by LENA DIAZ,
He suddenly smiled and leaned down as if to say something suggestive in her ear, and casually glanced over his shoulder. He uttered a foul curse.
“Rickloff,” he growled into the parrot pin transmitter attached to his shirt, “get some backup over here, now.”
He’d called Rickloff by name, something he’d repeatedly warned her not to do. And he hadn’t used any code words.
They were in deep trouble.
Heather bitterly wished the DEA had allowed her to bring her own gun. She didn’t like having to rely on someone else to protect her. And Mark was hopelessly outnumbered if the men behind them all had guns.
Three blocks to go. The registration booth for the motel was dark and deserted, but the lazy tune of “Margaritaville” piped out into the night from the live stage behind the collection of cottages.
Footsteps sounded behind them. So close!
They weren’t going to make it to the motel.
“What are we going to do?” she cried out.
Mark’s gaze darted to the left and right of the street, as if he was still expecting someone to come to their aid. But the backup Rickloff had promised at the first hint of trouble was nowhere to be seen.
“Mark?” Heather tried not to let her panic show, but his name still came out as a high-pitched squeak.
“When I say go,” he said, “I want you to make a run for the motel. Run straight to the back by the pool where all the people should be, right up on the stage with the band if you have to. Tell someone to call the police. You got that?”
“But what about you? What are you going to do?”
“Stall them. Go, Heather, run!” He shoved her forward, dropped the duffel bag and whirled around to face their pursuers.
Heather took off running. Shouts sounded behind her. She didn’t dare look back. She pumped her legs as fast as she could, whimpering when she heard the sound of a single pair of footsteps pounding behind her, getting closer and closer every second.
A shot rang out.
She let out a startled yelp. Was that Mark’s gun or someone else’s?
Tires squealed. Headlights flashed. A car barreled up the street in her direction. She hesitated. The motel was still too far away. She turned around. A man was charging toward her. She screamed and sprinted to the car, praying the driver wasn’t working for Gonzalez, and that he wasn’t friends with the man trying to catch her.
Brakes screeched. The sleek red convertible with its top down rocked to a halt beside her.
“Get in.”
Heather gasped at the sound of that deep, familiar voice.
Nick Morgan.
He wasn’t looking at her. He was holding a gun and appeared to be aiming it at the man behind her. Heather jumped over the passenger door and plopped down onto the seat. She glanced back in time to see the man who was chasing her dive into some bushes on the side of the road.
Nick shoved his gun in the middle console and hit the accelerator. The car leaped forward.
Heather grabbed the armrest to keep from sliding across the leather seat. “There was an agent with me. He’s over—”
“I know. Get down.”
Remembering condition number two, she immediately turned around and slid off the seat onto the floorboard, or at least as much as she could, folding herself into the tiny space between the dashboard and the seat.
Nick grinned, apparently thinking it was amusing to see her slide down onto the floor. The crazy man was actually having fun.
The car lurched and skidded sideways. Someone lunged over the top of the door on Heather’s side of the car and fell into the backseat. Heather had just enough time to realize it was Mark before Nick punched the accelerator again. Someone shouted from a few feet away. Another man cursed. The deep boom of a powerful gun filled the air. Heather jerked in surprise. The crunch and crackle of safety glass told her the shot had punched a hole in the windshield, but the rest of the glass held together.
Nick grabbed his gun, shaking his head and mumbling something about how Rafe was going to kill him. He fired two quick shots and shoved his gun into the console again. The tires screeched as he wheeled the car around in the middle of the narrow street, facing back in the direction he’d come from. The engine roared and the car rocketed forward, flying down the two-lane road into the night.
Heather couldn’t move. She was too stunned by what had happened, frozen in place. She stayed curled up, half on the seat and half on the floor, clutching the armrest and console to keep from sliding around.
Nick continued his reckless pace, twisting and turning down side roads. The few houses they passed dropped away until there was nothing but dark trees whipping by.
Mark pulled himself into a sitting position, hooking an arm around the back of the passenger seat in front of him to brace himself, but still no one said anything, as if they were all too shell-shocked from what had just happened, or in Nick’s case, too focused on getting away.
Heather caught glimpses of the ocean sparkling in the moonlight through the groves of trees on the side of the road. Nick finally slowed down and turned the car. Heather risked a quick peek and saw he was driving them up a long, sloping driveway. He pressed a button on the sun visor. Moments later he pulled into a garage and pressed the button again. The garage door slowly lowered, cocooning them inside.
After Nick cut the engine, for the space of several heartbeats, no one moved. Nick stared straight ahead as if deep in thought. Finally, he looked down at Heather. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, slowly unfolding herself from her painfully tight position. She turned around and plopped down on the seat. “Why are you here? How did you know we needed help? Where are we?”
He scrubbed his face and rolled his shoulders as if to relieve some stiffness. “You’re welcome,” he said, his voice sounding bland.
Heather’s face flushed hot as she realized how ungrateful she must have sounded. “Thank you. I mean it. Really, thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved our lives back there.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up with amusement. “One thank-you would have been sufficient.”
Mark leaned in between the bucket seats and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “You took your own sweet time getting there, Southern boy. They managed to get my gun and were going in for the kill. Cut it that close again and I’ll kick your sorry butt all the way back to that alligator swamp you call home.”
Nick stared at him in the rearview mirror. “No spoon-fed Yankee momma’s boy is going to kick anything of mine.”
Heather glanced back and forth between them. They obviously knew each other, but she couldn’t tell if they were teasing or about to slug each other. “Um, guys, are we okay here? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” Nick said, shoving his car door open, “is that Rickloff’s backup never showed. Which probably means there never was any backup.”
Mark hopped over the side of the car and dusted off his shorts. “I hate to admit you were right, but you were. You saved our bacon back there.”
Heather was still sitting in her seat, trying to follow their bizarre conversation, when Nick rounded the car to the passenger side, leaned over and scooped her up in his arms.
She was too surprised to do more than stare up at him as he carried her into the house.
Mark followed behind. He stopped just inside the kitchen, flipping on the lights, but Nick continued on into the living room with Heather.
“Um, Nick, I can walk. You can put me down.”
He didn’t bother answering and he didn’t put her down. He used his shoulder to flip on the hall light and carried her all the way to the end into what must have been the master bedroom, based on the expansive size of the room. He kicked the door shut behind them and stopped beside the bed.
<
br /> His brows were a dark, angry slash as he glared at her. The tightness around the corners of his eyes and the way he clenched his jaw told her she might be in as much trouble now as she had been back at the bar.
“Put me down.” She tried to sound braver than she felt. The last time she’d seen him like this, he’d slapped her in handcuffs. She wasn’t sure what to expect. She squirmed in his arms, anxious to get away from him.
He suddenly released her. She dropped to the bed and hadn’t even stopped bouncing on the mattress before he came down on top of her.
The shock of his warm body pressed against hers had her mouth going dry. For a moment they just stared at each other. His body was rigid. His Adam’s apple worked in his throat several times, as if he was struggling for words. Heat flooded through Heather, tightening her stomach. She was appalled that she was getting turned on, because it was quite obvious Nick wasn’t suffering from the same affliction.
He looked as if he wanted to strangle her.
She didn’t have to ask him why. She already knew. He was still furious that she’d jeopardized his career back at that nightclub in Saint Augustine and that she’d gotten him mixed up in this mess tonight. Although, really, it wasn’t her fault. And he wasn’t supposed to be here anyway. Was he? Actually, if she looked at it that way, he really didn’t have a right to be angry at all. If anyone should be angry it was her, because he hadn’t adequately warned her about the dangers. He should have tried harder to get her to not go along with Rickloff’s plan. And just as soon as Nick quit glaring at her, she’d find the courage to tell him so.
“You could have been killed tonight.” His voice shook.
Heather blinked in surprise. That’s why he was upset? “You were worried about me?”
“Hell, yes, I was worried about you. You shouldn’t have agreed to Rickloff’s plan. I told you I didn’t trust him, and you still insisted on plowing ahead. I’m on suspension. I’m supposed to be sitting at my house in my favorite recliner, which—I might add—is a hell of a lot more fun than being shot at. What do you think would have happened tonight if I hadn’t disobeyed orders and come down here to keep an eye on you?”
She was pretty sure she wouldn’t have survived the night without him, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to say that out loud. He was already shaking, and from the tension in his body against hers, she guessed he was still fighting his own battle not to throttle her.
She swallowed hard. “I...ah...don’t really know.”
His mouth thinned and his eyes flashed. He shook his head and rolled off her to sit on the side of the bed, as if he couldn’t stand to look at her anymore.
Heather scrambled up on her knees beside him, searching for the words that would ease his temper. She remembered he’d found humor in her thanking him repeatedly back in the car. She cleared her throat. “Thank you, again, Nick. Really. Thank you, a hundred times.”
He closed his eyes briefly, still shaking his head.
She tried again. “I’m...ah...really grateful you aren’t sitting at home in your comfortable recliner.”
He shot her an irritated look.
She sighed and straightened her legs, sitting on the edge of the mattress beside him. “Are you going to tell me how you ended up coming to our rescue? It sounded like you and Mark know each other, and that he was expecting you tonight.”
He let out a long, deep breath. “When you refused my help, Rafe and I dug around and pulled some strings to get some information. When I found out that Mark was the agent you’d be working with down here, I contacted him. He and I used to work together out of the Fort Lauderdale office. He kept me posted on where you two were going to be. I rented this house because it was near enough to your motel and the bar to be useful, but far enough away and remote enough that it made a good hiding place if it came to that.”
He twisted around to meet her gaze. “I borrowed a fast car in case I needed to make a quick getaway. Then I followed you two as closely as I could manage without being too obvious. I figured something was wrong when I never once ran into any other agents. If Rickloff was backing you up the way he was supposed to, someone should have challenged me earlier in the evening for keeping tabs on you two. No one ever did.”
Heather scrambled off the bed and stood facing him. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t there be any backup? Rickloff’s goal was to catch Gonzalez or some of his men when they swapped Lily for the cocaine.”
He cocked a brow. “Rickloff’s goal is to catch Gonzalez. Period. You’re a pawn, and so is your sister. Don’t forget that.”
She wasn’t sure she bought Nick’s cynical version of what had happened. Surely a high-ranking DEA agent like Rickloff wouldn’t be so cavalier with the safety of two civilians just so he could catch a drug dealer. There had to be another explanation for what had happened tonight.
“Why do you think Gonzalez didn’t show?” she asked.
“Oh, I think he probably did. He just didn’t let anyone see him. He would have come there to point you out to his men.”
“What? Wait. What do you mean? We were there waiting to meet with him. We had the cocaine... Oh, my gosh. The cocaine! We lost it. If we don’t have that cocaine we don’t have anything to trade for Lily. What will we—”
He grabbed her arms. “Don’t you get it yet? If Gonzalez was planning on a trade, he’d have shown himself. Tonight wasn’t about a trade. Gonzalez set this meeting up for an entirely different reason.”
“What reason is that?”
“He wanted you to come to Key West.”
“But...I don’t...” She twisted her fingers together in confusion. “Why would he want that?”
“For exactly the reason Rickloff said in the meeting yesterday. Gonzalez cares about Lily. He doesn’t want to lose her. But he’s a powerful man who maintains that power because people are afraid of him. If word gets around, and it will—it always does—that his mistress and her sister lost his drugs, or that either of them is helping the DEA, he’ll lose face. He can’t afford that. So he has to come up with an alternate plan. He wants to figure out how to save face in front of his men, but still keep Lily.”
Heather nodded, trying to follow his reasoning. “Okay. And he cares about my sister, so hurting her is the last thing he’ll do, right?”
“Based on the information I gathered last night and earlier today from my informants here in the Keys, yes. I think he really cares about her and he’ll do whatever he can to protect her, as long as it doesn’t mean giving up his reputation of power in front of his men.”
Relief loosened the tightness in her chest. “Thank God. That means Lily is okay.”
He stared at her for a long minute. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through yet if you think things are going well here. Rickloff didn’t back you up, even though he thought Gonzalez or his thugs would meet you at the bar. What does that tell you?”
She blinked in surprise as things started clicking together in her mind. “Rickloff is working for Gonzalez?”
He smiled, looking mildly amused at her conclusion. “No, I don’t think so. From what Mark told me on the phone last night, Rickloff has an ego the size of the state of Florida. He’s not the type to be at the beck and call of a drug dealer. He’d consider it beneath him. I believe he really does want to put Gonzalez in prison, partly to make the streets safer, but mainly because that would catapult his career to a higher level. At the least, he’d get a promotion. And if he has political aspirations, which Mark assures me Rickloff does, putting someone like Gonzalez away could be the perfect platform to put him in office.”
“But Mark and I could have been killed.”
He closed his eyes, his forehead wrinkling as if he were in pain. “Yes, you could have.” When he looked at her again, there was tenderness in his eyes that reminded her of how he used to look a
t her. Before.
“We’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “I’ll call the Key West DEA office and bring the special agent in charge, Dante Messina, up to speed on what’s going on. He can run interference with the police about the shooting back in town, in case anyone called it in. Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to meet him and we’ll get this all sorted out.”
He gently pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Try not to worry. Dante is far more reasonable than Rickloff. I’ve worked with him quite a bit this past year while on assignment down here. And I promise you I’ll do everything I can to find your sister. Okay?”
She blew out a shaky breath. “Okay. I just hope she’s—”
Red and blue lights suddenly lit up the room, flashing against the thin blinds covering the only window. Nick lifted Heather out of his way and ran to the window. She followed him, but he frowned at her and pushed her back as he lifted one of the slats to look out.
She caught a glimpse of a police car sitting in the driveway, pulled all the way up to the garage door. Both car doors opened and two policemen got out.
“I guess you were right,” she said. “Someone in town must have reported the shooting and given a description of your car to the police.”
Nick dropped the blinds back in place, shaking his head. “If they’re the police, how did they find us?”
“Your car—”
“Is in the garage. They couldn’t have seen it. And there aren’t any other houses for miles around. That’s why I chose this location. No one could have seen me pull the car into the garage.”
Her fingernails bit into her palms. “So what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe they’re real cops, maybe they aren’t. Maybe someone saw us when we made the turn down this road. They thought the cracked windshield looked suspicious so they called it in. Then again, maybe not.”
He started to reach for the phone attached to his belt when a door slammed somewhere in the house.