“This one’s similar.” Darrell picked up a five-sided box.
“Why would you want a similar… Fuck, Dazzle! Sorry, Aldric.” Sean grabbed Darrell’s arm. “Tell me you want a decoy box to take to Fuentes and let him handle this.”
“This?” Aldric asked.
Sean nodded. “I know my partner. He’s planning something crazy because Fuentes has been as useless as tits on a boar hog.”
Darrell snorted but didn’t speak.
“Like a trap?” Aldric’s mind raced as Darrell followed Sean out of the small room, arguing and persuading his partner that they should be the ones to hand the artifact over, not Aldric. Aldric locked the safe, catching references to Sean being similar in build, to a recent operation they’d pulled off and how well they worked as a team.
“We’d need to study the drop zone and we’d need backup stationed at three points,” Sean protested. “How is that gonna happen when Fuentes is ignoring this whole thing?”
“Here.” Darrell freed an old map from a rack on the wall. “You can pull up a map on your cell too and so can I.” He took out his phone.
“We’re in uniform,” Sean pointed out.
“We got clothes in the car. Come on.”
Aldric still didn’t understand when they left the store, promising to be back within minutes. He heard a buzzing noise. Darrell’s phone, left on the table, was ringing. A handsome face filled the screen. The guy Darrell had been trying to talk to at the museum. Mateo, it said. The door opened and the two men were back.
“Darrell.” Aldric indicated his phone, needing to ask about the call. About Mateo.
“Thanks.” Darrell slipped it into his pocket. “Right. We’ll change and go,” he announced.
“But…okay.” Aldric, confused, forced himself to switch tracks. “It’s the end of my hours, anyway.” And he could find a way to ask about the phone call on the journey.
“No. Not you. You’re staying here.”
Sean pulled a baseball cap low on his head. “A decoy box and a decoy courier. I dunno how you talked me into this.” He vanished into the back.
“I’m not going? But—” Aldric was still protesting when the police officers set off…which was when his stubborn streak set in.
Darrell thinks I’m weak and feeble, does he? His final words had been to keep out of sight, to stay safe. So he was supposed to hide behind closed doors, while Darrell had…adventures. Like with that Mateo guy. Well, Aldric would show him. He grabbed his jacket and keys, making sure the store’s van keys were among them, then locked up, intent on following Darrell.
Chapter Fourteen
Darrell looked at Sean out of the corners of his eyes as they walked. “Could you try to look less like a cop and more like Aldric?”
“I am a cop, and I don’t know that dude very well.” Sean slowed and glanced around. They’d left the car at the very end of the visitors’ center parking lot and were trekking the long way to the church at the back of the mission, going through the lot and past the welcome point, as if they were ordinary sightseers.
“Queen of the Missions. And second place I’ve been in a week that I went to on field trips,” Darrell said, hoping his conversation would deflect any lob before Sean served it. He didn’t want to have anything even approaching the conversation he could sense was looming on the horizon. Sure, Sean was his partner, even his buddy. But the risk of him reacting negatively to Darrell announcing yeah, I’m gay was too big to take.
“Do you? Know the guy that well?” Sean prodded.
“A little.” Darrell checked his watch. They should speed up a bit, without seeming to hurry. “There’s the bastion.” He pointed to the ball of the tower-like part projecting from the fort’s corner. “Did you pronounce it ‘bastard’ when you came here as a kid?”
“Huh? Why are you changing the subject?”
“I’m not.” He was trying to. “Just making a dumb joke. We grabbed lunch the other day.” Was that enough of a bone to throw? Ooh. Unfortunate choice of word—it was too close to boner, something Darrell was too close to, thinking about the other meals he’d grabbed with…and from…Aldric.
“I’m not stupid. I figured out…stuff about you.” Sean nudged him. “Like why we don’t see you with chicks.”
Darrell’s heart sank. “I don’t get why you’re asking me about this now. And I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Asking you now because you’re, I don’t know, different, somehow, now, okay?” Sean didn’t sound angry. He sounded almost like they were having one of their regular conversations about stuff.
“Am I?” Darrell wondered out loud. Aldric had gotten under his skin. Into his blood, maybe. Did that show? If it did, how did Darrell feel about it? He’d avoided commitment for so long, but now he thought he might want it—with Aldric.
Sean nudged him again, harder. “And I might understand if you fucking explained it to me, partner.”
Which was more of a concession than he’d ever imagined getting. “I’d have to understand it myself first.” He sighed. “Maybe I could try talking about it, over a beer?”
“If you’re buying.” It was Sean’s standard reply. God alone knew what he spent his money on.
“How about over a game of pool? At which I will beat you,” Darrell promised.
“Those tables in your fancy residential complex are shit. The floor slants, or something.” This reply of Sean’s was automatic too. He hated to lose. “I choose the place, okay?”
“I’ll still win.” No one could out-trash-talk Darrell, or any kid who’d grown up in his family. “And thanks.”
Sean’s upraised finger told him he was verging on ‘feelings and crap’ ground. “Better focus up here.”
The place was almost closing—the guide stationed just inside the walls by the Native American quarters was trying to convince stragglers to leave the vast square, and it took them flashing their badges and Sean turning his persuasive charm on the woman to get them in.
It was creepy, the trees seeming to absorb the light, and yet the grass looked too bright a green for the gray-brown buildings and pathways. The old limestone looked like it might crumble, and the stones, all different sizes and shapes, might pop themselves free of their cement—or whatever it was that held them together—and tumble down on them.
The church was on the far side of the mission, and as Darrell walked beside Sean, a bell tolled, the sound mournful in the late-afternoon air.
“Fuck.” Sean’s hand jerked as if he wanted to cross himself and he scowled. “Better not be any weird-ass time-slip shit going on,” he warned Darrell, as though Darrell had been plotting just that and would now drop the idea.
He knew where Sean was coming from. The gaping arches of the colonnades surrounding the church seemed to be lying in wait for them, to lure them into dead-end courtyards like a labyrinth. The hollowed-out rectangles and squares cut into the walls caught Darrell’s eye. They weren’t old doors or windows—some looked like hatches, except they didn’t go through to anywhere, and he tried to remember what the people who’d built the missions had once placed in them. A semicircle at the bottom of a wall had been for a fire. He could tell from the blackened state of the stone, and the chimney, complete with vents, built into the wall.
The empty doorways and windows in the walls added a desolate air to the building, but coming across barred ones was worse. Darrell was relatively glad to push the huge brown door to the church open, although he jumped when it was pulled from his hands—a couple were coming out as he and Sean tried to enter. He almost gasped at the richness and brightness of the church after the emptiness of outside. Well, the altar, anyway. Its blue and gold made the place seem bright, like the white of the walls and the high ceiling made the long, narrow building seem bigger.
“There, right?” Sean swung a foot at the first polished dark-wood bench of seats before the platform at the front. “Leave it there?”
“Yeah.” He kept watch as Sean placed the ba
g with the dummy box in it at the end of the bench.
Sean came back and jerked his head to the right. “Someone’s there, on the other side. A few rows back. Crouched down.”
“Praying.” Darrell had spotted the elderly woman kneeling on the floor between her seat and the one in front.
“You think that’s—”
“No. Hey, pew-pew!”
“What?”
“The benches are called pews and when we were kids, if we were taken into a church, we used to pretend to shoot and go ‘pew-pew’.” It didn’t sound funny now that Darrell mentioned it.
“Heathen.” Sean didn’t seem to find it amusing either. “That why you became a cop?”
Darrell shrugged. It was as probable as any other reason. The woman stood and inched her way out of the pew to walk to the front of the building. She gave them a hard stare as she passed them to exit. “We should make ourselves scarce,” he suggested.
“Move away from the bag,” Sean mocked. “I still think this is some stupid trick. A classic would be getting someone here to do this, then robbing their place.”
“Maybe.” Darrell led the way down the central aisle to the back of the church. He squeezed down a pew to look at the small plaque on the wall. There wasn’t a great deal to see. “If this was a Dan Brown book, there’d be clues in the paintings on the wall, or even up there, in those designs on the ceiling,” he said.
“And I’d get to fuck the snobby foreign chick with a stick up her ass,” Sean replied. “She’d be, like, a history professor or nuclear physicist or something, with those little black glasses, but wearing really high heels.”
“Which never seem to stop the women when they have to run their asses off to the next location,” Darrell pointed out.
“Oh, and she’s a martial arts expert. Tries to take me down, but I’m better,” Sean proclaimed. “That’s when her hair escapes from the clip or bun or whatever the fuck it’s called.”
Darrell eyed him. “You really put thought into this, huh?” It would definitely be more exciting than this, trying to kill time and remain unobtrusive, while keeping a watch on a package thirty feet away.
Thirty minutes in, Sean was the first to crack. “Nothing’s happening. This is whack.”
“Let’s check out the front of the church,” Darrell suggested.
Sean’s face showed what he thought of defiling the altar. Their bag was still there, still in the position they’d left it. Darrell noticed a door to the left of the entrance, and checking all around, pushed it open. He peered into the small anteroom it led to. “What’s this for?” he asked Sean.
“The hell should I know? Oh, Jesus. Damn. Sorry!” Sean apologized to the room in general. “Bathroom?”
It wasn’t. It was just a storeroom, or changing room or waiting room. Darrell resisted making a ‘three-in-one, just like the trinity’ crack. Suddenly the door they’d come in through was pushed open and a portly man in black clothes came in and froze, his wide eyes and flared nostrils suggesting he was startled to see them there.
“You shouldn’t be in here. Who are you?” he demanded.
Startled and angry. “SAPD.” Darrell took out his badge.
“And?” the man continued, advancing.
“And who are you?” Sean O’Hara, king of the comebacks.
“The deacon, for your information.” The man accompanied this with a finger pointed in Sean’s chest. “The mission is closed to the public at this time.”
“Yes—” Darrell started.
“And the police hold no jurisdiction in a church.”
“We—” Sean tried.
“Well?” cried the man, rounding on them both. “What have you got to say for yourselves?”
“That we’re just leaving,” Darrell answered, nudging his shoulder into Sean’s to slide him away. He grabbed the bag from the pew before they made a hasty retreat.
“Lovely church you have here, Deacon,” Sean said as they exited.
“You do know that sounded exactly like you were gonna add ‘shame if something happened to it’?” Darrell said.
“This was fucking stupid, Dazzle!” Sean burst out. “And not just a waste of time and manpower, which we’ll have to account for, officially or unofficially, back at the station. I mean if that idiot calls Fuentes, we could be screwed.”
“You play hunches all the time,” Darrell protested, jogging to keep up with his partner.
Sean cast him an angry look. “Yeah, but not because I’m trying to get in someone’s pants.”
“Yeah you do!” They were sprinting through the grassy garden now, heading back the way they’d come, then through the gate in the wall.
“Well, I don’t wanna get in trouble over some guy who’s—” Sean almost tripped as he came to a sudden stop. “Here.”
Darrell just managed to keep from slamming into his partner as he frowned at Sean. “Who’s—” Then he saw him, and Darrell’s lungs seized with fear. “Aldric?”
Sean was right. Aldric was there, on the path that led from the mission to the visitor center.
“I thought I told you not to be here,” Darrell grated at Aldric, his anger at Sean finding an outlet.
“I can go where I like.” Aldric sounded as pissed as Sean, who scoffed.
“You were right,” he said to Darrell, making him frown in response. “When you said you didn’t expect me to understand.” Sean sighed. “Look, see you at the station, yeah? Where we’d better hope we can fix this.” Sean gave them both a curt nod and left.
“It didn’t seem too dangerous, or whatever reason it was for you telling me to stay behind. Not if no one came for the box.” Aldric took the bag from Darrell.
He’d put it in an Intrinsic Value bag, Darrell noticed, when Aldric shook it out by the handles. Darrell had been carrying it folded over, to hold it more securely. Aldric’s words stung, just as Sean’s had. “You’re sure it was in the church? And this mission?”
“Yes. I’m not stupid.” Aldric looked as though he might stamp a foot. “I would have been here sooner, but Randa Buckman called.”
“She did? What did she want?”
“She was almost hysterical, begging the store to at least let her see her husband’s prized possessions once more. I replied I couldn’t say yes or no because I was only an employee.”
“Wait.” Darrell’s brain was spinning, his mouth struggling to catch up. “An employee who wasn’t supposed to be at the store at that time, because he should have been a few miles away, in response to a phone call. Of course no one showed up, if someone was listening and knew the handover was a setup!”
“So this is my fault?” Aldric demanded, his cheeks darkening with a blush.
Before Darrell could answer Aldric’s question, his cell rang, and he took it out on reflex. He tried to silence it but answered it by mistake. “Mateo? Not now. Really bad time. No. Wait. I need to talk to you.” He remembered his suspicions. Was it a coincidence that Mateo, who was probably working with the guy Darrell suspected was behind this, was calling now? “Hey, where are you going?”
The last was to Aldric, who’d turned and stalked off down the path leading to Roosevelt Avenue, the plastic bag swinging from his wrist which was jammed through the handles. Cursing, Darrell looked down at his cell phone, to see if Mateo was still there. He wasn’t—the call had disconnected. Should he call back?
A shriek made him look up, and his heart squeezed to a stop. “No!” he yelled, uselessly. “Shit!”
Aldric was fighting off two men who’d grabbed him and were dragging him toward the avenue. The avenue, where traffic flowed, making pursuit difficult, and where several parked cars, one of which was probably theirs, waited—making escape easy.
“Aldric!” Darrell started running. Fast.
Chapter Fifteen
“Get your hands off me! What do you think you’re doing?” Aldric cried to the figures dressed in black who’d rushed out from behind the half-wall of the mission building to one sid
e of the path and surrounded him. Well, he tried to yell, but only got out a few words before the guy behind him wrapped an arm around his windpipe, cutting him off.
Who the hell are these men? He assumed they were men by their build, but their black hoodies, with the hoods up, made it hard to tell. He struggled then stumbled as he was pushed and pulled along. The one in front of him twisted round, grabbing at the plastic bag Aldric had dangling from his wrist. Aldric, feeling stupid, only then made the connection.
Darrell and Officer O’Hara had come here to pretend to give the fake artifact to whoever was after it, with their plan being to capture the person responsible. And instead Aldric was the one really getting taken away.
The road was right in front of him. He’d left his vehicle there. Had these crooks done the same? And if they succeeded in getting him inside their car, he’d be in grave danger.
“Freeze! Police officer!”
Darrell!
“I am armed and will shoot. Repeat. SAPD officer prepared to open fire!” Darrell called out with steel in his voice. “Stop, now!”
That had the men halting in their tracks for a second or two, then continuing, but more jerkily, zigzagging, Aldric almost tripping and falling with each lunging step. He thought he could work out why. A police officer was less likely to shoot if an innocent party was in the way. That was the reason criminals took civilian hostages. Aldric didn’t watch many thrillers or action movies, but movies he tended to like had one thing in common. The heroine didn’t wait around for a man to rescue her. She rescued herself.
With as much force as he could manage, Aldric rammed his head back to hit the face of the man holding him. In an ideal world, it would break his captor’s nose, but he’d take what he could get. At the same time, he brought his heel down as hard as he could on the top of the man’s foot. The man swore and loosened his hold, and before he could tighten it again, Aldric wrenched himself away from him and the other guy.
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