Better Off Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  The knife fell to the asphalt with a clink that echoed along the narrow street. Chad bent over, plucked it off the ground. He jerked the punk to his feet and held the knife to his jugular. Chad’s face contorted with an emotion too deep to be mere anger. “Ready to die?”

  The kid clutched his balls with his good hand. “Dios, mio. Dios mio.” My God. My God.

  “I take that as a no,” Chad said and the kid nodded, tears funneling down his cheeks.

  Chad released him with a snort of disgust. The punk crumpled to the pavement, one hand flapping like a rag doll’s while the other cradled his crotch.

  Chad held the switchblade outward to the men who were now huddled in a pack. “Are we going to do business or fight?”

  “Whatcha’ lookin for?” one of them asked.

  “Sig Saur 225. Two of them.”

  Devon knew this wasn’t the easiest gun to locate. Punks like this worshipped firepower. The 225 didn’t hold as many rounds as they preferred, but the weapon was easy to conceal. Just right for Devon and Chad’s purposes.

  “Gimme five,” the punk said. “I’ll be back.”

  “We’ll be down the street at El Diablo café,” Chad said. “There’s an extra fifty in it if you get the guns to me in half an hour.”

  Chad snapped his fingers at Devon as if she were his dog, but she didn’t take offense. These men were into major macho stuff. They were afraid of Chad now, and he had to keep up the image.

  When they were back on Calle Ocho, she asked, “Did you encourage that guy to fight with you on purpose?”

  “You bet. It’s law of the jungle. Go for the jugular. Show them who’s strongest. If I hadn’t, they would have jumped me and stolen my money.”

  “How could you be sure one of them wouldn’t pull a gun and shoot you?”

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t but they’re addicts interested in little more than their next fix.”

  Devon walked beside him and thought how lucky she’d been in Chinatown. The two junkies she’d approached had been so strung-out that they hadn’t been capable of overpowering her and stealing what little money she’d had. For ten bucks, they’d directed her down the alley to a Chinese herb shop. The owner took the stolen guns, gave them money to buy drugs and resold the weapons for higher prices.

  They turned into El Diablo, a sidewalk café Devon hadn’t really noticed when they’d walked by the first time. A waitress built like a tombstone ambled out. “Que?” What?

  “Dos medianoches y dos Coronas,” Chad ordered in Spanish.

  “You speak Spanish?” Devon asked.

  He nodded. “It’s very helpful if you spend much time in Special Forces.”

  She realized there was a great deal about him she didn’t know. “How much time have you spent in Southern Florida?”

  “Not a lot, but I was in the Everglades quite a bit doing some testing for the military.”

  Interesting, she thought, but she could tell by his closed expression that he wasn’t going to discuss it further.

  “Okay, so what did you order?”

  “Medianoches. Ham and cheese sandwiches with pickles sliced lengthwise. I understand they were popular in Havana when people would stay out all night dancing at clubs. At dawn they would eat medianoches and go home.”

  The waitress delivered the sandwiches. Devon sampled one and found she liked it—she hadn’t realized how little she’d eaten on the airplane. She’d been nervous about telling Chad the truth and so worried about her sister that she hadn’t been able to eat.

  “Your appetite is back,” Chad commented. “Good. You’ll need your strength if this goes south on us.”

  “I hope—”

  The young punk who offered to get them guns rushed up, a backpack slung over one shoulder. “Check dis, dude.”

  Chad scooted their plates aside, and the kid put five Sig Saurs on the small table. He made no effort to hide what he was doing from the café or the street. Out of habit, Devon glanced around. There weren’t any police in sight. She hadn’t seen a single patrol car since entering Little Havana.

  “I’m going to try Steve again,” she said, standing.

  She left Chad carefully examining the guns and went to the pay phone on the side of the café. Steve startled her by answering on the second ring.

  “It’s me, Devon.”

  “What do you want?” Steve sounded more exhausted, more irritable than he had the first time they’d spoken.

  “I understand Tina’s a little better.”

  “A bit. She has a long way to go.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “She’s in ICU. One visitor at a time. I have to be with her.”

  “Couldn’t you spare me a few minutes to see my sister?”

  “It won’t do any good. She’s not conscious. You’ll just be wasting your time.”

  “I’ve come a long way…risked a lot.”

  The long silence nearly split her eardrum.

  “All right. Two minutes. That’s all.”

  “This evening.”

  “I’ll be here.” Steven clicked off without another word.

  “We’re good to go,” Chad told her when she returned to the table. “Two Sig Saurs and two extra clips each—just in case.”

  BROCK TRUDGED UP to Kilmer Cassidy’s office. He’d returned to his bunker under Obelisk this morning after a late night flight from St. Louis. The show had been a hit, if you judged by crowds, but Brock had been angry and frustrated the whole time. Jordan had cozied up to Trensen, but she hadn’t bothered to return his calls.

  Why not? Had something bad happened in the Delano he didn’t remember?

  Nagged by that thought, he opened the door to Cassidy’s office. The knock-out blonde who’d been hired as Cassidy’s “secretary” greeted him with a perfunctory half smile and told him to go into Cassidy’s office.

  “What’s the status on the Robbins woman?” Cassidy asked the second Brock came through the door.

  “The trap’s sprung,” Brock assured him while he mentally took inventory of the office. He’d do some major redecorating when he moved in.

  “Make it fast,” Cassidy snapped. “I’ve gotten word they’re about to set a trial date.”

  Brock battled the urge to tell the arrogant cocksucker that he’d known this for more than a week. “We’ll have the bitch soon.”

  “I want to know the minute you do.”

  Brock waited for Cassidy to ask another question or bark an order, but the prick just glared at him. Cassidy’s silence unnerved Brock. The sonofabitch always had so much to say. Brock thought about the missing file, and his inability to come up with any information on Olofson’s computer. He had a hunch he was losing their trust. He shouldn’t feel pressured. This was their fault for not listening when he gave them the heads-up on Samantha Robbins.

  But Brock did feel pressure. The only way to get their trust back was obvious.

  “Don’t worry. Give me twenty-four hours. Then the Robbins bitch will wish she were dead.”

  “YOU’RE SURE I CAN PASS for a teenage boy?” Devon asked Chad.

  “Absolutely.”

  After they had purchased the guns, they’d gone to Ekhard’s and bought extra wide bandage tape and a Marlins baseball cap. Then they’d visited the mall and purchased tennis shoes that cost more than the average family made in a week. Baggy gangsta style jeans and an X RULES T-shirt completed the outfit.

  Chad had clipped her dark, curly-haired wig short. With the baseball cap on backward and her breasts taped flat, Devon could pass for a boy, but she needed to keep on her dark glasses to disguise the feminine rise of her cheeks and her long eyelashes.

  Chad had altered his appearance, too. He’d added pounds around the middle, hips and legs with a layer of insulation they’d found at a construction site. He, too, wore baggy pants and a Marlins T-shirt. He’d wrapped his head in a rank green do-rag that was now more brown than green. He walked hunkered over slightly, as if his weight and the backpack
he had slung over his shoulder slowed him down.

  The backpack held the contents of his duffel, a strange-looking flashlight, GPS and other things she hadn’t recognized when he’d repacked the duffel before checking out of the fleabag motel. They were parked in the visitors’ lot outside Miami-Dade Memorial Hospital.

  “Remember about your gun,” Chad said.

  “Right.”

  They’d already agreed to double-check to see if the hospital was screening for weapons. If they weren’t, they planned to keep them concealed in the pockets of their baggy jeans like gang members did. If the hospital had a metal detector, they would have to leave the guns in the trunk of the Rent-A-Wreck.

  “All set?” Chad asked.

  Devon nodded and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

  “I’ll check out the lobby for the metal detector and anyone who might be waiting for you. Then I’m going up to look around ICU. Give me ten minutes exactly. If I don’t come back to get you, revert to Plan B.”

  Plan B. She would drive north to Atlanta and board a plane for Honolulu there. If the hospital was being watched, Rutherford and Ames might have the Miami Airport under surveillance.

  He trailed his index finger up the curve of her throat, barely making contact, his eyes never leaving hers. With the breathtaking sweetness of a lover’s kiss, his mouth met hers. She moved into his arms.

  Please, she longed to say. Don’t let me go. Love me the way I love you.

  He pulled back and his eyes roved over her face in silent appraisal. “No heroics, Devon. Time it. If I’m not back in exactly ten minutes, get out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS SEVEN MINUTES and eleven seconds later when Devon spotted Chad sauntering out the hospital’s front door. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been half-holding since he’d left.

  She was going to be able to see Tina!

  A few seconds later, Chad opened the car door and got in behind the steering wheel. “No metal detectors, but there are security cameras. Just in case someone reviews the tapes or is monitoring them, keep your head toward me when you walk to the elevator. I didn’t see anyone watching the lobby, but we can’t be too careful.”

  “I’m probably not in any danger. Right?”

  “If they’re really sophisticated, they’re watching the hospital with night vision equipment from a distance. You’ll be harder to spot, especially in a disguise. We have to operate at all times as if you’re being stalked.”

  She nodded, knowing he was right. “What about ICU?”

  “There’s a security camera at the end of the hall and one at the nurses’ station. Keep your head down. The cap and the glasses will conceal your face. You see your sister for as long as the ICU nurses allow you to stay. Then we deadhead for Atlanta.”

  She nodded her agreement. If anyone was watching the Miami Airport, they wouldn’t find her.

  His lips touched hers like a whisper, his mouth brushing hers, then pressing more firmly. The kiss didn’t escalate into heated passion, the way their other kisses had. It seemed to be a pledge of something deeper, more meaningful.

  Love welled up inside her. What would she have done without him? It wasn’t just that he was an expert in surveillance and disguises. Having him with her made Devon less anxious, less panicky. Less likely to make a deadly mistake. With him at her side, the all-encompassing loneliness eased.

  “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” she whispered. He kissed her again, and the sweetness of his kiss triggered an ache deep inside her. How did he feel? Did he truly believe she’d told him the truth? Did he love her?

  “Let’s roll.”

  They both stepped out of the wreck and sauntered toward the entrance, walking “the walk.” Gangsta types—even Cubans in Miami—had an attitude that showed in the way they walked. It had taken Devon almost an hour of practice to get it down.

  They ambled up to the entrance, and Devon checked the shadowy parking lot but detected nothing suspicious. Inside, she turned her head toward Chad and away from the security camera. They took the elevator to the second floor ICU.

  “Let me do the talking,” Chad said, his voice low as they stepped out of the elevator. “Keep your face away from the security camera over the nurses’ station.”

  They walked toward a pod crammed with high-tech gear. Devon didn’t spot the security camera, but she trusted Chad to know what to look for. Several nurses were sitting off to the side, monitoring patient information relayed from their rooms to the pod’s computers.

  The nurse on duty glanced up at them, then continued making notes on a chart. “Yes?”

  Chad leaned over the counter in a way that would have intimidated many people. Evidently the nurse had seen a fair number of gang members and an unshaven six-foot-four guy in a filthy do-rag didn’t bother her. Devon kept her head averted from where the security camera must be concealed among an array of equipment mounted on the walls.

  “My friend’s here to see Tina Layton,” Chad told the nurse.

  “Immediate family only,” the nurse replied with a brief glance up at them.

  “It’s Tina’s brother.”

  The nurse arched one eyebrow, clearly questioning this. “I’ll need to check the records. Mr. Layton has power of attorney.” She tapped a few keys on the computer in front of her.

  Please, Steven, Devon silently prayed. Have me on the visitor’s list.

  “Well,” the nurse said, obviously surprised. “Here you are—”

  “It’s okay to go in,” Chad cut her off before the nurse said her name out loud.

  “Yes, but Mr. Layton is with the patient. I’ll have to let him know.”

  The nurse trotted down the hall to a door marked 2-C. A few seconds later Steven emerged. He’d aged considerably since she’d last seen him. His wheat-blond hair had crept upward another half inch. His skin was like a turtle’s shell from hours on the golf course. Deep creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes and formed three horizontal lines across his brow.

  “Samantha?” The shock in his voice pleased her. The disguise was working.

  “It’s me.”

  “She’s still—” Steven’s voice broke, and Devon knew he was seconds from crying.

  “May I see Tina?”

  “That’s all right.”

  He eyed Chad with suspicion and didn’t comment when Devon told him that Chad was her friend. “Only one person in ICU at a time.”

  “S’okay. I’ll wait here.” Chad gave her arm a silent gesture of reassurance.

  “I’m going to slip in with you,” Steven told her. “The nurses don’t count me.”

  The animosity she’d heard over the telephone seemed to have vanished. She thought she understood. Steven was an only child whose parents had died several years ago. He didn’t have anyone to help him. It was easy to be angry with Devon at a distance, but now he had someone to share this tragedy with him.

  “I would never have recognized you,” Steven said as he put his hand on the lever to open the door into the room.

  “That’s the idea. Forget I was here.”

  Steven knew she was in WITSEC. As her closest relative, Tina had been informed immediately, when the FBI removed her from Houston and turned her over to the Federal Marshals who ran WITSEC. Tina had never been told where her sister had been relocated or that she’d been moved a second time, so Steven didn’t know anything, either. It was just as well. Devon had long ago decided her brother-in-law was a little weak. He would give her up in a heartbeat.

  “Tina?” she called softly as she entered the room and halted. For a moment she couldn’t believe it was her sister. Her face was like aged parchment, pale and dry. An oxygen clip pinched her turned-up nose. The lower part of her body was in some sort of contraption to stabilize her fractured pelvis.

  There wasn’t the slightest vestige of Tina’s heartwarming smile. Only the curly lashes Devon had always envied and her Cupid’s bow lips told Devon
this was her sister. Fear seeped from every pore, hitting her with a mind-numbing punch as she grasped the seriousness of her sister’s condition.

  Critical.

  She’d heard the term, known what it meant, but seeing Tina like this almost shattered her fragile self-control. She stood motionless in the middle of the room, gazing at her sister and silently acknowledging Tina might die.

  Devon forced herself to move forward and kiss Tina’s cool, dry cheek. She took her sister’s right hand into both of hers. The other hand was attached to a frightening array of tubes and wires.

  “It’s me,” she whispered in her ear. “It’s Sammy.”

  No one but Tina had called her Sammy since grade school. It was too boyish, she’d decided the moment she’d discovered the opposite sex was good for something besides climbing trees with her.

  “She doesn’t hear you,” Steven said. “I’ve been trying for two days.”

  Devon stroked her sister’s hand. “I know, but I’ve heard it stimulates the brain. It might help her regain consciousness.”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  “Tina, remember the time you locked me in Aunt Meg’s steamer trunk? When you finally let me out, I made you swear to eat my veggies for a week.”

  Nothing.

  “It’s Sammy. It’s Sammy,” she whispered directly into Tina’s ear. “Talk to me. I’ve missed you so.”

  The only sound was the annoying plink-plink of an IV attached to her sister’s arm.

  “What do the doctors say?” she asked.

  “She should wake up, but they can’t guarantee it.”

  Devon again whispered in her sister’s ear. “Tina, remember our marmalade cat you named Moe? You swore it was a boy. Then Moe had six kittens, remember?”

  Tina’s left eye flickered.

  “Did you see that?” she cried with excitement.

  “Yeah. She moves her eyelids now and then. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Devon’s heart lurched against the wall of her chest. She’d imagined a heart-to-heart talk with her sister—not this. She’d been unrealistic, of course. She should have known; she’d been told repeatedly Tina was unconscious.