Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She was silent for such a long time that he asked, “You still there?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going to call Martell, have him drop by to check on you in the morning, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Annie said again.

  “I love you, Annie,” Ric said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  She took a deep breath. “Ric—”

  But with a click, he was gone.

  Great. Now she needed a drink.

  She and Robin were quite the pair.

  Martell stopped by Ric’s on his way home from work.

  The forensics nightmare was still set up in Ric’s office, but Ric and Jules were nowhere in sight.

  He followed the sound of the TV upstairs to the living room—where they were sitting side by side on the sofa, playing Grand Theft Auto.

  “No,” Jules was saying, shifting to keep Ric from taking the joystick out of his hands. “No, no, no—I play this game differently from you. Check this out. Look, okay, okay…here we go…”

  On Ric’s flat-screen TV, the perp that Jules controlled with his joystick got out of the sports car and ran toward the fire truck that had skidded to a stop. The driver’s-side door opened, and the computer-image person who’d been driving the truck was tossed to the ground. Jules’s perp climbed behind the wheel.

  “Yeah, baby!” he said as the fire truck rumbled away.

  “What the fuck are you doing in the fire truck?” Martell asked from the doorway. “You can’t get up any real speed in that thing.”

  Both men glanced at him.

  “Nice to know your security system works,” Jules said to Ric.

  “He has a key.” Ric’s attention was back on the TV, where Jules was running over both people and cars in the ultraviolent computer game, gaining more and more speed.

  Boom! He just plowed through a police road block set up to stop him.

  “Okay,” Martell said. “Maybe that’s what you’re doing in the fire truck. Ric, you want to update me—”

  “No, no,” Jules said. “Full attention on the TV, gentlemen…Wait for it, wait for it…”

  He was moving at a pace that Martell wouldn’t have dared, not even in one of the smaller cars, sliding the fire truck onto the ramp up to the highway, but whoa! Instead of driving on the road, he was on the grass between the on-and off-ramps, dodging trees with a lightness of hand that was fucking amazing.

  The grass turned to a concrete ramp and the truck went up it, still gaining speed and—

  “Yeah!” Ric shouted as the concrete ended abruptly and the fire truck launched into midair.

  “Dude!” Martell shouted. The hang time was amazing. The giant motherfucker just soared. Jules added glitter to the visual by spraying water out of the fire truck’s hose. It was beautiful.

  But what went up must come down…

  Except Jules managed to land the truck with amazing grace on the parking area of a nearby roof, again working that joystick like a pro to keep it from flipping on its side and plowing through the flimsy guardrail.

  “Insane stunt bonus,” Jules announced, even as his words flashed on the screen. His score skyrocketed.

  “Dude!” Martell said again.

  Jules took the fire truck down the parking-lot ramp, all the way to the street below.

  “And that,” he announced as he handed the joystick to Ric, “is the only way to play Grand Theft Auto.”

  “Shit!” Ric immediately crashed the fire truck as Martell high-fived Jules.

  “You awe and inspire me, my gay brother,” Martell told him.

  “My personal life may be turning to shit, but I am,” Jules agreed, “the king of the insane stunt bonus.”

  “So what’s going on?” Martell asked, sitting beside them.

  “There’s Chinese takeout in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” Ric told him, turning off the TV.

  “I’m assuming that’s not the reason I got three missed calls from you on my cell,” Martell said.

  “I was hoping you’d have time to check in on Robin and Annie in the morning,” Ric said. “Their flight out doesn’t leave until noon.”

  Martell had to be in court first thing in the morning, arguing a case against an assistant DA named Bob Andersen. They were appearing in front of a grim-faced man he and Ric had nicknamed Judge Doom, back when they were on the police force. Doom had a propensity for bringing in guilty verdicts.

  Martell knew exactly—almost word for word—what his morning would be like. Bob would greet him by saying, Mr. Griffin. Back for more punishment today, are we?

  Judge Doom would bang his gavel and Martell would argue the case, using Damien Johnson’s lame-ass excuse that he’d held up the Circle K while under the influence of sleeping pills that he’d taken by mistake, thinking they were aspirin. He was sleepwalking.

  Right.

  The Doomster wouldn’t buy that shit any more than Martell had. The jury wouldn’t, either, and Johnson would not pass “Go” before going directly to jail.

  And Bob would smirk. Mr. Griffin. Have I started showing up in your nightmares?

  Like it had been some great contest of skill that Martell had failed, instead of an exercise in necessary futility, since a trial by jury was a constitutional right of all citizens—including each and every lame-ass who insisted he or she was innocent.

  And Martell wouldn’t say, Actually, Bob, I run when I see you coming because you bore me to tears.

  But he’d want to.

  “Sure, I can stop in, but it’ll be early,” he told Ric now.

  “Thanks,” Ric said.

  Jules stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

  Was he serious? “The king can’t go to bed at eight-thirty,” Martell protested.

  “The king is tired,” Jules said. He looked at Ric. “Wake me if Junior calls to say he’s coming any earlier than ten.”

  “Yeah,” Ric said. “Hey.”

  Jules stopped in the doorway.

  “You know, Annie was thinking you might want to call Robin,” Ric said, adding, “Or not. She’s just…you know…being Annie, so…”

  Jules just nodded, but Martell could see the intense exhaustion in the man’s eyes along with a little something extra. He’d seen that look before—in the eyes of people who were grieving a loss. He didn’t respond, except to say a quiet “good night.”

  They sat there then, in silence, as his footsteps receded down the hallway, as he gently closed the door to Annie’s room behind him.

  “He okay?” Martell asked.

  “Yeah,” Ric said. “He’ll be fine.”

  “So that’s what gay guys do, huh? Sit around racking up insane stunt bonuses on Grand Theft Auto,” Martell mused. “Who knew? I expected to find him redecorating your kitchen.”

  “I got Colt 45s in the fridge,” Ric said. “Want one?”

  Martell laughed. “Zing.”

  “He’s a lot like us,” Ric said. “He just…has sex with…men.”

  Martell turned his head to look at him.

  “I know,” Ric said. “It’s kind of weird, but then again…You had sex with the lieutenant.”

  God Almighty, Enrique was never going to let Martell live that one down. Their former boss had been temporarily separated from her husband, and Martell had just left the force to start law school. They’d both been drinking and…Crazy shit happened. So to speak.

  “I’d have sex with Robin Chadwick,” Ric continued, “before getting naked with the lieutenant. And since the probability of my having sex with Chadwick is somewhere between negative two billion and never…”

  It had been a one-time-only thing—thank you, Jesus—the true blessing being that the lieutenant reconciled with her husband mere days later. But it had been far from the awfulness that Ric no doubt imagined. Still, it was a night Martell chose to remember only selectively, squinting to dull the clarity of his memories.

  “You know,” Ric said pensively, “I think I’d have sex with
Pierre, before—”

  “Shut up,” Martell said, laughing. “You’re such a prick. You ask me to do you a favor and then you dis my woman?”

  “Your woman?” Ric repeated in disbelief.

  “She was fucking hot,” Martell said, just to make the prick squirm. Also because it was not a lie. He threw one in for good measure. “She wore leather and made me call her ma’am.”

  “Man, I so don’t want to know that,” Ric said. “Please tell me you’re shitting me.”

  “I’m shitting you.” He stood up. “I gotta go.”

  Ric stood, too. “Call me after you check in on Annie. Leave me a message if I don’t pick up.”

  He was seriously concerned about her safety, so Martell didn’t make a joke about either comforting her or alleviating her loneliness. Instead he just nodded. “Will do.”

  Ric followed him into the kitchen, where Martell helped himself to some Szechwan chicken that was still out and open on the table. “You sure you don’t want this?” he asked, even as he took a plastic fork from Ric’s drawer and started eating right out of the white cardboard container. It was cold, but damn good. He was hungrier than he’d thought.

  “I’m sure,” Ric said.

  There was a smaller container of steamed rice, and Martell unglued some of it, combining it with his chicken. “Because you know what they say about Chinese food. It tastes great, but you’re hungry again thirty minutes later.”

  For some reason, Ric found that really funny.

  “Bro,” Martell told him as he went down the stairs to the front door, Ric following to lock up behind him. “You’re losing it. Get some sleep while you can.”

  “Thank you again for helping,” Ric said. “When you see her, tell Annie that I love her.”

  Martell turned to look at him in surprise, but he’d already shut the door.

  Smiling, he stabbed another piece of chicken with his fork as he walked to his car. Considering Ric was one of the best detectives Martell had ever known, it had taken him much too long.

  But apparently he’d finally gotten a clue.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Robin was coming down with the flu.

  Had to be.

  His head was pounding, he was sweating as if he had a fever, he couldn’t sleep, and his nausea level was off the charts.

  Which, of course, made Dolphina’s 5 A.M. phone call all that much more fun.

  “I really don’t want to do this right now,” he mumbled into his cell as he staggered into the bathroom to take a leak.

  “Are you drunk again?” she asked sharply.

  “No.” He leaned against the wall above the toilet, too ill to stand without support. “I’m very much undrunk. I was sleeping.” He’d finally managed to nod off when his phone rang, jolting him awake.

  Dolphina, finally back from her cousin’s wedding in Orlando, had told him earlier that she’d call when the PR genius that HeartBeat Studios hired had come up with a plan of attack regarding the YouTube debacle. But this was ridiculous.

  “Can’t we discuss this in the morning?” he asked, flushing the toilet.

  “By morning the story will have broken,” she said. “Robin. Listen carefully. I just got a call from a reporter from TMZ dot-com. He wants a comment—from you—regarding the man who came into your hotel room last night.”

  Robin made his way back to his bed, where the bottle of water on his bedside table was empty. “There were no men in my hotel room last night.”

  “Last night,” she repeated. “Not tonight.”

  He put his head in his hands. “You mean…”

  “I’m talking about the night from the YouTube video,” she clarified.

  “There were two men,” he told her, “in that video. I’ve never seen either one of them before.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, but then Dolphina said, “Robin, did your…special friend come to your room that night, too? Because this reporter says he’s seen new footage of a man who came into your room and kicked everyone out. It’s just gone up online, and he’s giving us a chance to comment for the story he’s writing—a story that’s going to break in just a few hours. A story that outs you.”

  Ric came out of a really good dream with a hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear. “Ric. Alvarado, come on. Wake up.”

  It wasn’t Annie’s voice, which was disappointing—doubly so when he opened his eyes to see Jules standing over him.

  “Sorry,” the FBI agent apologized. “I knocked on your door, but you were out cold.”

  “What’s up?” Ric sat up, pushing his hair out of his face, aware of both his lack of shirt and his raging hard-on.

  In his dream, he’d been sitting on the lounge chair out on the screened porch and Annie had appeared, the way Annie often did in his very best dreams. She’d whispered his name as she’d straddled him, pushing him hard and deep inside of her.

  Yeah. Good dream. Really good dream.

  He bunched his blanket in his lap.

  But Jules had already moved back across the room to the doorway, respectful of Ric’s privacy. “Junior called on my cell,” he reported. “He said he’s running late, but that he should be here by noon.”

  Ric looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was slightly after 5 A.M., and the first faded pink hint of the coming sunrise was lighting the sky.

  “He used the words our little field trip to Myakka,” Jules said.

  “Myakka,” Ric repeated. Myakka was a state park, filled with alligators and long desolate stretches of swampy river. It was the perfect dumping ground for murder victims. As a cop, he’d helped drag the river many times.

  Jules nodded. “I’ve spoken to Yashi. He’s got three different teams already on their way out there. They’ll be in place by the time we leave. By the time I leave with Junior. I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s no reason for you to go, too. Which is why I woke you. I don’t want you here when Junior arrives.”

  He was serious.

  “And Junior’s not going to think that’s weird?” Ric asked. “That I’m not along for the ride?”

  “Not when I tell him that your father had another heart attack, and that you went to the hospital,” Jules replied.

  That was a good cover, but…“You’ll be alone,” Ric pointed out.

  “My entire team will be in place.”

  “And what if this Myakka thing is disinformation?” Ric countered. “Your team will be in Myakka and you’ll be God knows where.”

  “Then I really don’t want you with me,” Jules told him.

  “You think something’s going to go wrong.” Ric’s jeans were on the floor next to his bed, and he grabbed them and pulled them on, yanking up his zipper so they could have this conversation face-to-face.

  Jules didn’t try to deny it. He was standing there, in the doorway, in jeans and a T-shirt, with his feet bare and his hair sticking straight up in places like a frat boy with chronic bedhead. “I hate to go all Han Solo on you, but yeah. I got a bad feeling about this. So take a shower, get dressed, and go over to the hospital.”

  “Jules, come on…”

  His face got hard and the frat boy vanished. “That wasn’t a request. That was an order. This isn’t a democracy, Alvarado. You work for me. So get your ass to the hospital.”

  “Okay,” Ric said, holding out both hands as if he were trying to reassure Pierre when Annie had been gone for too long. “Whoa. Wait. Let’s not go into panic mode just yet. We’ve got plenty of time to, I don’t know, think up a counterplan.”

  Jules laughed. “You don’t think I’ve got a counterplan? I’ve got teams coming out here within the hour. They’ll be in place to provide backup, long before Junior arrives. They’ll follow, wherever Junior takes me. Plus, the body’ll be trackable. Go to the hospital, Alvarado. Don’t make me break your arm to send you there.”

  Those were fighting words, meant to piss him off, but Ric wasn’t going to argue that one. “L
ook, man, I know you can probably beat the hell out of me if you want to. And yeah, maybe you’re going to have to, because I’m not going anywhere. You had to know that my leaving you alone with Junior and his men just wasn’t going to fly. I can see that something’s got you spooked. I’ve been there. You get a feeling, you don’t know why, but you’re usually always right. So okay. Let’s work this through—”

  “I’ve worked it through,” Jules said again, “and you’re going to the hospital.”

  “I realize that you’re afraid for me,” Ric said, “and I appreciate that, but…it goes both ways. I’m afraid for you, too.”

  Jules didn’t move. Ric didn’t know how he did it, but one second he was standing there, the hard-ass FBI team leader, and the next, he’d completely changed. It was as if he’d flipped a switch and morphed into someone else.

  “I had no idea you cared,” Jules said so softly, Ric almost couldn’t hear him. And his eyes, which had been so hard, were now filled with heat. He gave Ric a long, slow once-over, looking at him in a way that Ric had never been looked at by another man before. It was extremely disconcerting.

  But Ric knew exactly what Jules was doing. Or rather, trying to do. It wasn’t going to work. He didn’t scare that easily. He wasn’t going to run away.

  Instead, he called Jules’s bluff. “Come on,” Ric said. “Let’s take a walk on the wild side, babe.” He purposely used Robin’s term of endearment for Jules. “We’ve got a couple hours to kill…”

  Ric went as far as to step toward Jules—who took a big step back, away from him. Just as Ric had known he would.

  “What,” Ric pushed. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Jules said. The heat was gone from his eyes—in fact, he was finding it difficult now to meet Ric’s gaze.

  “Oh, I’m the asshole?” Ric asked. “I thought we were friends. I thought that you respected me. But if you were really thinking you could scare me into some kind of, I don’t know, homophobic panic…? Fuck you, for thinking so little of me. And fuck you, too, for apparently assuming I wasn’t paying attention when you were talking about Robin. Christ, if anyone out there is a one-man…man…” Damn, but that was weird to say. “It’s you. Asshole.”