All the Wrong Moves

by Lovelace, Merline

  He went down, but not out. Moaning, he tried to get his knees under him.

  “Quick!” I shouted to Joy, preparing to wield the club again. “His gun!”

  The snick of a round being chambered brought my head around with a snap. The Brow had taken my meaning literally and was about to pump a round into her former boss.

  “Joy! No!”

  “You called it,” she grated hoarsely. “A robbery gone bad. I had to shoot him. Self-defense.”

  “Don’t do it! He’s not worth it!”

  “He ruined my life. My marriage.”

  “You did that yourself.”

  I can see now that wasn’t the smartest thing to point out at the moment. All I can offer in my defense is that I was a leeeetle frazzled.

  “If you’re going to shoot him,” I said with what I honestly intended as heavy sarcasm, “do it because he’s a total slime who profits off the pain and suffering of others.”

  Much to my dismay, I discovered sarcasm rolled off Joy Bennett with the same Teflon ease it did off Pen.

  “Good point,” she agreed and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IN one of those ironic twists that life sometimes dishes out, Roger Carlisle ended up in the hospital room right next to Mitch’s.

  When I arrived at the North Tucson Regional Medical Center early the next morning, the third floor corridor was swarming with uniformed police officers, plainclothes investigators and television news crews. I kept my head down and threaded my way through the milling throng to Mitch’s room. I’d given my statement—several times!—to the various law enforcement types who’d responded to Joy Bennett’s house last night. I was all statemented out.

  I should mention I’d also met Joy’s husband last night. He’d raced home in response to his wife’s frantic call and barreled his way past the police cordon. I have to admit I sniffed back a tear or two when he opened his arms and Joy fell into them. Sobbing her heart out, she kept crying over and over that she’d been such a fool, that she’d never meant to hurt him, that she would give anything to erase the past.

  Speaking from experience I will say it’s a kinda tough to erase the mental image of your spouse going all hot and heavy with someone else. I hope Mr. and Mrs. Brow work things out, though. They’d obviously invested more in their marriage than Charlie and I had.

  I was thinking about that when I knocked on Mitch’s door and stuck my head in. “Morning.”

  He was sitting up in bed, already dressed in the navy blue sweats I’d purchased in my Walmart shopping spree yesterday. His arm was bandaged to his side, but he looked ready to blow this joint.

  “Morning.” His hazel eyes tracked mine as I entered. “Hear you had a busy time last night.”

  “Busy is one way to . . .”

  The sight of the thickset male in the chair by the window stopped me in mid-stride.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right,” Paul Donati growled. Folding his arms across his chest, the FBI agent pinned me with a decidedly unfriendly look. “Care to explain why you didn’t bother to mention your planned excursion to the Bennett place when we talked last night?”

  “You said you couldn’t discuss details of the case over the phone.”

  Weak. Very weak. But the best I could come up with at the moment. The FBI agent didn’t buy it, of course. Beneath his black, wavy hair, eyebrows almost as thick as Joy Bennett’s drew together.

  “I believe I also told you to butt the hell out of my business.”

  What’s that saying? A good offense is the best defense? Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. Aggrieved by his lack of appreciation for my role in busting up a stolen arms ring, I went on the attack.

  “Good thing I didn’t butt out. If I had, Joy Bennett would be a statistic this morning and you’d have nothing on Roger Carlisle.”

  “Not quite nothing,” Donati huffed. “I checked the phone calls made to and from his office yesterday morning, as you suggested. One call traced to a disposable phone found on Ed Granger’s body.”

  I didn’t come right out and crow. I have more cool than that. I let a snickery snort convey my sentiments.

  “Have a seat.” With a smothered grin, Mitch patted the bed beside him. “Paul was just about to fill me in on Granger.”

  “He was one of ours,” the FBI agent admitted reluctantly as I hiked up on the hospital bed beside Mitch. “He worked for the Bureau for almost a decade before leaving to freelance.”

  “Like Patrick Hooker,” I put in, remembering the information I had Googled up on the former U.S. soldier who’d gone mercenary.

  “Like Hooker,” Donati concurred. “We know now Hooker and Granger connected while they were hired guns in Iraq. Carlisle came into the picture later, when Granger offered to cut him in on a deal for a shipment of grenade launchers. Carlisle subsequently provided inside data on at least three B&R shipments.”

  “He said last night he also tapped into competitors’ systems.”

  The FBI agent nodded. “Ms. Bennett gave us that input. Our data systems experts have already alerted several of those competitors. We’ll work with them and with B&R to determine how much of their systems have been compromised.”

  “What’s going to happen to Joy Bennett?” I wanted to know. “When I left her place last night, the on-scene detectives were talking possible assault charges.”

  Especially after The Brow admitted we’d had Carlisle facedown on the foyer floor when she splintered the tile two inches from his face and almost put out his left eye with a near lethal shard. She told the police her intent was to scare him, but she’d never fired a handgun before and didn’t know the bullet would ricochet like that.

  Personal opinion? Her aim was simply off. Either way, I considered that jagged-edged tile shard minor compensation for Mitch’s tree branch.

  “We’ve already nixed any talk of charges against Ms. Bennett,” Donati said with a shrug. “They’re still pending against you, however.”

  “Me?”

  My startled squeak drew a thin smile from the wavy haired agent. His first since I entered Mitch’s room, I might add. Raising a hand, he ticked off a daunting list.

  “Obstruction of justice. Interfering with a federal investigation. Suborning witnesses.”

  “You gotta be kidding!”

  “You think?”

  I angled toward Mitch. “Tell me this guy isn’t serious.”

  “He’s not serious.”

  I don’t like being jerked around any more than the next gal but I suppose I deserved a few pulls. I let the agent enjoy a brief gloat, then Mitch keyed in to the aspect of this case that had become so personal for him.

  “What impact will the events here in Tucson have on the case against John Armstrong Sr.?”

  “Hard to say at this point,” the FBI agent replied with blunt honesty. “He did murder two men.”

  “He was set up, Paul. Just like Joy Bennett.”

  “I know. I’ll talk to the DA. See if we can work some mitigating circumstances.

  Donati pushed out of his chair and crossed the room.

  “I’ve got a copy of the statement you gave the investigating officers last night. I’ve also got Mitch’s statement. I may want to talk to you both again. If so, I’ll contact you in El Paso.”

  He shook Mitch’s good hand and unbent enough to give me a real smile.

  “Think you can make the drive home without sailing off into another gully?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  I had Mitch strapped in and exiting the hospital parking lot when I remembered EEEK. I wasn’t up for the drive to Phoenix to return him to his rightful owners, but the least I could do was bail him out of jail.

  Okay, okay! You want the truth? The mere thought of another report of loss or damage to property in government custody broke me out in hives.

  Mitch had to flash his badge and I had to toss out wholly fictitious facts and figures about DARPA’s weight
in the civilian community before we sprang EEEK from the Marana police department’s evidence locker. To tell the truth, I think the only reason we regained custody was because no one on the police force had any idea how to fire up his computers or what they’d do with him if they did.

  His shipping container had been demolished in the explosion so Mitch and I reprised our role as cyborg chauffeurs. We drove back to El Paso with EEEK strapped into the back seat of my rental car.

  Our first stop was Mitch’s place, where I insisted on putting him to bed and spent the rest of the day playing nurse. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the me-doctor, you-hot-hot-hot-nurse kind of play I’d been dreaming about.

  Between my periodic checks of his bandages and temperature, we both made phone calls. Mitch, to his supervisor and the assistant DA handling the Armstrong case. Me, to my team and—gulp!—my supervisor.

  I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say my phone’s video screen showed Dr. Jessup round-eyed with disbelief while I recounted my latest series of disasters. His red bow tie bobbed convulsively. Sweat glistened like silver tears against his dark skin.

  I hung up convinced he would work either his immediate transfer back to the civilian sector or my immediate transfer back to the air force.

  MY gloomy prognostication appeared to come true less than two weeks later.

  Both Mitch and I were both back on the job. The hole in his shoulder had healed enough for him to return to duty. My bruises had run the gamut from ugly purple to ugly yellow to gone.

  I was in my office on Fort Bliss, struggling to make sense of an invention that purported to transform ordinary grains of sand into acoustical transmitters, when Dennis rushed in.

  “You’d better come down to the conference room, Lieutenant. Like, now!”

  I’d never seen him so agitated. I was out of my chair before he’d spit the last word out.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  I had instant visions of Penn stabbing an anti-Global Warming protestor with one of her hair implements or Rocky succumbing to hysterics over a failed test run.

  “Just haul your butt to the conference room,” O’Reilly panted, already out the door.

  I shoved away from my desk and followed him down the hall. Heart pounding, I rushed inside and immediately skidded to a surprised stop.

  The room was full. Civilians and military. Army, air force and a few scattered marines. My team stood aligned against one wall. Mitch, Paul Donati and several people I didn’t recognize leaned against the other.

  The fact that Mitch gave me a grin eased my half-formed fears of another disaster. The sight of Dr. J at the head of the conference table brought them crashing back.

  “Sir! What are you doing on Fort Bliss?”

  “It’s come to my attention that I’ve been remiss in making visits to my teams in the field.”

  I wanted to ask what idiot had brought that to his attention. Heroically, I managed to refrain.

  “Please come forward, Lieutenant Spade.”

  I edged past my team, hissing as I went. “What’s this about? Any of you guys know?”

  Their responses ranged from a stoney look (Sergeant Cassidy) to a shrug (Dr. Rocky) to a nod from Pen and a smirk from Dennis. I blinked twice when I saw EEEK propped in a corner at the front of the room.

  Someone—I’ll bet my next two paychecks it was O’Reilly and his warped sense of humor!—had arranged EEEK in the pose I remembered all too well. One metallic ankle was hooked nonchalantly over the other. His composite arms were crossed. An air force flight cap tilted at a jaunty angle on his electronic brow. A silver eagle was pinned to the cap.

  Colonel EEEK. God help us all!

  Thoroughly discombobulated now, I joined Dr. J at the podium. Funny. I’d never noticed he’s at least four inches shorter than I am. Or that his eyes were the same shade of warm chocolate as mine.

  Probably because he’d been sitting down the few times we conferred . . . and usually regarding me with a combination of caution and nervousness. I caught glimpses of both emotions before he turned to address the gathering.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, as I’m sure you know, Lieutenant Spade heads up Future Systems Test Cadre-Three, based here on Fort Bliss. FST-Three’s mission is to test inventions for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  My esteemed supervisor paused, cleared his throat, and forged on.

  “FST-Three has faced some enormous challenges in recent weeks, including the loss of their lab and most of their test equipment.”

  I soared between wild hope and crushing worry. Had Dr. J made the trip to West Texas to announce he’d found funding for replacement equipment and FST-3 would soon be fully operational again? Or was he shutting us down?

  I was surprised at the hole that last thought punched in my heart. It’s true I complain constantly about being deported to the backside of nowhere to work with my motley collection of geeks and eggheads. Also true, said geeks tend to howl with laughter at morning confab when reviewing some of the absurd projects submitted for our review.

  Yet I know that deep inside, every one of us on the team nurses a secret hope we might actually contribute a significant enhancement to the safety, security or performance of U.S. military personnel. Why else would we troop out to Dry Springs once a quarter? Why else would we put up with each other’s odd and occasionally repulsive idiosyncrasies? Praying for good news, I tuned in closely as Dr. J continued.

  “FST-Three also came close to losing its team chief,” he intoned solemnly. “That extraordinary sequence of events is why I’m here today. Dr. England, will you read the citation, please?”

  Startled, I swung toward Pen. She stepped forward, her sturdy figure draped in its usual layers of natural fibers, and flashed a wide smile.

  “My pleasure, Dr. Jessup.”

  Feet shuffled and shoulders squared as the rest of the people in the room came to attention.

  “Citation to accompany the award of the Joint Service Commendation Medal to Lieutenant Samantha JoEllen Spade,” Pen read solemnly.

  Stunned, I listened while she described in somewhat extravagant terms my actions in helping to uncover and shut down an illegal arms-for-sale operation that crossed international borders.

  Only after Dr. J had pinned a bronze medal suspended from a pretty blue ribbon to my breast pocket did he—finally!—announce he’d secured another CHU and funding for replacement equipment. FST-3 could truck on out to Dry Springs again in three to four months!

  A round of applause followed these momentous announcements. Then Pen invited everyone to FST-3’s end of the hall for iced tea and wheat germ cookies.

  “You might want to take a pass on the tea,” I murmured to Dr. J before he yielded the floor to my co-workers and associates. As they filed past, I shook hands and received hearty congratulations from everyone. Including Paul Donati.

  “Look, I know I came down a little heavy at times, Lieutenant.”

  “A little?”

  “Now that the dust has cleared, I’ve been asked to tell you the Bureau appreciates your actions in breaking this case.”

  Ha! I just bet they did.

  Mitch was the last to approach. We’d seen each other a couple of times since the shoot-out. Purely platonic visits, given the severity of his wound. Now that he was out of bandages and off painkillers, though, I had great hopes for our next session.

  I saw those hopes reciprocated in his grin as he glanced at the ribbon dangling from my breast pocket.

  “Nice hardware.”

  “I think so,” I replied smugly.

  Laughing, he hooked a finger in the V of my uniform shirt and tugged me close. His lips brushing mine, he murmured an invitation.

  “Want to get together tonight for a private celebration?”

  “You bet!”

  I vaguely recalled one of my instructors at Officer Training School lecturing us on PDA. In military lingo, the acronym stands for Public Displays of Affection. If you�
�re up there in the cerebral stratosphere with Pen and Rocky you might think it refers to Photo-Diode Array.

  When Mitch bent and covered my mouth with his, I put my own spin on the acronym. I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.