Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He crossed his arms. “That’s what I said.”

  As Decker, PJ, and Robin continued to try to blend in with the kitchen wallpaper, Cosmo and Jane stood and glared at each other.

  Cosmo broke the silence first. “You know, I can handle your anger. It’s part of your grieving process, it’s another side to fear—and I know what that feels like. And I understand why you’re pushing me away, so I’m okay with that, too. I know you’re scared that I’m going to get hurt, or that Robin is, or Deck or any of us . . . but this isn’t the answer. Yes, I take risks—calculated risks—because that’s my job. I’ve had training. I’ve had experience. We all have. When you say, ‘I wanna go to Idaho,’ and we say, ‘Mmmm, bad idea,’ you say, ‘Maybe some other time, then,’ not, ‘Out of my way, assholes.’ ” He shook his head. “I wish you would talk to me about what you’re feeling—I’m right here, I’m standing right here, Jane—but I know how hard that can be, too. You want to spend two weeks—two months—talking about Robin or your screenplay or your father’s ex-wives, I’m ready to listen. I’m happy to listen. I’m also willing and ready to give you all the time and space that you need, with the understanding that even if I back away, I’m not going anywhere. What I’m not willing to put up with is this disregard for your own safety, your taking foolish chances with your life.

  “You are not responsible for Angelina’s death. But if you go to Idaho like this and get yourself killed—that one will be on you. And me—if I let you do it.

  “And as far as what right I have to tell you what you can and cannot do—I have none. I have no right—other than the fact that I love you. And I goddamn will do whatever I have to do so that I don’t end up in Murphy’s shoes.” His voice broke. “Don’t do that to me, Janey.”

  Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. Not even Jane’s idiot brother. Decker held his breath.

  Jane started to cry, her anger morphing back into the heartsickening grief they all were feeling. She ran out of the room, but before she went, she threw her airline e-tickets onto the kitchen table.

  Thank God.

  Cosmo followed her. “Jane . . .”

  “I broke up with you,” Decker heard her say as she ran up the stairs, before she slammed her door shut.

  Decker looked down the hallway to see the SEAL sitting on the stairs, exhausted, looking like he’d just run a marathon.

  “Yeah,” Cosmo said, rubbing his forehead, “but see, I didn’t break up with you.”

  Patty blew two months’ rent on a dress, a pair of shoes, and a haircut that made her look at least twenty-three.

  Which was perfect because it was the age on her fake ID, handed down from her older sister.

  She did her makeup in the car with her radio on and her cell phone turned off.

  Her phone had started ringing almost immediately upon leaving Jane’s.

  She’d run out of the house—hadn’t waited for her stupid escort home. She hadn’t even gone home, though all cast and crew were being “strongly encouraged” to stay indoors with their shades pulled down.

  Taking those kinds of precautions seemed ridiculous, considering her boyfriend had left her for a man.

  Well, okay, so Robin Chadwick wasn’t exactly her boyfriend.

  But she’d gone right to the clinic, got tested for HIV.

  The nurse had given her a solid scolding for having unprotected sex, telling her she was no more at risk than she would be if Robin had been completely straight. It was his multiple partners and careless lack of protection that created the high risk. Gay or straight, AIDS didn’t discriminate.

  Was that supposed to comfort her?

  The test results wouldn’t be back for several days. And even then, she’d need to be tested again in six months.

  No way was she going to die without having lived first.

  Patty got out of her car, teetering for a moment in her new heels. As she walked around the corner toward the restaurant, she’d let herself get used to them.

  She was over an hour early, but that was okay. She’d sit at the bar and watch the door, practicing the perfect surprised smile. Victor! What a coincidence! Are you having dinner here tonight? My date seems to have stood me up. Join you? Why, I’d love to!

  Victor Strauss’ personal assistant had told Patty that his boss was coming here for dinner tonight. It had been laughably easy to get the information out of him without being too obvious.

  She imagined the warmth of Victor’s hand at her waist as he escorted her to his table. Or—yes, her future was almost unbearably bright—as he escorted her into the Oscar ceremony next spring.

  He’d touched her in the hospital, after Jane had been hurt by that falling light. It had been for the briefest moment, just to move her out of the way of an approaching gurney. But he had touched her.

  She’d play hard to get—at least until the test results came in. Please, God, let her be negative.

  Starting now, she’d be more careful. She’d already stocked both her purse and her car with condoms.

  Drat, the restaurant was much farther away than she’d thought. She had to cross the street, walk another two blocks.

  Patty waited at the corner for the light to change, aware of the looks she was getting from the late-afternoon crowd around her. Who was she, dressed up like that? She must be Someone.

  Somebody jostled her, nearly toppling her from her shoes, somebody else grabbed her and— “Ow!”

  Something sharp—a pin?—stuck her, right in the butt.

  She turned around.

  A man with a gym bag was standing behind her. “Sorry.”

  Yeah, right. If he’d been young and looked like Ashton or Orlando she might’ve smiled. Instead, she gave him a dirty look.

  The walk signal finally lit up, and the crowd surged forward and . . .

  It was farther from the curb to the street than she’d thought, and she staggered. The road felt almost rubbery and . . .

  The man with the bag took her arm. “Let me help you, dear.”

  “No thank you,” she said, but her mouth felt funny, her face almost numb. “I have a date with Victor Strauss.”

  “She’s had a little too much to drink,” the man said to an older woman who was looking at her. Concern, not admiration, was in her eyes. She was speaking, too, but was that Russian? Patty couldn’t understand her.

  “No,” Patty tried to say. “I need a drink,” but everything was really blurry.

  The man slipped her arm over his shoulders, which was good, because her legs were useless and . . .

  “Here’s the car,” the man said, only it wasn’t her car at all. Still, she was just so glad to sit as the world faded and went gray.

  Shortly after midnight Cosmo knocked on Jane’s door.

  “Go away,” she called.

  He said something, but it was muffled and she couldn’t make out the words. He knocked again—that she couldn’t miss.

  She’d spent the evening crying. For Angelina, whom she’d never even met. For Murphy, who’d brought his love for his wife to everything he said and did, every breath he took.

  For herself.

  Jane just sat at her desk and waited for Cosmo to go away.

  But this time he unlocked the door and came in.

  Pocketing what looked like some kind of lock pick.

  “Well, that’s comforting,” she said. “Lock, schmock.”

  He looked worn out. “I needed to . . . I don’t know. Make sure you were okay, I guess,” he said, sitting down across from her.

  She wasn’t okay, but she didn’t say a word.

  He was sitting forward, elbows on his knees, hands on the back of his neck, staring at the floor.

  He was sitting in that same chair that . . . Damn it! Was she ever going to be able to look at him again without thinking that they were alive, and Angelina wasn’t? Every time they laughed, she’d think about the fact that Angelina couldn’t laugh. And Murphy wouldn’t laugh, probably not ever again.

  Ever
y time Cos smiled at her and made her heart leap, it would immediately sink because she’d remember that Angelina’s heart was never going to leap like that again. As for Murphy’s . . . God.

  Every time they made love, every time Cosmo told her that he loved her . . .

  He loved her. He’d said that he loved her.

  And all she could think was how come she got to have this gift, this beautiful, wonderful gift, when Angelina and Murphy’s love had been stolen from them forever.

  And try as he might, Jane knew that there was nothing Cosmo could do or say to convince her that the woman who was in the morgue tonight wasn’t there because of her.

  “You’re not the only one who feels responsible,” he said when he finally spoke, as if he could read her mind. As he lifted his head to look at her, she realized with a jolt of shock that he had tears in his eyes. He sat back in his seat, holding her gaze, as if daring her to comment. “Tommy and Decker are both devastated. We all are. There’s not a man or woman among us who hasn’t thought, ‘If only . . .’ If only we’d reminded Murph to check to make sure he wasn’t followed when he left here that morning. It’s standard procedure. Hell, it’s so ingrained in me, I do it automatically. It never occurred to me to remind anyone, but maybe if I had, we wouldn’t have had to go into that hospital room tonight and . . .”

  He had to stop, folding his arms across his chest, the thumb of one hand against the bridge of his nose. He exhaled, a soft burst of pain. “We went in there, Janey, and told Murphy that . . .”

  Jane couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. Her heart was in her throat.

  “We told him she was gone,” Cosmo said brokenly. “We had to tell him. He was yelling and . . . He had to be strapped down. He woke up, and he kept asking about her, and the fucking doctors wouldn’t tell him the truth, so he started demanding they let him see her. He was ready to stand up and start walking the halls, searching for her, so we went in. Me and Tommy and Decker.”

  Tears were sliding down her own face, too, as she sat there, her hand over her mouth.

  “If I live to be five hundred,” Cosmo whispered, “I will never forget the way . . . Jane, I’ve watched men pass away. Something changes in their eyes when they’re gone. And I swear to God, today I watched Murphy die. He was still breathing when we left that room, but . . .” He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Jane wept. “I’m so sorry.”

  Cosmo had come here, not because he thought she needed him. He’d come because he’d needed her.

  And now Jane also cried because, if it had been up to her, she would have kept him locked out.

  She stood up, went around the desk to reach for him, but he was already over by the door, wiping his eyes on the bottom edge of his T-shirt.

  “Cos,” she said, and he hugged her, but he held her close for far too short a time.

  “We can all beat ourselves up about this, Janey,” he told her quietly. “We can feel sorry for ourselves and try to wish it away with should haves and shouldn’t haves, but there’s one man who I know for goddamn sure is responsible for killing Angelina. He’s out there and I’m going to find him.”

  “Cos . . .” Jane followed him out into the hallway but he didn’t stop. “Be careful,” she said, even though she knew he would be, as he clattered down the stairs, out the door, and into the night.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  I t was two days after that awful mistake of a night, before Robin ran into Jules again.

  It was two days of being escorted onto the set and home. Two days of being grateful that the scenes he was shooting weren’t with Adam and that the set was closed, due to the danger from the sniper.

  This morning, Patty hadn’t shown up at the studio. Apparently she wasn’t answering her cell phone, and Janey was worried to death about her. Troubleshooters team members had gone scrambling to her apartment, where they’d found nothing. No dead body, no sign of a struggle, but also no clues as to her whereabouts.

  Robin had been worried at first, too—until Jane had revealed that Patty had found out about his encounter with Adam, and everything fell into place.

  She’d gone back to Kansas or wherever. In a few hours, they’d get a call from her mother, telling them she’d arrived safely home.

  Which would be a relief of sorts. Running home was much better than running to the National Voice and publicly outing Robin.

  Which would have been a real irony, especially since he now knew for a fact that he wasn’t gay. He didn’t remember much of that night at Adam’s, but what he did remember was . . .

  Hal.

  Hal had loved every minute of it.

  But that didn’t mean that Robin was gay—just a damn good actor, consumed by the role.

  He hoped to God he never got cast to play a serial killer.

  As soon as American Hero was done filming, he’d exorcise Hal, and his life would return to normal. Until then, he just had to cope with Hal shoving Robin’s own thoughts aside, and daydreaming about . . .

  Not Adam. He didn’t want to spend a lot of time reliving the frantic near-violence of . . . Shit. It had been sex ramped up to an intensity that overwhelmed him and filled him with guilt.

  No, what haunted him was that kiss he’d shared with Jules. It stayed with him, the memory far clearer than anything he might have done with Adam.

  Robin had also spent the past two days vowing not to drink, but then caving in and breaking into the private stash of Puerto Rican rum that he kept in his closet. The rum was there, allegedly because he’d never brought it downstairs to the liquor cabinet after he got back from last year’s vacation cruise to Aruba, but really so that he’d have it close at hand during times of stress.

  And talk about stress.

  Janey was tied in a knot.

  For the past two days Robin had watched Cosmo—who had the patience of a saint—give his sister space. He alternately sat at the computer in the conference room, or pored over street maps of the Los Angeles area with some kind of list, or went out—usually in the middle of the day, oddly enough—to find the man who’d murdered Angelina.

  The question in Robin’s mind wasn’t if the SEAL would kill the bastard when he found him, but rather how he’d kill him.

  Alana in makeup had told him that SEALs were capable of killing a man with their bare hands. Just grab and twist and bye-bye, Mr. Insane-o, we hardly knew ye.

  Robin wished Cosmo would hurry up already.

  He really liked Cos. A lot.

  Not in that way. Go away, Hal.

  In a potential brother-in-law way. Janey usually picked losers, but Cosmo was kind of a fabulous cross between Jesus and the Terminator. The friendly Terminator, from Terminator 2.

  The man loved her—he’d said as much during yesterday’s shouting match in the kitchen. That shit was better than reality TV.

  Robin was actually looking for Cosmo upon his arrival home from the set, when he found Jules Cassidy instead.

  Sitting at the conference room table, reading through some official-looking documents.

  Robin stopped short, and Jules glanced up.

  But went right back to reading.

  Probably because he expected Robin to run away.

  Jules had left a couple of messages on his voice mail. Messages Robin hadn’t returned.

  Yet.

  He was intending to. When he’d figured out what to say.

  Be a man.

  Robin took a deep breath and went into the room. “Hi.”

  Jules looked up. An arctic breeze blew through the house, and Robin’s heart sank.

  “I’m waiting for Cosmo Richter,” Jules said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Dumping seventy different Hefty trash bags filled with Mr. Insane-o’s body parts in seventy different Dumpsters across the city?” Robin suggested.

  Jules didn’t smile. “That’s not something you
want to say to a federal agent.”

  “I was kidding.”

  “Not funny.”

  Okay. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.” Robin forced himself to sit down across from him.

  “I was worried about you. Guess I shouldn’t have been.” Jules went back to his reading.

  “I didn’t know what to say to you.” No apology on earth would make up for what had happened.