Nowhere to Run

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Crew-cut gave a low whistle. “Nice wheels.”

  The trunk was open, the way she’d left it when she’d come to the office that evening. She’d been airing out the fishy smell that seemed to follow her around.

  “I guess I didn’t need those keys after all,” Carlos said, pulling her around to the back of the car. He was still holding her arm with his right hand, so he gestured grandly toward the trunk with his left. “Get in.”

  Carrie stared at him, not understanding. What did he want her to do?

  “That’s it?” Crew-cut sputtered, disappointed. “You’re just going to lock her in the trunk? Man, if it was me, I’d’ve taken her right here, in the front seat of her car.”

  Carlos was going to lock her in the trunk of her car. He wasn’t going to force himself on her; he was just going to make sure she couldn’t call the police. He wasn’t going to hurt her; she was going to be all right. Except, Lord, that trunk was awfully tiny, and with the hood down, it would be incredibly dark and hot and…

  Crew-cut reached out and ran one grubby finger down the side of Carrie’s face. She pulled away, slapping at his hand, disgusted by his touch. On further thought, maybe being locked in the trunk wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Crew-cut drew back his hand to slap her, but Carlos caught his wrist.

  “Rumor has it,” he said dryly, “that sex is more pleasurable when the woman is willing.”

  “Yeah, well, this would be better than nothing,” Crew-cut said with a shrug, jerking his hand free.

  “No,” Carlos said firmly. “In a case like this, nothing is best.”

  “Aw, come on, man,” Crew-cut said. “I think she’s kind of cute, so little and pretty. Look at all this blond hair.”

  Her hair had come free from its ponytail, and it hung around her face in a smooth blond sheet. Crew-cut ran his fingers through it, and Carrie yanked her head back, nearly toppling over. Carlos steadied her, and she realized she was grateful for his presence, grateful for the warmth of his body behind her. Crew-cut was the one she was afraid of. Carlos didn’t want to hurt her. At least she hoped he didn’t.

  “Come on,” Crew-cut said again. “Take me five minutes, ten minutes tops. I bet she’s a real screamer.” He leered at Carrie. “I bet you’d like to sink those sharp little teeth in me, huh, baby?”

  “If you so much as touch me,” Carrie snapped, “I’ll kick your family jewels through the roof of your mouth.”

  “And that’s after I get finished kicking your family jewels through the roof of your mouth,” Carlos said mildly. “Back off, T.J.”

  “Why? You don’t want her—”

  “I didn’t say that,” Carlos corrected him. “On the contrary. You’re right. She is very pretty. And I like her spirit. Very much so. No, I didn’t say I didn’t want her.”

  Carrie’s eyes flew to Carlos’s face. Her heart was pounding so loudly she could barely hear. She searched his eyes, looking to see if he was serious, or if he was joking—or if he’d been joking all along and he really meant to force himself on her, and then let his horrible friend take a turn.

  “Shh,” he said softly, as if he could see the sudden flare of panic in her eyes. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

  His eyes were unreadable, an odd mix of heat, excitement and…kindness? Carrie was confused, and terribly frightened again. If this was some kind of head game Carlos was playing with her, he was winning, hands down.

  “Just do her, man,” Crew-cut urged. “You know you want to.”

  “But the real question is, does she want to?”

  “Try it, and I’ll kill you,” Carrie whispered.

  “Unlike you,” Carlos said to Crew-cut, “I am quick to recognize a no when I hear one, and that sounded like a very definite no to me.” He turned to Carrie. “Get in the trunk, please.”

  But Carrie couldn’t do it. She couldn’t move. As much as she wanted to be away from Crew-cut and Carlos, she couldn’t bring herself to climb into that tiny, dark, airless trunk. Never mind her childhood claustrophobic fears of being locked in a closet or trapped in her parents’ camper’s tiny bathroom. Lord, in a few hours, the hot Florida sun would rise, and that trunk would turn into an oven. She’d bake. She’d dehydrate. Her body temperature would soar, and she’d be dead in a matter of hours.

  Carlos scooped her up, holding her, one arm behind her shoulders, the other supporting her knees, and lifted her easily into the trunk.

  “No!” She clung to his neck, afraid to let go, afraid that his would be the last face she’d ever see, afraid of the hood closing down on her, trapping her, entombing her.

  “You’ll be safest here, cara,” Carlos murmured, prying her fingers loose. “Trust me,” Carlos said to Carrie, his dark brown eyes so gentle, so kind. “You have to trust me.”

  The hood of the trunk closed with a frightening finality. She was alone, alone in the dark.

  “C’MON, MAN, we’re going to be late,” T.J. said, running his hand anxiously across his crew cut as he looked across the dark marine park. “Iceman’s gonna start the meeting without us.”

  “I’m not ready to go,” the man known as Carlos said calmly, stopping at a row of pay phones near the closed and shuttered concession stand.

  “This ain’t the time to call your girlfriend,” T.J. said, watching him dial. “911? What the hell…?”

  “Someone’s got to get the girl out of the trunk before the sun comes up,” Carlos said in his gentle Hispanic accent.

  “Yo, we can let her out on the way back.” T.J. smiled. “I’ll come back this way and—”

  “Yeah,” Carlos said into the phone. “I’d like to report a woman locked in the trunk of a red Miata inside the grounds of Sea Circus. Yeah, that’s Sea Circus—down on Ocean and Florida Streets? The car’s inside the park, not out in the lot.”

  T.J. shook his head. “You’re a stupid sonuva—”

  “No, I wish to remain anonymous,” Carlos said.

  “We gotta go,” T.J. growled.

  Carlos put his finger in his ear, blocking the sound of T.J.’s voice. “How do I know there’s a woman in the trunk of a red Miata?” He laughed. “Because I put her there. Just send a patrol car down to let her out, okay?” There was a pause. “Good,” he said.

  He hung up the phone and smiled at T.J. “Now I’m ready to go.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  January—six months later

  FELIPE SALAZAR adjusted his bow tie in the mirror of his furnished suite at the ritzy Harbor’s Gate Apartments, then wiped imaginary dust from the shoulder of his tuxedo.

  It was a very nice tuxedo, carefully tailored so that his shoulder holster and gun didn’t disrupt the lines of his jacket.

  This penthouse suite was very nice, too. It was four times bigger than his tiny one-bedroom apartment on the other side of town. Of course, the monthly rent was much higher than four times that of his little, airless apartment. But luckily for him, he wasn’t paying it.

  In fact, he wasn’t paying for anything these days. The hotel, his expensive clothes, his meals, the two thousand dollars in spending money he carried around in fifties and one hundreds were all courtesy of the St. Simone Police Department.

  It was one of the perks of working a round-the-clock dangerous job. In fact, it was the only perk most people would understand. Very few people would call the danger, the risk, the thrill of being an undercover police detective a perk.

  But Felipe Salazar wasn’t most people.

  And tonight, he wasn’t even Felipe Salazar.

  Tonight, as he’d been for the past five months, he was Raoul Tomás Garcia Vasquez. Raoul Tomás Garcia Vasquez had quite good taste in clothes. He wore expensive suits and Italian shoes and underwear that cost more than a police detective’s daily salary.

  Felipe looked at himself again in the mirror. Yes, the tux fitted him very nicely. It was a far cry from the leather jacket and worn-out blue jeans he’d worn on his last assignment. He’d been called Carlos for that one, an
d he’d infiltrated an uneasy alliance of street-gang leaders out to make a fortune in the world of illegal drugs. As Carlos, he’d come face-to-face with Caroline Brooks, that intriguing blonde at Sea Circus and…

  He shook his head. This was no time to think about blondes, particularly about this blonde. Unfortunately, there was never any time. He’d gone straight from being Carlos to being Raoul Vasquez. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had actually called him Felipe. But such was the nature of his job. Felipe glanced into the mirror again, and Raoul Vasquez looked back at him.

  Raoul was fresh out of prison, and ready to start over. He’d come to St. Simone—or so his story went—after cashing in some favors, some big favors. His old boss, Joseph Halstad, the head of a minor crime syndicate in Washington, D.C., had offered him his old job back, but Raoul wanted a fresh start, someplace new, someplace where the police didn’t recognize his face.

  So Halstad had phoned Lawrence Richter, the man who ran Western Florida’s organized-crime outfit, and called in a few favors of his own.

  Of course, Richter didn’t know that Halstad had made that phone call as part of a deal struck with the Washington D.A. over certain racketeering charges.

  And Richter wouldn’t know—at least not until Felipe had gathered all the proof he needed to cement this case shut and send Richter and all the men and women in his syndicate to jail for a long, long time.

  After five months, Felipe was immersed in Richter’s organization deeply enough to put Richter and many of his underlings away. Strangely enough, even with all the drug and weapons sales, the prostitution, gambling and racketeering that went on, it was the importation of illegal aliens that was going to bring Richter down.

  On the surface, it seemed innocent enough, benevolent even. Lawrence Richter, humanitarian, was helping the poor and impoverished into America. He was helping them get a start, helping them find that American Dream.

  Felipe knew all about the American Dream. His own parents had made the move from Puerto Rico to Miami, searching for a better life for themselves and their five children. But Miami had been hot and angry, and they’d moved on, across to the west coast of Florida, to the city of St. Simone.

  Some American Dream.

  Felipe’s father had worked himself into an early grave, trying to keep his floundering auto shop afloat. Raphael, Felipe’s older brother, had run with the wrong crowd, nearly overdosed on drugs and ended up doing time in a state maximum security prison. His oldest sister, Catalina, had married a man who’d been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver, leaving her alone to raise their two small children. His other sister, Marisela, had given up her own dream of going to college and had taken over their father’s garage with the help of Roberto, their youngest brother, who was still in high school.

  And Felipe? Felipe had become a cop.

  He smiled wryly at himself in the mirror. His father, the dreamer, had been disappointed in Felipe’s choice of profession. Yet it was Felipe who was most like the old man. Out of all his brothers and sisters, it was Felipe who was the idealist. It was Felipe who still believed in good versus evil, in right over wrong. It was Felipe who still believed in the criminal justice system and the rule of law. It was Felipe who was keeping alive the American Dream.

  And that meant putting away Lawrence Richter, who was bringing entire families of illegal immigrants into the country and turning them into little more than slaves. In exchange for safe passage into America, the land of opportunity, Richter would squeeze years of indentured servitude from these people. He’d contract them out to work in factories and sweatshops at much lower than the legal minimum wage. Then he’d keep most of their paycheck, giving them only barely enough to get by. If they complained, they’d get delivered into the hands of the immigration department, speaking hardly any English and knowing only the assumed names of the men who had brought them into the country.

  Felipe had seen many of these people, trapped into working sixty-hour weeks for money that they would never see, money that would line Lawrence Richter’s pockets. Felipe had looked into their eyes and seen the despair and desperation—and utter hopelessness.

  For them, the American Dream had become a nightmare.

  Shutting Richter’s operation down would mean deportation for many of them. But some would slip through the cracks, free at last to pursue that elusive American Dream.

  Still, as close as Felipe was to nailing Richter, he had to wait. Because last week, something he’d suspected for quite some time had become more than a mere suspicion.

  Richter had a partner.

  And Richter’s partner was someone relatively high up in St. Simone’s government. He was someone with power, someone with clout, someone who, it seemed, could make the entire police force turn their heads and look the other way if need be.

  And before he took Richter down, Felipe Salazar, faithful believer in right over wrong and staunch defender of his father’s American Dream, was going to make sure that this other man, this man Richter had nicknamed “Captain Rat,” whoever he was, fell, too.

  BOBBY PENFIELD III was the most boring man Carrie Brooks had ever met in her twenty-five years of life.

  Yet she sat across from him at their table in Schroedinger’s, St. Simone’s most elegant restaurant, located on the ground floor of the glamorous Reef Hotel, and tried to smile. This was why she didn’t go out on dates, she reminded herself sternly. The next time some relatively nice-looking man that she didn’t know asked her to dinner, she would definitely find some excuse to stay home.

  Sure, some women might have found Bobby Penfield III and his endless stories about the ad agency wars exciting. But frankly, Carrie couldn’t see how choosing a man over a woman to plug some paper towel on TV could really make that much difference in the future sales of those paper towels. And it certainly didn’t warrant nearly an hour of dinner conversation. Besides, as an avid environmentalist, she’d prefer it if the entire world stopped using paper and turned to reusable cloth towels instead.

  Carrie wished that he’d change the subject. She wished that he’d talk about anything else. Hell, she’d rather discuss last week’s sensational mob-related killings—the “Sandlot Murders,” the press had so cleverly dubbed them. Everyone across the state was talking about it. It had even made the national news. Two mobsters, Tony Mareidas and Steve Dupree, had been executed in a vacant lot downtown—a vacant lot that happened to be next to an elementary school. Children had discovered the bodies, and the city was in an uproar, searching for the man or men responsible for the bloody crime.

  But Bobby Penfield III rambled on about his paper products, and Carrie was forced to smile cheerfully back at him. She was here because Bobby’s ad agency was going to produce a series of commercials and print ads about Sea Circus, at quite a discount off their regular rates. Or so Hal Tompkins, the aquarium’s business manager had told her. And when Hal had brought Bobby over to see the dolphins run through their afternoon training session with Carrie, and when Bobby had asked Carrie to dinner and Hal had widened his eyes at Carrie in a silent plea to be nice to Bobby, Carrie had stupidly accepted the date.

  So here she was in her own personal level of hell, in a much too posh restaurant, underdressed in the fanciest dress she owned—a simple blue-flowered sleeveless dress with a short, swingy skirt—sitting across the table from a man she had nothing, absolutely nothing in common with. Except maybe for the fact that they both liked the new two-piece bathing suit Carrie had been wearing during that afternoon’s dolphin training session.

  Across the restaurant, a long banquet table caught Carrie’s eye. It was filled with men in tuxedos and their beautiful wives. Or dates. Dates, Carrie decided cynically. Their wives were probably all home with the children.

  A silver-haired man sat at one end of the table, smiling benevolently at his guests. Yes, this was his party, Carrie decided. Silver-hair was definitely the man who’d be picking up tonight’s check.

  Bobby Penfield drone
d on about marketing disposable diapers, unaware that Carrie’s attention had long since wandered. As she watched, across the room, Silver-hair stood up and made a toast. Another man, a man who had his back to her, stood also and bowed graciously to polite applause.

  Carrie leaned forward, trying to get a closer look. Something about this man, something about the set of his shoulders—or maybe the way his tuxedo fit those broad shoulders—was oddly familiar. She studied the back of his head, silently willing him to turn around.

  But he didn’t. He sat back down without giving her a chance to see his face. Whoever he was, he wore his long, dark hair pulled tightly into a ponytail at his nape.

  Carrie knew plenty of men with long, dark hair that they wore in a ponytail. But none of the men she knew had ever worn a tuxedo—let alone a tuxedo that had so obviously been altered to give its wearer such an incredibly precise fit.

  Carrie looked up, startled, suddenly aware that Bobby had stopped talking. He was looking at her as if he was waiting for her to answer a question.

  She did the only thing she could. She smiled at him. And asked him where he went to college.

  Bobby was only too happy to keep talking about himself. He didn’t even notice she’d never answered his question. Carrie wasn’t sure he’d heard a single thing she’d said all night—except the questions she’d asked about him.

  Lord, somewhere, someplace in the world, there had to exist a man who actually listened to the words another person spoke. But whoever he was, he sure as all hell wasn’t named Bobby Penfield III.

  Of course, she wasn’t exactly listening to him, either. She sighed. She’d known from the moment she’d gotten into his car that this entire evening was going to be a disaster. She’d picked up on their incompatibility that early and wished now that she’d had the nerve to bow out gracefully.

  Except Bobby still seemed to harbor hopes that Carrie would go home with him after dinner. She could see it in his eyes, in the way his gaze lingered on her breasts and on her mouth.