by Pamela Clare
Making a mental note to discuss her intuition with Cooper, she went through her clothes again. Normally, she slept in as little as possible. Under the current circumstances, that was obviously out of the question.
Settling on yoga pants and a T-shirt, she went to the patio doors where she pushed the curtains aside. The room was on the top floor, facing the courtyard below. No patio, just a railing nailed across the outside of the glass to keep guests from using the patio doors and taking a big fall into the part-tropical, part-desert garden below. Mixed in with the palm trees and gardenia bushes were succulents the size of a car and cactus plants that sported spines as long as her thigh.
The hotel curved in a U-shape so that most of the rooms had an ocean view. An ocean view that, Celina decided, craning her neck to look around the leaves of a palm tree waving in front of her window, could only be seen with binoculars even on a clear day. Outside the courtyard was the front drive. Beyond that, the coastal highway, then the boardwalk, and beyond that, in the distance, the Pacific Ocean. Since it was dark, the most she could see were the flashing stoplights on the highway.
Flipping the lock on the patio door, she slid it open and took a deep breath of cool air. She could almost smell the ocean. She strained her ears, listening, and in between cars on the highway, she heard the waves. Closing her eyes, she imagined standing in the waves when this was over, and felt some of the tension drain from her shoulders.
She was stuck in a hotel room that featured a patio door without a patio, her oversized, gruff-as-a-linebacker ex-boss, and no clean underwear. But being on Emilio’s list was the real nightmare, one she had to bring to an end soon, before anyone else got hurt.
“Davenport,” Forester barked behind her. He was finally out of the bathroom. “Get your fanny away from that window.”
Drawing in another deep breath, Celina stepped back, shut the door and closed the curtains.
Turning, she froze, staring at her boss in total disbelief.
Her boss, sans shirt.
“Don’t you have any sense?” Forester asked her.
“Don’t you have any sense of decency?”
His hands went to his hips. “What? You’ve never seen a man bare-chested before?”
Oh my god, Celina thought, and went and locked herself in the bathroom.
Long, hot soaks in the tub weren’t normally her thing. She was always running late and preferred showers. But every once in a while, when her mind was in full ADD-mode, a hot bath slowed her blood pressure and reduced her mental pressure to a manageable spin.
Forester was on his cell phone when she emerged from the bathroom. He was also flipping channels on the TV back and forth between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News and eating a slice of pizza. Celina was relieved to see he’d put a shirt on.
His gaze flicked to her, sized her up in her yoga-wear, and returned to the television. He grunted something into the phone, snapped it shut, and motioned with his head at the plate of pizza on the desk. “I ordered room service. And your friend dropped off some soda for you, but I’m guessing he mostly wanted to check on you. Wouldn’t let me interrupt your bath, though.”
He said ‘friend’ in a way that meant Cooper. The smell of sausage and mushrooms fired up her stomach. She was starving. “He’s a good agent.”
“Punto’s improving. The lung the surgeon fixed is hanging in there and the prognosis is good. She’ll need some time to recoup and maybe some physical therapy, but she said to tell you hi.”
“She’s awake?”
Forester nodded. “Her family’s there. I talked to the sister. She said Ronni doesn’t remember what happened yet. Doc claims it’ll come back to her once they ease her off the sedatives and pain medication. Be a few days.”
Celina nodded, glad for the update as she sat in the chair and ate pizza. It was still hot, and tasted delicious.
“You’ve been on all the news channels.” Forester pushed a button on the remote. “Lead story.”
“That was the plan,” Celina said, licking grease off a finger.
“Dupé seems less than happy about your plan.”
“He’ll be happy when we catch Emilio.”
Forester grunted and changed the channel.
There in full color was Cooper leading her away from the house in Des Moines. Celina scooted the chair forward and scanned the crowd as the camera panned the property. She was looking for anyone wearing a red ball cap. She saw no one.
“You’re lucky Dupé likes you,” Forester said, scanning the crowd like she was. “You seem like trouble to me. I’d have fired your ass after that Time thing.”
The clip ended and the news anchor appeared with a head shot of Emilio hanging in the air to her right. It was a copy of a picture Celina had taken. He looked intelligent and confident. The news anchor dispatched the nationwide manhunt information.
“You’re letter of the law,” Celina said, eyeing the chief. “I’m more essence of the law.”
Forester made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat, rose from the edge of the bed, and grabbed another slice of pizza. “The law is the law, Davenport. Don’t hide behind some mumbo jumbo ‘essence’ crap.”
Celina chuckled. “So I’m a little unconventional. I get the job done. That’s why they stuck me on the SCVC taskforce.”
“Huh.”
They sat in silence, chewing. Another minute and the pizza was gone.
“How do you multitask so well when you’re driving?” Celina asked him.
Forester raised an eyebrow.
“You know,” she said, “that thing you did the first day I arrived in Des Moines. I had to ride with you to the bank robbery for my initiation. You used your knees on the steering wheel while you were loading your shotgun. Talking on the radio while you took a corner doing ninety. Cooper does that too.”
Forester almost cracked a smile. He grabbed a glass from the mini-bar and opened one of the Cokes room service had delivered with the pizza. “Practice.”
He offered Celina the other soda, but she grabbed a Dew instead. “That’s what I told Ronni. I just need more practice.”
Forester drank some soda, picked up a chocolate candy mint with the hotel’s logo on the wrapper and broke it in half. He handed one tiny piece to her.
Celina accepted the mint and studied the chief. Anyone who shared a piece of chocolate wasn’t all bad. She raised her quarter inch of the mint to him. “Here’s to the successful capture of Emilio Londano.”
Forester raised his glass, having already inhaled his portion of the mint, and took a big drink. “You sleep with him?”
She choked. The mint stuck in her throat. “Of course not!”
Forester gave her a nod. “Good. Let’s get some sleep. I’ll take the floor.”
Cooper was six seconds from falling asleep when Thomas said, “I can handle this, Coop, if you want to catch some zzz’s.”
The partners were situated five hundred yards southeast of the hotel on an overpass that eventually hooked northbound traffic up to the Pacific highway. Construction work had closed the outside northbound lane, but the construction workers were long gone and Cooper had moved a few barricades and squeezed his Tacoma into the perfect vantage point. He and Thomas were protected from any late-night traffic flowing up the overpass, and could watch the back of the hotel.
It was only midnight, but they were still sleep-deprived, jet lagged, and hungry. They’d analyzed everything about Londano that had been discussed during the meeting at FBI headquarters: his means of transportation, whether or not he had a fake ID and was therefore able to fly, how soon he’d reenter California by plane, train, or automobile. They also went over a few things that hadn’t been discussed in the meeting. Like what he might do to Celina if he kidnapped her.
That last discussion still grabbed Cooper by the gut.
Taking the night-vision binoculars away from his eyes, he rubbed a hand down his face. He fed his gut check with an image of Londano getting near Celina. It kept hi
m awake better than the six cups of coffee he’d downed in the past two hours. “I want this bastard. I personally want the satisfaction of nailing him when he shows up.”
The younger agent stretched out on the passenger side, stifling a yawn. “You haven’t slept in days. You’re a walking zombie.”
“You haven’t had much yourself.”
“Yeah, but I’m young. Doesn’t bother me.”
Cooper took his focus off the hotel for a second. “You see that railing, Hawkins?” He gestured with his chin at the concrete and metal outside Thomas’s door.
“What about it?”
“You keep it up with the disrespect and you’ll be dangling by your toes from it.”
Thomas chuckled. “I have no doubt you’d throw me over the side without an ounce of remorse, sir.” After a minute, he glanced at Cooper. “You know, you scared the shit out of me when I was assigned to the taskforce.”
Cooper returned the binoculars to his eyes. “Obviously that’s changed.”
“That first month, I really believed you had some kind of super human powers. Celina kept throwing herself at you, but you ignored her, shut her down. The rest of us were all like, how does he do that? Why does he do that? Then that whole takedown with Londano and the arrests. The Dyer thing. Man, you were like a machine.” He yawned, sat forward, and drummed his hands on the dashboard in a quick rhythm. “Des Moines changed that though.”
Des Moines changed everything. Cooper ground his teeth together.
Thomas rolled his head around on his shoulders. “You became human just like the rest of us poor pathetic schmucks, Coop.”
Cooper grunted.
“Oh, don’t worry, we still know we’re not worthy to kiss the boots of The Beast, but now, you know, we don’t feel like such losers.”
Cooper tried to work up annoyance over the comment, found he felt a touch of relief instead. “Shut up, Hawkins, and quit squirming.” He gave the agent a hard, disdainful glare that even in the dim light from the street, Thomas should feel to his bones. “We’ve got a job to do here and a woman’s life depends on it.”
“Forester got the good job. Being Celina’s personal bodyguard, getting to sleep in a nice hotel room, order room service. Tell me again why we didn’t volunteer for that assignment?”
Thomas was right. Forester had suddenly become a leech. A leech that got to sleep in the same room with Celina. Cooper drew a breath, prepared to swear, but his cell phone chirped, interrupting him.
Caller ID told him it was fugitive recovery agent Sara Rios. “We received a call,” she said, bypassing the normal hello. “Our man’s in your neck of the woods. The Palomino Apartments in Carlsbad, fourth floor. Landlord there saw the man’s face on the ten o’clock news. Says the guy’s home. You know the place?”
Cooper threw the binoculars on the seat and started the SUV. The Palomino Apartments…why did that sound familiar? “We’re less than a mile from it.”
“SWAT team’s on their way. Thought you might want to be in on the takedown.”
Cooper moved the phone from his mouth and instructed Thomas to alert the agents in the inner circle to stay alert, they were following a lead. Then he slammed the vehicle into gear and shot out of the barricaded lane. “Damn straight,” he said to Sara. “We’ll be there.”
Chapter Nineteen
A sharp, rhythmic buzzing woke Celina from a deep sleep. Heart thudding, she slapped at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It didn’t stop, and it was so loud, it echoed in the room. The previous night’s occupant had forgotten to turn off the alarm setting, or housekeeping had accidentally knocked the switch on. She sat up, fumbled with the buttons on the clock, sure the neighbors next to her were cussing her out.
The room was dark and Celina searched for the light switch on the lamp next to the bed. The digital read out on the clock read 4:14 a.m. as she turned the switch.
No light.
“Chief,” she said, over the blaring noise. She turned the alarm clock over, kept trying buttons. “I can’t get this thing to shut off.”
No answer.
Celina ripped the cord from the wall. Still the buzzing continued. Battery-backup, she thought and fumbled for the battery case. It was empty.
Celina looked around, her brain finally registering the sound.
Not an alarm clock. Fire alarm.
“Chief,” she called again, all her instincts on high alert. She didn’t smell smoke, but she was on the third floor. The fire could be on another floor. Her eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark room and she wondered why the auxiliary lighting hadn’t come on. Did the hotel have a generator? Had it malfunctioned?
Had someone tampered with it?
She felt around the nightstand for her cell phone. It wasn’t there. She’d fallen asleep with it in bed. Running her hands over the tangled blankets, she still couldn’t locate it.
The warning bell in her head matched the clanging of the fire alarm. She grabbed her gun from the nightstand and took a deep breath, readying herself. Where was Forester? Why didn’t he answer her?
Inching her way around the end of the bed, she strained her vision, checking everything she could see. The door was closed although she couldn’t tell if it was still locked. The curtains were drawn. Skirting the bed, she saw the white sheets and tan blanket piled on the floor where Forester had bedded down.
The chief was gone. She swept her gun in controlled arcs around the room, looking for any out-of-place shadow or sudden movement.
Her back to the wall, she slid around the armoire that held the television. Then the desk, making it to the curtains. As she yanked one side back from the other, soft light slipped in. Keeping herself hidden, she peeked out. All looked normal except for the people gathering below. No fire trucks. Celina scanned the windows and doors of the hotel within her view and saw no smoke.
Her heart in overdrive, she drew back from the crack in the curtains and considered her options. That’s when she felt it.
Someone else was in the room.
All her senses screamed at her to get out. Without hesitation, she flipped the lock on the patio door and pushed it open, but before she could catapult herself over the iron railing, a hand grabbed her by the hair and jerked her backwards. Her chin pointing at the ceiling, she stumbled against the intruder. Definitely a man.
She jerked her right elbow back, aiming for his stomach. It caught him in the side. He barely flinched as he wrapped one arm around her waist and tugged her farther away from the window. Releasing her hair, he tried to knock the gun from her hand, but she stretched it out and firing, sent three rounds through the glass of the patio door. Glass shattered and fell to the ground and Celina hoped it was a clear enough call for help.
Over the buzzing of the alarm, the man—Emilio?—grunted with anger. He shoved her against the wall beside the desk, moving with quick efficiency to slam her wrist with the gun against the edge of the desk.
A bone snapped. Celina clamped her lips together, refusing to cry out at the pain. But her hand opened and the gun fell to the floor.
Emilio pushed her against the wall with full body contact, his face in hers, his breath warm on her cheeks as he spit angry words at her. She couldn’t understand them against the backdrop of the fire alarm, but their meaning wasn’t lost in the noise. Struggling, she pushed at him, but drew in a sharp breath when her right hand registered pain at the force. She tried to bring her knee up, but he’d spread her legs outside of his when he’d pushed her and the knee could do no damage.
Emilio grabbed her face with both hands and slammed her head into the wall twice with such force his dark image swam in front of her. She closed her eyes and forced her knees not to buckle. At the same time, she swung her good arm and landed a fisted blow to his stomach. She stomped on the top of his foot with hers.
The punch seemed to do little, the heel stomp even less, since she was barefoot and he wore thick leather boots. In the next second, the cold metal of a knife bit her at the base o
f her throat.
Although she was already pinned against the wall, she instinctively flattened herself farther, trying to become one with the paint. The tip of the knife slid down and opened a cut across her collarbone.
The fire alarm stopped. In the sudden silence, its echo vibrated in her ears along with her breathing. Emilio was a bulky presence against her, the knife a cutting one. Her head throbbed and her vision blurred as she took another swing at him. This one he blocked, catching her wrist with his free hand and chuckling low in his throat. “You are paying for what you did. One by one, they will continue to fall, until you have no one and nothing left to live for. Then I will slit your throat.”
In the hallway, men yelled. Feet pounded outside the door. “Try it. I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
She head-butted him, but Emilio didn’t seem to care. He smacked her upside the head. “Live in fear,” he murmured in her ear. And then he licked her collarbone where his knife had drawn blood.
Celina slapped his face, her pain morphing into rage.
The door opened with a swift bang. Emilio let go of her, running for the patio door.
“Halt!” a man yelled.
He didn’t stop. As he grabbed the railing, the security agent fired, but Emilio was over the railing in a heartbeat, the shot sailing over his head.
Celina’s security agents rushed the room to the patio doors, guns ready. Pushing herself off the wall, she hobbled past the desk and followed them. Emilio had survived the fall and was running across the courtyard, but the security team pulled up without firing a shot. The courtyard was full of people.
A moment later Emilio disappeared behind an incoming fire truck.
Chapter Twenty
Red and blue lights cut through the night as Cooper shot past fire engines and drove into the hotel parking lot. A police officer stopped him, but a flash of the badge hanging around his neck got him through the barricade. He swerved around people and vehicles into a No Parking zone and parked.
