by Cindi Myers
“I fear he is dead,” an older woman in a black evening gown said.
“The ambulance is on its way,” the first man said.
Union Cycliste Internationale President Alec Demetrie was a familiar figure to Luke, and to anyone in the professional cycling world. But the inert, ashen-faced man slumped in his chair was almost unrecognizable. Luke felt for a pulse but couldn’t find even a flutter. He met Travis’s gaze and shook his head.
“What happened?” Luke asked the woman, who he recalled was the president’s wife.
She took a deep breath, visibly pulling herself together. “He had a few bites of the entrée and complained of it tasting off. I told him he should send it back to the kitchen, but by then he was already unwell. I tried to get the attention of one of the waiters, then Alec slumped in his chair and...and...” She stared at her husband, unable to say more.
“Paramedics, let us through!”
Luke stepped back to allow two uniformed EMTs to reach the president. He motioned for Travis to follow him some distance away from the table and was surprised when Morgan joined them. “Is he dead?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
Luke nodded. “What do you think?” he asked Travis.
“Maybe he had a heart attack,” Travis said. “But I think we’d better make sure someone takes that plate as evidence.”
“I overheard what the woman said about the food tasting odd,” Morgan said. “Do you think someone poisoned him?”
“I think I’d like to check out the kitchen,” Luke said.
“I’ll question the waitstaff.” Travis nodded toward the dozen or so black-clad servers who stood along the back wall.
Morgan turned to Luke. “I’m coming with you,” she said.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” He didn’t like to involve civilians in his work. And if there really was a poisoner in the kitchen, the situation could be dangerous.
“You can’t stop me,” she said, then slipped her arm in his. “Besides, you’re less likely to arouse suspicion in the culprit if you look like a diner interested in complimenting the chef, instead of an FBI agent snooping around.”
“I never worry about looking suspicious.” But he covered her hand with his own to keep it in place on his arm.
“Right. Because you’re an FBI agent and whatever you do is right.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I think the attitude comes with the badge.”
“You don’t look too upset about it.”
A sly smile curved her lips. “I like a man with a little attitude.”
At the kitchen door, they had to push their way through a crowd of workers who had gathered to view the excitement in the dining room. “What’s going on?” asked a man in a white chef’s toque and apron.
“One of the diners became ill,” Luke said. He scanned the crowd of workers, searching for a familiar face.
Not all the workers had left their duties to gawk at the door. A dishwasher stood with his back to them, rinsing dishes, seemingly oblivious to the commotion. Another worker carried a trash bin to the back door. As he reached the door, the dishwasher moved to open it for him.
Faster than he could articulate the information, Luke’s brain processed the data his eyes transmitted: young male, early to midtwenties, slight, athletic build, five-eight or five-nine, clean shaven, short brown hair. “You there, by the door,” he called.
The man dropped the trash can and reached behind him. Time slowed as Luke drew his weapon from the holster beneath his jacket. Light glinted off the barrel of the gun the suspect they’d dubbed Boy Scout pulled from his waistband. Morgan screamed, then launched herself toward Luke as shots rang out.
They fell together, Luke propelled backward, crashing against a counter, Morgan sagging against him. Adrenaline flooded his system and he struggled to right himself, gripping his weapon in one hand, pulling Morgan up beside him with the other. “Are you all right?” he demanded, forcing himself to look for the wound he was sure was there.
“I’m sorry.” She looked up at him, tears streaking her face. “I had to stop you.”
“Are you all right?” he asked again. No blood stained her gown, but he knew the man at the door had been aiming right at them.
“I’m fine.” She struggled to pull away from him, but he held her firmly. “I couldn’t let you shoot him.”
The shooter had missed. Luke glanced toward the back door. Both the men who had been there were gone, the door standing open, the trash can on its side.
He gently set Morgan aside and raced to the door. The alley outside was empty, with no sign of the two men, and no apparent place for them to hide. He pulled out his phone and called his boss. “We’ve got a shooter on the loose,” he said as soon as Blessing answered. “Two men took off on foot from the kitchen of the hotel.” He gave a brief description of each man. “I’ll be in touch after I’ve finished assessing the situation here.”
He holstered his weapon and returned to the kitchen. Around him, the voices of the others in the room rose, full of questions and protests. He ignored them and found Morgan, standing where he had left her, shoulders hunched, expression stunned. He slipped his arm around her and guided her to a quiet corner. “Who did you think I was shooting at?” he asked.
“The dishwasher. I know you think he’s guilty, but he’s not. He would never...”
“Shh.” He put two fingers to her lips. “I was aiming for the other man. The one by the trash can. Didn’t you see the gun in his hand?”
Confusion clouded her eyes. “A gun? I wasn’t looking at him. I was watching the dishwasher. He was...”
“I know.” He laid her head against his shoulder and smoothed his hand down her back. “I recognized him, too. He was your brother.”
Chapter Four
“What do you think you’re doing, you idiot? You can’t come in here shooting up my kitchen!” Luke looked up into the florid face of the chef, who held a cleaver in one hand, the other curled into a fist.
“I’m a federal agent.” Luke gently separated himself from Morgan. “I have to go,” he said, to her, not the cook. “Maybe I can still catch them.”
She nodded and pushed him toward the door. “Go. Hurry.”
He raced past the gaping chef, skirted the fallen trash can and the lettuce shreds and potato peelings that spilled from it, and pounded into the alley. At the end he looked down the street filled with cars and pedestrians. Taxis and limos jostled for space with more modest sedans across four lanes of traffic idling at the red light on the corner. Half a block farther on, a light rail train blasted its horn as it pulled out of the station. His quarry could be anywhere by now—in one of the taxis or cars, on that train, or hiding in a dark alley nearby.
“You looking for those two who hightailed it out of there a minute ago?”
The raspy tenor voice came from a tall, thin black man who leaned against the brick wall a few feet to Luke’s left, one foot propped against the brick, a cigarette glowing in his right hand.
“Which way did they go?” Luke asked.
“Both ways. They split up. Which one did you plan on shooting?”
Luke realized he still held the gun in his right hand. He replaced it in the holster beneath his left arm. “The man with the short brown hair—which way did he go?”
The man straightened, both feet on the ground. “I didn’t pay attention to what either of them looked like,” he said. “I just know they were bookin’ it. I thought I heard gunshots, so I figured I’d best stay out of the way for a while.”
“Did you see either of them get into a car or taxi, or onto the train?”
“No. They were both running. I’d just stepped out for a smoke in time to see them leaving.” He snuffed out the cigarette against the brick. “And n
ow it’s time for me to get back to work.” With that, he sauntered back into an alcove and took the stairs down a level to a club, The Purple Martini, spelled out in purple neon above the door.
Luke had little hope of finding either Morgan’s brother or his suspect now, but he had to make an effort. He set out walking, past The Purple Martini and a string of closed shops. As he walked, he pulled out his phone and called Travis. “Our suspect got away. He took a shot at me, then ran out the back door. I’m going to show his picture around on the street, but unless we get really lucky, he’s gone.”
“I heard the shot, but by the time I got to the kitchen it was all over but the crying,” Travis said. “The chef is ranting at anyone within earshot and Morgan looks like she’s seen a ghost.”
“See that she gets back to her hotel okay.”
“What happened?” Travis asked.
“I’ll tell you the story later. For now, I want to keep looking. It’s possible the suspect is still on foot downtown.”
“I’m on it.”
He ended the call, then scrolled to his photo album. The picture he had of their suspect was a grainy image from a surveillance video, but it showed his face and general build. He approached a group of young people gathered on the corner, waiting for the light to change. “Have any of you seen this man around tonight?” he asked, holding out his phone.
“Who wants to know?” demanded a beefy blond whose flushed cheeks and bright eyes suggested he’d had a few drinks.
“FBI.” Luke flashed his creds and the blond gaped, while his friends crowded close to study first the credentials, then the image on Luke’s phone.
One by one they shook their heads. “Sorry.”
“No, haven’t seen him.”
“What’s he done?” the blond asked.
“We want to talk to him in connection with a case we’re working on.”
He moved on to others. Everyone studied the picture, frowning in concentration, but no one remembered seeing the suspect. About the results Luke had expected. Most people didn’t really look at others. Even when they did, the details didn’t stick in their minds the way they did for Luke.
Over an hour later, he’d covered the two-block area on either side of the hotel with nothing to show for his efforts. He stowed his phone once more and headed back toward the banquet facility. He needed to talk to people there and find out what they knew. Other members of the team had probably already conducted interviews, but he wanted to hear the information firsthand. It was possible the suspect had made friends who knew where he lived. Certainly, they’d have a name, though whether or not it was the man’s real identity was doubtful.
And he needed to figure out if Morgan’s brother, Scott, had anything to do with the suspect. Maybe he was merely holding the door open for a coworker, but the two had fled together. Luke needed to know why.
A block from the hotel, a woman moved out of the shadows ahead of him. The streetlights shimmered on the blue of her dress, and a gusty breeze tugged at her short hair. Luke straightened. “Morgan, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was waiting for you.” She moved in close beside him, almost but not quite touching him. She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder toward the front door of the hotel and Luke saw the reason for her nerves: half a dozen news vans crowded the curb and men and women with cameras and microphones filled the portico in front of the entrance, everyone jostling to report the big story of the night.
Luke took her arm and directed her across the street, to a bench at an empty bus stop. “We can talk here,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” she said, though her pinched face and hunched shoulders belied the answer. “Did you find him?”
By “him” did she mean her brother or the suspect? “They both had a big head start on me. I found a witness who said they split up at the end of the alley and ran in opposite directions.”
“I’m sure Scott only ran because he was confused and frightened,” she said. “He’s never liked tense situations, but even more so since he’s been diagnosed.”
He nodded. “I’d like to talk to him and find out what he knows about my suspect.”
“I talked to Gary and he said Scott had been working as a dishwasher only three days,” she said.
“Who’s Gary?”
“Oh, he’s the chef. Gary Forneaux. After you left I offered to bring him a drink from the hotel bar and he calmed down quite a bit. He told me they’d needed extra help for the banquet, so they’d agreed to hire Scott on a trial basis.”
“Do you think that’s how he’s been supporting himself—working temporary jobs in whatever town he’s in?”
“Probably. Gary said Scott knew how to run the commercial dishwasher. And he gets along well with most people. He can be very charming when he wants to be. Gary said everyone in the kitchen liked him.”
“I’m glad you found him,” Luke said. Along with everything else that had happened, there was that one bit of good news for her. “At least you know he’s all right.”
“But it feels like I’ve lost him all over again,” she said. “No one at the hotel knew where he was staying. Though he did use his real name. Tomorrow I’m going to start calling around to hotels and apartments, trying to find him.”
“I hope you do,” he said. Not just for his investigation, but because he knew how much being reunited with her lost sibling would mean to her. He would have given almost anything to see Mark again.
“What about the other guy?” he asked. “Did you find out anything about him?”
“His name is Danny. He was a day laborer from a temp agency. He was brought in just for tonight. Gary couldn’t even remember his last name and didn’t know anything about him.”
“Thanks. We’ll follow up on it.” Though he didn’t have high hopes that anyone at the temp agency would have more information. So far this guy had been very good at covering his tracks.
He glanced toward the hotel, at the bright lights and rumbling growl of the generators powering the portable satellite dishes for the news vans. “I guess I’d better get back there.”
“Luke.” Her hand on his arm drew his attention to her once more. The streetlight overhead cast a golden glow over her, glinting off her hair and shadowing her eyes against her pale skin. “I really don’t think Scott knew the man who shot at you. I mean, I don’t think they were friends or anything. He was just opening the door for him, not trying to help him escape.”
He wrapped his hand around hers and held it to his chest. “I know you want to believe that, but you can’t know it. We have to check out the connection, though I hope we don’t find one.”
“Will you tell me if you do?”
This was hard. He didn’t like the thought of keeping anything from her. He knew how much any scrap of information about Mark would mean to him. But he had a job to do. And sometimes that job required making hard decisions. “I can’t tell you anything I find,” he said. “But I will tell you if we’re able to clear your brother.”
“So in this case, no news is bad news.”
She almost smiled, and the burden of guilt he felt at having to keep things from her lifted a little. He marveled at her ability to maintain a sense of humor under the circumstances. She was stronger than she looked. “You’ve had a rough night,” he said. “You should go back to your hotel and get some sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve still got work to do.” He doubted he’d see his bed before morning.
“The first stage of the race starts tomorrow morning, in Aspen,” she said. “I have to be up early to Skype into a press conference.”
“They’re going through with it?”
She nodded. “The UCI made the announcement about an hour ago. The vice president, Pierre Marceau, said it was what Monsie
ur Demetrie would have wanted.”
“So if someone was trying to stop the race by poisoning President Demetrie, he didn’t succeed,” Luke said.
“Are they sure it was poison?” she asked. “The kitchen was swarming with police after you left. They took leftovers from every dish as evidence. Gary was very upset.”
“We’ll know by morning, anyway.”
“Do you think this is even connected to the bombings?” she asked. “Poisoning seems so personal.”
“That’s something we’ll have to find out.” They could very well be looking into two unrelated crimes. He stood, and pulled her up with him. He hated to leave the oasis of this little bench, away from the crowds and all the unanswered questions, but his duty had to come before his personal feelings. “Will you be all right walking to your hotel alone? I can find someone to go with you, but I can’t leave the investigation. I’ve stayed away too long as it is.”
“I’ll be fine. You’ve done so much already. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” If anything, he’d made things worse for her, placing her brother at the center of an investigation into international terrorism.
“Thank you for listening to me. For believing me—or at least pretending to. And for sharing as much information as you have with me.”
“So you aren’t afraid of me anymore?” He continued to hold her hand, reluctant to let go.
“No.” She put her hand on his chest, the warmth seeping through his shirtfront. “I’m glad we met, in spite of the strange circumstances.”
“Yeah. I’m glad, too.” Maybe from the moment he’d first seen her in that video, he’d known he’d seek her out. Something in her called to him.
She tilted her head up and rose on her toes to bring her face closer to his in silent invitation—an invitation he wouldn’t refuse. He’d been wanting to kiss her, hesitant only because of the tenuousness of their relationship. Her lips warmed beneath his, as soft and sensuous as he’d imagined they would be. He wrapped his arms around her to pull her closer and she slid one hand around to cup the back of his head, her fingers tangled in his hair. He stroked his tongue along the seam of her mouth and she opened for him with a soft sigh more passionate than any words would have been. Every nerve in his body was attuned to her, to the soft floral aroma of her perfume, to the taste of wine that lingered on her lips, to the curve of her breasts against his chest and the strong line of her spine beneath his hand. He deepened the kiss, lost in the sensation of her.
