Hard to Handle

by Diana Palmer

  “Where did you get that?”

  She flushed. “I can’t tell you. Sorry.”

  “You’ve hacked into some poor soul’s protected files, haven’t you?” he asked sternly, but with twinkling eyes.

  “I can’t tell you,” she repeated.

  “Okay, I give up.” He ate stew and corn bread with obvious enthusiasm. “Then I guess you and I will go on stakeout tomorrow night.”

  She smiled smugly. “Yes, in your boss’s borrowed security car, because my cousin is visiting and we can’t neck in the apartment. I told Brody that, and he’ll tell Cara that, so if we’re seen near my office, they won’t think a thing of it.”

  “Sheer genius,” he mused, studying her. “Like I said, you’re a natural for law enforcement work. You’ve got to get your expert computer certification and change professions, Jodie. You’re wasted in personnel work.”

  “Human resources work,” she reminded him.

  “New label, same job.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe so.”

  They finished their supper in pleasant silence, and she produced a small loaf of pound cake for dessert, with peaches and whipped cream.

  “If I ate here often, I’d get fat,” he murmured.

  She laughed. “Not likely. The cake was made with margarine and reduced-fat milk. I make rolls the same way, except with light olive oil in place of margarine. I don’t want clogged arteries before I’m thirty,” she added. “And I especially don’t want to look like I used to.”

  He smiled at her warmly. “I like the way you used to look,” he said surprisingly. “I like you any way at all, Jodie,” he continued softly. “That hasn’t changed.”

  She didn’t know whether or not to trust him, and it showed in her face.

  He sighed. “It’s going to be a long siege,” he said enigmatically.

  Later, they curled up together on the couch to watch the evening news. There was a brief allusion to a drug smuggling catch by U.S. Customs in the Gulf of Mexico, showing the helicopters they used to catch the fast little boats used in smuggling.

  “Those boats go like the wind,” Jodie remarked.

  He yawned. “They do, indeed. The Colombian National Police busted an operation that was building a submarine for drug smuggling a couple of years ago.”

  “That’s incredible!”

  “Some of the smuggling methods are, too, like the tunnel under the Mexican border that was discovered, and having little children swallow balloons filled with cocaine to get them through customs.”

  “That’s barbaric,” she said.

  He nodded. “It’s a profitable business. Greed makes animals of men sometimes, and of women, too.”

  She cuddled close to him. “It isn’t Brody you were after, is it? It’s his girlfriend.”

  He chuckled and wrapped her up in his arms. “You’re too sharp for me.”

  “I learned from an expert,” she said, lifting her eyes to his handsome face.

  He looked down at her intently for a few seconds before he bent to her mouth and began to kiss her hungrily. Her arms slid up around his neck and she held on for dear life as the kiss devoured her.

  Finally he lifted his head and put her away from him, with visible effort. “No more of that tonight,” he said huskily.

  “Spoilsport,” she muttered.

  “You’re the one with the conscience, honey,” he drawled meaningfully. “I’m willing, but you’d never live it down.”

  “I probably wouldn’t,” she confessed, but her eyes were misty and wistful.

  He pushed back her hair. “Don’t look like that,” he chided. “It isn’t the end of the world. I like you the way you are, Jodie, hang-ups and all. Okay?”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  “And I’m not sleeping with Kirry!”

  The smile grew larger.

  He kissed the tip of her nose and got up. “I’ve got some preparations to make. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 6:20 sharp and we’ll park at the warehouse in the undercover car.” He hesitated. “It might be better if I had a female agent in the car with me…”

  “No, you don’t,” she said firmly, getting to her feet. “This is my stakeout. You wouldn’t even know where to go, or when, if it wasn’t for me.”

  “True. But it could be very dangerous,” he added grimly.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “All right,” he said finally. “But you’ll stay in the car and out of the line of fire.”

  “Whatever you say,” she agreed at once.

  The warehouse parking lot was deserted. The night watchman was visible in the doorway of the warehouse as he opened the door to look out. He did that twice.

  “He’s in on it,” Alexander said coldly, folding Jodie closer in his arms. “He knows they’re coming, and he’s watching for them.”

  “No doubt. Ouch.” She reached under her rib cage and touched a small hard object in his coat pocket. “What is that, another gun?”

  “Another cell phone,” he said. “I have two. I’m leaving one with you, in case you see something I don’t while I’m inside,” he added, indicating a cell phone he’d placed on the dash.

  “You do have backup?” she worried.

  “Yes. My whole team. They’re well concealed, but they’re in place.”

  “Thank goodness!”

  He shifted her in his arms so that he could look to his left at the warehouse while he was apparently kissing her.

  “Your heart is going very fast,” she murmured under his cool lips.

  “Adrenaline,” he murmured. “I live on rushes of it. I could never settle for a nine-to-five desk job.”

  She smiled against his mouth. “I don’t like it much, either.”

  He nuzzled her cheek with his just as a car drove past them toward the warehouse. It hesitated for a few seconds and then sped on.

  “That’s Brody’s car,” she murmured.

  “And that one, following it?” he asked, indicating a small red hardtop convertible of some expensive foreign make.

  “Cara.”

  “Amazing that she can afford a Ferrari on thirty-five thousand a year,” he mused, “and considering that her mother is poor.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” she murmured. “Kiss me again.”

  “No time, honey.” He pulled out a two-way radio and spoke into it. “All units, stand by. Target in motion. Repeat, target in motion. Stand by.”

  Several voices took turns asserting their readiness. Alexander watched as Brody’s car suddenly reappeared and he drove away. The gates of the warehouse closed behind his car. He paused near Alexander’s car again, and then drove off down the road.

  As soon as he was out of sight, a van came into sight. Cara appeared at the parking lot entrance, inserted a card key into the lock, opened the gate and motioned the van forward. The gate didn’t close again, but remained open.

  Alexander gave it time to get to a loading dock and its occupants to exit the cab and begin opening the rear doors before he took out the walkie-talkie again.

  “All units, move in. I repeat, all units, move in. We are good to go!”

  He took the cell phone from the dash and put it into Jodie’s hands. “You sit right here, with the doors locked, and don’t move until I call you on that phone and tell you it’s safe. Under no circumstances are you to come into the parking lot. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay. Don’t get shot,” she added.

  He kissed her. “I don’t plan to. See you later.”

  He got out of the car and went toward a building next door to the warehouse. He was joined by another figure in black. They went down an alley together, out of sight.

  Jodie slid down into her seat, so that only her eyes and the top of her head were visible in the concealing darkness, barely lit by a nearby street light. She waited with her heart pounding in her chest for several minutes, until she heard a single gunshot. There was pandemonium in the parking lot. Dark figures ran to and fro. More sho
ts were fired. Her heart jumped into her throat. She gritted her teeth, praying that Alexander wasn’t in the line of fire.

  Then, suddenly, she spotted him, with another dark figure. They had two people in custody, a man and a woman. They were standing near another loading dock, apparently conversing with the men, when Jodie spotted a solitary figure outside the gates, on the sidewalk, moving toward the open gate. The figure was slight, and it held what looked like an automatic weapon. She’d seen Alexander with one of those, a rare time when he’d been arming himself for a drug bust.

  She had a single button to push to make Alexander’s cell phone ring, but when she pressed in the number, nothing happened. The phone went dead in her hand.

  The man with the machine gun was moving closer to where Alexander and the other man stood with their prisoners, their backs to the gate.

  The key was in the car. She only saw one way to save Alexander. She got behind the wheel, cranked the car, put it in gear and aimed it right for the armed man, who was now framed in the gate.

  She ran the car at him. He whirled at the sudden noise of an approaching vehicle and started spraying it with machine gun fire.

  Jodie ducked down behind the wheel, praying that the weapon didn’t have bullets that would penetrate the engine block as easily as they shattered the windshield of the car she was driving. There was a loud thud.

  She had to stop the car, because she couldn’t see where she was going, but the windshield didn’t catch any more bullets. Now she heard gunshots that didn’t sound like that of the small automatic her assailant was carrying.

  The door of the car was suddenly jerked open, and she looked up, wide-eyed and panicky, into Alexander’s white face.

  “Jodie!” he ground out. “Put the car out of gear!”

  She put it into Park with trembling hands and cut off the ignition.

  Alexander dragged her out of it and began going over her with his hands, feeling for blood. She was covered with little shards of glass. Her face was bleeding. So were her hands. She’d put them over her face the instant the man started firing.

  Slowly she became aware that Alexander’s hands had a faint tremor as they searched her body.

  “I’m okay,” she said in a thin voice. “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  But he was rattled, and it showed.

  “He was going to shoot you in the back,” she began.

  “I told you to use the cell phone!” he raged.

  “It wouldn’t work!”

  He reached beside her and picked it up. His eyes closed. The battery was dead.

  “And you stop yelling at me,” she raged back at him. “I couldn’t let him kill you!”

  He caught her up in his arms, bruisingly close, and kissed her furiously. Then he just held her, rocked her, riveted her to his hard body with fierce hunger. “You crazy woman,” he bit off at her ear. “You brave, crazy, wonderful woman!”

  She held him, too, content now, safe now. Her eyes closed. It was over, and he was alive. Thank God.

  He let her go reluctantly as two other men came up, giving them curious looks.

  “She’s all right,” he told them, moving back a little. “Just a few cuts from the broken windshield.”

  “That was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen a woman do,” one of the men, an older man with jet black hair and eyes, murmured. “She drove right into the bullets.”

  “We’d be dead if she hadn’t,” the other man, equally dark-haired and dark-eyed, said with a grin. “Thanks!”

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a sheepish smile as she moved closer to Alexander.

  “The car’s a total write-off,” the older man mused.

  “Like you’ve never totaled a car in a gun battle, Hunter,” Alexander said with a chuckle.

  The other man shrugged. “Maybe one or two. What the hell. The government has all that money we confiscate from drug smugglers to replace cars. You might ask your boss for that cute little Ferrari, Cobb.”

  “I already drive a Jaguar,” he said, laughing. “With all due respect to Ferrari, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.”

  “I helped make the bust,” Jodie complained. “They should give it to me!”

  “I wouldn’t be too optimistic about that,” came a droll remark from the second of the two men. “I think Cobb’s boss is partial to Italian sports cars, and he can’t afford a Ferrari on his salary.”

  “Darn,” Jodie said on a sigh. “Just my luck.”

  “You should take her to the hospital and have her checked,” Hunter told Alexander. “She’s bleeding.”

  “She could be dead, pulling a stunt like that,” Alexander said with renewed anger as he looked at her.

  “That’s no way to thank a person for saving your life,” Jodie pointed out, still riding an adrenaline high.

  “You’re probably right, but you took a chance you shouldn’t have,” Alexander said grimly. “Come on. We’ll hitch a ride with one of my men.”

  “Your car might still be drivable,” she said, looking at it. The windshield was shattered but still clinging to the frame. She winced. “Or maybe not.”

  “Maybe not,” Alexander agreed. “See you, Hunter. Lane. Thanks for the help.”

  “Any time,” Hunter replied, and they walked back toward the warehouse with Alexander and Jodie. “Colby Lane was in town overnight and bored to death, so I brought him along for the fun.”

  “Fun!” Jodie exclaimed.

  The older man chuckled. “He leads a mundane nine-to-five life. I’ve talked him into giving it up for international intrigue at Ritter Oil.”

  “I was just convinced,” the man named Colby Lane said with a chuckle.

  “Good. Tomorrow you can tell Ritter you’ll take the job. See you, Cobb.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Who were those two guys you were talking to?” Jodie asked when the hospital had treated her cuts and Alexander had commandeered another car to take her home in.

  “Phillip Hunter and Colby Lane. You’ve surely heard of Hunter.”

  “He’s a local legend,” she replied with a smile, “but I didn’t recognize him in that black garb. He’s our security chief.”

  “Lane’s doing the same job for the Hutton corporation, but they’re moving overseas and he isn’t keen on going. So Hunter’s trying to get him to come down here as his second-in-command at Ritter Oil.”

  “Why was Mr. Lane here tonight?”

  “Probably just as Phillip said—Lane just got into town, and Hunter volunteered him to help out. He and Hunter are old friends.”

  “He looked very dark,” she commented.

  “They’re both Apache,” he said easily. “Hunter’s married to a knockout blond geologist who works for Ritter. They have a young daughter. Lane’s not married.”

  “They seem to know each other very well.”

  Alexander chuckled. “They have similar backgrounds in black ops. Highest level covert operations,” he clarified. “They used to work for the ‘company.’”

  “Not Ritter’s company,” she guessed.

  He chuckled. “No. Not Ritter’s.”

  “Did you arrest Cara?”

  “Our Houston policewoman made the actual arrest, so that Cara wouldn’t know I headed the operation. Cara was arrested along with two men she swears she doesn’t know,” he replied. “We had probable cause to do a search anyway, but I had a search warrant in my pocket, and I had to use it. We found enough cocaine in there to get a city high, and the two men in the truck had some on them.”

  “How about Cara?”

  He sighed. “She was clean. Now we have to connect her.” He glanced at her apologetically. “That will mean getting your boss involved. However innocently, he did let her into a locked parking lot.”

  “But wasn’t the night watchman working for them? Couldn’t he have let them in?”

  “He could have. But I have a feeling Cara wanted Brody involved, so that he’d be willing to d
o what she asked so that she didn’t give him away for breaking a strict company rule,” he replied. He saw her expression and he smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him be prosecuted.”

  “Thanks, Alexander.”

  He moved closer and studied the cuts on her face and arms. He winced. “You poor baby,” he said gently. “I wouldn’t have had you hurt for the world.”

  “You’d have been dead if I hadn’t done something,” she said matter-of-factly. “The phone went dead and you were too far away to hear me if I yelled. Besides,” she added with a chuckle, “I hate going to funerals.”

  “Me, too.” He swept her close and kissed the breath out of her. “I have to go back to work, tie up loose ends. You’ll need to come with me to the nearest police precinct and give a statement, as well. You’re a material witness.” He hesitated, frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Cara knows who you are, and she can find out where you live,” he said. “She’s a vengeful witch. Chances are very good that she’s going to make bond. I’m going to arrange some security for you.”

  “Do you think that’s necessary?”

  He nodded grimly. “I’m afraid it is. Would you like to know the estimated street value of the cocaine we’ve just confiscated?”

  “Yes.”

  “From thirty to thirty-five million dollars.”

  She whistled softly. “Now I understand why they’re willing to kill people. And that’s just one shipment, right?”

  “Just one, although it’s unusually large. There’s another drug smuggling investigation going on right now involving Colombian rebels, but I can’t tell you about that one. It’s top secret.” He smoothed back her hair and looked at her as if she were a treasure trove. “Thank you for what you did,” he said after a minute. “Even if it was crazy, it saved my life, not to mention Lane’s and Hunter’s.”

  She reached up a soft hand to smooth over his cheek, where it was slightly rough from a day’s growth of beard. “You’re welcome. But you would have done the same thing, if it had been me, or Margie.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I would have.”