Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Or maybe…No, thanks?

  Because what if Ben was wrong? What if this was all a giant mistake? What if he made this huge, life-altering decision and regretted it?

  What if Jules regretted it? Would Ben expect him to make a similar sacrifice in return?

  Like giving up the chance to take over Max’s team.

  Or promising never to watch another Robin Chadwick movie.

  Jules scrolled through his e-mail in-box, because thinking about Ben and—God help him, Robin—wasn’t going to help him get to sleep, either.

  There was a brief e-mail from his mother. She ran into his middle school music teacher in the grocery store. Did he remember Ann Schauffler? She remembered Jules—wanted to know if he was still playing the clarinet.

  Oh, and by the way, Ms. Schauffler’s son is gay, too. An architect. Single. Looks kind of like Nate Berkus. Lives in Manhattan, which isn’t that far from Jules’s condo in D.C. Not that she was trying to set them up or anything—she knew how Jules hated it when she did that…

  His cell phone rang, saving him from eye-rolling himself into a migraine. “Cassidy.”

  “Hey, Jules. It’s Yash. We got a call from Sarasota.”

  Jules braced himself. “Good news or bad?”

  “Could be good, but probably not.” FBI agent Joe Hirabayashi was an eternal pessimist. “We’ve had movement tonight at Burns Point. Apparently there was an earlier hit attempt on Gordon Junior—which pretty much happens every two to three weeks. End result is two new players in the game. Neither have been inside the fortress before, at least not since our surveillance started.”

  Which, according to the reports Jules had read just that afternoon, was approaching the two-year mark. He stood up. Started to pace.

  “They’ve been inside for a coupla hours,” Yashi continued. “Male and a female. Male’s been ID’d as Enrique Alvarado, a local PI, been in business for about a year. Female’s still unknown, but we’re working on it.”

  “Why is that name familiar to me?” Jules asked him. Enrique Alvarado…

  “Dunno,” Yash said helpfully. “Although, he’s former Sarasota Police. Detective squad. He might’ve been involved in the Warren Canton case.”

  A few years back, Jules and Yashi had both spent time in Sarasota, tracking the man responsible for an assassination attempt on the U.S. President. There’d been a huge task force set up—a combination of local police, FBI, and even the military. It was possible Jules had met Enrique Alvarado then.

  “E-mail me with whatever info you’ve got on Alvarado,” Jules ordered. “And let’s get surveillance in place. I want his home and office watched, 24/7. I want a complete file on this guy, and I want it yesterday.”

  “You got it,” Yashi promised. “Although don’t get your hopes up. He may have been in Burns’s pocket, even when he was on the force.”

  “Or he might be the break we need.” Jules was eternally optimistic, which made Yashi a good match for him, as a teammate.

  “Maybe.” Yashi sounded doubtful. “FYI, it’ll take about ten minutes for that file to download.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Jules said. But as soon as he got off the phone with Yashi, he dialed American Airlines. “I need a seat on your next flight to Sarasota, Florida, out of Baltimore-Washington…”

  “Don’t stop,” Martell said. “Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop!”

  “But that’s my house,” Annie protested.

  “It’s lit up like the surface of the sun,” Martell told her as they rolled on past. “Did you leave that spotlight on when you left for work today?”

  “It’s not mine,” Annie said. “It must be the neighbors’—we share the driveway. They must’ve just put it in.” It definitely hadn’t been that bright last night.

  “Your neighbors drive a black Olds?” he asked.

  “Who, Kathy and Mike?” Annie laughed. “They have a Prius that’s covered with bumper stickers about global warming and equal marriage rights.”

  “How about the neighbors across the way?” Martell asked.

  “Pickup truck,” Annie said, her heart sinking as she looked in her rearview to see a dark sedan parked in that driveway, too.

  “Your house is being watched,” Martell told her. “Plus we still got that car on our tail—although it’s not a dark sedan, which makes me wonder. Bottom line—no way am I letting you go home.”

  “If they’re watching me…” Annie started.

  Martell was already dialing his cell phone. But he shook his head. “Ric’s not picking up.” He left a message. “Yo. Starsky. Call me, ASAP.” He tried to give Annie a reassuring smile. “I’m a little broader than he is, you know, around the waist? Those shorts I was wearing were loose on him. He was probably afraid if he put his phone in the pocket, he’ll end up pantsing himself, so…He probably left it in the car. And remember, everyone thinks I’m him, that he’s right here, with you. He’s safe.”

  “I hope so.” Annie made up her mind. “I still want to drive by his place.”

  Martell nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  Lillian Lavelle picked up her cell phone on the first ring. “About time,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for hours.”

  Unbelievable. “Sorry,” Ric said as he drove Martell’s car north, toward the string of cheap motels by the airport, where she was staying. “I was busy getting the crap kicked out of me and then being held at gunpoint.”

  “You should’ve just let me shoot him.”

  Him. So her target wasn’t Brenda. “I have this problem—with my clients using me to help them kill people?”

  “I owe you…an explanation.”

  If Annie were here, she’d be all over that hesitation that came after owe you. She’d be rolling her eyes, insisting it was carefully added innuendo, certain that Lillian was going to try to buy Ric’s continued silence with high-intensity sex.

  “How do you know it’s not too late for explanations?” he asked her. “How do you know I haven’t made a deal with Gordon Burns—to deliver you to him, for trying to kill his son?”

  “Because I’m willing to bet that a former cop hates Gordon Burns almost as much as I do,” Lillian countered. “Can we meet?”

  “You tell me where,” Ric said. “As long as when is right now.” He was tired, his leg hurt, and he wanted to get back to Annie’s to make sure she was okay.

  Yeah, right. Like he wasn’t in a rush to get back to Annie because he had a full-blown, zero-gravity, raging-hard-on, heart-in-his-throat thing for her. For sweet little Annie Dugan.

  How the hell had that happened?

  For starters, he’d kissed her.

  He’d finally freaking kissed her, like he’d wanted to kiss her for years. And everything he’d been denying for most of his adult life had come rushing to the surface. And/or to his dick.

  Man, he was so screwed. Because this was a relationship that was not going to happen. He knew that. She loved him like a brother—she was the little sister he’d never had. Bottom line, he and Annie were friends. They had been for years—and that was all it was ever going to be between them—even though she’d kissed him the way she had.

  It was called acting.

  Wasn’t it?

  Damn, it scared him to death.

  “I’m two minutes from your office,” Lillian told him.

  He was even closer. “I’ll meet you there,” he said, taking a right turn from the left lane. “Leave your weapons locked in your car. I’ll leave the office door ajar, approach it with both hands in the air, open it with your foot.”

  “That seems a little overdramatic.” Lillian laughed.

  “Ms. Lavelle, you fired two shots from a .44 into a crowd tonight,” Ric reminded her as he pulled into his driveway. “You either do it my way, or I go directly to the police.”

  Except, here she was, too, pulling up right behind him, making a lot of noise into the phone at his mention of the authorities. He drew the sidearm that Martell had brought to the
Shell station for him.

  “Change of plans,” he interrupted her. “Get out of the car, put your hands on your head, and stand there. No sudden moves.”

  “I assure you,” she said, “unless you’re Gordie Burns, I’m not dangerous.”

  Ric had a dozen stitches in his leg that said otherwise, but she’d already hung up her phone. As he watched, she got out of her car and put her hands on her head. She wore the same full-length raincoat that she’d had on earlier, and she was carrying some kind of pocketbook over her right shoulder.

  He kept his weapon on her, herding her in front of him, to his office door. He unlocked it with his eyes on her, and she laughed. “I promise, I’m not—” she said again, but he didn’t let her finish.

  “Inside.”

  “Ooh, I love a forceful man.”

  “Cut the crap.” He turned on the lights and the AC, locked the door behind them. He put his cell phone on Annie’s desk, because these stupid surfer shorts that Martell had been wearing didn’t have real pockets. He steadied his gun hand, his barrel pointed directly at Lillian. “Drop your bag on the floor. No fast moves.”

  She complied. “You want me to take off my coat?”

  “No. Step back from the bag,” he ordered. “Keep your hands on your head.”

  When she’d moved far enough away, he scooped up her handbag, emptying it out onto Annie’s desk. Wallet, makeup, tin of Altoids, makeup, makeup, a bunch of loose change, about a dozen store receipts, a pair of…handcuffs? A whole lot more makeup, a best of Charlie Parker CD, a pack of photos of Marcy and Brenda with Gordie Junior, still more makeup, but no gun.

  Ric felt the bag to make sure there was nothing else inside, but it was empty. He tossed it, too, on Annie’s desk.

  “Okay, now the coat,” he said. “Take it off and drop it onto the floor. Move slowly, keep your hands open and…”

  Ah, Christ, he’d walked right into this one.

  Annie was right—about everything. Beneath her raincoat, Lillian was wearing only underwear—if you could call it that. Maybe a more accurate word was lingerie. A black merry widow that barely contained her full breasts, satin-and-lace panties…She actually had a garter belt holding up thigh-high fishnet stockings, which with the high heels was quite the look.

  She was kidding, right?

  Nope.

  She walked into his private office and sat down where he could see her from Annie’s desk—on his take-a-nap sofa, her arms up and across the back cushions, her long legs gracefully crossed. “You seemed intent upon my not being armed while we talk. This way you can see that I’m not armed.”

  She wasn’t armed. She was…incredibly unarmed. She was undeniably attractive in a meaningless, mind-numbing, sex-for-the-fuck-of-it way. And she’d planned this. She knew he’d call her, and had been dressed and ready for him.

  She was clearly a woman—a very beautiful one—who’d been around the block a time or twelve. She was comfortable with her body, and she obviously knew what men liked.

  Most men. Ric put his sidearm within easy reach on Annie’s desk, then picked up Lillian’s coat and searched it. The only thing in Lillian’s pockets was her key ring. There was nothing hidden in the lining.

  He picked up his weapon, took both it and the coat into his office, tossed the coat back to her. “You can put it back on.”

  “It’s warm in here.” She set it to the side.

  Fine. Let her think she was tempting him. Fancy lingerie just wasn’t his thing. He preferred no underwear at all beneath an oversize T-shirt, bare feet, hair a tousled mop of curls, gray eyes wide in surprise at finding Ric camped out on her brother’s sofa at the crack of dawn on New Year’s Day in the winter of her freshman year of college, and damn, but he had to stop thinking about Annie, with or without her underwear.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Brenda Quinn was Gordie Burns’s girlfriend?” Ric asked Lillian, after turning on his office version of Maxwell Smart’s Cone of Silence—a device that would jam all electronic frequencies. If Burns had already come in and bugged his office, or if one of the cars Ric had spotted parked out on the street had a long-range microphone intended for eavesdropping, it would turn this conversation into a scrambled, static-filled mess.

  “Would you have taken the case if I had?” she answered.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  Ric leaned against his desk. His leg was really hurting and he wanted to sit down somewhere soft, but it was kind of obvious that Lillian wanted him to sit next to her, and no way was he doing that. “You said you hated Gordon Burns.”

  She nodded. “He killed my daughter.”

  “I thought she died of an overdose.”

  “That was the official cause of death,” Lillian said. “Yes. He made it look like a drug overdose, but it wasn’t. It was murder.”

  “So you just…go vigilante,” Ric said. “Take the law into your own hands…?”

  “First I went to the police,” she told him, a trifle defensively. “But they did nothing. They took my statement, sure. But there was no investigation. As far as they were concerned—which was not at all—Marcy was just another body to send to the morgue.” Her voice broke convincingly. “Another troubled girl permanently off the streets.”

  Ric took the box of tissues off of his desk. He brought it to the sofa, setting it down on the cushion next to Lillian. “Do you have any proof? Any evidence that Burns intentionally—”

  “She was just out of rehab,” she told him, reaching out and catching his wrist. She had one hell of a grip. “I spoke to her on the phone that day, and she was doing everything right. She was doing fine.” She looked up at him beseechingly, her eyes filled with tears, her bosom actually heaving with her distress. It was a nice touch. “She told me she was afraid of Gordie Junior—that she’d seen him beat a man to death. She was there when he disposed of the body, and it was awful. She wanted to move to California, but…She didn’t want to go without Brenda. They were best friends.”

  “Ms. Lavelle,” Ric interrupted. She was determined that he sit on the sofa, so he sat. But he sat as far from her as possible, with the box of tissues between them. “Brenda’s a junkie. She’s probably more to blame for your daughter’s death than—”

  “Gordon Burns purposely gave Marcy an overdose,” Lillian insisted. “She knew things. She’d seen things. She could send his son to jail.”

  “Marcy wasn’t doing everything right,” Ric pointed out. “If she was just out of rehab, the last thing she should have done was start hanging out with her drug buddies again. She wasn’t doing fine—I think you probably know that.”

  Lillian even cried beautifully, one tear, and then another slowly traveling down her perfect face. “He killed her,” she told him. “He killed my child—I’m going to kill his.”

  Ric nodded. “That’s not something I can help you with.”

  “I have money,” she said.

  “That’s not what you told me yesterday,” he countered.

  “I thought I could…get you on my side in other ways.” She wiped her eyes with a Kleenex, careful of her makeup, then looked down at herself, and laughed—a hopeless burst of despair. “I guess I’m too old for this approach.”

  Ric laughed, too. “You know damn well what you look like, so don’t even try to play the pity card.”

  She held his gaze. “And yet there you sit, all the way over there.”

  “I don’t get intimate with clients.” What was she hoping to gain here?

  Lillian leaned closer, her hand on his knee. “You’re fired.”

  He picked up her hand and put it back on her own lap. “We still have more to discuss.”

  “The bandage on your leg,” she said. “Was that where…?”

  “You shot me,” Ric finished for her. “And, yeah, it hurts. You’ve got two choices. You either get on a plane and go back to St. Louis or wherever you’re from. First thing in the morning. I’ll escort you to the airp
ort myself. If you come back to Sarasota, I’ll go to the authorities and tell them everything, and you will be arrested. Or you can go with me and talk to them today. I have some contacts with the FBI—good people who I know haven’t sold out to Gordon Burns. It’s possible they’ll be able to get him on some kind of conspiracy charge—he did cover up a murder attempt tonight, but I don’t know if that can stick. I have a friend who’s a lawyer, but I haven’t been able to discuss this with him, not in detail.”

  “Or we could lie low,” she said. “Wait to see what Burns does next.”

  What Burns had done was hire Ric and Annie to protect Gordie Junior.

  Damn it. How the hell was he going to keep Annie safe, short of driving her back to Boston? And yeah, like she’d willingly go…

  “There’s no we,” Ric told Lillian, whose hand was back on his thigh, traveling northward. He stopped her, holding her wrist. “I’m not going to kill Gordie Junior for you, and I’m not going to allow you to hire someone else to do it. Yeah, I think Burns is scum, but I’m not—and you’re not, either. I know you’re devastated by your daughter’s death, but this isn’t the answer. Invest your money in grief counseling, Ms. Lavelle. Because here’s a truth that you cannot change: Killing Gordon Burns’s son won’t bring Marcy back.”

  “Maybe I am scum,” she told him through the tears that she could turn off and on like a faucet. They were back in force. “Because it’s all that I want.”

  He didn’t see her move, and he sure as hell didn’t lean forward, but somehow she was in his arms, crying on his shoulder.

  Christ.

  And okay. It was definitely easier to be objective about the lingerie when she was on the other side of the room, or even the other side of the sofa. Up close she was all soft skin and softer body. She smelled nice—a little strong, like walking past a department store’s perfume counters, but nice. Nothing like Annie, but no one smelled as good as Annie, which was such a pathetic thing for him to be thinking that when Lillian kissed him, he then found himself thinking fuck it, and he kissed her back.

  The tears shut instantly off, he noted. She’d also popped out of the left side of her bustier as she took his kiss as an invitation to straddle him. Damn, but the woman knew what she wanted, and she took hold of him, right through his shorts—Martell’s shorts. Martell was wearing the drawstring linen pants that Ric had been given by Gordon Burns. Martell, who was with Annie right now…