by Katie Reus
Sid rolled his eyes and shut the door on him. Fucking doctor thought he could threaten him. But the truth was, a thread of fear slithered down his spine. It wasn’t the doctor he was worried about.
After these next three targets, he was definitely out. Hell, if they were going to lie low after he took the women anyway, his employer wouldn’t need him. That thought gave him pause. If they didn’t need him, he’d be disposable.
Maybe he should split town before taking anyone else. He had a new ID already made, but he could get more aliases. Just disappear. He wouldn’t have as much money as he’d planned on, but he could find new work.
Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He’d have to sleep on it. In the morning he could put his getaway plan into motion. Maybe he’d take one girl so no one would get suspicious and then he could split town and no one would realize, at least for a little while.
Amelia unlocked the back door to her restaurant and let herself in. She’d already stopped by La Cocina de Amelia first to see everyone. While she hired mainly college students at Plátanos Maduros, the first restaurant she’d opened was very family-oriented and had long-term, slightly older staff. Definitely not as much employee turnover.
She’d wanted to assure everyone that things would be operating as usual. Because she’d been in the business long enough to know that people would freak out, and the story of her accident—and she wasn’t telling anyone it had been intentional—would morph into a tale of her going out of business and everyone losing their jobs. It was just the nature of gossip in this industry.
She didn’t want to be here, though. Didn’t want to face anyone. Nathan had left her house late last night, telling her that he had a meeting today. She had no idea if he was lying. Things between them had been awkward, and she didn’t know what to do to make it right. She was afraid there wasn’t anything she could do. He said he forgave her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have anything to do with her.
And now she had to worry about another date with Mercado. She wasn’t nervous around Mercado, not after their last date, but she didn’t feel like herself, didn’t want to put on a fake smile and pretend to be happy. She knew she could say no, but she’d seen the news this morning and knew they’d found a lot of bodies—and she was hurt that Nathan hadn’t said a damn thing to her about it. She didn’t know for sure that the finding was related to his case, but she wasn’t stupid. She wanted to help them either nail Mercado to the wall or clear him.
The scent of delicious fried foods wafted through the air as she shut the door behind her. It automatically locked, part of her security precautions. She’d taken a few steps down the hallway when she saw that her office door was open. No one should be in there.
Panic and paranoia pumped through her. After yesterday it was hard not to feel jumpy. She had reached into her purse for her pepper spray when her front-of-the-house manager, Sylvia, stepped out.
Her coffee-colored eyes widened as she saw Amelia. “What the heck are you doing here?” She took a concerned step forward and Amelia automatically dropped the pepper spray and withdrew her hand. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m fine, I swear.” And wasn’t she sick of saying that to people? Which made her feel a little bit like a jerk, considering that everyone was just concerned. “Everything okay here?” She tilted her head to her office door.
“What . . . oh yeah, just updating the floor plan for today and dropping off the receipt for yesterday’s bank deposit. Sales were crazy yesterday.” She leaned against the doorframe and shoved her hands in her pants pockets. “I compared them to last year and we almost doubled what we did on the same date one year ago. I bet we see more today too, especially after that news clip they did on you.”
Amelia’s heart rate increased. “News clip?”
“You didn’t see it? Of course you didn’t,” Sylvia said, “or you wouldn’t have asked. Yeah, it came on after that awful story about the remains of all those women being found this morning. Did you see that?”
Amelia nodded. It was why she’d turned the news off. One depressing story was enough for the day.
“It was on right after that. They just talked about how you’d been in a hit-and-run and there was a brief interview with two women who said that you avoided hitting them to your own detriment. We were all so worried yesterday, but the police wouldn’t let us see you. And then you were just gone. Are you sure you’re okay?” As usual, Sylvia was going a million miles a minute. She always seemed to have an unending supply of energy. It was one of the reasons she was so good at her job.
“I’ll be so much better if you tell me there’s fresh coffee made.” There should be, this early in the morning. Her staff lived on the stuff. She’d had a cup at home, but she was still dragging. Lack of caffeine had little to do with it, though, and the truth was, she probably should have just stayed home.
“There is. I’ll grab you a cup. Hey, how’d you even get here anyway? It looked like your Jeep was toast yesterday.”
“Ah, rental.” Which wasn’t the truth, but Amelia had no problem lying. She wasn’t going to say that the FBI—or whoever, per Sinclair’s cryptic words—had let her borrow a vehicle until she got things straightened out.
When she woke up this morning, she’d had a text from Nathan telling her that she’d have an escort to work who would follow in another vehicle and that they’d left a mini-SUV in her garage. Which reminded her, she needed to call her insurance company and Sinclair. She wanted a copy of the police report so she could get a rental ASAP. She also wanted to grill Sinclair about who Nathan worked for.
She’d been a mess yesterday afternoon and last night. Nathan had been an absolute rock too. He’d just been a solid presence in her house, making her feel safe even though they’d barely talked. Of course that was probably because she’d been asleep more than half the time he was there. She tried to think why Nathan would lie about who he worked for and couldn’t come up with anything.
And this wasn’t the kind of conversation she could have with Nathan via text. Besides, he probably wouldn’t even tell her the truth anyway. He hadn’t told her about finding the bodies. Granted, he probably wasn’t allowed to tell her, but if the freaking media knew, it should be okay to tell her something. She’d put her neck on the line by going over to Mercado’s house.
Shaking her head, she stepped into her office and collapsed in the comfortable chair. Her neck and shoulders were a little sore, as if she’d run a 10K or done a bunch of push-ups. That was the least of her worries. Someone who wanted to do her serious harm was still out there.
And she had no idea who it was.
Neal Gray was a definite possibility. She hadn’t even thought of him after the first time someone rammed into her Jeep, but now that Tessa was missing she was thinking twice. She’d already given Sinclair a list of women who Gray had harassed, but she needed to contact them directly herself. If she didn’t and something happened, it would weigh on her forever.
Glancing at the wall calendar, she saw that two of the girls were on shift right now. Good, she could tell them later. Amelia nodded at Sylvia as she brought a cup of coffee in and picked up the office phone. She was calling the others now.
“Will you shut the door behind you?” she whispered as the phone started ringing.
Sylvia quickly ducked out. When Amelia was alone, she slumped back against the chair, not bothering to put on her happy face. After these calls she wanted to do the rounds at the restaurant and let everyone see she was fine.
Twenty minutes later, her calls were made. None of the girls seemed particularly worried about Gray—and that bothered Amelia. People never seemed to think bad things would happen to them. Until they did.
She stood and tucked her pepper spray into one of her pockets. She felt a little silly carrying it around, but after the attacks on her she wasn’t taking any chances. She also wanted her cell phone with her, so when she couldn’t find it, she cursed. On the way
to work she’d called a few friends using her hands-free system and had left the phone on her center console.
Her flat boots were quiet on the floor as she strode down the short hallway to the open kitchen. The loud blast of voices and clanking dishes filled the air, comforting her. It was an assault on her senses after the quiet of her office, but she welcomed it. If anything she needed it to feel a semblance of normal again.
“Amelia, surprised to see you here. You look good,” Toni, a pixie-sized server, said as she hurried by Amelia in the direction of the walk-in freezer.
She didn’t even have time to respond before a cacophony of other voices mirrored the same sentiment. Smiling and feeling a hundred times lighter, she snagged Mark, the nearest server. His order pad and pens were tucked into the front of his long black apron, but he didn’t have any plates in his hand. “Can you spare twenty seconds?”
“Sure, boss. What’s up?” he asked as they started back down the side hallway for the back door. “Thought you got in an accident yesterday. Shouldn’t you be resting or something?”
She was just going to hang a sign around her neck that said “I’m fine.” As soon as she had the thought, she felt ungrateful. She should be glad so many people cared. “I’m good, promise. Just need to grab something from my car and don’t want to do it alone.” Nathan had told her that her “escort” would be waiting in the parking lot and watching her all day, but she didn’t have a way to contact the driver/temporary watchdog. And she sure as hell wasn’t calling Nathan to tell him to tell the guy she was walking outside to get her freaking cell phone.
That sounded insane even as she thought it.
“Sure.” He started walking with her. “So, what happened yesterday? I heard you were, like, hospitalized.”
She snorted and shot him a glance. He was a foot taller than her, so she had to look up. “And you believed the gossip?”
He grinned, his expression boyish as they stepped out into the sunlight. “Wasn’t sure what to think. We were all worried about you, though.”
“I appreciate it. As you can see, I’m good, so spread the word.” They were halfway across the back of the paved lot when she realized she’d forgotten her SUV keys. “Apparently I need more caffeine today. I forgot my keys.”
Mark laughed lightly. “No worries.”
As they started to turn back, a blur of motion to her left caught her eye. A medium-sized man wearing a mask jumped out from behind a row of vehicles, a gun in his hand! He was less than fifteen feet from them. Panic seized her lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Everything seemed to slow for a moment as he raised it toward Mark. She felt rooted to the spot, her gaze locked on the weapon in horror.
It wasn’t a gun, she realized. A Taser.
The man fired, the dart flying straight for Mark. Her employee flew back, crying out in pain as he hit the ground.
Calling on all her strength, she started screaming at the top of her lungs, piercing the late-morning air. She pulled out her pepper spray and ran right for the guy.
Her assault seemed to take him off guard, because he stumbled back. She’d read up on Tasers and knew the shooting type could only fire once. She raised her arm, still screaming her head off, and fired a stream of liquid at the guy.
She nailed him right in the face.
A perverse sense of pleasure punched through her when his hands flew to his eyes and he bellowed in pain. She could hear Mark groaning but kept all her focus on their attacker. The weapon dropped from his hand, but she kept spraying. The man’s knees hit the ground, his cries of agony music to her ears. She needed to get Mark away from here, but she needed to make sure this guy was down. For all she knew he had another weapon hidden on him.
Before she could think about her next move, another man raced from between another two vehicles. She barely had time to register that it was the man who’d escorted her to work this morning before he tackled the masked man.
Her pseudo-bodyguard—Dax, she remembered—had the crying, cursing guy on the ground, his hands and legs both secured in seconds. He whipped the mask off the guy and yanked his head up by the top of his hair. Recognition slammed into her.
Dax dug his knee into the man’s back. “Shut the fuck up.” His words were a low, angry order to the prisoner. “You know him?” he demanded of her.
Amelia nodded, feeling sick. It was Neal Gray. “He used to work for me.”
Chapter 16
Agent: a person officially employed by an intelligence service.
“People are never going to want to eat here again,” she muttered to Sinclair, who was leaning against her tiny desk in her matchbook-sized office. It seemed so much smaller with him in it, but there was nowhere else she wanted to be right now after the past couple of hours. Seriously her nightmare had better be over. She was tired of being attacked and dealing with the annoying police paperwork that inevitably seemed to follow.
Dax had been stealthy about calling Sinclair to come arrest her former employee—who’d screamed about police brutality as they hauled him away—and about sending an ambulance to pick up Mark. She didn’t think he was hurt enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, but since it had happened on her property she’d insisted he go to get completely checked out. Nothing like the circus from yesterday.
Sinclair shook his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You’ll get more publicity if this ever hits the media, but I don’t think most of your employees even know about what happened.”
She rubbed her hands over her face. “You’re right,” she said, her words muffled. She dropped her arms. “I just want this nightmare over. Has he said anything yet?” Amelia didn’t think she needed to be specific about who she meant.
“No, we’re letting him stew. I’m going to interrogate that fucker myself, but I wanted to make sure you’re okay first.”
She had started to say “I’m fine” for what felt like the hundredth time that morning when Sylvia popped her head around the corner. She paused for a moment to give Sinclair a once-over before looking at Amelia. “There’s a man named Iker Mercado here to see you. I told him you might have already left for the day because I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see him or anyone.”
Crap, she so didn’t want to see anyone else right now. Not when her nerves were completely shot. But she nodded and stood. “I’ll be out there in just a sec.” But she was going to check her makeup first. If she wanted to snag a second date, she couldn’t go out there looking as if she’d been run over by a truck. Even if that was what she felt like.
Sinclair blocked her way, his expression dark. “You’re friends with Mercado?”
She blinked, surprised by his heated tone. “Uh, yes. I went with him to the auction last week. I told you.”
“You didn’t say a word about Mercado.”
“Oh.” Right.
“He’s . . . not who you think he is.” Sinclair’s jaw tightened as he watched her.
Amelia bit her bottom lip. It was clear Nathan’s team hadn’t told Sinclair or maybe even the Miami PD about her involvement in trying to hack into Mercado’s home system. She’d signed a confidentiality agreement, but she wouldn’t say anything anyway. As Nathan had told her, she had to act completely normal about her and Mercado in public.
“Look, he’s just a friend and I’m going to say hi. And you need to get down to the station and make that bastard confess to everything he’s done.” Because she knew Gray had been behind the other attacks. Or she really hoped he had been. It seemed insane that there could be more than one person randomly attacking her.
It was clear Sinclair wanted to argue, but he simply nodded. “I’ll contact you as soon as I have news about Gray. I can tell you he’s not going anywhere right now. He’s going to do jail time. It’s just a matter of how much we can pin on him. But about Mercado—be careful.”
“I will.” She walked Sinclair out, earning a frown from Mercado as the detective walked past him. Maybe he knew Sinclair was part of the Miami PD.
But Mercado’s attention quickly focused on her, his eyes concerned. “I saw the news this morning and I’ve been trying to call. I . . .” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ve been worried.”
If this man wasn’t a criminal, he was incredibly sweet. She glanced at Sylvia, who was behind the hostess stand, pretending not to listen, and gently took Mercado’s elbow. “Let’s talk about this out here.”
When they stepped out into the cool, early-afternoon air, she sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the crispness. She wasn’t exactly nervous, but she felt weird around him. She nodded at one of the benches in front of the restaurant. They were between the morning and afternoon rush, so there shouldn’t be too much foot traffic.
“Thank you for coming out here,” she said when he sat next to her.
He took her hand in a comforting gesture, squeezed once, and didn’t let go. She felt absolutely no spark. Yep, Nathan was definitely it for her. Unfortunately she probably wasn’t “it” for him. “So, what happened? The news was vague.”
“I . . .” She sighed, trying to find the right words. “I’m honestly not sure what happened. Or why I was attacked, I should say.”
He stiffened, his gaze darkening much the same way Nathan’s did when worried about a threat. “Attacked?”
She nodded and gently extracted her hand to rub the back of her stiff neck. “Yeah. Don’t freak out or anything, but someone rammed into me while I was driving home from the auction the other night. I knew it was intentional and I contacted the police. My . . .” She started to say “friend” but stopped herself. “My contact with the police department just left.”
Mercado nodded and something she couldn’t define seemed to click into place in his eyes. As if he’d known who Sinclair was. That was interesting. And not in a good way. Why would he know who a police detective was? Unless maybe he’d seen Sinclair on the news. Or maybe he’d had run-ins with him. . . . No, Sinclair would have told her if so.