Deadly Intent

by Pamela Clare

  They went back to bed, Joaquin holding Mia close.

  This time, she didn’t dream at all.

  18

  Joaquin and Mia spent Sunday cocooned together, Joaquin doing all he could to make Mia forget. He made her breakfast and strong coffee, talked with her, made love to her in the shower, on the sofa, in bed. They went for a hike in the bright sunshine with the snowshoes Joaquin had found in the closet, then warmed themselves by the fire with cups of hot chocolate.

  They talked about everything and nothing. Their childhoods growing up in Colorado. What they liked to do on their days off. Their favorite places to hike and ski. Then Joaquin told her about his friends, sharing war stories from the newsroom with her, leaving out the scary stuff, like last month’s terrorist attack, and focusing on the good memories, the things he thought might make her laugh.

  “Holly worked for the CIA?” Mia stared at him, open-mouthed.

  Joaquin chuckled. “That look on your face right now—that was all of us when we heard. None of us had a clue.”

  “I feel like I know them now.”

  “Hang with me long enough, and you’ll meet them. You’ve already met Darcangelo and Hunter.”

  After that, he showed her his family’s private website with its birthday tracker, events calendar, and message board. “There’s a spot for family recipes here. This is where my mom and dad updated everyone yesterday to let them know I was okay.”

  It took him a moment to remember that it was all in Spanish.

  “What’s your middle name?” Mia’s cheeks were flushed from sex and sun.

  “My middle name? Um… ” All this fucking must have shorted out his brain because he had to think. “I have two. Joaquín Cristián Delgado Ramírez.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty.”

  “Spanish is a pretty language. What’s yours?”

  “Mine is nothing that fancy. Just Rose. Mia Rose.”

  “I like it. It fits you. No wonder you like flowers.”

  After sunset, snow started to fall. Joaquin and Mia accepted an invitation to join the West family for Sunday dinner and a movie, good food, good wine, and good company putting a perfect end on a perfect day—or a day that might have been perfect had the threat of a killer not been hanging over Mia.

  “I’m afraid to fall asleep,” Mia said as they crawled into bed. “I’m afraid real life is going to catch up with us.”

  Joaquin drew her close. He knew exactly how she felt, but he didn’t say that. She didn’t need empathy right now. She needed someone to be strong for her. “Whatever happens, Mia, I’ll be right here.”

  Real life caught up with them at eight in the morning, when Joaquin’s cell phone buzzed. He fumbled for it in the darkened room. “Ramirez.”

  “You’re still asleep? Must be nice.”

  “Darcangelo.” He sat up, saw that Mia was awake now, too. “I was still asleep. What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to give you a heads up. Wu is going to call you two soon with an update. Right now, he and the two special agents are in one of the interrogation rooms with that asshole Powell. He’s saying some offensive stuff about Mia—dark, hateful stuff. He says he hasn’t had anything to do with the murders or the attempt on Mia’s life, but he’s cheering on whoever is behind this. He says he can’t wait to read about her murder in the paper.”

  “Hijo de puta. Put me in an interrogation room with that son of a whore. I’ll take the bastard apart.”

  “Hey, if I were running this show and it weren’t against the law, I just might give you that chance.”

  “Do they have any real evidence against him?”

  “Not yet, but Wu says everything in this investigation is pointing to him right now. He has clear motive, at least where Mia is concerned, and he lives within easy driving distance of all the victims. They’re trying to get something out of him that will justify a search warrant. I expect you’ll be hearing from Wu or Shoals the moment they’re done questioning the bastard.”

  “Okay.”

  “Also, speaking of papers, that reporter is sniffing around the building again, sidling up to people.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Joaquin had known Cate wouldn’t give up.

  “Old Man Irving would ban her from the building, but he doesn’t want to have to deal with your dickhead boss.”

  “I can’t blame him for that. Hey, thanks for the heads up.”

  “De nada.” Darcangelo ended the call.

  Joaquin turned around to find Mia standing in the doorway to the bedroom, barefoot and in her bathrobe, worry plain on her face. “That was Darcangelo. He says Wu and the FBI guys brought Powell in for questioning. They don’t have any real evidence yet, but everything else seems to point to him.”

  He refused to tell her the rest of it. That son of a bitch had hurt her enough with his vile bullshit. She didn’t need to hear more.

  “Was there anything else? You two talked for a few minutes.”

  “He said Wu and Shoals will probably be getting in touch with you this morning to give you an update on the case. He didn’t say why. He also said Cate is hanging around the cop shop again, asking questions.”

  “Great.” Mia walked into the kitchen and started making coffee, as if they hadn’t just been talking about a man who wanted her dead. “What do we want for breakfast?”

  Mia watched the Black Hawk land, snow swirling in the rotor wash. Special Agent Shoals had called her a little more than an hour ago to let her know that he and Wu were on their way out to the ranch with news. She had expected them to drive, not fly in. “Isn’t this a bit dramatic?”

  “Your taxpayer dollars at work,” Jack muttered.

  “Oh, Jack.” Janet shook her head. “They don’t want to risk driving up and giving away Mia’s location. Flying is also a lot faster.”

  “I hope they arrested that bastard,” Joaquin said.

  “So do I.” Mia desperately wanted this to be over.

  Jack sent his foreman to pick Shoals and Wu up and headed back inside with Janet, Mia, and Joaquin. “Coffee? Hot chocolate? Something stronger?”

  “Coffee, please.” Mia never turned down caffeine.

  “Nothing for me,” Joaquin said.

  Jack made his office available to Mia and Joaquin, leading Wu and Shoals their way when the men arrived.

  Shoals shook Mia’s and Joaquin’s hands and then started telling Mia how a firearm leaves marks on brass shell casings and bullets that help law enforcement connect both brass and projectiles to a specific firearm. “When the firing pin strikes the primer—”

  “I know how firearms work.” Mia didn’t mean to be rude, but she didn’t feel like sitting through an hour-long lecture on something she already understood.

  Wu looked like he was fighting back a grin. “The shell casings left in the shooting and disappearance of Mr. Meyer, the two murders, and the attempt on your life came from the same firearm.”

  Shoals gave Wu an irritated sidelong glance, as if Wu had stolen his big news, then went on. “We worked with CGIC—the Crime Gun Intelligence Center here in Denver, also known as Operation Hot Brass—and have been able to confirm that the same shooter is behind all of this.”

  That was it? They’d flown up in a freaking Black Hawk to tell her that?

  “Didn’t we already know this?” Joaquin was underwhelmed, too.

  “We suspected it, certainly,” Shoals said. “But now we know for a fact that the shell casings at these crime scenes came from the same firearm. This is now evidence that is admissible in court.”

  Okay, admissible evidence. That was something.

  “What about Powell?” Mia had to know.

  “We questioned him and let him go—for now.”

  “He has alibis,” Wu said. “He said he was home with his wife at the time all four crimes were committed, and she corroborated that. We’ll be checking into that further. We’re also looking into everyone else involved in the looting.”

  “The big reason
we flew out here was to get a sample of DNA from both of you.”

  Mia couldn’t have heard him right. “DNA? Why do you need that?”

  “We now assess that when you fired back, you hit him, Mia.”

  “I hit him?” Mia felt a stab of savage satisfaction.

  “Good.” Joaquin gave her hand a squeeze.

  “It was probably just a minor graze, but it was enough that he dripped blood where he was standing. It wasn’t much—just a couple of drops. The initial forensic sweep missed it. A team from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation found it. We just need to make sure that it’s not your blood, given that your blood was at that same crime scene. Mr. Ramirez, you weren’t cut or grazed, were you? No. Okay, well, even so, you were at the scene, so we’d like DNA.”

  Mia met Joaquin’s gaze, saw that it made sense to him, too. “What do we do?”

  Shoals picked up his briefcase, set it on Jack’s desk, and opened it, taking out two small boxes, kits of some kind. “We can do that by buccal swab. It has to be done by the book, of course, because it’s evidence, so I’ll need to handle the swab. It needs to be done at least thirty minutes after you’ve last had something to eat or drink.”

  So much for finishing her coffee.

  They walked back out to the living room, where Nate had a big fire going in the fireplace. Shoals and Janet got into a conversation about the different people they both knew and had worked with, while Wu seemed impatient, the scowl that was a permanent part of his face deeper today.

  “Is this taking you away from your other work?” Mia asked him. “I know this isn’t your only case.”

  “There are never enough hours in the day.” When he looked at her, there wasn’t anger in his gaze, just weariness.

  After thirty minutes had passed, they went into the kitchen, where Shoals washed his hands, put on Nitrile gloves, and took out a small swab. “Open wide.”

  He scraped the inside of Mia’s cheeks, first one and then the other, and then stuck the swab into a tube that held a small amount of liquid. Then he took off his gloves and started from the beginning again. Clean hands. New gloves. Buccal swab on Joaquin’s inner cheeks. “That’s it.”

  “What happens now?”

  “We’ll take this straight to the CBI lab and put a rush on it. We ought to have results within forty-eight hours.”

  “What if he’s not in the system?”

  “Then he’s not in the system,” Wu said. “But when we find him, we’ll already have the tool we need to convict him.”

  “Every piece of evidence is a dot on the page, a piece of the puzzle,” Shoals said. “Connect the dots, put the pieces into place, and the picture comes together. That’s what we’re doing right now—getting dots on the page, collecting pieces of the puzzle.”

  Joaquin turned to Mia, his dark eyes searching hers. He lowered his voice, spoke to her alone. “This is more than we’ve had so far.”

  For the first time since this nightmare started, Mia felt they were making progress.

  A winter storm was moving in fast, with at least a foot of accumulation in the forecast, so Joaquin chopped firewood. He wanted to make certain they’d be warm in case the power went out, as Nate said it sometimes did in big storms. Already, the wind had picked up, and the temperature had dropped.

  Joaquin didn’t mind the snow. He didn’t mind the physical work either, as it gave him an excuse to hit something. In a rhythm now, he swung the ax, venting his rage on the wood, which flew apart into two pieces. He tossed them on his pile, then set another log on the stump, and swung again.

  Crack.

  If Mia’s chain of command had done their job, she might not be in this situation, and people might not be dying. Instead, they’d covered up for Powell, burying Mia’s accusations against him, forcing her to work with a bastard who obviously had no respect for women, not even his fellow officers. They’d ignored her report about his looting, too, until they’d had no choice but to act. Their failure to do their duty had put lives in danger in Iraq and had almost gotten Mia killed in Denver.

  Crack.

  The cops were onto Powell now. They had DNA. If it belonged to Powell, they would lock him up and throw away the key. If it didn’t, then the cops had next to nothing, and the killer was still out there. No one had been murdered these past few days. Wu had pointed that out. He’d said that Mia was likely the killer’s primary target—and that he had saved her for last like dessert or some shit.

  Fuck him. He wasn’t going to get her.

  Crack.

  Joaquin stacked wood on the deck, then carried a few armloads inside, where Mia sat at the table, studying the images Shoals had left her—images of the man who wanted to kill her. Mia had mentioned a few times that something about him seemed familiar. They were hoping that seeing the images might help her recognize him. But Joaquin could tell by the troubled frown on her face that it wasn’t working.

  He stepped out of his boots, took off his gloves, hat, and parka, then added wood to the fire, warming his fingers. “You know you don’t have to keep looking at those. If it’s not sparking anything, you should stop.”

  One of the images had been taken from the security camera in the elevator and showed Mia pistol raised, determination and terror on her face. It had made Joaquin’s stomach knot to see it. He couldn’t imagine how it affected Mia.

  “I suppose this could be Powell. Shoals said the height and weight were right. The images are so dark and grainy. Why have surveillance cameras if they’re useless?”

  “Good question.”

  “I just don’t understand why he would kill Andy or Jason.” She had a pencil in her hand, and Joaquin could see she’d drawn something. “Why would he take their money and phones? His family is wealthy.”

  He shut the wood stove’s iron door and went to sit beside her. “What are you drawing?”

  She gave an irritated little shake of her head. “It’s me being stupid and literal. Shoals called the evidence dots, so I made dots. So far, all I have is dots.”

  Joaquin looked at the page, saw dots labeled with the names of the killer’s victims and a dot for Mia. “It might work if you knew how to arrange them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d have to know why he’s doing this, understand what each victim represents to him, right? Then you’d know how to arrange the dots, and you’d get your picture—metaphorically speaking.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do. I just can’t figure out what Powell would have against Andy and Jason.” She closed her eyes, pressed her fingers to her temple. “I wish Shoals hadn’t given these to me. I don’t want to look at them, and yet I can’t stop myself. Can you get rid of them for me?”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “If I keep staring at them…”

  She didn’t need to say more.

  He took the printouts and walked over to the woodstove, then opened the door and fed them to the fire.

  He stood just inside the alley, huddled against the snow, his head feeling as if it were about to explode. Where was that asshole?

  He should have waited till spring or summer to do this. It was too fucking cold to be out like this in winter.

  Cold. Cold. Cold.

  He saw his d-boy hurrying down the street and stepped back into the shadows, taking the bills he’d lifted from Frank out of his pocket. It had been nice of the bastard to come loaded with cash. He’d probably been planning to pay his hooker, but he hadn’t been that lucky. No last fuck for him.

  The Doctor looked over his shoulder, then stepped into the alley and walked over to him, hands in his coat pockets. He probably had a piece hidden there. “You got cash?”

  “You’re late. My head is fucking killing me. What you got?”

  “Sixty Oxy—ten mgs each and ten bucks a shot.”

  He didn’t have six hundred bucks. “I got them for a fiver each last time. I’ll give you three hundred.”

  The Doctor shook his stu
pid head. “Costs go up. Expenses go up. Hey, I’m a businessman.”

  He got in the dude’s face. “You think I’m just another fucking junky? I’m a veteran, man. I was injured in Iraq. Mustard gas. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Why are you wasting time with Oxy, man? You should be using the real stuff. It’s easier to get, and it will take away your pain.” Doc smiled.

  “Heroin.” He shook his head. “No way. That shit is expensive.”

  Doc shrugged. “You get what you pay for. Do needles scare you?”

  “Needles? Fuck, no.” He lived with them—needles in his brain, in his eyes.

  Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.

  Would heroin do a better job of helping him than Oxy?

  It’s not like he had to worry about getting addicted—not when he planned to blow his own head off.

  “How ’bout this—twenty-five Oxy for two hundred, and another hundred for five good doses of smack.”

  That would only get him through a couple of days.

  “Just give me the Oxy for three hundred.”

  “For three hundred, you can have forty.”

  You stupid son of a bitch.

  He was sick of this, sick of pain, sick of talking. With sixty pills, he could make it a good few days, maybe long enough to finish this.

  He drew out his pistol, put a bullet in the middle of Doc’s surprised face, then grabbed everything he could—bottles of pills, heroin, a bag of weed, a syringe—and ran.

  19

  Mia stared into her coffee, mind and body exhausted. She’d had the nightmare again last night, jerking awake to find herself shaking and sick in the pit of her stomach. Three times she’d dreamed she was standing in front of the elevator. Three times she’d seen him in the mirrors and grabbed for a firearm that wasn’t there. Three times, he’d opened fire, bullets hitting her, her blood running in rivulets—

  “Mia?”

  She jumped, realized Joaquin was talking to her. “Sorry. What did you say?”