by Pamela Clare
The SWAT team and the taskforce had descended on The Palomino Apartment building en masse and came up empty-handed. While they’d been at the apartment Emilio Londano had rented, Emilio was at the hotel terrorizing Celina.
Cooper was so mad he was ready to spit nails.
Too late. Too goddamn late again.
Thomas, next to him, kept flashing his badge until they found a Carlsbad PD lieutenant that recognized the tight expression on Cooper’s face and understood it. “Agent Davenport took a bit of a beating,” Sam Pressfield told him as he led both men toward an ambulance with its doors open wide. Sam and Cooper went back to Cooper’s days on the beat. “But she’ll be okay.”
Cooper heard the words but didn’t believe them. Wouldn’t believe them until he saw Celina in person. Did his own evaluation. “How’d he get to her?” he ground out between clenched teeth.
“No forced entry. We think he scored a key card. Used that.”
“What about Forester?” Thomas asked. “Was he injured?”
“Agent Davenport’s security detail can’t find him.” Pressfield pointed toward two men flanking the sides of the ambulance. Agents Simmons and McCain nodded a dour greeting.
Cooper and Thomas exchanged a glance, knew what the other was thinking. Thomas shook hands with one of the agents and Cooper took a look inside the ambulance. Celina sat on the gurney with her head between her knees. An EMT was wrapping her gun hand with white tape. “How is she?” Cooper asked.
Celina looked up and Cooper’s stomach heaved. Blood covered the front of her T-shirt under a very white gauze pad taped to her collarbone. He looked away, looked back. Forced himself not to go ape-shit.
The EMT glanced up, went back to wrapping. “Broken bone in her wrist. Possible mild concussion. Superficial knife wound that requires stitches. We’ll be transporting her as soon as she cooperates.”
Celina smiled weakly. “I’m fine and I wanted to talk to you. Matt Simmons told me you were on your way.” Her voice sounded weary and tired. “I made them wait.”
Climbing in, he sat on the gurney beside her and realized with the cramped quarters, his leg had nowhere to go except against hers. He stared at the faded denim of his jeans against the soft black stretch pants she was wearing and tried to ignore the metallic smell of her blood. “What happened, Celina?”
She told him the story, all of it; from her frustration with Forester and his shirtlessness right up to the false fire alarm and the sight of Emilio disappearing into the night. “It wasn’t Emilio.”
Cooper shifted on the gurney to look at her more carefully. One of Emilio’s neighbors had told Thomas there were two men living in the apartment they’d raided. “Who was it?”
She shook her head. “The man who attacked me…” She stopped, started again. “He was familiar, but not like Emilio. About the same size and build, but…well—” She gave him a grim half smile… “You’re not going to like this.”
“Enrique’s still in jail. It can’t be him.”
“Not Enrique. Petero Valquis.”
“Val’s dead.” As soon as he said it, he slapped his hands on his thighs. “As dead as Enrique. Shit.”
“Yeah,” Celina said. “My thoughts exactly.” She looked back down at the bucket. “I thought it was him when I saw the tape of the safe house, but I didn’t say anything. It was too crazy, even for me to believe.”
The Mexican officials had kept Valquis’ body in Mexico. DNA results had verified his identity, but anyone could be bought off. Or blackmailed. Threaten a person with physical torture or the death of a loved one and they’d do and say whatever you wanted. “What about his voice?”
“Fire alarm was going off so most of what he said I couldn’t make out.” She winced as the EMT cut the end of the tape around the splint and gave a little tug. “When the alarm stopped, he said something like, ‘you are paying for what you did. One by one they will all fall until you have nothing and no one left. Then I will slit your throat.’” She shuddered. “The last thing he said was, ‘live in fear.’”
The EMT looked over his handiwork and released her hand. Celina dropped her head between her knees again and drew in a deep breath. “Every time I think about it, I want to throw up,” she said, bringing her injured hand in close to her body.
“She should be lying down.” The EMT gave her a look of reprimand and then shifted the look to Cooper. “She’s lost blood and could be going into shock. She should be at the hospital with a heavy dose of pain killers in her system and a dozen stitches in that wound.”
“I don’t want to lie down,” she said to the floor. “And I don’t want any pain killers. As soon as the nausea passes, a Diet Mountain Dew, some M&M’s, and a clean shirt will do the trick.”
Cooper felt queasy himself every time he looked at the blood covering her shirt and thought about Valquis touching her. He was going to hunt the bastard down and pound his fist into his face and pull his balls out through his nose and—
“They’ll put you in a gown when you get to the hospital,” the EMT said, ripping open a bag that held an IV drip. “You don’t need clothes.”
“Have they found Chief Forester?” Celina’s head was back up but she was dangerously pale.
Cooper shook his head, wondering just how much longer she could remain upright.
Her eyes went back to the floor. “Oh, god. He’s probably dead, too.” Her voice broke. “This is my fault.”
He shushed her. “Thomas is getting an update. I’ll let you know as soon as we find out anything. In the meantime,” he patted her leg, his fingers lingering a moment on the soft fabric, “you need to get to the hospital, get your wrist x-rayed, and get stitched up. I can’t have you bleeding out before I can get you back on the SCVC team.”
Her head snapped up and he saw confusion, quickly replaced by a spark of hope, at the idea of rejoining the taskforce. She nodded, a tiny dip of her chin, but then the spark left and she looked away. She bit the inside of her bottom lip and he knew she didn’t want to go. “I’m serious about the clean shirt.” She pulled out some forced bravado from somewhere. “No way am I wearing a hospital gown. Think you could find my bag and bring it to me?”
It was her eyes that gave her away. She’d just been attacked by a psycho who’d licked her blood and broken her wrist. Her two hundred and fifty pound bulldog was missing. Cooper knew what she was really asking him for. “I’ll get the bag and I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
The relief that flooded her eyes and the smile she gave him this time was more enthusiastic.
Standing, he bent at the waist, and gently drew her legs up and onto the gurney. “You lie down and let the EMT take care of you. I’ll meet you at the hospital and I promise I won’t let you out of my sight, okay?”
Celina leaned back and drew another deep breath, still smiling. She closed her eyes and sighed. “How about that Diet Dew?”
Cooper couldn’t stop himself from patting her cheek. “I’ll call ahead and make sure they’ve got a cold one waiting for you.”
Before he could take his hand away, Celina grabbed it with her good hand. It felt small but firm on his. “Thanks, Cooper.”
He gave her a nod as the EMT moved in and started prepping her arm for the IV needle. Jumping out of the ambulance, Cooper took his own deep breath and forced his mind to forget about the blood and her smile and the firm warmness of her hand and focus on what he needed to do.
The first man his attention fell on was Thomas. “Go to Celina’s room and get her bag and bring it back down, fast. We’re following the ambulance.” Thomas took off at a run and Cooper motioned to the security agent Thomas had been talking to. “Simmons, ride up front,” he instructed. “Anybody or anything tries to stop this ambulance, shoot them, got it?”
The man nodded agreement and went to get in the ambulance. Cooper turned to the other man and jerked a thumb at the still open door. “McCain, you ride in back, same instructions.”
As Cooper waited for Th
omas to return and the EMTs to close up the ambulance, he scanned the crowd. Catching Lieutenant Pressfield’s eye, he waved the man over. “Anybody see anything?”
The detective flipped through a small tablet. “Perp came in the cook’s entrance, pretended to be a new guy. Left for the bathroom according to one of the busboys and never came back. Probably lifted a key card from a cleaning cart, set off the alarm and went after her. We’ve taken the security camera tapes to confirm all that. Crime scene investigators are already in the room.”
“No sign of the FBI chief?”
Pressfield shook his head. “I requested uniforms at the airport and the train station and we’ve set up roadblocks all over Carlsbad, but the perp’s probably long gone and we don’t know if he’s still on foot or has snagged a car. One of your men said you thought you had this guy a few blocks from here.”
“Call to the hotline came in. Feds have their investigators combing the apartment to see what we can get.”
“You think it was Londano?”
Cooper gave him a nod.
“He working alone?”
Celina had been shocky and her perception of what had happened in the room might have been colored by the intensity of the attack, the noisy fire alarm, and the lack of light. But for all Celina’s inexperience, she was a trained agent with good instincts. Even in the worst circumstances, she would know the difference between Emilio Londano and Petero Valquis.
Even if the asshole perp was Valquis, how did an approximately five-ten, one hundred and eighty pound man move another man the size of Forester without help? It didn’t compute. Forester either left under a gun or Valquis had help. “There may be a second perp.”
Thomas arrived, out of breath, Celina’s bag in his hand. “Got it.”
“Check the dumpsters,” Cooper told Pressfield. “Trunks and cars within a half mile radius of this hotel. We’re going to the hospital. You can get hold of me there. I want to know everything you come up with, and in return, I’ll share everything the DEA has on this guy.”
Pressfield shook his hand and walked back into the crowd.
“You think Forester’s dead,” Thomas said a minute later as Cooper gunned the Tacoma out of the parking lot behind the ambulance.
Cooper stuck his cop light on the top of the SUV and turned on his siren. “You don’t?”
“Londano couldn’t have gone far with him. Chief’s a big man. What I can’t figure out is how Londano got him in the first place.”
“He might have had help.”
Thomas shot Cooper a look. “The second guy the neighbor talked about?”
Cooper nodded, hand tight on the wheel. “Celina said the man who attacked her wasn’t Emilio. Similar, but not him.”
“Enrique?”
“Enrique’s still in jail awaiting his arraignment.”
“Are we sure about that?”
Cooper ran a red light behind the ambulance. Decided to see how far Thomas might go with his speculation. “That attack was pretty violent for a wimp like Enrique.”
“True. Enrique’s more into drinking and slutting around.”
“Not a lot of motivation. No balls compared to his brother.”
“Plus, he doesn’t have the emotional investment in Celina that Emilio does. Enrique might want revenge on her for screwing up their business, but he’d be less personal with it.”
Cooper cut his gaze to Thomas. “You’re starting to sound like a profiler.”
“I thought about joining them.” He took out his cell phone. “FBI tried to recruit me, but when I found out the profilers rarely get to shoot anybody, I quit taking their calls.”
Cooper reached out, patted him on the shoulder. “Good choice.”
Thomas made a call and confirmed Enrique was still in jail. As Cooper drove into the hospital parking lot, he found a slot, shut off the light, and sat watching the EMT’s unload Celina from the back of the ambulance and whisk her into the ER door. “Can you think of anyone else our second man might be? Anyone else that matches your profile?”
“What are you thinking, Coop?” Thomas was watching him.
Cooper was mostly thinking about Celina and how much he hated hospitals. Hated blood. Hated Emilio Londano and every other maggot like him and Valquis who lived and breathed Southern California air. “Celina says it was Petero Valquis.”
Thomas’s reaction was understated. He thought about it a minute, nodded. “It fits. At least it would if he were alive.”
“Enrique’s alive.”
Thomas drummed his fingers on his knee. “And maybe Val is too. Interesting. That makes it a whole new ballgame, doesn’t it?”
“Give me her bag.”
Thomas handed him the nylon bag and Cooper caught a whiff of Celina as he set it in his lap. He didn’t know if it was perfume, shampoo or what, but it smelled good. Clean and healthy and impossibly young. He handed the car keys to Thomas. “Go home, get some sleep. I’ll call you with any updates.”
“I want to stay. I can make some calls and do stuff from here. Keep your coffee cup full.”
Looking at his partner, Cooper saw a younger version of himself, understood Thomas’s request. He’d made a few like it when he was starting out in law enforcement. Thomas was a good kid and smarter than he usually let on. One of the things Cooper liked about him.
He nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“What’s that?” Celina asked the nurse. The woman was short and plump and holding a syringe filled with something the ER doctor had rattled off a few minutes ago in his orders. Celina figured it was the morphine she’d told him she didn’t want. The doctor had ignored her refusal and now the nurse was doing the same.
“That broken wrist must be painful.” Dark curls of hair framed the nurse’s face. Her nurse’s top was covered with cartoon cats. “On a scale from one to ten, ten being the most painful, give me a number for your pain level.”
Ten, Celina thought. Ten plus a few, actually. Her wrist, her hand, her whole arm ached. The ER doctor had stripped the EMT’s handiwork off, x-rayed her wrist, confirmed she had a fracture, and then rewrapped it. Since her job required her to shoot a gun accurately, any problem with her wrist was serious. A specialist had been called in to discuss surgery.
Celina’s whole right side throbbed from the indelicate treatment. Her hand and wrist were propped on pillows. They’d moved her out of the ER and upstairs to the med/surg floor. Her stitches hurt too. The topical Novocain the doctor had swabbed her cut with before stitching the wound closed was wearing off. And, on top of all that, her head pounded. The man who attacked her had been strong. Emilio-strong. Still, she didn’t believe it was him.
Valquis. The weasel. She’d had little time around Emilio’s lieutenant while undercover, but she’d bet her last Mountain Dew it was him.
Eyeing the syringe, Celina ignored the part of her brain begging for the contents. Pain medication would make her sleep. Sleep made her an easy target. As the nurse tore open a small square pouch and pulled out an antiseptic wipe to clean a port on Celina’s IV, Celina shook her head. “I don’t want it,” she lied.
“Don’t be silly, young lady,” the nurse chastised. “This will help you sleep.” She stuck the end of the syringe in between her teeth and used them to remove the cap, but before she could stick the needle in the port, Celina sat up.
“I said no.” She jerked out the IV tubing and the syringe went flying to the floor.
“What’s going on in here?”
Cooper stood inside the door, his face a block of granite, looking from Celina to the nurse. In his hand was a soda Celina had requested. She choked back an unbidden sob of relief. Just the sight of him bringing her Mountain Dew made her want to weep.
“She’s refusing to take the pain medication the doctor ordered.” The nurse, pissed now, retrieved the syringe from the floor and placed the cap back on the end. “And wasting it in the process.”
“I’m sorry for
making you drop it.” Vertigo hit and the room swam in front of her. “But I don’t want to sleep.”
“The doctor ordered–”
Something inside her broke, snapped as cleanly as the bone in her wrist. Shock and rage and guilt boiled inside her. “I don’t give a monkey’s pink ass what the doctor ordered.”
With her good hand, she grabbed the metal rail on the side of the bed to keep from swooning as the room continued to spin. “I don’t want pain killers. I don’t want to sleep. For three nights straight, a psychotic killer has terrorized me. He’s stalked me, killed an agent guarding me, and stuck a knife in my partner’s back.” Angry tears bubbled up in her eyes and she blinked to keep them from falling. “Tonight he beat me up and God only knows what he did to my section chief.” She used her shoulder to brush away a stray tear and lowered her voice. “If I don’t want the fucking morphine, than I damn well have the right to say no.”
Cooper must have moved in behind her and set down the soda, because she felt his hands on her upper arms. “It’s all right, Celina.”
He drew her back against the pillows and spoke to the nurse, who’d taken a step back and was looking at Celina as if she’d grown a second head. “Give us a minute,” he told her and the nurse sighed and gave him a curt nod.
As she retreated from the room, Celina called after her, “And I’m not a young lady. I’m a full-grown woman. An FBI agent.” The door shut and Celina glanced at Cooper who had one eyebrow raised at her. “What?”
“Jesus, give the poor woman a break. She’s just doing her job. You don’t have to take the morphine.”
Celina settled her injured wrist on the pillow and covered her eyes with her left arm. Her hair was a mess and she had no makeup on. She had exchanged the bloody T-shirt for a clean one but she smelled like the hospital: antiseptically clean and medicinal. It turned her stomach. “Damn right, I don’t have to.”
Celina heard a soft ssss beside her. Cooper had opened her Dew. She peeked under her arm and he held it out to her. “But you do need sleep.” He helped her sit up and take a drink. “It’s going to be hard to sleep if you’re in pain.”
