by DJ Erfert
“They’re here,” Sunny said sarcastically.
Cooper opened Junie’s door and stepped outside. “Hello, Bridget.”
“Cooper? What are you doing here?” She had four male agents standing behind her. Cooper saw three of his men lean out from behind two buildings awaiting orders.
“Visiting a friend,”—Lucy came outside—“and my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Her suspicious stare shifted between him and Lucy. “She’s your daughter?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” Lucy asked.
Monroe’s gaze bounced between the two. “No, actually. It makes perfect sense.” She took in a loud breath. “Agent James, or Steele, whatever, you need to come with me,”—she took out a pair of handcuffs from the back of her waistband—“down to headquarters.”
Cooper pushed Lucy behind him.
“You know I can get out of those in less than ten seconds,” Lucy said from around Cooper’s shoulder.
Monroe made a low growl of sorts before replacing the silver cuffs from where she got them. “Will you come with me?”
“I’ll drive her,” Cooper said.
“No,” Monroe said. “I need to make sure she gets there this time and there’s no misunderstanding at which building we’re meeting.”
“I’m coming, too,” Cooper said.
“I’ll need a ride home,” Lucy said quickly. “Unless you want to drive me back to LA.”
“I do not.” Monroe reached over and took Lucy by her elbow.
“I need my jacket and handbag,” Lucy said, digging in her heels.
Monroe sighed. “Fine, go get them. But don’t get lost.”
Cooper held the door while his daughter ducked under his arm and disappeared into the room. “How long will this take, Bridget?”
“As long as it takes,” Monroe said with her arms folded across her chest. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a daughter with the CIA?”
“You knew I had a daughter, but I didn’t think her employer was any of your business.”
Monroe flipped her blond hair over her shoulder with one hand and tried to look inside the room. “I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“I didn’t know you knew her,” Cooper countered, “so what difference would it have made?”
“Cooper, I need to come with you,” Kate said.
“Are you with the LAPD?” Monroe asked before Cooper could answer.
Kate took out her ID and flipped her wallet open. “Special Agent Kathleen Laurence. I’m Assistant Director James Brockway’s executive assistant, here on assignment.”
Monroe popped her head back. “What’s your assignment?”
“To make sure Agent James is safe.”
“Safe?” Monroe scrunched her brows together. “Safe from who?”
Cooper gazed at Kate. He was curious about her answer, now that she knew he wasn’t a threat to Lucy.
“If we knew that, then I wouldn’t have been assigned to shadow her.”
“Does this have anything to do with her mission to Mexico? Has the man who attacked her in the interview room in Yuma tried to come after her?”
“What do you mean by that?” Lucy asked from the doorway. She lifted the long strap of her handbag over her head and hung it on her shoulder. “How would he be able to come after me if he’s still in your custody?”
Monroe glanced over her shoulder at the nearest man in black. “He got away when he was being transferred to Phoenix.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“How?” Cooper asked, taking Lucy’s elbow again. “And why didn’t you call Lucy and tell her about this?”
“I was informed about it this morning. He escaped sometime late last night when the truck he was being transported in had a flat tire outside Gila Bend. The DPS officer found our agent dead next to the tire he was changing from a single gunshot wound to the head. The Suburban was empty—his prisoner was gone.”
“You only had one agent with him?” Cooper asked.
Monroe glanced back at the men behind her again. “I would’ve been with him too if I hadn’t gone to LA on another matter,” she said pointedly at Lucy.
“Why was he so important that someone was willing to kill a federal agent this far into the US?” Lucy asked, her voice low and soft. “What did he know?”
“Or who did he know?” Kate asked. “You really don’t know if they freed him or killed him.”
Monroe shrugged her shoulders. “We don’t know anything.” Her steely stare landed heavily on Lucy again. “He wouldn’t say a word after you knocked him out.”
Lucy lifted her chin. “He wasn’t going to answer any of your questions anyway, Agent Monroe, unless you grew a beard and got a sudden influx of testosterone. He was going to kill you—”
“How do you know that?”
“You were taking off his handcuffs—”
“I was gaining his cooperation by giving in a little.”
“You gave him an opening to attack you—”
“So you attacked him instead?”
“I saved your life, you little twit—”
“Lulu, back off,” Cooper whispered.
Lucy stretched her neck sideways. “Let’s go,” she said. “I want to get this over with.”
Cooper swung his hand in the air like he swatted at a fly. His men knew he meant for them to disappear. “We’ll follow you, Lulu. Don’t worry about anything.”
“With you watching my back,” Lucy said, buttoning her jacket, “I know I’ll be fine.” She looked over at her other friends. “Maybe you two should go back to LA.”
“No way,” Junie said.
“We all need to finish our, uh, our discussion,” Sunny said. “We’re going to follow you to the Federal Building, too.”
“Oh, good,” Lucy said sullenly. “A convoy. Sounds like fun.”
~*~
Cooper took Kate’s car keys and opened the passenger door. “If you don’t mind, I want to drive. I know where the Federal Building is.”
“It’s okay.” Kate slid onto the seat.
Cooper got behind the wheel and turned over the engine.
“You know Agent Monroe,” Kate said, buckling her seatbelt.
Cooper shifted into reverse. “I do.”
“How?”
He laid his arm over the back of Kate’s seat and looked out the rear window. “We’ve subcontracted with the FBI a few times this year.”
“And? I mean, you seemed very familiar with each other.”
He shifted into drive and caught sight of the black Suburban in which Lucy was being held. “Are you asking me if we ever dated?”
“Well …” Kate fidgeted in her seat and said in a quiet voice, “yeah. Am I being too personal?”
“Katie, you can ask me anything you want. I have always been honest with you. We just need to get to know each other better, and I don’t think it should be over the phone anymore.”
Kate nodded and turned in her seat, bringing up her knee between them. “Okay, then, yes, I want to know if you dated Bridget Monroe.”
Nodding, Cooper said, “Yes, we went out a couple of times.”
“Went out? Or dated?”
“What’s the difference?”
“I guess it depends on what your definition of dating is.”
“Hmmm,” Cooper mumbled. “Okay, I thought dating consisted of eating food together and maybe going for an activity.”
“Where did you take Bridget?”
“She took me, actually. The last time we worked for them, Bridget coordinated the event, and we stuck close together. Toward the end of the week she invited me to be her escort to a business dinner. It had been a long assignment, and I’m always up for making another contact.”
“Did you have a good time with her?”
Cooper grinned over at her. “For the most part.”
“Oh,” Kate whispered.
“The dinner was excellent, and the company at our table kept the conversation lively. But Br
idget seemed to disagree with practically everything I said.” He shrugged.
“Yet you went out with her for a second time?”
Cooper nodded. “Yes. As I dropped her off at her apartment, she asked if I wanted to come over for dinner, and since I don’t cook, I thought it couldn’t hurt anything.”
“Oh, Coop. You encouraged her.”
“How?”
“By just being there.” Kate placed her hand on his leg. “Did she keep messing with her hair?”
“Huh?”
“Think back. Did Bridget keep fussing with her hair, like,”—Kate used two fingers and tucked her hair behind her ear—“this. Or did she flip her hair behind her shoulder like she did at the hotel?”
“I didn’t notice her doing that.”
“Okay, then did she keep touching you?” Kate ran her hand up along his shoulder and slowly went up his neck.
“She … might have done that,” Cooper said, enjoying the enticing sensation she gave him.
“Uh-huh—” Kate sat up straight. “Like I thought. Bridget was coming on to you.”
Cooper picked up her hand and wove their fingers together. Her warm hand felt soft and small in his. “Would you feel better if I told you that I didn’t even kiss her goodnight?”
“I almost feel sorry for her—a little anyways.”
“You do know that I’ve been involved for the past two years with a woman that I care about, and I’m fairly sure that she likes me, too.”
Kate leaned closer and softened her voice when she asked, “Are you talking about me?”
“Only you.”
“Then, please, don’t go out with other women anymore.”
Cooper heard the pleading tone in her voice, and it reached into his heart, touching his very soul. “Never again. I’m so glad we finally met.”
“Why haven’t you asked to meet me before?”
Cooper shook his head. “I’m a coward.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve read the reports Steele Reinforcement send in and I know what kind of jobs you take on, at least the ones we call you in on. Those assignments take more courage than I can imagine.”
He glanced over at her. “Then I’m a coward when it comes to you. I don’t want to scare you away. I’m afraid that still might happen after we resume our talk.”
Kate leaned against the seat’s headrest. “Is what you’re going to tell us really that bad?”
Cooper pulled her hand up to his chest and held it close to his fast beating heart. “My wife was murdered, and you said a serial killer was responsible. I had no idea…”
“But I know you didn’t do it. You don’t have the tattoo.” Kate pulled his hand back to her and put her other hand over their shared fist. “Do you want to tell me what happened that day?”
“Katie,” Cooper said, “I don’t think I should try to tell you something like this while I’m driving. When I remember that day, the intense feelings … they come flooding back.”
“Like last night? You looked like you were going to pass out.”
“I felt like it, too.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Kate said, her voice pitching higher.
“I didn’t know how. I still don’t.” Cooper turned into the Federal Building’s parking lot. “When we are done here, we’ll all go someplace private and … I’ll try. I only hope after I’m through you won’t hate me, and that I won’t go to prison.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Follow me.” Monroe walked briskly down the wide hallway, and Lucy finally walked on her own. She’d been pulled, pushed, and threatened with handcuffs for the past fifteen minutes, yet the more the little twit tried to command authority, the less Lucy had respect for her. It was kind of humorous. The four men she’d brought for backup had disappeared shortly after they’d entered the building, and Lucy had to wonder why she’d brought them to the hotel in the first place. Had Monroe been afraid to confront Lucy on her own?
Junie and Sunny walked beside Lucy, and behind them were her dad and Kate—and they held hands like a real couple. Lucy had known Kate for a very long time. She was one of very few people she counted as a good friend. She’d often wondered why Kate never married. Working with the CIA didn’t preclude being in a relationship. Lucy proved that. Junie’s marriage did, too. But now it seemed her dad had made a special connection with Kate, and it gave Lucy hope that they could find happiness together.
She looked up into her dad’s blue eyes, and he gave her a quick wink, making her smile. He made her feel safe. He always had, even when she was little. At the moment, she couldn’t remember whose idea it was for her to take Taekwondo classes when she was eleven years old—her own or his.
The gun in her ankle holster made her feel secure, and knowing each of her friends had their weapons made her feel a little guilty at ratting out Monroe in LA when she strode into CIA headquarters without putting her gun in a locker. Their two agencies had very different policies for their buildings. All Lucy did was show her CIA identification, and she got to carry a concealed weapon in a federal building.
“In here,” Monroe said, unlocking a door with her name on it. “This is my office. I have a computer with international access to all the files we need.”
The room wasn’t big, but it had a sofa pushed up against one wall long enough for three people to sit on or for one person to sleep. The throw pillows looked used, like Monroe had taken advantage of the latter use.
The large desk had two computers sitting next to each other, ready for their search. What concerned Lucy most was the white board covering one entire wall of the office. The color photographs taped to it and the notes written in blue and red marker beneath each picture must have been from cases she was working on, including the serial murders that started in Arizona last year, ending up in LA in the past week. Lucy looked over at her dad when his eyes fell on the pictures of the dead women. They froze on her mother’s picture taken twenty-nine years ago. Any trace of color disappeared from his face. Kate noticed it, too.
“Coop?” Kate whispered. “We’ll wait outside, Lucy.” She pushed him back out into the hallway.
“What’s wrong with your father?” Monroe asked as she watched the door close behind them.
“He isn’t feeling well this morning,” Lucy said, moving to stand in between the bossy FBI agent and the door her dad just left out of. “I think he’s coming down with the flu. You should probably stay away from him.” Monroe flipped her hair over her shoulder with one hand.
“Shall we begin?” Monroe motioned toward the two chairs next to her desk. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll pull up the profile program, and you can start looking for our man.” Junie sat next to Lucy, and Sunny sat on the arm of Junie’s chair.
As Monroe typed, Lucy asked, “Can you narrow the field so I don’t have to look at all the Arabic men you have on file?” She let up on the keyboard, turned, and gave Lucy her attention. “The man I saw in the cantina with our coyote was about twenty-five, five-foot-eight inches tall, and weighed approximately one hundred eighty pounds. He had a pretty good beard going, and his dark brown hair was curly and almost touched his shoulders. His eyes were as dark as his hair, and they looked …”
“How?” Junie asked. “How did they look?”
Lucy paused for a moment before she said, “Menacing.”
“He was only twenty-five?” Monroe began typing again. “Humph.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. It’s just that’s not what I expected. Maybe he isn’t the head guy after all.”
“Just another link in a chain?” Lucy asked as she watched the computer screen change.
“One good thing about links is one link leads to another. We find this guy, and he’ll lead us to others.” Monroe lifted the laptop and set it in front of Lucy. “Scroll through this group. They’re all between twenty-one and twenty-nine years old.”
Lucy placed her index finger on the forward arrow and began flippin
g through mug shots of known terrorists, men of Arabic decent on the no-fly list.
“Is Agent Laurence involved with Cooper—your father?”
Lucy kept her eyes on the faces as they flashed by. She didn’t need to linger on each picture—she’d know the face immediately if it came up. “It looks that way.”
“You don’t know?”
“He’s a grown man and doesn’t have to clear his romantic life with me.”
“Where’s your mother?”
Lucy felt a flash of heat in her face. Her mother’s death was the major reason she didn’t want to ever see the FBI agent again. And now here she was—trapped inside a small room with her mother’s murder scene taped up on a wall, as well as the picture from the morgue. Lucy felt sick. “She … died a long time ago.” From the corner of her eye she saw Monroe lean closer, staring hard at her face.
“Agent James,” Monroe said slowly, “How old are you?”
Lucy lifted her head, moving her hands to her lap, but she didn’t say anything. Monroe went to the corner of her office and took a lid off a white storage box before touching through some files. She pulled out a single folder. “I have the original report from Las Vegas on all the murders from 1988, from both the identified girls and the Jane Does.” She set the worn manila folder next to the laptop and opened it. “The crime scene was photographed by the on-scene police officer, but considering he was a beat cop, he did an excellent job in capturing details that connect one murder with the others.”
Lucy felt the heat leave her face, and her fingers suddenly felt like melting icicles as she looked at the pictures of the house she only remembered in her nightmare. Monroe took each picture and spread them out on her desk, and as she moved them something in one of the pictures caught Lucy’s attention, as well as Junie’s, making her friend gasp out loud. The photograph of the living room captured a pink baby’s bag on the floor, streaked in blood and shredded as if it was caught in a giant food processor. Lucy squeezed her trembling hands tightly, trying to keep Monroe from noticing.
“The lab has this Jane Doe’s DNA saved,” Monroe said softly. “Do you want me to get a warrant for your blood?”
