Blue Blooded

by Shelly Bell

  His gaze fell to Walter. “That’s a nice dog you got there.”

  She took the leash from Logan and offered it to Morrie. “He’s looking for a new home. I don’t suppose he could live with you, could he?”

  Morrie’s eyes glistened and his hands shook as he accepted the leash. “Ever since my dog, Rocky, passed, I’ve been wanting a new friend. Got bags of dog food and brand-new chew toys that Rocky never got to enjoy.” His voice wavered. “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” she said, looking at Walter wistfully. As much as she had already become attached to Walter, he’d be better off with someone who didn’t work long hours . . . or have the FBI in pursuit. “It’s too dangerous to take him with us.”

  Morrie grabbed her wrist. “They’re after you, aren’t they?”

  She gasped, wondering if he recognized her and Logan from the news. “Who do you mean?”

  His eyes widened and his lips trembled. “The aliens. Do they want you to go back to Vietnam too?”

  Her heart broke for him. “No. No one’s after us. We just need to borrow Joe’s car for a couple of days.” She threw her arms around the old man. “I promise you, the aliens will never take you back to Vietnam.”

  He sighed and pulled away, his head hanging as he shuffled toward his house. “I can’t escape. They take me there every night.”

  Logan brushed his knuckles down the apple of her cheek. “Hey, he’ll be okay. He’s got Walter now, and Joe wouldn’t have suggested it if he didn’t think he’d give Walter a good home. But right now, we need to go before the FBI figure out we aren’t in the car with Joe.”

  She nodded, trying to smile, but she just couldn’t make herself do it. She gave him the keys and hopped up into the passenger side of the truck.

  She held her breath until they made it onto the highway without incident. In less than two hours, they’d make it to the port. She didn’t know what they’d find there, but she did know one thing.

  If they didn’t find Leopold, they’d lose the one lead they had to prove their innocence.

  Chapter Thirteen

  RACHEL WOULD’VE THOUGHT there’d be a breeze coming off the water of the port, but the air was stagnant and humid, and the afternoon sun beat down on them with its relentless heat. She could barely smell the salt of the ocean underneath the heavy scent of motor oil and car fumes. Sweat collected on the nape of her neck, and if there was one thing she hated, it was sweat.

  At least outside the bedroom.

  Her stomach cramped from anxiety, and she silently cursed the gas station hot dog and slushie she’d eaten for lunch. Without knowing what or whom to look for, they were running blind. It wasn’t as if they could start asking around, or they’d draw attention to themselves. At this point, their only hope was to find Evans and Fink and spy on them in order to discover what they were up to without getting caught. Of course, since she and Logan couldn’t exactly show their IDs at the staffed access-control gate, they’d parked off-site and hiked it. Unfortunately, there were several fenced-in restricted areas that not only required an ID, but a port-issued badge. Not to mention, the entire port was monitored by security cameras.

  It would’ve been better if she and Logan were armed with more information than the word Leopold. Were they about to stop a murder? She shook her head, pursing her lips. The area was too busy and exposed for that. The agents couldn’t risk any witnesses.

  She hadn’t felt this helpless and ill-informed since she’d lived with her parents. Once she’d gotten access to the Internet in college, it was as if the whole world opened up to her. While other students had complained about the amount of homework, she’d spent countless hours online sifting through websites, from international news sites to Bloomingdale’s. She’d read about other religions and crammed in as much as she could in a short period of time in order to catch up to her peers.

  There was no question she was book smart, but she’d lacked street smarts. She hadn’t known how to react when her roommate had woken her up at three in the morning having sex with her boyfriend on the bunk above her. Or when she attended her first party and she didn’t know not to accept drinks from strangers and ended up in the hospital after imbibing a drink laced with Rohypnol. There were times she wanted to give up and return home to her parents, and others when she wanted to curl up in her bed and forgo any social interaction. But she hadn’t. Instead, hungry for knowledge, she’d immersed herself in every possible experience.

  As an investigative reporter, she had access to databases and dozens of contacts for finding the information. Now it was as if she was going through withdrawals, her hands shaky from the lack of technology at her fingertips. Joe’s old truck picked up only AM radio stations, and there was very little news about the manhunt for them, the reports simply replaying the same bogus sightings and the FBI’s official statement.

  They walked to a sanctioned public viewing area where they could get a good look at the port. In addition to the gigantic cruise ships, several cargo ships were docked. Using forklifts and cranes, the workers at the port busily loaded and unloaded crates, oblivious to the unknown danger that lurked within the gates. “So what’s the plan?” she asked Logan, hoping he’d come up with something better than hanging around the perimeter and hoping they spotted something or someone marked “Leopold.”

  Logan scratched his scruffy cheek, looking sheepish. “Before you came downstairs this morning, I put in a call to some friends of mine to check the inventory of the cargo ships. Once they had the results, they were going to send it to a secured e-mail that I can access from my phone.”

  She crossed her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me this before now? Didn’t you trust me?”

  He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun. “It had nothing to do with trust. I just figured I’d tell you if they found anything.”

  She bit her lip, knowing now was not the time to have this kind of conversation. But after accusing her this morning of tipping off the Feds and withholding this information from her, she couldn’t help feeling slighted. “So your friends are hackers? Like you?”

  He shook his head. “Better than me. I served with them in the army’s intelligence unit. I’m good, but there’s nothing they can’t hack.” He opened an app on his phone. “Once they figured out which cargo ships were arriving at one today, my friends accessed those ships’ records. All the ships are required to have documentation of what’s on board, especially if it’s international cargo. Then it has to go through customs.”

  She moved closer to him, trying to make out what he was reading on the screen. “Do you see anything?”

  He looked up at her. “There are only two ships that arrived at one. Both of them were scheduled to dock at the cargo terminal yard a few blocks away from us. They guys didn’t find anything called Leopold.”

  Of course not. That would be too easy. “What did the ships have on them?”

  He took her hand and steered her in the direction of the cargo terminal yard. “The Triple Green carried fruit from South America, and the Media Congo originated from the Democratic Republic of Congo with copper and inorganic chemicals.”

  Fruit and copper? What was so special about that? “So what are Fink and Evans doing here? Maybe the South American ship was carrying drugs? Or the African ship was smuggling diamonds?”

  “Only one way to know.” He pointed at the fenced-in yard. “We’ve got to get in there and find them.”

  He was crazy. The port had security monitoring almost every portion of the property. “And how are we going to do that?”

  He held up his phone and waved it in front of her. “We’re going to jam the camera feeds by disrupting the signal. My app will jam every camera within thirty meters and play the previous few minutes of video on a loop. But we’ll need to move quickly and stay out of sight as much as possible.” They stopped in front of the fence, and he squeezed her hand. “Ready?”

  She tilted her head back. “That’s a really high fence.”

/>   He frowned. “Rach, can you climb a fence?”

  She shrugged. There weren’t many opportunities for climbing fences in her childhood, but she couldn’t imagine it was too difficult. “I’ve never tried. Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  Logan played with his phone. When he was done, he began to climb. “Come on. We’ve only got a couple minutes to get over the fence.”

  She grabbed on to the fence and lifted herself up, sticking her feet into the holes. Then she hoisted herself higher and higher until she came to the top. She got into a squat and turned herself around, creeping down the other side of the fence. With Logan waiting for her on the ground, she released her grip on the fence and jumped down.

  “Not bad for your first time,” Logan said with a grin. He took her hand and pulled her between the high towers of shipping containers. “This way toward the ships.”

  They ran down the aisle, the noises of the port getting louder and louder the closer she and Logan got to the water. Her heart thudded against her chest, adrenaline shooting through her. At the end of the aisle, they stopped and peered out onto the dock. Workers unloaded crates and containers from the large white ship marked Media Congo.

  Logan nudged her and pointed to the left of the ship. “There they are.”

  Inconspicuously dressed in dark business suits, Evans was shaking the hand of a customs agent as Fink bent to pick up a slim green tubular object. Then they strode away, heading in the direction of her and Logan.

  She couldn’t make out the green object. “What is Fink carrying?”

  His brows wrinkled. “It looks like a gas canister.” As the agents moved closer, Logan grabbed her hand and pulled her back, flattening them against the shipping container.

  “You think they saw us?” she asked.

  “FBI! Freeze!” one of the agents shouted.

  “I’d say that’s a yes,” Logan said. “Run!”

  Trapped between the rows of shipping containers, they raced up the aisle. It wasn’t as if the agents would shoot them in the back in front of witnesses. Then again, she and Logan were two of the most wanted people in the country right now and allegedly armed and dangerous. It’s possible no one would bat an eye if an FBI agent shot and killed them during capture.

  The booming noises of guns firing startled her, causing her to stumble.

  “They want us dead,” she said breathlessly, wishing she’d taken a spinning class rather than Pilates. The reality of the situation crashed into her. They weren’t going to arrest her. There’d be no opportunity to prove her innocence. No trial. The agents needed to pin Rinaldi’s murder on her and Logan. Evans and Fink couldn’t afford the risk of them telling the authorities what they had witnessed.

  “Really? I couldn’t tell by the bullets flying at us,” Logan quipped.

  Looking over her shoulder at the agents, she tripped and fell forward, smacking her hands and knees on the ground. “Logan!”

  From ten yards ahead, Logan stopped and turned around, his eyes wide with fear. He raced toward her.

  Her heart jumped into her throat, beating faster than she would’ve thought possible, and her breath caught in her chest. She’d always wondered if what they said about life passing before your eyes was true.

  It wasn’t.

  The only thing going through her mind at the moment was how angry she’d be if the sons of bitches got away with her murder.

  A sadistic smile spread across Evans’s face as he raised his arm and aimed for her head. She winced, anticipating the kill shot and hoping it wouldn’t hurt.

  Logan bent and grabbed her from under her arms, heaving her to her feet and yanking her away just as a bullet pinged by and embedded itself in a nearby container. He flung himself in front of her, a gun suddenly in his hands. “Go,” he shouted. “I’ll meet up with you.”

  It was a suicide mission. If he stayed, she’d never again see him alive.

  She wouldn’t leave without him.

  Fink shouted at Evans. “We’re not supposed to be here. If you shoot them, we’ll have to answer questions, and we’ll never make it on time for Friday. We’ve got to let them go.”

  Evans kept his arm raised, a scowl on his face. The second he holstered his gun, she and Logan took off, not waiting around for him to change his mind. With trembling hands, she climbed back over the fence.

  She and Logan returned to the truck and sped away, neither of them speaking about how close they’d come to dying.

  Logan drove south, taking them onto the crowded highway where they could disappear into the chaos of Miami traffic.

  The adrenaline from the past couple of hours wore off, leaving her hungry and restless. She rested her head against the glass and peered at Logan. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I’m going to find us a hotel to stay at for the night.”

  “What if someone recognizes us?”

  His lips quirked up. “The kind of place we’ll be staying at won’t ask any questions.”

  She lifted her head and tapped her nails on the window. “Ew, we’re going to stay at one of those rent-by-the-hour places, aren’t we? Have you seen those exposés on what shows up on ultraviolet light in hotel rooms? Not to mention the bedbugs. If they grow mosquitoes that large down here, how big you think the bedbugs will be?”

  Cocking a brow, he glanced at her. “Well, if you’d rather skip the hotel, we can camp outside somewhere. They don’t have as many gators or black panthers down in these parts.”

  As many? One gator or panther was one too many for her.

  “Evans had mentioned the target is in Las Vegas on Friday,” she reminded Logan, recalling the conversation they’d overheard after Rinaldi was killed. And Fink had mentioned Friday again today. “That only gives us a couple of days to get there and stop whatever the hell they’re planning.” She paused. “What do you think is in that gas tank?”

  “I wish I knew. But whatever it is, it can’t be good, especially coupled with the word target.”

  “Maybe a weapon?” she said, theorizing. “But what kind of weapon could you get from the Congo that you couldn’t get anywhere else? And why hide it in a gas canister?”

  “Because all ships have canisters of oxygen on them in case of emergency.” Logan glanced at her. “Either someone slipped something inside it, or they exchanged one canister for another.”

  After an hour without incident, they pulled into the parking lot of a decrepit motel, the sign in front advertising rooms for ten dollars an hour and ninety-nine-cent shrimp cocktails.

  While Logan went to check in, she sat in the truck, her gaze darting to every slam of a door and to every car that drove by. She kept waiting for the agents to arrive and finish what they started.

  For some morbid reason, she wondered if anyone would really mourn her if she died.

  Would her parents? Or had they already mourned the daughter they had lost?

  She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose to ward off the tears. She would not die. They’d figure it out, and when they did, she’d return to her real life, where she wouldn’t feel so helpless.

  A sudden knocking on the window ripped her from her thoughts and sent her pulse skittering. She snapped her head to the right and sighed in relief at the sight of Logan holding a key in his hand. After she caught her breath, she got out of the car.

  “We’re in room seven,” Logan said, dropping the key into her waiting palm. “I’m going to go get some supplies.”

  As he headed off to the store across the street, she found their room and got her first look at where they’d be spending the night. It was small, but then again, how much space did they need? It had everything she required—a shower and a television. She tried to ignore the single bed in the middle of the room and the fact that once again, she and Logan would have to share it. This time, though, he’d just have to accept she wasn’t going to sleep more than a couple of hours because there was no way she’d allow a repeat of last night.

  Besi
des, he’d left his rope and the bandanas at Joe’s, so there’d be no tying her to the bedposts tonight. Not that this bed even had posts or a headboard to tie them to.

  Settling on the bed, she switched on the television and flipped the channels to her favorite cable news station.

  It didn’t take more than a minute before her and Logan’s photographs flashed across the screen. At least they’d used her publicity shot. Logan’s photo was of him in his army uniform, his youthful face free of hair and the lines of hard experience that roughened his appearance now. His eyes were different then too. Less guarded. Less . . . haunted. Since she’d known him for only a year, she had no foundation for what he was like before he’d joined the army, but she’d interviewed several men and women who had served, and they had all acknowledged a loss of innocence that had nothing to do with age.

  The news anchor reported an exclusive from someone “close” to Rachel, who alleged Rachel was having an affair with both Rinaldi and Logan. The anchor and two other guests debated the validity of the story, one of the guests proposing Logan may have killed Rinaldi in a jealous rage.

  Rachel chuckled, wondering who claimed to have inside knowledge into Rachel’s love life. The jealous-lover theory made for a great news clip, but as soon as the FBI dug into her history, it would deflate like a soufflé taken out of the oven too early. She wouldn’t have slept with Rinaldi even if he’d promised her an exclusive that would’ve won her a Pulitzer. The man had tortured and murdered numerous women then buried them in the woods behind his cabin.

  Even she had some standards.

  A firm knock shook the door. She slid off the bed and checked the peephole before opening it. Carrying two brown bags, Logan strode into the room and dropped them on the floor beside the air-conditioning unit.

  Logan kicked off his shoes and picked up one of the bags, bringing it with him to sit next to her on the bed. He motioned to the television. “Anything good on?”

  She laughed. “Us. Did you know we’ve managed to rob three different gas stations from New York to Texas? And that I was having an affair with both you and Rinaldi, so you killed him in a jealous rage? I can’t believe they’re reporting this crap.”