Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He deserved the look of scorn that she shot him, because it was a stupid thing to say. There was zero chance in hell that Screech’s bouncer, Tommy Fista, wouldn’t recognize him. Seven years ago, almost to this very day, Ric had jammed his knee into the middle of Tommy’s gargantuan back as he’d cuffed him and read him his Miranda rights. Fista had gone to Raiford Maximum Security for five to seven for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

  Ric tried again. “I heard he found God in jail.”

  As he watched, Annie glanced around the corner at the bouncer. Clearly Fista hadn’t found Jenny Craig in the lockup. The huge man was standing at the door to Screech’s, which was a fairly new establishment, having opened since Ric had left the police department last year.

  Still, it hadn’t taken Ric much effort to learn that it was owned and operated by Vitardo Co. Strip clubs in this part of Florida were usually owned either by local scumbag Gordon Burns or his main rival, Miami-based Bernie Vitardo.

  “So what’s the best-case scenario?” Annie asked as she applied lip gloss with one finger, leaning down to see herself in her little car’s side mirror. “Tony-the-bouncer takes you by the hand, leads you inside for a joyful hymn and prayer session before sharing—willingly—everything he knows about Brenda Quinn?” She straightened up, smacking her lips together as she put the container back in her bag.

  “It’s Tommy the bouncer,” Ric corrected her. This was possibly the first time he’d ever seen Annie with makeup on, and he searched his memory, trying to prove himself wrong. But no. Aside from Halloween back when she was little, he couldn’t think of a single time that she’d gotten dressed up. She hadn’t gone to her school prom. And she’d worn one of Bruce’s suits and ties to her high school graduation. Although, as far as makeup went, what she had on now wasn’t much. It just made her full lips look shiny. More moist.

  If that was possible.

  Annie Dugan wasn’t traditionally pretty, at least not in a helpless-and-fragile delicate female sense. She did, however, have the fresh-faced, Irish American peasant-girl thing down pat, with big gray eyes and freckles, naturally curly hair, and a wide smile that could, at times, be incredibly sweet.

  Her attitude, however, was pure twenty-first-century kick-ass dominatrix.

  With the exception, perhaps, of her attachment to her ridiculous little dog, Pierre. Ric would’ve expected a woman like Annie to have a golden Lab. Something large and outdoorsy, capable of playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Something that galloped. Something friendly named Pal or Lucky.

  Not this glorified fuzzball of a quivering rodent named Pierre, that she now hugged and kissed and gave a doggy treat to, all while reassuring it that she’d be right back.

  “So what’s the worst-case scenario here?” she asked, plopping the rat-thing back onto the front seat of her car, making sure his travel bowl of water was full before turning her attention back to Ric. “A trip to the dentist with your two front teeth on ice in a Ziploc baggie? Or maybe another few days of pink urine? Gee, that’s always so much fun. Setting my watch alarm to go off every ten minutes so I can check to make sure you haven’t gone into shock from excessive hemorrhaging…?”

  Yeah, telling her about the internal-injury thing had definitely been a mistake. At the time Ric had thought it would invoke a little sympathy, maybe make her extend the two-week notice that she’d given him back when she’d quit—on day one of her employment—when she found out she’d be sitting behind a desk.

  Time was running out. He had only a few days left to replace her or convince her to stay.

  And it was there that she had the unfair advantage.

  He wanted her to stay. Rather badly.

  “It wasn’t days, it was day,” he pointed out now.

  “I’m going in to find Brenda Quinn’s last known address,” Annie told him with that hint of bitch-queen, do-not-cross-me, I-am-determined, you-are-toast that he’d first heard in her voice back when he’d met her, when she was eleven and he was fifteen. Almost twenty years ago. Damn, had they really been friends for nearly two decades? Although he hadn’t seen very much of her in the last ten years…

  Still, it occurred to him that now, just as when she was little, the best way to deal with her might be simply to let her try. Just hang close to pick her up and dust her off in case she failed miserably.

  It wasn’t as if there were any real danger hiding in that strip club.

  It was, however, filled with relentless apathy, seedy despair, and unending depression. Spending some time in Screech’s might well make Annie decide against a career path as a private investigator.

  “Okay,” Ric said.

  She looked up at him with a mix of wariness and disbelief.

  Ric nodded. “Go for it. Go find Brenda.”

  “You don’t think I can do this,” she accused him.

  “What does it matter what I think?” he countered. “It only matters what you do. Or don’t do.” Which was more likely going to be the case. But she’d find that out soon enough.

  “Thank you, Yoda.” She gave a tug on the bottom of her T-shirt, as if that would somehow provide the illusion that she had real breasts.

  And thank you, Mary Mother of God, for keeping him from saying that aloud, because he definitely hadn’t meant to be insulting, just realistic. Not that her breasts weren’t real. They just weren’t stripper-sized.

  They were extremely nice, actually. And now that he was thinking about it, it was really her waist that wasn’t stripper size, which was good, because women who had that creepy, tiny-waisted wasp thing going on just didn’t do it for him. No, Annie was curvy and soft in a way that Ric truly appreciated. She was no skinny twig who might snap if you held her too tightly and he was so screwed because he was standing here, staring at her body, thinking about sex.

  And that was a serious violation of rules one through about two thousand and twenty-seven in the male employer/female employee relationship handbook. It came right before rule number two thousand and twenty-eight: Never, never, never employ family or friends—because how the hell do you go from twenty years of friendship to employment without completely screwing things up?

  Cursing Annie’s brother, Bruce, and his brilliant ideas—Bruce who was going to be mad as hell when he found out that Ric had actually let Annie go into that strip club, so he better never find out—Ric looked slightly more northward, and found himself meeting Annie’s gray gaze.

  Her very cool gray gaze.

  It was disconcerting as hell. If she wore heels, she’d be at least as tall as he was, and he was not a short man.

  “You’re such a jerk,” she said, clearly able to read his mind all the way back to his real-breasts thought. “What, do you think I’m going to pretend I’m here to apply for a job as an exotic dancer?”

  Well, yeah, that was what he’d thought. But sometimes it was best to keep one’s mouth firmly shut.

  “I’m not stupid, Alvarado,” Annie continued. “Nor am I deluded. I know what I look like.” She laughed her disbelief. “Who’d pay to see me strip?”

  With that, she turned and walked away, across the parking lot, around the edge of the building that kept Ric out of Tommy’s line of sight, toward Screech’s front entrance.

  Pierre stood up in the front seat of Annie’s car, paws on the steering wheel so that he could watch her go.

  Ric watched her, too—watched her T-shirt stretching across her back as she moved. Bruce had told him that one of her last jobs, after she quit the accounting firm, was assisting a woman who built stone walls. She was clearly strong and very…healthy. Very. With those long denim-clad legs leading up to a posterior that was…definitely healthy.

  And in a flash, he could picture her, in motorcycle leather, sexy as hell, with seven-inch platform heels that would turn her into a total Amazon, strutting the stage with a whip, hooking her leg around a pole as she writhed to the pulsating music.

  God save him.

  She was out of sight now, a
nd he peeked around the corner, far less patient than Pierre, who’d settled in for a nap as he waited for Annie’s promised return.

  Across the parking lot, she’d stopped to speak to Tommy Fista, who not only let her pass, but actually held the door for her. When Tommy’s head was turned, she sent a quick grin and a thumbs-up in Ric’s direction, before vanishing into the club.

  Max Bhagat, the head of the FBI’s most elite counterterrorist division, had a huge stain on his tie.

  He was standing in the waiting area just outside of the Oval Office, and as Jules Cassidy approached this man who was both his boss and his friend, he saw that it was Emma-goo that marred the fine blue silk. It looked as if it might be oatmeal, with traces of Max’s one-year-old daughter’s favorite, mashed sweet potatoes.

  “Here’s the file, sir.” Jules handed the sealed envelope over. “The news is bad.” He couldn’t say more than that out here, but he didn’t need to.

  Max knew what they were dealing with. This was just confirmation. “Thanks,” he said, sticking the envelope into his briefcase.

  The man had also missed a spot while shaving—a small patch near his left ear. No one else would notice it—at least those who didn’t know Max as the meticulously, obsessively well-groomed person that he was.

  To Jules, who’d worked with him for years, he looked practically slovenly.

  And yet his hands were steady, his eyes clear. He no longer seemed as if his head were on the verge of exploding, despite the gravity of the news he was here to share with the President.

  “President Bryant will see you now, Mr. Bhagat.”

  “Sir.” Jules had his own tie off and held out to Max before noting that it was, because of its pattern of teensy, barely recognizable SpongeBobs, perhaps even more inappropriate for a meeting with the U.S. President than that tie stained from Emma’s epicurean euphoria.

  And sure enough, Max waved him off. “Put it back on. You’re coming in with me.”

  “Excuse me?” His voice actually cracked.

  But Max had already disappeared into the Oval Office, leaving Jules standing there under the impatient and somewhat disdainful gaze of the President’s secretary.

  So he put his tie back on, straightened his collar, brushed the invisible dust from his jacket, and walked…onto the set of The West Wing. Except this was the real thing.

  And the bald-headed man with his shirtsleeves rolled up and tie loosened was the real U.S. President.

  Who probably wouldn’t even remember that phone call Jules had made to him on his private line—the number somewhat illegaly obtained—during an international crisis a few years back.

  There was a meeting already in progress—several members of the President’s staff were sitting in a circular grouping of couches and chairs.

  “How’re Gina and the baby?” Alan Bryant was asking as he shook Max’s hand. “Emma, right?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Max said. “They’re both doing well.”

  “Mr. Cassidy, how’s the leg?” Bryant shook Jules’s hand just as warmly. “Sit, please sit.”

  So much for his not remembering. “Fully healed, sir,” Jules reported as he and Max both sat down. “I’m back to speed.”

  “Nice tie,” the President said, squinting at it more closely. “I’ve got a granddaughter who adores that show. I’ve watched it with her—funny stuff.”

  “Yes, it is.” Was he really discussing SpongeBob with the leader of the free world?

  “I’ve gotta get me a tie like that. Where’d you get yours?” the President asked.

  Jules glanced at Max, who was busy opening the sealed file—no help was coming from him.

  So okay. His President had asked him a question, he was just going to have to answer it truthfully. “I was on vacation in Provincetown,” Jules admitted. “In Massachusetts. Cape Cod. There’re stores there with…campy stuff.” To hell with that. If he was really out, then he was out in the Oval Office, too. He explained. “Gay-friendly stores.”

  Max glanced up at that, but Jules didn’t look at him. It was entirely possible that, after this meeting ended, Max would inform him that he’d just exploded his career.

  If so, so be it. Jules was who he was.

  But Bryant was smiling. “Oh yeah,” he said as he reached down and opened one of the drawers of a nearby cabinet. “I’m familiar with Provincetown. My favorite nephew and his partner—spouse now—have a summer place there.” He took out a mahogany tray that turned out to be filled with a colorful array of new ties, and held it out to Max, as if he were offering hors d’oeuvres. “I’ve got a pack of granddaughters. One’s about the same age as your Emma. Her aim, too, is unerring.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Max took a tie and put it on, slipping his soiled one into his pocket.

  Jules took one, too, replacing it with his. “I’m happy to donate SpongeBob to a good cause,” he told the President.

  “Unnecessary, but sincerely appreciated,” Bryant told him with a smile, but then morphed into the man Jules had seen on TV—gravely serious. “You’ve got bad news for me, I gather.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Max said, handing him the contents of that file.

  “Let’s have Mr. Cassidy give the report,” Bryant said, “since you’re obviously grooming him as your replacement.”

  What the…? Was Max really?

  Jesus yikes.

  Again, no eye contact from his boss, the bastard, who told the President, “Cassidy’ll also be in charge of this investigation.”

  Another piece of breaking news that left Jules speechless.

  Of course, now Max did look at him, but only because he was passing him the proverbial microphone.

  Not that this wasn’t completely typical behavior from his legendary boss—surprise the leaping bejeezus out of him, then make him give an impromptu presentation—his first in front of the U.S. President and his staff.

  Jules cleared his throat. “The photo you’ve been given, sir, is that of Yazid al-Rashid al-Hasan. Our code name for him is Tango Two, due to the amount of time he’d spent as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man back in the late 1990s. We believe he’s heading to the United States, with the intention of carrying out a major attack on an East Coast city, probably New York, possibly Atlanta.

  “We believe his point of entry will be the Gulf coast of Florida via South America. We’ve been watching a mob boss named Gordon Burns, who’s based in Sarasota—we believe his organization may have been responsible for smuggling another al Qaeda operative into the country, although we’ve uncovered no hard evidence to date. We’re working to find out the logistics—where, when, how.

  “We have an agent inside,” Jules continued. “Peggy Ryan has been working as a live-in housekeeper at the Burns estate for the past two months.” And wasn’t she going to love it when she found out that Jules had just been assigned agent-in-charge of an investigation she was working, when just last year he’d been working for her? Especially when she’d transferred down to Florida to get away from him. “As of yet, she’s found nothing, but she’s one of our best and—”

  “Cassidy doesn’t know this yet, but I was notified about an hour ago”—Max interrupted him—“that Agent Ryan missed her last check-in.”

  And that was not good news. Peggy may have been homophobic, but she was a good agent—always meticulous with safety procedures such as check-ins. Although, good agents missed check-ins all the time, for a variety of reasons. Support staff generally waited to panic until an agent failed to file two consecutive reports.

  “Under other circumstances,” Max continued, “we’d obtain the necessary warrants and shut Burns’s operation down. But apprehending Tango Two is a higher priority.” He was still addressing the President, but his message was also aimed at Jules. “As much as we would like to provide assistance to our missing agent, we can’t risk doing so at this time.”

  Those words weren’t easy for Max to say. Jules knew that. Although he and Peggy had never gotten along, she an
d Max were friends.

  “If we merely shut down Burns’s operation,” Jules added, “it’s likely that Tango Two will find a different route into the country—a route we may not know about.”

  “Can’t we just continue to track him?” the President’s chief of staff asked.

  “Well, we could, sir,” Jules said, “provided we knew where he was. Last report had him heading for Spain.”

  Due to its proximity to Algeria, Spain had been, in the past, one of the jumping-off points for terrorists heading into the United States—a fact that the President and his staff knew well.

  Jules stood. “If there are no other questions, please excuse me. I need to get to work, locating my missing agent.”

  As Annie went into the dank darkness of Screech’s, she said a silent prayer of thanks to the unlikeliest pair of patron saints—Tommy Fista and, yes, Lillian Lavelle.

  Alvarado Private Investigations’ newest client had swayed into the outer office early this morning, like some kind of stereotypical private-eye film noir fantasy.

  Auburn hair surrounded a heart-shaped face with full lips. Predatory heat simmered in cat-green eyes. Painted nails, do-me shoes, and matching condom-size handbag—she had all her accessories in order. As for that skintight dress from Cleavage “R” Us…It was almost too funny for words.

  Almost.

  Ric, the big dick, didn’t exactly laugh as Annie showed Lillian—if that was really her name—into his office. In fact, his eyes appeared to have glazed over.

  And Lillian, upon first sight of Ric rising to his feet to greet her, had actually gasped.

  And okay. Yeah. With his tie loosened and the top button of his white shirt undone, long sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, Annie’s new boss—and her brother’s best friend from their high school days—was scary handsome. With his thick dark hair, deep brown eyes, and that face like a movie star, he was TDH to the max. But he was also about twenty years too young for someone as overripe as Lillian Lavelle.

  Ric offered the woman his hand, they shook, and of course she held on way too long. Not that he particularly seemed to mind. Annie settled in, leaning against the filing cabinet in the corner, ready to take notes, but Lillian aimed her artfully made up eyes in her direction.