Striking Distance ti-6

by Pamela Clare

  ¡Puñeta!

  What a clusterfuck!

  The commander was going to love this.

  * * *

  LAURA MADE COFFEE for Deputy U.S. Marshal Childers, then retreated to her office, turning to her job to keep her mind off Klara. But that was impossible.

  Safiya was lying, doing all she could to keep Klara, and there was little Laura could do about it. Once Erik had exhausted diplomatic options, she would have only the courts to turn to. And the courts would rule against her.

  Despair welled up inside her, Erik’s words running through her mind. If it hadn’t been for Javier, she wasn’t sure how she’d have gotten any sleep last night. He’d held her, assured her everything would be all right. His confidence had seemed to lift some of the burden—and some of the worry—off her shoulders.

  Determined to have a productive day, she slogged through transcribing her most recent interviews. She had worked only four full days over the past two weeks, the newspaper seeming distant, part of another life. If she didn’t produce something soon, Tom would lose patience with her, though his temper didn’t bother her the way it bothered other people.

  Done with that, she began to run through her notes on the VA story, only to find that she still couldn’t concentrate. Her gaze fell on Ali Al Zahrani’s FBI file. She set her VA notes aside, reached for the file, and looked through the list of articles she’d written over the past few months to see whether any of them might have provoked Ali. But none of them had touched on any topic remotely related to the Middle East or terrorism. There were, however, a lot of articles about her both in the Denver Independent and in other papers as the media focused on Al-Nassar’s upcoming trial.

  Could that be it? Could that coverage have persuaded him somehow to think of her as an enemy, a threat that needed to be eradicated? Could there be some connection between Al-Nassar and Ali or his family of which the FBI wasn’t aware?

  If Laura had read this report without having met Ali’s family and without having spent so much time in the Middle East, she might have bought that story without a second thought. Page after page painted a damning picture—a young man who’d gone from model teenager to terrorist in a matter of months, turning his back on society to carry out one fatal act of violence. But nothing in the report explained how Ali might have become radicalized or who might have influenced him. Could he have spent his afternoons radicalizing himself in his own bedroom?

  Laura’s reporter instincts, instincts she’d learned to trust, told her that something was off here.

  His afternoons.

  Her heart gave a hard kick.

  She grabbed her notes from her interview with Ali’s uncle together with a fistful of pages from Ali’s browser history and began to compare.

  According to FBI’s interview notes and her own, Ali went from class to his uncle’s grocery store, where he worked every afternoon until the store closed. He got out of class at roughly two in the afternoon and then reported to work by three, usually getting home at about nine thirty at night. And yet all of the suspect Internet searches he’d made using his desktop computer and home IP address—every single one of them—had taken place between one and four in the afternoon.

  That made no sense.

  Laura double– and triple-checked the documents, page by page, and confirmed it. The condemning Internet searches had all been made from Ali’s home during the hours he was supposed to have been at school or working at his uncle’s grocery store.

  That could only mean one of two things. Either his uncle was lying about Ali’s whereabouts in the afternoon—or someone else had been using Ali’s computer.

  Had FBI investigators noticed this?

  Surely, they had. Then again . . .

  Just to be cautious, she read through the browser history for a fourth time, noticing things she hadn’t before. His afternoon searches were strictly related to bomb making and terrorism. There wasn’t a single search for naked women, no clicks on news articles, no visits to chat rooms, no detours to iTunes. Also, he’d never done any Internet searches about her. In fact, there was nothing in his browsing history that involved her at all, not even articles about Al-Nassar’s trial. To make matters stranger, he’d visited some of the sites—many of them, in fact—for only a matter of minutes before clicking on the next link and the next.

  “Ms. Nilsson?”

  Laura gasped, startled. She looked up to see Childers standing in her office doorway, smartphone in hand.

  “Sorry to startle you, but I just got word that Mr. Corbray has been shot.”

  * * *

  IT WAS LATE afternoon by the time Javier was discharged from the hospital and free to head back to Laura’s place. He’d been questioned first by Darcangelo and then by two homicide detectives while waiting for the doctor to appear and stitch the graze. He’d been about to stitch the damned thing himself when the doctor had finally walked in and gotten the job done, leaving nine stitches in all.

  Now, all he wanted to do was get back to Laura.

  She’d put his phone number to use and called him the moment she’d heard he’d been shot, panic in her voice. He’d reassured her he was fine, but he knew she wouldn’t believe that until she saw him.

  He walked with Hunter, Darcangelo, and two officers to the hospital’s parking garage. The two men had offered to accompany him back to Laura’s flat even though it wasn’t really their job.

  “Why don’t you ride with that loser?” Darcangelo pointed to Hunter with a jerk of his head. “He’s got tinted windows that might give you more privacy if we run into media on the way.”

  Hunter grinned. “He’s just jealous.”

  Javier recognized close male friendship when he saw it. He climbed into Hunter’s SUV and put on his seat belt. “How long you and Darcangelo been married?”

  Hunter grinned. “We met about six years ago. I’d broken out of prison, and Darcangelo was the one who found me.”

  “Prison?” Javier listened while Hunter told him how he’d been convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. He’d broken out of prison to save Megan and Emily, and Darcangelo had put the pieces together, first bringing him in and then helping him prove his innocence.

  “If it had been anyone else, I’d probably still be in the joint—or dead.”

  Javier understood that bond. That was what he had with Nate. Except that he’d been awfully hard on Nate when he’d been up at the Cimarron, keeping him at a distance, keeping things from him.

  Maybe you should set that right, cabrón.

  Maybe he should.

  * * *

  LAURA WAS ABOUT to go out of her mind by the time Javier finally got home. She met him at the door, took in the sight of him. He smiled when he saw her, but she could tell he was troubled. Was he in pain? “Thank God you’re okay!”

  She wanted to wrap her arms around him but stopped herself. He was carrying two grocery bags, and she wasn’t sure where he’d been hit. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  He set the bags down and drew her into his arms. “I told you not to worry, bella.”

  She hadn’t been able to help it. She’d felt nauseated since she’d gotten the news, afraid in her heart that Javier had become a target because of her. His photo had run in the papers and been on all the news broadcasts, after all. Maybe the same people who wanted to get rid of her had now decided to go after him, too.

  “Where were you wounded?”

  Javier stepped back and slid out of his jacket to reveal a bloodstained T-shirt, the left side torn a few inches above his waist. He lifted the shirt and pressed his hand against a dressing that was held in place by medical tape. “Nine stitches. No big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Fear for him flashed into anger. “You could have been killed!”

  Childers stepped forward. “Glad to see you’re in one piece.”

  “Thanks, man.” Javier shook Childers’s hand. “Sorry to keep you so late.”

  “No problem. It was good to see you again, Ms
. Nilsson.” Childers gave Marc and Julian a nod and left.

  It was then Laura remembered her manners. “I’m so sorry. Please make yourselves at home. Can I take your coats, get you something to drink?”

  Marc and Julian shook their heads.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Marc said. “We’ll be heading out in a minute.”

  She looked at the three men. “So will one of you please fill me in? The TV news isn’t saying much. A shooting in LoDo. One man dead. Another wounded.”

  Javier slipped out of his coat and sat on the sofa, drawing Laura with him, Marc and Julian sitting across from them. She listened as Javier told her what had happened, feeling sick to think that he would be dead right now if the man who’d fired at him had simply been a better shot.

  “He was laughing?” Chills shivered down her spine

  Javier nodded. “It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. He had this look on his face like he was having fun. And when I shot him, he looked . . . surprised.”

  “Was he psychotic?”

  “We hope to have some answers soon.” Julian got to his feet. “Old Man Irving sent homicide to execute a search warrant at his residence this evening. In the meantime, the firearm he used has been sent to the lab.”

  Marc stood. “It looked to me like someone had painted the tip to make the weapon look like a toy. It could be the shooter wanted to fool you, Corbray. That way he’d get off the first shot.”

  “If his aim had been better, it would have worked.” Javier touched a hand against his wounded side.

  “How did they know where to find you?” Laura didn’t understand that part. The grocery store wasn’t usually part of Javier’s routine.

  “My guess is he knew I went for a run every morning and planned to catch me on my way back. When I took a detour to the store, he followed me.”

  “That’s as good an explanation as any.” Julian stood. “We’ll let you know what the search warrant turns up.”

  Then Marc and Julian left, leaving Laura and Javier alone.

  Laura checked to make sure the door was locked and turned to find Javier standing behind her. “The media are going to pick this up. My paper will pick it up first. Someone on the news crew will remember your name, and they’ll connect you to me. Then the national papers will grab it and the TV news stations. I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Your commander can’t penalize you for defending yourself, can he?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You’d be dead if you hadn’t fired back.”

  But Javier’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

  He reached for her. “I killed a man today, bella. I’ve killed men in combat, but this was different. I had no choice. I know that. He tried to kill me. But why?”

  “I’m so sorry.” She sank into his embrace and held him as tightly as he held her, one thought running through her mind, the same thought that had haunted her all afternoon.

  She’d almost lost him. She’d almost lost Javier.

  That simple realization had cut through her, opened her eyes to the truth. Despite all that had happened to her, despite the terrible situation with Klara, she had something precious in her life now, something beautiful, something she could not bear to lose.

  And that was Javier.

  She loved him.

  He drew back, a hand against his injured side. “You think you can help me find a way to take a shower without getting this wet?”

  She smiled up at him. “I bet I can think of a thousand ways.”

  It was only later, when she and Javier lay in bed together on the brink of sleep, that Laura remembered what she’d discovered about Ali.

  She would call Zach tomorrow.

  CHAPTER

  24

  LAURA RAN NAKED into her office and booted up her computer, then rushed back to her bedroom and grabbed something out of her closet. It turned out not to be the blue dress she’d aimed for but a blue blouse. “Helvete!”

  Javier stood in the hallway naked, apart from the dressing on his side, glancing down at the watch in his hand. “You’re not going to make it. It’s zero-nine-hundred and thirty seconds.”

  She slipped into the blouse, buttoning it as she ran back toward her office, still totally bare from the waist down.

  “Is this your new professional look, because, I gotta say, bella, I like it.”

  Torn between laughter and irritation, she glared at him as she passed. “This is your fault, Javier Corbray.”

  “My fault? Hey, you started it.” He followed her. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to be your morning lollipop, but I need to eat, too.”

  Her simple good-morning blow job had turned into a round of crazed sixty-nine that had sent pillows flying—and was about to make her late for work. Oh, but it had been worth it. Her body was still purring.

  She sat at her desk and clicked on Skype, doing her best to work the tangles out of her hair, the clock on her computer telling her that she was now a full minute late for the I-Team meeting. She grabbed her notepad and was about to log on when she realized Javier had followed her into her office. “Go, or my editor is going to see you naked!”

  Chuckling, he disappeared out the door.

  A click and a few rings later, she found herself staring at Tom’s face.

  “Nice of you to join us, Nilsson.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” She felt the urge to laugh, knowing that to him she looked normal—a bit less polished than usual, but normal—when she was only half-dressed.

  “Hey, Laura!” That was Sophie.

  Tom went on. “Harker, can you indulge Nilsson’s tardiness by repeating yourself?”

  “I’ve got an e-mail trail of two city council members who appear to have been taking kickbacks from a labor union. I’m guessing twenty inches with head shots.”

  “Alton?” Tom’s gaze shifted.

  “Windsor became the tenth Colorado town to ban fracking. I’d like to pull something together on the lawsuits challenging the bans and include the latest EPA studies on air and water pollution at fracking sites. Joaquin got some great shots of the rigs out along the Poudre River. I’d need probably fifteen to twenty inches.”

  Tom looked into the camera. “How about you, Nilsson? Make any progress on that VA story?”

  “I have an interview scheduled for later today with the regional VA director, and then I’ll be ready to pull it together.” Laura had never quite gotten the hang of thinking in column inches. She did a bit of mental math. “It will be a good twenty inches.”

  “What about photos?” That was Syd.

  Joaquin answered. “I’ve got shots of most of the soldiers she’s interviewed as well as the PTSD coordinator.”

  “Carmichael—your turn. What’s the latest on the bombing investigation and last Thursday’s shooting?”

  “That depends.” The camera moved until Laura found herself looking at Alex, who had a black eye and lacerations on his cheek. “Any word from the DPD as to whether yesterday’s shooting of your SEAL friend is related to the attacks on you?”

  He already knew.

  “No.”

  Alex looked directly into the lens. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course, I’m sure.”

  “I’d really hate it if some other paper scooped us on any of these stories because you held out on your own coworkers.”

  Laura’s face flamed. “If I knew something and sharing it wouldn’t place my life or his in danger, I would tell you. In this case, I haven’t heard anything. The shooter might have been just a random psycho.”

  She understood now why Alex got punched in the face so often.

  Alex looked up at Tom. “Javier Corbray, the SEAL who’s shacking up at Laura’s, was shot yesterday in broad daylight on Nineteenth Street between Chestnut and Wewatta. Minor wound. Corbray fired back and killed his assailant with two slugs to the chest. DPD is being very close-lipped
about it. Also, my sources with the FBI says they’re getting close to making an arrest in the bombing.”

  “What?” Laura hadn’t heard that. “Who told you that?”

  But Alex ignored her. “I’m looking at six inches on both pieces.”

  Laura was glad when the meeting was over. She walked to her bedroom to finish dressing, then found Javier sitting in his running pants on the sofa staring out the window at the mountains, his cell phone on the coffee table across from him.

  She sat beside him. “Did your commander call?”

  He shook his head, one hand coming to rest on her thigh. “I called him. I decided it was better he hear it from me than the newspapers.”

  That made sense.

  “What did he say?”

  “He wants me to fly back to Coronado this afternoon.”

  Laura felt the color drain from her face. She stood, turned her back to him, walked to the kitchen. “So . . . you’re leaving.”

  “Laura, I—”

  “It’s probably for the best. Since you got here, you’ve been filmed and photographed, had your name in the paper. You’ve been shot at—twice. You were almost killed yesterday.” She averted her gaze, not wanting him to see how upset she was. She’d never cared for women who used their emotions to blackmail. Javier needed to do what was right for him without pressure from her. “You came to Colorado to recover, not to get sucked into my mess.”

  “I did not get sucked into anything.” He walked over to her and took her hands. “I made a choice, bella, and that choice was to stand by you. I’m not leaving now.”

  She stared at him. “But your commander—”

  “He didn’t give me an order. It was more like a strong suggestion.”

  “A suggestion?” Laura shook her head. “I don’t want you putting your career on the line for me. You’ve already done so much for—”

  He pressed his fingers to her lips. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m staying here with you until my leave is up.”

  Laura sank into his open arms and held on tight, hoping with all of her heart he wouldn’t have a reason to regret his decision.