed.
“You okay?”
“I need to eat something,” she lied. “Can I stay?”
A touch of dimples bracketed his mouth, but he didn’t flash the whole smile, because he knew he’d been managed. “Yeah. You can stay. Just don’t make me regret it. Last time I bent the rules, a crazy woman let her Chihuahua poop all over the floor.”
“You won’t. I promise,” Kira swore.
And she handed over the money, already wondering how she could keep Max from barking long enough to smuggle him up to her room.
Chapter 3
“This is your room, Randolph.”
Kerry Randolph followed the marshal across the suite and peered over his shoulder into the second bedroom. Bed, dual nightstands, desk, dresser, corner chair.
Home sweet home.
Nothing but the best for protected witnesses like him, no siree.
“Everything look okay?” Assistant US attorney Jayne Morrison, his new BFF, waited in the living room, watching as he dumped his duffel bag on the bed and came back. “Need anything before I leave?”
Huh. Funny. He had a comedienne on his hands.
“Yeah.” With so many other battles to fight these days, he didn’t bother trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I need some branch of the feds to assassinate Kareem Gregory for me. So I don’t have to spend the rest of my life in hiding with the marshals.” He shot an apologetic glance at the nearest marshal; was that Seth or Joel? Pretty soon he’d have to trouble himself to learn their names, especially since they’d be spending so much quality time together. Seth was the brother. That was it. Joel was the blond. “No offense.”
Seth pulled a hurt face that was as fake as the so-called crab they’d had in the Chinese food they’d eaten for dinner tonight. For dramatic effect, he put his hand over his heart as though he’d been gravely wounded. “Gee. You really know how to hurt a guy. We can’t think of anything we’d rather do than spend the rest of our lives with you, keeping you safe from harm and making sure you’re tucked in bed nice and cozy at night, Randolph. Or do you prefer ‘doctor’?”
Joel, who was over at the minibar examining the candy bars with clear disappointment, snorted.
Doctor. Right. Like Kerry wanted the reminder of the chance he’d squandered.
“I’d prefer for you to go fuck yourself, my brother,” Kerry said.
“Oh, no.” Joel selected a Baby Ruth candy bar, tore off the wrapper, and bit it in half. “The witness is mad at you, Seth. How will you live with the pain?”
“Can you clowns play nice for three seconds, please?” Jayne, now looking as surly as she did exhausted, shot them all a warning glance. “You don’t get paid if you kill the witness you’re supposed to be protecting. And for future reference, Randolph, I work for the government. So when I ask you if everything looks okay, the only correct answers are yes or can you please bring me a magazine? Anything else is above my pay grade. Got it?”
Kerry had to smile. He liked Jayne, even if she had grilled the hell out of him at their meeting earlier. Kerry just prayed he’d produced enough useful information about Kareem Gregory’s empire to earn himself immunity from prosecution and a permanent place in WITSEC, somewhere far, far away from Cincinnati and Kareem Gregory.
“Got it,” Kerry told Jayne. “What now?”
“Well, since it’s damn near two in the morning, how about I go home and go to bed, and you three get some sleep. Tomorrow, assuming the three of you make it through the night without bloodshed, we reconvene and continue our fascinating discussion of all things Kareem Gregory. Get you ready for your grand jury testimony. We covered this.”
“Right.”
The hesitation was not lost on Jayne, who seemed to know he had something else on his mind. With a quick glance at Seth and Joel, who were in the middle of an animated discussion about who deserved the single package of nacho-cheese-flavored Doritos on the minibar, she took Kerry’s elbow and steered him over to the window for a private word.
“What’s up? Don’t tell me the accommodations aren’t up to your normal five-star standards.”
Actually, they weren’t. This perfectly nice hotel was a dump, relatively speaking. His bachelor’s paradise apartment, on the other hand, with its black leather furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows, and chrome, was heaven, but heaven was gone forever, at least for him. Oh, but there was more. The modern art he’d studied and collected: also gone. Buh-bye. The luxury sheets, computer gadgets, and designer shoes—man, he liked nice shoes. Lost forever, all of them.
Adios. Sayonara. Aloha.
He’d tried to make peace with all of that when he made the phone call and snitched on his boss. There was nothing tricky about it: if you tattle on your boss, and your boss is a drug kingpin, you go into WITSEC and pray the marshals are good at their jobs, which is keeping you alive. Actually, he needed to back up and look at it from the beginning: when you’re stupid enough to sign away your s
oul, lie down with the devil, and sell drugs to your people, you’re a parasite whose life and possessions are forfeit.
Simple, right?
But it was still hard, man. The loss of control. The uncertainty. The fear.
“It’s fine,” he told Jayne.
If the crease between her brows was any indication, she didn’t believe him for a second, but a distraction arrived in the form of his favorite DEA agent, Dexter Brady, whom one of the marshals let into the suite. Brady was his contact. He was Brady’s confidential informant, affectionately known as snitch. They were a team of sorts, like Sonny and Cher or gas and diarrhea. And it was his fondest wish, once he’d testified and disappeared into the WITSEC woodwork forever, to never see the sanctimonious and judgmental bitch again.
For now, though, they needed each other.
After saying hellos all around, Brady walked over. The brother was looking the worse for the wear, no question. Eyes bleary and bloodshot, the scruff of a beard that didn’t want to wait until morning to appear, the feral alertness of a man obsessed with a single goal and willing to go to extreme lengths, like not eating or sleeping ever again, to achieve it.
Kareem Gregory.
It was all about getting Kareem Gregory—for good—no matter what it took.
The two men stared at each other while Jayne slipped away, giving them a minute. There was no need for preamble or yackety-yack, not when Kerry’s entire life hung in the balance. If things had gone well, Kerry had the protection of the US government backing him up. If they hadn’t, he was shit out of luck. Simple.
“How’d it go?” Kerry asked with the scratchy remainder of his voice.
There was only one it in question: the raid of one of Kareem’s warehouses based on a tip that Kerry had phoned in that morning. Before making the call, Kerry had personally seen kilos and kilos of the Mexicans’ finest there, just waiting to be distributed, but Kareem was a sneaky bastard, so there was no telling what tricks he’d pull. For all Kerry knew, Kareem had pulled another rabbit out of his hat and smuggled the shit out the back door while the DEA was breaking down the front.
By way of answer, Brady cracked the beginnings of a smile and held out his hand, something he’d never done before. Kerry liked to think of himself as a cool cat in any situation, but he blinked down at those fingers, wondering if maybe there were explosive devices embedded under the nails.
The gesture would need some clarification, and Brady complied.
“Two hundred fifty kilos,” he said.
Kerry blinked again, his mind racing. “Don’t fuck with me,” he warned.
Brady kept that hand out there, insistent now. “Thank you.”
Stunned, he reached out and shook. Brady slapped him on the back with his free hand, and then, the next thing he knew, they were hugging with the fearsome grip of two soldiers who’d made it off the battlefield alive. This time.
Pulling back, Kerry tried to wrap his mind around this much good fortune and asked a few more outstanding questions.
“Did you pick him up?”
“Oh yeah.” Brady grinned with wicked delight. “Your old boss Kareem was throwing himself a little dinner party celebration. We hated to break down the front door and ruin the festivities, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
“Did he go quietly?”
That killed Brady’s grin. “Not exactly. And he suspects you were the one who flipped.”
Kerry popped his mouth open in a disbelieving look as exaggerated as he could make it. “Holy cluster fuck, Batman! You don’t say!”
Brady ignored the sarcasm. “Apparently your absence from the dinner party made him a little suspicious. So our friend Kareem is not a happy camper right now.”
“Where is he?”
“I just came from his processing downtown. He’s cooling his heels in a cell until his arraignment in the morning.”
“What, with the regular criminals? Poor Kareem. What if someone barfs on his wingtips? He’s not used to mingling.”
“True.”
It would have been nice to revel in poor Kareem images for a while longer—Kareem using the communal toilet in front of an avid audience, for example—but the full impact of the situation was beginning to hit Kerry in all its sickening clarity.
Kareem now realized that Kerry, the man who knew where all the skeletons were hidden, had flipped on him. And, swear to God, Kerry could almost feel the gathering clouds of rage, as though the worst Category 5 known to man, Hurricane Kareem, was gaining strength and heading straight for him.
Kareem’s retribution, or at least a mighty attempt at retribution, was inevitable. Why? Well, Kerry had watched Kareem shoot Yogi, another lieutenant, in the back of the head on account of an imagined betrayal. Hmm ... what else? Oh, yeah. He’d seen Kareem at his weakest, drunk and sniveling among the designer clothes in his walk-in closet, doing a whole lot of woe-is-me because he wanted his wife to love him, and she didn’t.
Memories of that ugly interlude two nights ago knotted and congealed in Kerry’s gut. He remembered the tears, yeah, and his own rage and shame, because he had, once again, let Kareem get away with the unspeakable.
Most of all, he remembered the blood....
“How is Kira?” he blurted before he could think to stop himself.
It didn’t take long for the third degree to begin. “Mrs. Gregory?” Brady’s expression was about what Kerry expected to see on a tiger lunging for a monkey in a tree, and his shrewd gaze locked tighter on his face. “Why do you ask about her?”
With difficulty, Kerry yanked back his straining emotions and put them on a reinforced leash, where they belonged. “She’s a nice lady. I don’t think she deserves what she’s gotten in the husband department—you know what I mean?”
This perfectly logical explanation seemed to do a big fat zero in terms of quashing Brady’s interest. “True. But Wanda Gregory was there, too, and I don’t hear you asking about her. She didn’t deserve to see her son dragged away in handcuffs—”
“Actually,” Kerry interrupted, “I think she did. I think she knows exactly what kind of son she raised, and I think she deserved this as much as he did.”
“Maybe.” Brady shrugged, showing negligible interest in Kareem’s dear old mom. “But you didn’t ask about her. You asked about Mrs. Gregory. And I’m wondering why.”
Kerry hit his limit. It was late, he was exhausted, and he didn’t have to submit to this verbal equivalent of a prostate exam. Not from Brady. Not from anyone, come to think of it, which was pretty funny. He supposed the one good thing that came out of his association with Kareem Gregory was that everyone else in the world seemed like a teddy bear in comparison.
“It’s an easy question, Brady.” He didn’t bother keeping the rough edge of annoyance out of his voice. “How’s she doing? What happened to her?”
Brady studied him long. Hard. Took his sweet time about answering, then took a little longer. “Funny you should ask. She packed her bag and walked out on our friend.”
In a day full of extraordinary events, this was the cherry on top, and Kerry couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping. Brady was still up in his grill, though, and he needed to take a minute. So he turned and walked to the window. Stared at the closed curtain. Came back and tried to think of a question that wouldn’t be a dead giveaway to things that needed to stay hidden forever.
“You serious?”
“As a federal indictment on major distribution charges, yeah.”
“I never thought that would happen,” Kerry said, another one of those ill-conceived admissions he really wished he hadn’t said.
Brady’s eyes went flat. Dark. Impenetrable. “You don’t say.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I have no idea.” Brady’s jaw tightened with grim determination. “But I intend to find out.”
Chapter 4
“I need a minute.” Brady walked into the second bedroom of the suite and shut the door in the bemused faces of the mars
hals, feeling unaccountably surly, which was ridiculous. After years of hard work and sacrifice on the part of his team, they finally had Kareem Gregory dead to rights on major federal charges. He was in jail, where he belonged, and would hopefully stay there for the indefinite future. Forfeiture proceedings were already in the works. They’d seized several of Kareem’s cars already, and could soon have his million-dollar house as well.
Even better, one of Brady’s men, Jackson Parker, had escaped Gregory’s vengeance and would soon be relocated to Panama City, where he’d be safe from the long arms of Kareem’s organization. Best of all, Brady had had the intense, orgasmic, euphoric pleasure of seeing fear in Kareem’s face for the first time ever. He’d seen reluctant respect in Gregory’s eyes tonight, and it was a beautiful thing.
His world should be wall-to-wall roses, rainbows, and dancing ponies.
So why did he want to smash his fist through the nearest wall?
The truth was, something about the way Kerry Randolph asked about Mrs. Gregory just now rubbed him the wrong way. Looked like the snitch had a thing for the drug lord’s wife. Wasn’t that ... fascinating? And wasn’t Kerry stupid? Having a thing for your boss’s wife is always a stupid idea, but when your boss is a major drug kingpin, it’s downright suicidal.
Still, he could understand Kerry’s infatuation with the beautiful Mrs. Gregory. She was really ... really ... Nah. He wouldn’t go there.
Didn’t want to go there.
The thing was, though, he didn’t like the idea of Kerry sniffing around Mrs. Gregory. Which had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the snarling, seething, primal mass of feeling in his gut.
Oh, yes. Mrs. Gregory had an undeniable effect on men. Yes siree.
Not that her effect on Kerry was any of his business. So he’d let that go.
There. See? He’d forgotten her already.
The issue of her whereabouts was still outstanding, though.
To his utter astonishment, she’d walked out on Kareem earlier tonight, just as Brady and his team were finishing their search of Kareem’s Architectural Digest–worthy mansion. Well, he wasn’t entirely surprised she was leaving Gregory. Hadn’t she come to Brady for help on several occasions? Hadn’t she told him she wanted to leave her maniac of a husband but was afraid of what he’d do when she did? So, yeah, the Gregorys’ pending separation wasn’t a surprise to him even if it had been to Kareem.
Deadly Desires Page 2
