by Steve Brewer
"Thanks for your input. Anything else?"
"I want to talk to Jackie," Ellis said. "Just to make sure she's all right and that she's solid with the decision she's made."
"She's all right. She's solid. She doesn't want to talk to you."
Ellis felt his face getting hot, blood surging up in him like mercury in a thermometer.
"Afraid that's not good enough," he said. "I need to see her with my own eyes. I need to talk to her alone."
"Not gonna happen."
Ellis took a deep breath through his nose, trying for calm.
"I could force the issue," he said. "I'd hate to place a former marshal under arrest, but if you impede my investigation—"
"Go peddle that bullshit somewhere else," Sandoval said. "You've got no reason to arrest me. There's no warrant out for Jackie. And you've got no warrant to come into my home."
"I can get one."
"Go for it, if you think you can find a judge who'll believe you. In the meantime, take my word that Jackie is safe and sound."
"She's my responsibility—"
"No, she's not. She's done with WitSec."
"Not her decision to make."
"Yes, it is. Witnesses can choose to walk away from the program anytime. She's made that choice."
"It's going to get her killed."
Sandoval smiled. "She seems pretty capable of taking care of herself."
"That only goes so far. Whoever kicked in this door—"
"It wasn't you?"
"Hell, no, it wasn't me. Somebody else is looking for Jackie, and that means she's in danger."
"Maybe they were looking for me," Sandoval said. "I was on the job for ten years. I've got a lot of enemies."
Ellis gave him the hard squint. "You're about to have one more, if you don't get out of my way and let me talk to her."
Sandoval squared up in the doorway, his shoulders nearly touching either side, daring Ellis to move him out of the way. He wasn't smiling now.
A minute crept past, neither man moving, not even blinking.
Ellis knew Jackie was just out of sight somewhere, listening to them. It was all that kept him from slugging this guy. Maybe he could salvage the situation.
"I'm concerned about Jackie's welfare," he said, loud enough that he was sure she'd hear. "That's the only reason I'm here. If she's in danger—"
"I told you she's fine."
"Man, do you ever let anyone finish a sentence?"
Sandoval closed his mouth, but he didn't budge.
"Tell Jackie I'll call her," Ellis said.
"She won't answer."
"I'm not going anywhere until I talk to her. You want me hanging around Albuquerque, following you everywhere you go?"
Again, no answer from Sandoval.
Stubborn son of a bitch, Ellis thought. He'll get his eventually. I'll see to it.
"All right, I'm going now," he said, louder. "But I'm thinking about you, Jackie. I want to help you."
Romeo Sandoval closed the door in his face.
Chapter 48
When Jackie stepped out of the kitchen, she saw that Romeo was at the front window, peering out between the curtains. A deep-throated engine gunned to life outside.
"He's leaving," Romeo said over his shoulder. "Driving a black Jeep with big tires."
"That must be his personal vehicle. All I ever saw him drive was a federal Ford."
Romeo turned away from the window. "The man drove all the way here from Grand Junction in a Jeep?"
"So?"
"Pretty bouncy ride for five hundred miles of highway. Probably rattled his teeth loose. He must be desperate to catch up to you."
Jackie frowned at him.
"And he's likely here on his own time, too," Romeo said. "Otherwise, he'd use a government car or a rental."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he's obsessed with you, like you said. He's doing all this on his own."
"But he said WitSec—"
"They don't chase after people who leave the program. They might give APD a heads-up, ask them to watch for you, but that's about it."
"Really?"
"Hey, Jackie, it's not like you're some mob kingpin with lots of future headlines to offer. You've already done all the testifying they want you to do. For here on, you're nothing but a liability on the budget."
"Nice."
"Sorry, but that's the way it is. WitSec is hugely expensive. They've got thousands of people to watch, and they do a great job of protecting them. But the ones who go off the reservation are on their own. Nobody's going to waste resources looking for them."
"They made that clear from the beginning," she said.
"So all this interest from McGuire? It seems excessive. He's here on his own, and he might be nuts."
"He drove away, right?"
Romeo turned back to the curtains and peered out. "I don't see that Jeep anywhere. But he won't be far, not if he's that crazy about you. He'll run out of patience pretty soon. Then we'll have another face-to-face confrontation. Or, worse, he'll call in reinforcements."
"He could do that? Just on his word?"
"Sure. He could tell APD he wants us picked up for questioning. No charges necessary and they could hold us for hours while it gets squared away."
"I don't like that," she said. "So what do we do instead?"
"We need to vanish. Get off his radar while we sort out who else is after you and what we should do next."
"A motel?"
"Or back to Nancy's house."
"Joe Dog's still there."
"We probably ought to turn him loose."
"Let him suffer a little longer."
Romeo shrugged. "Where, then?"
"Let's just get out of here for now," she said. "We can hang out at a coffee shop or something while we figure it out."
"All right," he said. "Let's take both vehicles. That gives us more options. But assuming McGuire is still out there, he'll probably follow you."
"I'll find a way to lose him. Where do you want to meet?"
"There's a coffee shop on the other side of the university, by that weird intersection where Central and Girard and Monte Vista come together. Where the Taco Bell is?"
"Taco Bell has been on that same corner my whole life."
"That little shopping center behind it. A tattoo parlor, couple of stores and this coffee shop."
"I know which one you mean. That place has changed hands a dozen times over the years. What's it called now?"
"The Coffee Shop."
"You're kidding me."
"It's got good food," he said. "And they don't mind if you loiter. Whoever gets there first can snag a table and wait for the other."
"It's only a couple of miles from here."
"Don't go straight there," he said. "Make a big loop or something. Take a drive on the freeway. Make sure McGuire's not behind you. I'll do the same."
She followed him into the kitchen, where he filled the to-go cups – "No use wasting this coffee" – and snapped on the lids. They carried the cups back into the living room, Romeo looking around like he was afraid he was forgetting something.
"Your bag?" she offered.
"In a minute. There's something I've got to do first."
He went to the window again, opening the curtains this time so he could see better. Once he'd had a look around, he said, "I'll be right back."
He left the broken door standing open and went outside. Jackie moved over to the door so she could keep an eye on him. He limped down the long sidewalk in front of the Stellar Arms until he reached a ground-floor unit at the far end. He banged on the door with flat of his hand, and Jackie could hear it from where she watched.
The door opened after a few seconds, and she got a glimpse of the scruffy tenant before Romeo blocked the view, standing close to the door while they talked. She couldn't hear what they were saying. Romeo shook his head a couple of times, then turned on his heel and limped back down the sidewalk toward her.
As he reached the door, she said, "What was that all about?"
"My problem tenant, Marcus Dupree. I just evicted him."
"Really?"
"He ratted us out to those thugs yesterday. That was the final straw."
"I thought you used deputies to evict people."
"Usually, yeah. But I didn't need them this time. I mentioned that the deputies would check his name for any outstanding warrants, and that was enough to get him moving."
"What's to keep him from coming down here and stealing everything you own and trashing your place? The door's still broken."
"Look around," Romeo said. "I don't own much of value. But I told him that if anything did turn up missing or damaged, I'd blame him."
"I'll bet he didn't like that."
"Not much."
"What did he say?"
"Not sure. He was still talking when I walked away."
Romeo went to the window again, checking the parking lot.
"We should get out of here," he said.
"I'm ready."
"Let's leave at the same time," he said. "If McGuire's still out there, it might confuse him for a second. I'll go north out of the parking lot, so you go some other way. If you get in a jam, call me and I'll come running."
She liked seeing Romeo this way. All business. The way he must've been before that gunshot ended his career as a marshal. She felt sure he'd been good at his job. She certainly felt safer with Romeo than she ever had with Ellis McGuire.
"Ready?" he said as he picked up his bag.
When he turned toward her, she stepped closer and gave him a peck on the lips.
"For luck."
He grinned. "Hell, we don't need luck. We've got talent."
Another quick kiss, then they burst outside, Romeo pausing just a second to shut the apartment door. Jackie ran around to the driver's side of the pickup truck and got behind the wheel. She cranked the engine and threw the truck into gear.
As Romeo climbed behind the wheel of his car, she gave him a final wave. She wheeled the truck around so she could go south toward Central Avenue, then roared away.
Chapter 49
Romeo Sandoval didn't see the black Jeep anywhere. He turned onto a frontage road and drove north along Interstate 25, watching his mirrors, but the fat-tired Jeep never appeared behind him.
When he reached Menaul Boulevard, he cut through the parking lot of a hotel and went out a different exit. He drove east on Menaul to Carlisle, then south again, taking his time.
Most of Albuquerque is laid out on a simple east-west, north-south grid, but a few streets slice across the grid at odd angles. They're leftovers from the post-World War II housing boom, when competing developers tried to get fancy to attract buyers to what was then the eastern fringe of the city, nothing but empty desert all the way to the distant Sandias.
Monte Vista Boulevard is one of these maverick streets. It curves through the Nob Hill neighborhood between Lomas and Central and terminates at an oddball intersection at the southeast corner of the University of New Mexico campus. Because the four-lane street enters the intersection at an angle, it carves off the end of one block, leaving a triangle.
Romeo was thinking of that landscaped triangle when he chose this spot for their rendezvous. Directly across from The Coffee Shop, sitting in the middle of that triangle, was a one-of-a-kind police substation.
It had once been a ten-stool diner, the kind manufactured at a faraway factory and shipped by rail to locations all around the country. Not many of the prefab diners remained in business, chased away by McDonald's and Burger King, and this one had been destined for the scrapyard, too, until some preservationists got the idea to put it next to UNM as the city's smallest APD substation. Most of the time, Romeo knew, the red-and-white building was staffed by volunteers rather than actual sworn police officers, but it would do as a lifeboat if things got dangerous.
A wedge of asphalt parking lot squeezed between Monte Vista and the shopping center. The lot was nearly full, but Romeo found a slot for his Chevy not far from the entrance to The Coffee Shop. He sat in the car for a minute, watching his mirrors.
A couple of frat boys, dressed in the requisite warm-weather gear of flip-flops and shorts and Greek alphabet T-shirts, cut across the parking lot on foot. They were laughing about something, and Romeo envied their lightheartedness and the way neither looked over his shoulder to see if they were being tailed. He wondered when he'd feel that secure again.
He got out of the car and went into the funky café, which was furnished with a dozen tables as well as five red vinyl booths along one wall. The furnishings were painted in shades of cherry red and silvery gray – the colors of the UNM Lobos athletic teams – and Lobos sports pennants decorated the walls and high ceiling.
The three young women working behind the counter were very hip, with lots of facial piercings and tattoos, but Romeo found them to be uniformly friendly. They always gave the impression that The Coffee Shop was a fun place to work, even if it did get crazy busy at times.
He was ahead of the lunch rush, so there were several empty tables now. He got a cup of coffee and settled near the door to wait for Jackie. He sat facing the front, so he could watch the parking lot through the café's tall windows. Beyond the lot, he could see across the street to the little white substation, as well as a slice of Central Avenue, a busy Walgreens and a couple of the restaurants that squatted near the intersection, feeding off the ever-hungry UNM student population.
Romeo's stomach growled. He was trying to wait for Jackie before ordering, but she was taking longer than expected. He wondered if McGuire had somehow picked up her trail and was chasing her around the city. Romeo thought he should've stuck with her. He'd be less anxious if he could keep an eye on her. Besides, they made a pretty good team.
He smiled as he remembered the way she'd abruptly bopped Joe Dog on the forehead. Romeo still had law enforcement training that kept him in check, but Jackie had no such compunction. Don't give her what she wants? Whack, right on the head.
Romeo supposed he'd put on a similar display at the apartment, when he'd blocked the door to Marshal Ellis McGuire. While he'd been intent on getting rid of the man, some part of his brain had recognized he was also being a macho hero for Jackie. That's the kind of emotional distraction that can cause you to make mistakes and get other people hurt.
He tugged at the tail of his blue polo shirt to make sure it covered the Glock on his hip. He had to remember he wasn't a federal agent anymore. And guns in cafes made people nervous, especially in the politically correct zone around the university.
Romeo scanned the parking lot again, but found no new vehicles. No McGuire. No Jackie.
Had she changed her mind? Had she decided to disappear again? Maybe Marshal McGuire's appearance spooked her away. If so, Romeo would never forgive him.
He checked his phone again. All charged up, no missed calls. He put it back in his pants pocket.
Jackie would be here soon. He felt sure of it.
Chapter 50
U.S. Marshal Ellis McGuire peered out the tiny window of the police substation, watching The Coffee Shop, waiting for Jackie Nolan to appear.
She and Romeo Sandoval thought they were so smart, splitting up, chasing all over town to meet here. They'd been outflanked the whole time. Had they really thought Ellis would just leave after his facedown with Romeo? Give up and go away?
He'd known they would be watching, so he'd driven away from the apartment complex after the doorway encounter with Romeo Sandoval. But he'd circled back immediately and parked in an evergreen-lined alley behind the building. He'd sneaked up to an open window at Romeo's apartment and listened to the whole conversation while they were making plans to meet at The Coffee Shop, and they hadn't had a fucking clue. Then, while they were driving around town, wasting gas and time, Ellis made a beeline for this place.
Best line of sight was from the Albuquerque Police Department substation. He had a little tr
ouble with the senior citizen behind the counter, a gray-mustached volunteer named Irving, who kept trying to get him to fill out an incident report. Ellis finally had to yell at the man, telling him there wasn't any incident yet, but there was about to be if he didn't stop pestering him.
Irving had gotten the message, going to the far end of the counter and letting Ellis watch out the window in peace. Romeo Sandoval showed up a few minutes later and went inside the café. Now Ellis was waiting for Jackie to arrive.
Irving pecked away on the keys of a desktop computer. After a minute or so of this, he said, "Did you say the woman you're looking for is named Jackie Nolan?"
Ellis had told him that much when he was trying to get his cooperation without a lot of foofaraw. Now, he worried that he was leaving a trail.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because she's here in the computer," the volunteer said. "There's an APB out on her."
"I know. I'm the one who put out the APB."
"But there's a note attached. Anyone who sees her is supposed to alert a Captain Pugh at police headquarters."
"I talked to Pugh on the phone." Ellis still hadn't taken his eyes off the cafe. "We're working together on this."
"I sent the message, as requested, but nothing back from Pugh so far."
"He's probably trying to reach me," Ellis said, checking his phone. "But I'm way ahead of him."
Irving said nothing more, just tapped away at the keyboard. The clacking noise was driving Ellis crazy, but he didn't complain. He was the one intruding on APD turf after all. Let the man do his work.
"There she is!" Ellis said aloud as he spied the red pickup truck with the camper shell on the back. Irving drifted closer to get a look, but Ellis didn't take his eyes off that truck.
Jackie circled the parking lot twice before finding a place where she could squeeze the truck between two cars near the Taco Bell. Ellis noted that she backed into the slot. Always planning a getaway. She got out of the truck and strode across the parking lot to the entrance of The Coffee Shop.
"That's her, huh?" Irving said at Ellis' shoulder.