by Pamela Clare
Plopping more change into another vending machine, Celina bought a Diet Mountain Dew, cracked it open, and took a sip.
“You’re one lucky Avon lady,” Cooper said from behind her.
Celina glanced over her shoulder. He looked so damn good even if she was irritated with him for being such a selfish bastard. “You were here in Des Moines and you didn’t call me?”
He was silent, standing in the doorway just staring at her. He wasn’t quite expressionless, but Celina couldn’t read what he was thinking. Other than, of course, he didn’t want to have this discussion because he wasn’t that into her.
She crossed the room, set her pop on the counter, and opened the bag of candy, fishing out a blue M&M. “Congratulations on your arrest.” Her voice sounded completely insincere and she didn’t care. “Why didn’t you notify us that you were tagging Jagger? Could have saved duplication on the take-down.”
Cooper broke his stillness and sauntered to the candy machine, putting his back to Celina as he dug a ratty dollar bill from his jeans pocket. “Your office was notified.” The machine whined and Cooper punched his selection.
Celina watched him, feeding herself one M&M at a time. “There was no posting on the Current board this morning. I would have seen it and known…” you were here. She couldn’t finish the sentence. Chocolate was caught in her throat. Crap. She coughed, trying to clear it.
Cooper glanced at her, removing a Snickers bar from the machine. King Size, of course.
Tossing the candy bar on the table, he pulled out a chair, flipped it around, and sat down. “You working field ops again?”
Swallowing a sip of her soda, she eyed him suspiciously. If she answered yes, would he take her back? Probably not after witnessing today’s sorry fiasco. “Why?”
“I thought you were supposed to be lying low. Keeping off the streets until the media circus blew over.”
She leaned her butt against the counter and sucked a few more candies into her mouth. “I have been, but I’m bored out of my mind. Ronni too. Forester only gives us cold cases, and I do mean cold, as in colder than the wind chill outside, to work on.”
He chewed his candy bar, challenge in his gray eyes. “Solved any?” A small smirk played at the corner of his mouth and Celina knew he was betting she hadn’t.
“Three,” she told him, pride in her voice. “One murder, in fact. The other two, child abductions.”
Cooper nodded, approval in his eyes now. “So why were you going after Richardson today?”
Celina sighed. “Ronni and I were on our lunch break and happened to be in the area when the call came in. We sort of invited ourselves to the party.”
“And the Avon lady routine? Please tell me that wasn’t your idea.”
“I suggested an alternative, but Forester and Quarters didn’t like it. Quarters told me I didn’t see the big picture”—she made air quotes—“and to follow orders.”
“Following his orders almost got you decapitated.”
Celina nodded, happy to be having a conversation with Cooper. “I knew the Avon routine wouldn’t work, but I had hoped to offer myself as a trade to Annie for her kids. That’s the only reason I went up to that door unarmed. We believed the only other adult in the house was Annie’s mother.”
Cooper went very still. “You were going to let Richardson take you hostage? On purpose?”
“I didn’t want those kids to get hurt.”
Cooper looked away, rubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Celina. Didn’t you learn anything from me when you were in the SCVC?”
Yes, Celina thought. Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity. The guiding principles she had cut her teeth on at Quantico Marine Corps Base. After thirteen weeks of new agent training, she’d held up her hand, taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and accepted her gold shield with a sense of pride and honor.
She had breathed, ate, and lived them under Cooper’s guidance. Working the L.A.-San Diego pipeline with Cooper, she’d absolutely nailed bravery.
“I didn’t have a lot of time with you,” she said, purposely letting the double meaning hang in the air for a moment. “Maybe I should come back and take a few more lessons.”
Cooper threw the end of the candy bar in his mouth. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “Not my call. Director Dupé’s the guy you need. It’s probably too soon for you to work undercover anyway after that Time article. Your face is so…”
He trailed off while he stared at her for several beats and Celina’s pulse kicked up. This time the expression on his face was familiar…like he couldn’t quite take a deep breath….she’d seen that expression on his face before. She knew he felt exactly what she was feeling. Heat. Not into me, huh?
“So what, Cooper?” she prompted, giving him a small, and she hoped sexy, smile.
Bingo. Pushing his chair back abruptly, he returned to the candy machine. For a half second he just stood there and she watched the muscles in his back as he drew in a deep breath.
There was something between them. Something that looked, smelled, and felt like pure sexual tension. Continuing to watch the muscles in his back as he drew out another dollar from his pocket and fed it into the slot, Celina smiled to herself. Every muscle, every pore was brimming with unspent sexual emotion. And it was all aimed at her.
A King Size Payday dropped into the bottom of the machine and Cooper reached in and grabbed it. Leaning against the candy machine, he focused on tearing off the Payday’s wrapper. “What’s the big picture?”
Topic shift. He was scrambling for safer ground. “You. Your team. Quarters must’ve known you were in town to grab Jagger.” She shrugged. “He wanted to be sure he got Richardson and if he could preempt your take down, he might nail both of them.”
“This unit having problems?”
“Des Moines is not high on the list for federal funding, except for counterterrorism. We’re totally understaffed for all other criminal activities.” But she didn’t want to talk about the Des Moines unit. She wanted to talk about Cooper. The best way to bring things back to him was to talk about his job. The SCVC. “How’s Thomas? Bobby? The other guys?”
Cooper stopped chewing, threw the rest of his candy bar on the table. All the color seemed to drain from his face.
Celina felt an uncomfortable tightening in her ribcage. “What happened?”
A nerve in Cooper’s jaw pulsed. It was a long time before he answered, his voice low and rough. “Valquis got Dyer, Celina. The night you arrested Emilio. Remember how you knew Valquis was out of town on business? He found Dyer and beat him to a pulp while I was following you and Emilio. He didn’t kill him, but he did so much damage to Dyer’s spinal cord he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Now he’s living—if you can call it that—in a damned wheelchair.”
A chill shot down her back. Not for the first time, she wondered how she’d pulled off betraying Emilio so completely without ending up in wheelchair, or possibly a grave, herself.
But Dyer? She couldn’t imagine him paralyzed. Like Cooper, he lived to be a DEA agent. He’d spent hours prepping Celina for her role as Emilio’s reluctant girlfriend. And never even hinted that she was too young or inexperienced to pull off the sting. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t…” He looked at the floor, the muscle in his jaw continuing to jump. When he spoke again, his voice was controlled. “Valquis left Dyer behind a dumpster in Santa Cruz without ID. He was transported to a hospital and laid there for several days before I found him. Eliza was out of her mind with worry, and then we both lived at the hospital with him until he gained consciousness. I was there every day in the middle of trying to wrap up the paperwork on Londano, hunt down Valquis and Enrique, and still run the taskforce. A week after it went down, the Time article turned you into a media magnet and you were removed from my team and sent here. I was in Mexico tracking Valquis and Enrique and I never had a chance to tell you.”
Celina was suddenly angry. Forget
the fact that he’d never called to check on her. He could have at least called to tell her about Bobby. “Ever heard of a phone, Harris?”
She waited for him to answer. When he didn’t, she shook her head. “How could you possibly not tell me this? How could Bobby not tell me? He emailed not more than a month ago to see how I was doing and never mentioned anything about it.”
Cooper stood there, eyes glued to the floor. “Dyer insisted I not tell you, Celina. He didn’t want your first major bust to be tainted by his accident.”
This is what she got for refusing to tune into the gossip always going around. But most of the gossip had been about her after the Londano operation and that stupid article. Time had even put her face on the cover, causing an uproar inside the Bureau. “And he didn’t think I would find out what happened eventually?”
Cooper lifted his head. “He wanted you to have your moment of glory for as long as possible.”
Her moment of glory. So fleeting. So useless.
Celina pressed her eyes shut. She remembered the rush she’d felt on the beach after nailing Emilio. Remembered how high she’d felt. Since then, everything had gone downhill. Her career thrown completely off track because of the media blitz, and now finding out Bobby was paralyzed from the waist down, she felt like it had all been for nothing.
She should have been more observant. Should have tried to find out what Petero Valquis was planning that night. But she’d been so intent on fooling Emilio, she hadn’t thought past her relief that Valquis was scheduled to be out of town. Guilt burned in her stomach.
Throwing the rest of the M&M’s in the garbage, she followed them with the bottle of soda. “I was part of your team, Cooper. You and Bobby should have told me what happened, no matter the consequences of my feelings.”
The pain on Cooper’s face morphed into anger. “I did what I thought was best for everyone,” he told her in his don’t-argue-with-me voice. “You may not agree with that, Celina, because God knows you’ve never agreed with any of my decisions as head of the SCVC, but you don’t have the experience I do. You haven’t been the leader of a team. Seen your best friend and partner lying in a hospital bed with tubes and wires like mutant spider webs running in and out of his body.”
Celina let her own anger wrap around her like a blanket. “You think I don’t feel guilty about what happened?” She watched his expression change to confusion. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand her at all. “You are unbelievable.”
“Celina?” Ronni’s voice interrupted from the doorway.
Celina immediately noted her partner’s pale face behind her masklike expression. Ronni had been in Forester’s office, giving him and the Special Agent in Charge her official version of Richardson’s capture. From the tightness around her mouth, Celina knew Ronni had just had her butt chewed out in a royal way. The younger woman was, at that moment, trying to stay professional on the outside while her guts churned like a washing machine on the inside.
Celina knew the feeling. It wasn’t every day you got double-barreled by both the bad guys and the good ones.
“Chief Forester would like to see you, now.” Ronni’s gaze darted back and forth between Celina and Cooper.
For a split second, Celina saw Ronni in a wheelchair and felt her stomach bottom out. She couldn’t imagine what Cooper had felt over Dyer’s injuries at the hands of Valquis. How something like that would leave him unable to call her and talk about it. “Thanks, Ronni.”
As Ronni’s footsteps faded, Celina returned her gaze to Cooper. The air around him was still vibrating with his anger and hers. The anger was mixed with guilt. She drew in a breath and let it out slowly, tired of being angry, tired of being left out. Just tired, period. And sorry for him and for Bobby. It didn’t take Einstein to know that Cooper’s anger was simply a shield of armor to hide his true feelings. Shock, rage, grief.
No wonder he hadn’t called to check up on her. Knowing she would ask about Bobby and the other taskforce members, Cooper had blown her off to save himself from having to talk about the tragedy. How nice it might have been if he’d called and confided in her. She could have shared his anger and grief and helped him realize it wasn’t his fault. Instead, he chose to ignore her and take on all the guilt himself. Deal with the grief alone.
Typical alpha male, just like her brothers.
“I have to go. I’ll call Bobby later.” She stopped in the doorway. “Congratulations on getting your man,” she repeated, forcing more sincerity this time.
Cooper’s eyes held hers. His anger was gone now too. Was that regret shining in them? “Always do.”
Celina nodded, wishing he’d apologize.
But what she really wished was that she could draw a big red S on her shirt and turn back the Earth, turn back time, to the night of Emilio’s arrest. If only she could change what had happened.
Cooper was halfway to the hotel when he drove off the street and parked the rental car next to a Kwik Trip. Sitting in the Durango with the heater on high—damn it was cold in Iowa—and a local vintage rock station blaring in his ears, he mentally kicked himself soundly in the ass.
He should have told her. Plain and simple. While she’d only known Bobby Dyer a few weeks before getting caught up in the Londano operation, the two of them had bonded. At first, Cooper suspected Celina was dogging Dyer because he was usually with Cooper, which made it convenient for her to flirt with him. Later Cooper realized Celina went to Dyer for advice because Dyer talked to her and listened to her and wasn’t interested in getting in her pants. Unlike most of the other male members of his team.
Outside the Durango, teenagers enjoying a snow day pumped a few dollars’ worth of gas into their rusting cars and grabbed Cokes inside the convenience store. Dickie Jagger was on ice at the local sheriff’s department waiting for the judicial system to extradite him back to California, but the sense of satisfaction Cooper usually felt after nailing a perp was absent. While the rest of his team celebrated back at their hotel with pizza and Coronas, Cooper sat in the parking lot and gave himself one more mental kick. He’d screwed up. Royally.
How could he explain to Celina what he couldn’t explain to himself? How he’d let Dyer go off on his own to track Valquis. How he’d never suspected that Val was leading his best friend and partner on a wild goose chase, just to send Cooper and the rest of the SCVC unit a message. How he wasn’t there to stop the beating. How he hadn’t found Dyer in that hospital for three days.
Three fucking days.
Seeing Dyer in that bed, helpless, paralyzed and one step away from life support, Cooper had lost it. His hatred for Petero Valquis and Emilio Londano had warred with his feelings of total helplessness over Dyer’s condition. What he couldn’t explain to Celina, then or now, was how he of all people had let Dyer get hurt.
And that he couldn’t beg, bargain, or sell his soul to turn back time and make things right.
Cooper had picked up the phone a hundred times to call Celina, even when Dyer insisted he didn’t want her to know. And every time he’d had the phone to his ear, his pulse raced and words had evaded him. Even now, he could do little more than simply gut out the facts to her.
Closing his eyes to fight off the memories, he listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers gutting out their own angst. Dyer, being the man that he was, had told Cooper repeatedly to get over what had happened. Move on. He wasn’t happy about the wheelchair, but he was damn glad to still be breathing. He was back at work for the DEA, albeit at a desk now, and continued to take physical therapy. Dyer had never let anything keep him down for long. He’d given himself a whole week to work through his anger, depression, and grief over the loss of his legs and then he’d told Cooper one day to get lost.
“I’m alive,” Dyer had said, rubbing his hand over his newly grown bush of beard, “and I’m going to live, damn it. I’m not going to hold your hand and endorse your fucking guilt complex, Coop, so get the hell out of here and go save the world.”
Cooper smi
led, opened his eyes.
Three girls in their early teens jostled each other, laughing as they filed out of the convenience store’s front doors. Each was dressed identically to her friends in tight jeans and puffy nylon coats. As they walked in front of the Durango, each carried a pop and a bag of M&Ms.
A high-def image of Celina’s full lips sucking blue M&Ms into her mouth rose up in Cooper’s mind. Jesus, she made him crazy. He’d put himself on the Jagger team just so he could come to Des Moines and try to see her, knowing exactly how he’d react when he did. Even after all these months she could do the simplest thing and send his libido into overdrive. All that flawless skin and those righteous curves.
And a superhero complex bigger than his own.
“…I had hoped to offer myself as a trade to Annie for her kids.”
A superhero complex channeling Mother Teresa.
“I just didn’t want those kids to get hurt.”
Shit. When he’d seen her, not in the rush of the adrenaline-fueled take down, but back at the Fed building, he’d so totally lost the ability for coherent thought, he’d stopped breathing and nearly grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her just to make sure she was okay. She looked so damned good in her simple black turtleneck and jeans. Those red boots. Her cheeks still rosy from the cold air…
Then, when she’d told him her plan to trade herself for Richardson’s kids, he’d almost grabbed her to shake some sense into her. What was she thinking?
But the worst thing about their reunion was how she went from flirting with him to despising him in a heartbeat when he explained—tried to explain—why he hadn’t told her about Dyer.