by Fiona Brand
He gritted his teeth as he slowly straightened, the pain increasing with every second.
His uncanny run of luck had finished. Tyler hadn't been hit, but he had.
Tyler scrambled to her feet. West's hand shot out to help her; she brushed it aside. She hadn't missed his wince when he'd gotten up.
"You're hurt."
He stripped off his T-shirt and began folding it into a pad. "It's nothing. Much."
There was blood on his hand, and she noticed his face was pale and his eyes were glazed. Over the past couple of days she'd come to recognize that look; she'd seen it often enough in her own eyes in the mirror. Now he was in mild shock.
"Let me see," she demanded fiercely.
He turned and she saw the frayed tear in his pants, the seep of blood, but it was hard to gauge just how much blood because West's pants were black, and the light wasn't good. The tear itself ran almost parallel to the waistband.
"It's a graze...I think. You're going to have to take your pants off so I can see properly."
"It can wait." He pressed the T-shirt to the wound with one hand, and pulled her close with the other, burying his face at the nape of her neck.
His skin was hot and damp, the beat of his heart steady against her, and he smelled delicious—sweaty and male and alive. She noticed he was trembling almost as much as she was.
He lifted his head and found her mouth with his, the kiss hard. Tyler wound her arms around his waist and hung on.
A tiny burst of static sounded. West lifted his head, he pulled his lip mike to his mouth, and talked into it. "That was Carter. He's locked one of them in a car."
Minutes later, Gray, Blade and Carter emerged put of darkness. Gray was holding a squirming figure by the scruff of the neck and herding him along. Tyler recognized the gunman who'd just shot West.
Gray pointed at the sidewalk. "Sit," he barked. "He was babbling about a gun. We searched him, but didn't find it."
He glanced at West as the man meekly complied, and then swore. "He shot you."
West kept his eye on James who was still unconscious. "Just barely."
"West's been hit?" Carter closed the distance between them in two strides, pushed West's hand away, lifted the pad and examined the graze. "It's shallow, and you've lost some blood, but not much." He shook his head. "I don't believe it. Whole terrorist squads have tried to hit you and missed."
West reapplied the pad, wincing because even in the short time that had passed the wound had stiffened up. "I don't think he was trying to hit anything."
The man was an amateur—that had been clear just by the way he'd held the weapon. If he'd hit anything, it had been by mistake. In a further escalation of his panic, he'd either dropped the gun, or thrown it away.
Carter's expression was grim. "Who is he?" Accidental discharge or not, the man was dangerous. He could have killed West.
Gray extracted a wallet from the man on the ground. He examined a driver's licence. "Ernest Wallace." He made a sound of disbelief. "There's a business card here, says Ernie sells insurance when he's not shooting the butts off ex-SAS sniper commanders."
Blade stared at the man sitting cross-legged on the wet sidewalk, his face pale. Ernie wasn't wearing dark, nondescript clothing that would help make him invisible in the dark; he was apparently still dressed for work, wearing a cream striped polyester shirt, a red-and-cream striped tie and a brown suit. The suit looked as if it was also made of polyester. Blade hadn't thought anyone wore brown polyester these days.
Fashion mistakes aside, the sheer scale of the amateurism was upsetting. They had been taken down by a group of suits driving four-door sedans who, if the information they'd garnered from Ernie was representative, only practiced larceny in their spare time.
Blade nudged Ashley with one booted foot. "What about this guy? You didn't give him brain damage, did you?"
West eyed Ashley coldly and briefly outlined just who and what Ashley was. "The damage was done before I ever touched him."
Blade glanced at the gleam of the Bernadelli, which was just discernible at the edge of the pooling shadows beneath the shrubbery, his gaze dark and cold. He knew all he wanted to know about Ashley James. He was a thief, probably a rapist and a murderer, and he'd stolen West's gun to implicate him in the crimes he'd plained. West had stopped him, but if James's eyelids so much as flickered, Blade would happily break his jaw. Grimly, he pulled a pair of cuffs from his back pocket and snapped them around Ashley's wrists.
West shook his head. "Where did you get those?"
Blade grinned. "My cousin's son mail-ordered them from some outfit in the States. And before you ask, no, you can't borrow them."
A cell phone buzzed. Tyler fished her phone out of her bag. "It's Richard. They've finally got hold of Cornell. He's on his way."
West took the phone and spoke in quick terse sentences. When he terminated the conversation and handed the phone back to Tyler his expression was blank and cold. "They'll be here in five with a full team."
Blade leaned on West's car, wincing as he did so. He was fit, he still ran most mornings, and he rode a lot, but his back was aching. He must have pulled a muscle diving at the scrawny guy in the checked suit—the one that had got away. A checked suit.
Somehow that was more of a crime than polyester.
It was hard to admit, but... "I'm getting too old for this."
Gray caught his eye.' 'You're younger than I am.'' Carter grinned. "Mate, almost everyone's younger than you."
"Oh, yeah, that's it. Rub it in."
Minutes later a police car pulled into the space in front of West's car, the signature red-and-blue lights strobing the area. West glanced at Ashley, who was now conscious, but securely cuffed to a steel mailbox post. "Here comes the paperwork."
Ray Cornell climbed out of the cruiser, followed by Farrell, who'd been driving. That figured. Ray was a hard ass from way back, but Farrell had an edge that could cut steel. If she wanted to drive, West would sure as hell let her drive.
Cornell eyed West with disbelief. "You're the person who got shot?" He glanced at Farrell. "Did someone put hallucinogen into the coffee?"
Farrell lifted a brow. "Like we'd ever get that lucky. Maybe then, we could pretend it tasted good. But if you're sensitive to artificial sweeteners, honey, right now you're flying."
West winced as Carter slapped a first aid kit he'd pulled from his car on the bonnet of the Saab and eased his pants down far enough to check the damage.
Farrell surveyed West's bronzed buttock with interest. Hey, she had a guy, but there was no harm in looking—and the butt was legendary. Her shoulders shook slightly. "Need an ambulance?" Carter probed and pressed. The breath hissed in between West's teeth. "If Carter tries to jab me with a needle, place the call." Blade eyed the seeping wound as Carter applied nonstick pads and taped the area. "I don't think you're in any danger of getting morphine. Carter's miserly with it—likes to save that stuff for special occasions."
Cornell lifted a hand to his mouth, then gave up trying to suppress the grin. "If this isn't a special occasion I don't know what is.'' He eyed both of the captives. "So, who got your cherry?"
West steeled himself against the humor. After years of having a reputation as a hard, cold bastard, of having an uncanny luck in the field, he'd been shot by a rank amateur. He could see the funny side. All the same, he was glad he was out of the military because he would never have lived this one down. "He's an insurance rep called Ernest Wallace." "Not on Interpol's Most Wanted List, huh?" Blade leaned against the car. "Looks like he's been in business for all of five minutes."
Cornell briefly examined Wallace, who was in the process of being escorted into the back of a cruiser. "You never can discount the amateur factor. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing."
West eased his pants up and fastened them, relieved Carter had finished so quickly. He was a damn good medic, but a little on the scary side with his bedside manner. Out in the field he took no prisoners.. Wh
en it came to combat medicine, the same attitude applied. "Any more cliches, Cornell?"
''Just one,'' he said evenly. ‘‘Try not to get caught with your pants down again. Especially not when Farrell's around. That woman's got a long memory."
Chapter 18
Ashley was cuffed and sitting in the back of the cruiser with two uniformed policemen. Farrell was overseeing the legal processing of the other two men as they were cuffed, read their rights and bundled into a second police car.
The radio blared static as Cornell finished a brief conversation and replaced the mouthpiece on its cradle. He pulled on latex gloves and bagged the gun.
"Nice weapon."
West's voice was cold. "It's mine. James broke into my house and stole it."
Cornell went still. He'd dealt with some certifiably weird cases—enough of them to doubt he could ever be surprised by the myriad distortions of the criminal mind again, but West had just surprised him. They were ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure they had their jade thief—and a lot more. "When did your gun go missing?"
''I don't know exactly. I didn't check the safe until tonight—"
"—and you have a computerized locking system."
"You got it."
Cornell slipped the gun in beside James's briefcase, which was sitting encased in a plastic evidence bag in the boot of the cruiser. "Well, at least that's consistent. Take a look at this."
He unzipped the plastic around the briefcase and flipped the lid on the case.
Tyler felt sick. "That's my laptop."
Even though she knew Ashley was the perpetrator of everything that had gone wrong from the theft of the jade onwards, actually seeing the proof was shocking.
Cornell unzipped a flap, lifted out an envelope, looked at the contents, then tipped several snapshots out onto the surface of the laptop. There was a brief silence.
West shook his head. "That's twisted." Tyler looked at the photographs of herself. She recognized them, although she hadn't looked at them in years. They had been stored in a photograph album in her lounge, which meant Ashley had broken into her apartment when she hadn't been home. And maybe more than once.
She shook her head. "I don't get it. He's worked for Laine's for years. In that time he's never shown any interest in me, and even less in jade. Ashley works with diamonds."
Cornell's gaze was hooded. "Ask me in a couple of days, or maybe make that ten years. There's never been anything straightforward about this investigation, and something tells me that sonovabitch isn't going to make it any easier."
West smiled coldly. Farrell was reading Ashley James his rights and taking her time over it. If that didn't scare him, he didn't know what would.
Farrell asked Ashley where the jade was and got a finger for her trouble.
"Lose the sign language, buddy." She slammed the door of the police cruiser, looking ticked off, slapped her notebook closed and slipped it into her pocket. "Man, I hate loose ends. I want that jade."
She shot James a goading look. "Like the after-hours mafia aren't going to tell all, anyway."
Ashley didn't respond or acknowledge Farrell in any way, his expression as cold and blank as marble.
Farrell flashed West and Tyler a grin, the light of battle in her eyes. ‘‘Life is good. Oh boy, am I going to enjoy this."
The statements took time. The crime might take just minutes to commit, but the wheels of justice were driven by detail.
Two hours after entering Auckland Central, Cornell walked into the interview room where West, Tyler, Blade, Gray, Carter and Richard were drinking coffee.
"He hasn't confessed, but we don't need a confession. We've got more than enough to hold him with the testimony and evidence we've collected. The wash-up on the jade is going to take a little longer, since we didn't actually catch him with it in his possession, but we've got the lab boys working on his briefcase. With any luck, they'll find material that will directly link James to the jade. If not, we've got him on motivation and opportunity. And in any case, Reed and Wallace are cooperating fully. Reed's already identified James's voice."
Tyler cradled her cup between her hands, even though the coffee had long gone cold. "And the jade?"
"Reed gave us the name and the flight number. The jet's still on the tarmac and won't be leaving until the jade's recovered."
Tyler felt herself go limp with relief. "So it's finished."
Cornell lifted a brow. "All except for the publicity." Their boy was a rarity. The press had already got a whiff of the story and were pressing for details. In a couple of hours the place would be overrun with reporters and TV crews.
Cornell shoved a hand through his hair, not sure how to handle the next part of the conversation. The series of crimes that had happened around Tyler Laine had been diverse and mystifying, and had happened so fast they'd struggled to keep up. Every time he'd done a computer search he'd kept hitting the same list of unsolved crimes, spread across different countries, but all with enough similarities in common that they had been grouped. After the break-in at Tyler's flat, the pattern had become too strong to ignore. "James led a double life. During the day he was a respected businessman, but in private, he dealt in larceny. We've searched his house. It's empty, although his car was still garaged, with luggage in the boot. He was packed, ready to leave the country, and stashed in a concealed compartment in his suitcase we found an alternative identity—a passport, credit cards, air ticket and travel insurance documents for one Edward Hammel. If you hadn't caught him when you did, he would have disappeared into thin air.
"Interpol are now investigating Edward Hammel who just happens to be a fine gems assessor in Geneva. He owns a residence and has a numbered Swiss account and a safety deposit box that so far we haven't been able to touch—but Interpol are working it through the courts. It might take a couple of years, but eventually they'll get access. From what we can make out, Ashley James has been responsible for most of the major diamond thefts in the southern hemisphere for the past ten years. We ran all the diamond thefts we have through the computer, and came up with a percentage that fit his M.O. Now all we have to do is compare the date and location of the thefts to James's overseas jaunts, and see if we come up with any matches. He went overseas on a regular basis to buy diamonds for Laine's, but I'm willing to bet he did a little moonlighting on some of those trips. He isn't admitting to any of it—and we don't expect to nail him on all counts—but we'll have enough to put him away.
"Even if he'd never stolen a thing, attempted murder is a serious crime—it'll be years before he surfaces on the street. And when we're finished with him there's an additional list of warrants for his arrest.
"If we're right about our boy, he's wanted in South Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia. Hell, even the Samoans want him."
West set his cup down. "What's he wanted for primarily?"
Cornell met West's icy gaze, and saw the knowledge there before he answered. "Murder."
West went cold inside. "He's a serial killer."
Sometime while they'd been in the station it had rained, and now steam lifted off the pavement making the gray pre-dawn seem even more secretive and mysterious. The first touch of light in the east, reminded West of another dawn just over a month ago, but this wasn't Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, thank God. The morning might be gray and the street might be slick with rain, but Ponsonby Road
, with its cafe's and interior decorating shops possessed a shabby, upmarket elegance that was a far cry from the feeding grounds of arms dealers.
West leaned on Tyler's car and pulled her close. He felt the first touch of the sun as it burned away the mist and the grayness, touching everything with a delicate, transparent, light, and he thought about Port Moresby again.
For a moment he felt the isolation he'd felt in Port Moresby, but this time there was no blood, no death and the woman he was holding was alive, and his.
He ran his fingers through Tyler's hair, careful of the tende
r area around her scar. The bright strands felt cool and silky, almost as good as her skin.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, her mouth melted into his, and the tension inside him unwound. Oh yeah, this was what he wanted. This.
Dimly he noticed that the traffic was beginning to flow. Unlike the industrial area at Port Moresby, Ponsonby Road
was busy—an urban hub of activity not far from the central business district of town. He lifted his mouth, touched his forehead against hers. "I'm never letting you out of my sight again. I go away for five minutes—" "Five years—"
"—and you somehow manage to attract the attention of a serial killer."
"I didn't want you to leave." "I didn't want to go."
She pulled back slightly. Her green eyes fastened on his. "Does that mean you're in love with me?"
His heart slammed hard in his chest; love. He had difficulty even thinking about that word, let alone saying it. For most of his life he'd been defending himself from it. He hadn't wanted friendships, and he hadn't wanted a wife or family because he didn't ever think anyone could—knowing his past, knowing the way he was inside—love him.
He swallowed, but even so, when he spoke his voice sounded husky and hollow. "I've been crazy, head over heels in love with you ever since I first met you. Why do you think Carter clucks around me like an old hen with her only chick?''
Tyler blinked, for a moment unable to take in the simple phrases, then what he'd said sank in.
He had been in love with her all along.
She went hot and cold, all the fine hairs at her nape stood on end, and abruptly, as if some internal focus had readjusted, she saw him.