“Sam’s not going to agree to this if it’s less than forty-eight hours,” Alyssa said.
Sam. Always Sam. “He’s not going to agree to it, period,” Max told her. “Let’s stick with the plan.”
“Max, please,” Alyssa said, and he knew.
She hadn’t even realized it herself yet, but Max knew. Sam Starrett had won. She was toast, and Starrett was going to gobble her up.
As he watched, Gina pulled aside the curtain, undid the night lock, and slid the door open. She stepped outside.
“You have forty-eight hours,” Max said into his phone, watching Gina move gingerly across the pebbled parking lot in her bare feet. Her feet weren’t the only things that were bare. She was wearing a baggy pair of boxer shorts and a tank top that barely covered her—her version of PJs, no doubt. God damn, she had an incredible body. A twenty-three-year-old’s body, with the kind of curves most twenty-three-year-olds starved themselves to avoid having. “No, you know what, Alyssa? I’ll give you fifty-three. But if you don’t deliver Sam Starrett to my office on Friday by eight-thirty A.M., I’ll expect your resignation on my desk.”
“Agreed.” God damn it, she didn’t even hesitate. “Thank you, Max.”
“Watch out for his teeth,” he said, but she’d already cut the connection.
He put his phone into the car’s cup holder as Gina opened the passenger’s side door and slipped her incredible body and her equally incredible, indomitable spirit into the seat next to him.
“I don’t sleep too much anymore,” she told him, “but it doesn’t seem fair to make you lose sleep, too.”
“Do the pills help?” he asked. “Because tomorrow I can help you replace what was stolen.”
Gina looked searchingly into his eyes, and he forced himself to hold her gaze, praying she didn’t see his desperation.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hate taking them, so I hardly ever do. It makes it too hard to wake up in the morning.”
Max nodded. He knew. He’d tried something similar himself, just a few months ago.
“We’re really going to be looked at askance if I bring you to my hotel with me in this and you in that,” he said.
“I’m not going to your hotel. But you should go.”
Max sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you were going to say. Thanks, but no. I’m fine right here.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“I’m not lying. But maybe I should rephrase—I’m just as miserable here as I would be anywhere else,” he told her.
“That’s a terrible way to live.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
They sat in silence for a moment, and then he said, “I’m sorry about before. I, uh, shouldn’t have, uh—”
“You’re allowed to be angry,” she interrupted him. “You don’t need to apologize for expressing the way you feel.”
He laughed. “God, Gina …”
More silence.
“What?” she said. “God, Gina, what?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know anything.”
“I do,” she told him in a voice that was very, very soft. “I know that when I’m with you, I don’t feel so lost.”
Don’t look at her. Don’t do it. Don’t turn your head, Max, you goddamn idiot—
He looked. He did more than look. He reached for her, and she went into his arms.
Fortunately sanity prevailed before he kissed her. He kept her head tightly tucked under his chin as he held her.
And Gina seemed to know not to ask for more than he could give. She just clung to him, soft and warm and vulnerable as all hell.
She was trying to hide it, but she was crying. Max stroked her hair and her back and the soft smoothness of her bare arm.
Touching her like that screamed of impropriety, but he was too tired to make himself stop. Jesus Christ, it was just her arm.
Max closed his eyes, knowing that he had to push her away, that she had to go back into her room.
But it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, fifteen tops, before he realized that she’d stopped crying. She was breathing slowly and steadily.
Gina, who didn’t sleep much either anymore, had fallen asleep in his arms.
* * *
On the other end of the phone, Sam was silent.
“Are you still there? Still awake?” Alyssa asked him. When she’d called, he hadn’t been.
“Yeah, I’m …” His voice was rusty from sleep. “I’m thinking. I’m a little groggy, so … So you went to Max and he just agreed to give me forty-eight hours?”
“Fifty-three,” Alyssa said.
“And I’m supposed to believe him?”
“You don’t have to believe him,” she said. “You can believe me.”
He was silent again for several long moments. “Yeah,” he finally said. “And I want to. I, uh, just don’t know if, um …”
Sam didn’t trust her. That shouldn’t matter so much, but it did. “You know, if you don’t agree to do this, I’m going to look really foolish. After going to Max and laying it on the line for you …?” Her voice was just a little too sharp.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he really sounded as if he were. “Lys, really, it’s not you I don’t trust. It’s Bhagat. Why would he agree to something like this?”
“Your suggestion—you know, the one about the blow job? It really worked.”
“That is so not funny.”
“Neither is you not trusting me,” Alyssa countered.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Enough to promise Max that I’d deliver either you or my resignation to his office by the end of those fifty-three hours.”
“Fuck,” Sam said. “You shouldn’t have promised that. I mean, what if we haven’t found Haley by then?”
“We’ll just have to work fast.”
“Fuck,” he said again. “Fuck. Alyssa, Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”
“How about, ‘Let’s meet at the Hardee’s in ten minutes’?”
“You’re really going to share information with me?” he asked, clearly not believing her at all.
“Yes.” What could she tell him to convince him? “You’ll be part of the team working to find Mary Lou. For fifty-three hours.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. And you’ll tell me what you found out from the desk clerk at the Sunset Motel, huh? What’s her name. Did she actually remember seeing Mary Lou?”
“Beth Weiss,” Alyssa said. This was it. In her attempt to make him believe her, should she tell him about her plan to intercept him, or not? She hadn’t considered the possibility that she was going to have to catch him to make him understand that those fifty-three hours Max had granted him were real, but it sure sounded as if that was going to be the case. “Look, Sam, please trust me. At least enough to meet. Right now. You name the place, I’ll be there—alone.”
“And naked?” he asked. “Because I’m actually considering it, and the naked part would probably push me over the edge.”
Alyssa closed her eyes. “You know, I’m being serious here and—”
“And I can’t do it,” he said. “Alyssa, there’s a part of me that wants to take you up on this offer—if only to prove to you what a bastard Bhagat is. He’s messing with you. I know you don’t believe that, but as soon as I agree to meet you, he’s going to send in the cavalry and have me down on my face on the sidewalk so fast—”
“Max doesn’t operate that way.”
“My ex-wife’s fingerprints were on a weapon used in a presidential assassination attempt,” Sam said. “I think he’s probably under a great deal of pressure to get some kind of answers.”
That much was true. But would Max deliberately lie to her?
After proposing marriage?
Alyssa didn’t kid herself. That proposal was a crazy-assed attempt on Max’s part to protect himself from his mixed up feelings about Gina Vitagliano.
She sighed. “Shit, Sam …”
“Shit is right.”
“Look, I only know what Max told me—that if you surrender yourself to me, we’ve got fifty-three hours before I have to bring you in.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t trust him.”
“Sam—”
“I’m sorry.” He cut the connection.
The FBI’s plan was going to have to work. And wasn’t he going to be surprised when he found out that the fifty-three hours Max had granted him was real?
Unless …
Why would Max agree?
If he had a choice between getting Sam Starrett into custody immediately or in fifty-three hours, wouldn’t he pick immediately?
Maybe Sam was right, and Max had an alternate plan that he hadn’t bothered to tell Alyssa about.
She opened her phone and dialed Jules’s cell phone number. Time for her to put into place her own plan B.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2003
Gina was roused by the sound of a cell phone ringing. It was blindingly bright wherever she was, so she kept her eyes tightly shut. God, her neck and back were stiff from sleeping funny, but, hey, at least she’d slept.
“I know,” a male voice said. Whoever it was was speaking in hushed tones, probably to keep her from waking up. A pause, and then, “Alyssa, I’ll be there.”
Alyssa.
Gina opened her eyes and discovered that she was sleeping in Max Bhagat’s rented car, with her head on Jules Cassidy’s lap. She had Max’s raincoat over her.
Jules looked down at her as he closed his cell phone. “Damn, I woke you. I’m sorry.”
Gina sat up, rubbing her neck. Maybe it wasn’t sleeping funny that made her ache. Maybe it was mild whiplash from yesterday’s accident. It was nothing, though, that a hot shower wouldn’t fix. “What time is it?”
“Nearly six,” he told her.
“Where’s Max?”
“He has a meeting in about half an hour that he couldn’t miss—and couldn’t show up for in plaid pajamas and a Snoopy shirt.” Jules smiled. “Who knew? I think I love him more than ever now.” He handed her a folded piece of paper. “He asked me to give you this.”
Gina opened it. Gina, either move to a safer hotel, or Jules Cassidy will be your roommate tonight. That was it.
“Did you read this?” she asked Jules.
“No,” he said.
She looked at him.
“Of course I read it. I’m an FBI agent. It’s a clue.”
“He didn’t even sign his name,” Gina said.
“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”
“He’s pushing me away because he let me get too close last night,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? Exactly how close did he let you get?”
“Not as close I wanted,” she admitted. She sighed, looking down at Max’s neat handwriting again. Jules Cassidy will be your roommate … “He’s trying to set me up with you, you know.”
Jules laughed at that. “No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is. Every time I turn around, he’s pushing you at me.”
“No, he most certainly is not. He’s using me to baby-sit you, which is something else entirely for you to get mad about.”
She waved the letter. “But—”
“He’s using me to baby-sit you because he thinks that because I’m gay, I’m safe. If he knew what I said to you last night, he’d probably have a coronary. And then he’d transfer me to Nebraska.”
“Max knows you’re gay? You’re positive?”
“Sweetie, either he knows I’m gay or he’s an idiot, and I’m pretty sure he’s not an idiot. I’m gloriously out of the closet. The entire office knows, even though they don’t ask and I don’t tell. But there’s more than just a discreet gay pride flag in the pencil holder on my desk—there’s a signed picture from the cast of Queer as Folk. I sing show tunes in the hallway. I use words like gloriously when I talk. I smell good all the time. Believe me, Max knows.”
Gina stared at him. She had been so sure.… But if Max knew … “Oh, man,” she said. “Just when I’m sure I’ve got him figured out …”
She found out that she was still completely clueless.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
One last time, Sam took his car down the roads around all three of the doughnut shops between the highway and the Sunset Motel, driving the potential escape routes.
He’d done it last night, but everything looked a little different now that the sun was up, so he was glad he had the extra time to do it again.
Ninety-eight percent of a successful E&E—escape and evasion—was all about knowing the roads and being familiar with the area. Since it was more than likely he’d be out of his car if and when any bad shit went down, Sam paid close attention to the buildings in those parts of town, too. Places in which to get lost. Stores or medical buildings to enter as one person and exit as someone looking entirely different. He looked long and hard at the alleys and the cut-throughs, too, until he could see them in his mind, with his eyes closed.
He’d gotten out of his car and walked them last night.
He was ready.
Well, almost ready.
Just one more rather important thing to do.
He headed toward the First Unitarian Church, home of the FUC Men’s Homeless Shelter.
He’d seen that listing in the phone book last night, and at first his exhausted brain had filled in the missing “K-E-D.” He’d had to read it twice, thinking, What the fuck?, and he’d laughed aloud when he realized what he’d done. It seemed like a sign from God. At the very least, it was a sign that God—or someone who knew Him rather well—had a sense of humor, because surely Sam wasn’t the only one who saw that listing and misread it in that particular way.
Sam drove past the church now, slowing down to take a better look. His timing was perfect. All of the FUC-ked men were leaving the shelter, looking as lost and bedraggled as they probably had when they came crawling in late last night.
Up and at ’em, boys. Time to wander the streets. Maybe apply for a job that you have no prayer of getting because you don’t have a permanent address and you haven’t washed your clothes in four months. Maybe roll a drunk. Maybe earn a few bucks doing something illegal or degrading, and buy a bottle of gin and get drunk, get rolled by kids who are too young and stupid to realize your pockets are emptier than theirs.
The first four men Sam saw were either African-American or Hispanic. The next bunch were white, but all too short.
He went around the block and …
Jackpot.
He was too young, barely even twenty, a little too skinny, but he had the right color hair. A jacket would help hide his lack of muscles. He was even wearing jeans and scuffed up cowboy boots.
Sam pulled up alongside of him and leaned over as he opened the passenger’s side window. “Hey. Want to earn an easy twenty bucks?”
The kid scowled at him. “Fuck you. Go suck your own dick.”
“Whoa,” Sam said. “That’s not what I—”
But he realized that what he must look like with his haircut and shaved face and these new clothes—what he surely looked like from the kid’s vantage point—was some casually rich, corporate deviant looking for an early morning jump start to his day.
Not that being gay made you deviant. It was only deviant when you had a wife and kids and pretended to be straight but then went sneaking around, paying street kids like this one to get your rocks off.
Sam got out of the car and followed the kid on foot. “Hey, junior, you misunderstood.”
The kid turned and looked at him with dead eyes. “A hundred bucks and you wear a condom.”
Aw, man. “Fifty bucks,” Sam negotiated, “for absolutely no sex. You sit in my car with me for an hour, maybe two, tops, while we wait for someone to show up. I don’t touch you, you don’t touch me, no one even touches themselves. No sex. I’m not into that—you understand?”
The kid didn’t even blink.
Sam held up his
baseball cap. “We drive around for a little bit, and you wear this into a doughnut shop, buy yourself a cup of coffee. Period. No sex. You walk out of there with fifty bucks in your pocket.”
The kid looked at the hat, looked at him. “Seventy-five and you wear a condom.”
Sam gave up trying to convince him that he was serious when he said no sex. “Deal. Get in the car.”
The kid would find out soon enough.
Team Sixteen was back in Coronado.
Tom Paoletti saw his former XO, Jazz Jacquette, as he was being taken back into the BOQ after another extremely early session of questioning.
This time the questions had been all about a blond man and a gardener or landscaper.
The only blond man Tom knew well was Senior Chief Stanley Wolchonok. And as for a gardener … He himself spent a lot of time in his own garden. His great-uncle Joe was a gardener, back in Massachusetts.
But neither Stan nor Joe—nor Tom—were terrorists.
Tom didn’t mention either of the other men by name. No way was he letting this witch-hunt spread to them.
He pushed open the door and saw that Kelly was waiting for him in his room. No, his wife was waiting for him. Just thinking that made him smile, even though he was exhausted from four hours of questioning in a room that was purposely airless and hot. They were trying to make him sweat.
They had succeeded. He now stank.
“The team’s back,” Kelly told him, hugging and kissing him anyway, despite his animal odor.
“Yeah, I know.” He held her tightly, hit by a wave of emotion, grateful as hell that she was here for him. With him.
He let her go and took off his jacket. Man, it was damp and it reeked. Just what he needed—to walk into these sessions smelling of fear. “I need to get this dry-cleaned.”
“I’ll get it done right away,” Kelly promised as he unfastened his pants and kicked off his shoes. “I figured as much. I brought a bunch of your other uniforms over. And some more clean socks and underwear, too.”
Tom kissed her again. “Thank you.” She was wearing pants today. What a shame. He moved past her into the bathroom, where he splashed cool water on his face and let it run on his hands and wrists before he washed his pits. Jee-zus. He really needed a shower, but that could wait until after Kelly was gone.
Gone Too Far Page 30
