Relentless

by Leigh, Jo

  The reminder got her moving. She stepped out of the car, then decided not to make any phone calls from the street. Even though her cell couldn’t be traced, she knew enough about microphones that she didn’t dare talk in public. Hell, after what had happened to Christie, she knew talking in private wasn’t safe, either.

  She thought about Christie, and how Omicron had tormented her. One of the agents had dated her, then stalked her for months. She’d lost her job, her money, almost her sanity. All because she was Nate Pratchett’s sister. Nate, who’d been Kate’s go-to guy in Kosovo, had been in hiding. Everyone, including his sister, including Kate, had thought he was dead. But he’d been spending his time finding out who was involved in the Kosovo killings.

  She wished Nate were here now. Nate, Seth, Boone and Cade, her Delta Force soldiers, all were in hiding. Nate and Seth were in Los Angeles, Boone was in Wyoming with Christie, and Cade was in Colorado, living in a safe house where they could all hide if they had to and listening in on the operations of a small Omicron office outside of Colorado Springs.

  Kate headed inside to the ugly efficiency apartment she’d rented under yet another assumed name. The smell of unwashed bodies and weed filled the dim hall, and for once, she didn’t mind.

  * * * * *

  VINCE WAITED IN the manager’s office, shifting on the too-small chair, willing himself to chill. The guy, name of Tyson, was prissy and nervous and Vince needed his help. It turned out he wasn’t sure who had been assigned to stock Tim’s bar, and he had to go find the paperwork.

  The office gave him no easy distractions—it was as prim as the man who occupied it. The chairs were like something out of a Victorian sitting room, too delicate for a man Vince’s size. The art was all landscapes, the lamps had little beads on the shades and the whole office smelled like his grandmother’s bedroom.

  He tried to regret smashing Baker in the face but couldn’t. Then he tried to figure out which gang was most likely to have wanted Tim dead, but that just made him fidget more.

  Finally, he stood. At least he wouldn’t break the chair. He walked over to the window and looked out. It was gloomy, a typical November day for Los Angeles. At least there was no snow. He’d grown up in South Dakota, and he’d seen enough snow there to last two lifetimes.

  He was on the third floor, and from this corner window he could see a couple of patrol cars. More interesting was the vendor, selling fish tacos and horchata, standing by the front entrance. He’d probably witnessed the gunmen enter the hotel, although he’d probably be too scared to be of any help.

  “Detective Yarrow.”

  Vince turned. Tyson walked in with two manila folders.

  “The woman taking care of the fourteenth floor is Kate Rydell. I’ve asked her supervisor to bring her here.”

  “Great.” He nodded at the folders. “May I take a look?”

  The man handed them over, and Vince turned slightly, giving the manager more of his back, hoping he’d catch the hint.

  In the folder, he found Rydell’s work application along with a very blurry copy of her driver’s license. Shit, he couldn’t get anything from the picture at all. It was even hard to make out the license number or the salient facts. Squinting, he saw that she was five-eight, one hundred eighteen pounds, and had brown hair and eyes. That wouldn’t get him far. “I’ll need copies,” he said, not bothering to turn. He checked her license address against the application information. They were the same. Her work history was just about what he expected. Hotel service, waitress. High school education.

  He heard the manager behind him and handed him the first folder. “Do you have surveillance cameras?”

  “In the lobby and in the garage.”

  “I’ll need them.”

  “Why don’t you come with me. You can watch the tapes while I get the photocopies. We can wait for Ms. Rydell in the security office.”

  Luckily, the woman who was in charge of security for the hotel thought on her feet. She’d already taken out the tapes from this morning and queued them for duplication. Her name was Phyllis Samms, and from what he could see she was a regular on the weight machines. He’d hate to run into her in a dark alley.

  Even her handshake was muscular. “I’ve got them ready,” she said, pointing to a chair. He sat down. “I couldn’t find your shooter in the lobby. Maybe your people will have more luck. However, there are some interesting shots in the garage.”

  She sat next to him and pressed the remote. The camera angle wasn’t good—it was aimed more for identifying cars than people. Someone would have to look up in order for him to get a good face shot. Phyllis was right, there were some interesting shots. Two guys in big coats with hoods ran out at eleven-seventeen. He couldn’t see who they were, not even tats, but he’d take the tape and let the lab boys go to town. They’d find something.

  The bangers didn’t get in a car. Instead they ran out of camera range.

  As Phyllis went to stop the tape, Vince shook his head. He kept watching. A couple of businessmen came out, got into their cars. A hotel employee, a male, came out for a cigarette. Then nothing until a police car came in, followed by an ambulance.

  He watched as his own unmarked car entered the garage. Jeff got out, then he did, and they walked right into the building.

  Nothing except cops and EMTs and then, a woman. She was in a blue uniform and she had dark hair. Slim, tall—it had to be Kate Rydell.

  She glanced at the official vehicles, then walked calmly to her car, a beat-up old Toyota Celica. Nothing about her was rushed or panicked. Still, she wasn’t wearing a coat, which told him she hadn’t stopped to clock out or to go to her locker. She got her keys out of her pocket and opened her door.

  That’s when he saw her face. It was nothing like the picture on her driver’s license. Even though the security camera wasn’t the best, he could see she was a very attractive woman. Her hair had been pulled back, so he got a pretty decent look. She didn’t seem like a room service employee. Not with those cheekbones.

  “You know her?” he asked Phyllis.

  “Not really. I’ve seen her around, but we’ve never talked.”

  “No?”

  “She kept to herself. I’ve never seen her with anyone. Expect maybe Ellen.”

  Vince got out his notebook. “Ellen?”

  While Phyllis gave him the details about the housekeeper, he thought about Kate Rydell. She must have known something about the gangbangers who’d killed Tim. She’d gotten out so damn fast, he knew she was running, that she didn’t want anyone to know she’d seen the whole thing. She wasn’t about to cooperate, not willingly. But in the end, she would. He’d make sure of that.

  Chapter 2

  The motel was as nondescript as its name. The Sleep Inn had only twenty rooms, and the one she requested was on the second floor, on the end, with windows facing the parking lot and Van Nuys Boulevard

  . It cost thirty-nine dollars plus tax a night.

  She put the cardboard box on the small round table and looked around the room. A double bed with an ugly green bedspread, a TV bolted to a squat dresser. A phone she wouldn’t use. The carpet was worn and seemed recently vacuumed. The sink tile was cracked, but the water pressure wasn’t bad. She’d stayed in worse places. Lots worse.

  For the first time since she’d witnessed the murder, she let herself take a moment. In the past two hours she’d packed, loaded her car and gone by several other motels until she’d found this one. It was far enough from her old apartment that she felt relatively safe, but not so far she couldn’t hook up with the others.

  Seth and Nate were working on something big, tailing some high-level employee of Omicron—that was when they weren’t trying to earn a living with their private security business. They’d both been surveillance experts in Kosovo. When they’d gotten back, they’d spent every last cent setting up a trauma room in Harper’s basement. Just in case. Not only couldn’t they get regular jobs any longer, they couldn’t do half the things norm
al people took for granted. Go to a hospital, for example. At least not for the kinds of injuries they were likely to get fighting Omicron. Even she’d had to learn to shoot, and Kate had always hated guns.

  Harper worked at the free clinic in Boyle Heights, but she was always on call in case anything happened to any member of the team. They hadn’t had to use her services so far. She had been one of the doctors for the U.N. staff Kate had met in Kosovo. Harper had seen firsthand what Omicron had created in the Balkans. It had been her misfortune to be taken to the remote Serbian village that had been the testing ground for the gas. A nurses’ aide hadn’t been able to reach her family, so she’d asked Harper to drive with her to her home town. Everyone there was dead. Men, women, children. A town full of life, wiped out in one awful morning.

  Then Kate had met Tamara, a chemist who thought she’d been working to eliminate biological and chemical weapons, but in truth Omicron had tricked her and a lot of other scientists into creating a chemical agent of unimaginable horror. Tam had rebelled, and now she was one of them. One of the six who were hunted.

  But Kate hadn’t talked to either of the women in a long time. She was too busy trying to earn a living and trying to make sense of the poor photocopies from Kosovo. Her days swam by in dread and tedium. The fear never left. Never. It had become her second heartbeat. Now this.

  She didn’t have enough horror in her life? She would have screamed her outrage if she thought it would do any good. That poor man in the hotel, to die such an ugly death. She wondered if he’d been married. If he had children.

  She got her cell from her purse and dialed Nate’s number. It rang twice.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got trouble.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not Omicron. But it’s bad. I witnessed a murder today at the hotel.”

  “Shit. Where are you now?”

  “At a motel in Reseda. I got out, left the apartment. No one followed.”

  “Okay, that’s good.”

  “What’s not good is that I saw them. Gangbangers. I can identify them.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Yes, I can. I saw their faces. And the tattoos, and their weapons.”

  “Kate, you can’t. The moment you come forward, you’re dead. You know that, right?”

  “There has to be a way. I can’t just—”

  “There is no way. I’m sorry. I know this sucks, but it’s not just you. It’s all of us. We’re getting close. We can’t afford to be identified. And you have to finish the paper trail.”

  She let her head drop down, so weary she could hardly breathe. “It’s not fair.”

  “Damn straight it’s not.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’ll keep my mouth shut. There’s another problem. I didn’t get my last check. I’m really broke.”

  “Damn. We just had a major outlay of cash. Not much left in the coffers. Let me see what I can do.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you make it a week?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Sorry, kiddo. I mean it. I’ll figure something out.”

  “I appreciate it. What about getting me a new name?”

  “That, I can have for you by tomorrow. Give me a call in the morning.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She turned the phone off but didn’t move. There were clothes to hang up, her files to go through. But first, that shower she’d been aching for. There’d been a time in her life when she’d adored showers and baths. She’d indulged in every kind of ointment and bath goody she could find. She’d had something for every mood.

  Now she carried a good soap with her because her face got too dry if she used the cheap stuff. That was it. Good soap. No lotions, no salts, no special conditioning treatments. Most days it didn’t matter. But man, today she’d kill for a lavender bubble bath.

  * * * * *

  Nate disconnected and dropped the cell phone on the makeshift table in front of him. He leaned back and closed his eyes, willing himself to relax. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d had a really good night’s sleep.

  His eyes popped open, and, momentarily panicked, he looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes. He’d lost fifteen minutes.

  He stumbled to his feet and took the ten steps to the bathroom. He turned on the cold water and splashed some on his face, then dried and looked at himself in the mirror.

  He had to admit he was looking a little gaunt. Who was he kidding? He looked like crap. Would you buy a customized security system from this man?

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Several times. He actually picked up the brush and made a moderate effort to look somewhat neat.

  Kate. He had to find some way to help Kate.

  As refreshed as he was likely to get at the moment, he went back into his living room. Well, there wasn’t much he could cut back on. The only table in the room was a piece of plywood on concrete blocks. He’d gotten the mattress at Goodwill. His phone, like everybody else’s in the team, was prepaid—virtually untraceable. He’d never turned on the gas, doing all his cooking on a camp stove—on his plywood table. The couch had come with the room.

  Everything went into equipment and the needs of the team.

  He picked up his cell and dialed Seth’s. He knew the number by heart, just as he knew everyone else’s. No little scraps of paper lying about to get found later.

  “Hello?”

  “Seth. It’s Nate.”

  “Something new?”

  “Kate’s in trouble.”

  Nate could hear movement on the phone.

  “Shit. Where is she? I could be there in…”

  “Not that kind of trouble. She ran into a situation. She’s got to relocate.”

  “A-a-ah. Okay. The usual? Driver’s license, birth certificate…”

  “Yeah. Pretty quick, too. And how are you fixed for cash?”

  Seth let loose a strangled laugh. “I gave the last of it to you for that surveillance equipment. Maybe in a week.”

  Nate sighed. “Don’t sweat it. Just get to work on her new ID, would you?”

  “Sure thing. And Nate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Get some sleep.”

  * * * * *

  “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  Vince looked at Captain Emerson’s red face, and he knew he wasn’t gonna walk out of this smelling like a rose. “He accused Tim of being in bed with drug dealers.”

  “So what?”

  “It wasn’t true.”

  “Since when is that something new? He’s not just putting the assault in the paper, he’s putting it on Channel 5.”

  “How much does he want?”

  “He says he wants twenty-million. What he really wants is your badge.”

  Vince sat back in the wooden chair across from Emerson’s desk. He’d been in here a lot during his years on the force. Mostly to get chewed out. He didn’t blame the Captain for that. He had a department to run. He had people to answer to. The Captain understood, most of the time. He knew Vince did the job.

  Most cops who got involved with investigating gangs didn’t last a year. They’d transfer to anything else they could, knowing it was the most dangerous of all the details. Hell, he knew guys who would quit rather than do one day on the streets. And Vince had stuck with it for three years already. “You gonna give it to him?”

  The Captain, looking a lot older today than he had yesterday, wiped his face with the flat of his hand. “I gotta suspend you. You know that, right? I can’t just give you a slap on the wrist this time. Goddammit, Vince. You had to hit him in the face?”

  “Yeah, Captain. I did.”

  “Shit, I suppose so. I’ll do what I can to soothe some feathers, but it’s not gonna be quick. Maybe the time off will do you good.”

  Vince leaned forward. “They killed Tim. I’m not gonna let that go.”

  “You have no choice.”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it before he got in deeper.
Instead, he got out his badge and his weapon and put them on the desk. “Call me when I can come back.”

  The Captain looked at him for a long moment. “Don’t do anything stupid. Well, stupider. This may not be up to me. You got it?”

  Vince nodded as he stood, grateful it was only a suspension. “Thanks.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Nothing new there.”

  The Captain let him go. “Get out of town. Go get drunk. Get laid. Relax.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Emerson was already on the phone when Vince got to the door. The Captain had the press to deal with, and the city council and the mayor. It was all part of a thankless job, and keeping Vince’s badge was way, way down there in terms of importance. But that didn’t change things.

  There was no way in hell he was going to let this thing go. He had Kate Rydell’s address in his pocket. He’d find her, question her about what she saw, get her to testify if necessary. If it got him fired, oh, well. It was time for him to leave the job, anyway. He didn’t have the heart for it anymore.

  He walked into the squad room and to his desk. He unlocked the bottom drawer and reached far into the back, where he pulled out a black leather case. He didn’t open it until he was outside.

  Once he got in his car, he took out a badge. He wasn’t supposed to have it, let alone use it. But it went into his pocket, and the gun under his seat went into his holster. Screw it.

  * * * * *

  THE KOSOVO PAPERS on her desk beckoned, but the want ads were more important, at least for the moment. She had two sections, one for jobs and one for furnished apartments. With red pen in hand, she started with the jobs.

  The primary criterion was the invisibility factor. Room service had been great for that. She’d also been a waitress, a housekeeper and worked at a copy store. Since she’d returned from Kosovo, the one time she’d tried to do anything close to her qualifications, she’d been forced to quit, leaving the R & D company in a real bind. She wouldn’t do that again.