They watched from several stories higher, and while that limited their scope into his place, it looked like it gave them a straight line of sight over the building beside him and into the windows where Aziza and Alya were holding their meeting.
As far as Cooper could tell, that unit served no other purpose besides being a meeting point. Though some of downtown was gentrifying, this particular area was still held by landlords who didn’t care what you really used the apartments for, as long as you paid on time.
Cooper paid a few days late every month. Didn’t want to look suspicious. If he was too perfect a tenant, he’d might stand out. He wondered if the cell did the same.
The problem was that he’d spotted the agents with no real trouble. He did daily sweeps. When he saw a window he couldn’t account for, he paid a little extra attention, and boom, today, there they were.
A little ways back, in the shadows to be sure, but watching his window. He headed into a different building and used his scope to watch them watching him. Only they were watching the jacket he’d stuffed and set into his one chair—a rolling desk chair, not a coincidence. Then he’d rolled Fake Cooper in front of the computer and left.
Sure enough, they watched Fake Cooper while Real Cooper watched them. A little too easily.
While Ken Kellen was the languages expert, he was no shit-for-brains when it came to surveillance either. So he would find the agents, too, and it wouldn’t take him too long. If he connected them to Cooper, then Cooper might be well and truly fucked. He’d never get into the cell.
Heading home, he snuck into his own apartment, and wondered if the agents had figured out that “Cooper” had been sitting at the computer for over thirty minutes and hadn’t moved. But he had to come back. He’d left his regular cell phone, the one with the tracking app, here at the apartment.
Though Cooper had previously been relatively convinced that the FBI hadn’t tagged him with that weird app, now he leaned the other way. He just wasn’t entirely convinced they needed it. If they didn’t really need it, why risk him finding it? Because he would. Maybe they were just tapping his line or triangulating him every ten minutes. He could cloak the phone, but that would be even more suspicious if they were onto him. So he’d left it, then snuck back into his own place to pick it up.
Not a problem, he knew five points of entry and egress here. He looked around before peeking out a side window. Seemed they were still there.
They were going to fuck everything up.
His only real problem was the little redhead. Where was she today? Was she on his tail and he didn’t see her? Cooper didn’t think she was that good, but he’d been smacked and smacked hard before by underestimating people.
So he picked up the tracked phone off the small cardboard box he used as a bedside table in the second bedroom and called a number he knew. As he stared through the slit in the curtains from this room, he watched as the tall, Indian-looking agent picked his phone out of his pocket. Did he frown at the number?
Cooper hoped so.
“Hello.” There was a question in the voice, but Heath recognized this number.
“Get the fuck off my tail.”
He could see the movement in the other apartment. Yeah, I know you’re there. I see you. And you only think you see me.
Then he added the part he needed to. The part that wanted to get out of him. “Or people will die.”
24
Eleri sipped champagne as she stood in an alcove, the party in one ear, her phone to the other. “He said what?”
“Or people will die.” Donovan quoted. “Exact words.”
“Geez-es.” The most she could swear at one of her mother’s precious soirees. “I’m not positive it’s not a direct threat, but I don’t know where to report it to, either.”
“Anything good on your end?” he asked, knowing full well where she was.
“The turbot with artichoke was fantastic as were the escargot.” She smiled faintly at the wall in front of her, thinking that she was still following her mother’s party dictates—find something nice to say—and wondering if Donovan had ever eaten either turbot or escargot. She’d mapped the cells and what they knew, and tried to work. But she hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of any of it.
“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying the party.” The tone in his voice indicated that, no, he’d not had either and might vomit if he was offered them.
“I didn’t say I was enjoying it.” She offered with the lilt that always crept back in when she was around her mother.
“Eleri, there you are.” As if summoned, her mother materialized by her side, a smile wider than normal plastered across her face.
“I have to go.” She nearly whispered it, as though she could keep Nathalie Eames from seeing the dreaded device. Eleri pushed her finger on the button then shoved the phone into her small handbag that matched her dress and pasted on her own smile as she turned to face her mother.
Nathalie Eames was a vision, dark hair, dark eyes, round features, half African American and as beautiful as people of mixed race often are. Eleri knew where her mother came from. New Orleans to be exact. Eleri had spent time with Grandmere Remi, actually her great-grandmother. Nathalie’s own mother Emmaline Remi, had been a wild child and eventually a drug addict who disappeared. To this day Eleri had no clue why her sister had been named for the woman.
Her own Emmaline long since gone, her mother’s smile reached higher these days, but still not quite to her eyes. Eleri was the only one left to be the dutiful daughter. So she stood here in enough make-up that the quality of her gown was the only way she was distinguishable from a high-priced call girl.
“You must meet Wilson Canders, dear.”
Ah yes. Wilson stood before her with a smile and a subtle pass of his gaze. Did she muster up to his expectations? His wishes? Her mother was sure hoping so.
Eleri fought the sigh and the urge to ask exactly which prominent family did Wilson hail from? And why did it matter to a woman who’d grown up in a small row house in New Orleans? Then Eleri reminded herself that was probably exactly why it mattered. But it didn’t matter to Eleri.
With her own wide smile and proper tilt of her head, she held out her hand, fingers together and forward, as regal as she’d been taught as a child. “Special Agent Eleri Eames at your service. Wilson, was it?”
The last few words came out over his sputter.
She smiled. Question answered.
Eleri would attend the parties and go ball gown shopping in Vegas and listen as her mother told the seamstress all the last minute hemming and tucking that must be done to make the gown perfect. But she would not date any of the men her mother had thrown at her.
“And you?” She cued the man who was still stuck with his tongue somewhere on the roof of his mouth. Her mother’s fault, Eleri thought. If she’d thought to mention the most important thing in Eleri’s life along with the introduction, it might not be a surprise. But here stood Wilson trying to remember what he did for a living. Her mother was long gone, having done her usual introduce-and-ditch.
“I’m a VP at a software firm.”
She didn’t care but smiled anyway, and exchanged her champagne glass as a server went by with a tray. “How exciting. What exactly do you do there?”
“I procure funding for research and development.” He grinned, having said the words research and development as though he were talking about cancer treatments or reducing global warming. She reminded herself that the champagne was good and the dress was gorgeous, though it was out of the price range of her FBI salary.
Eleri was taking a rather full sip when he asked, “So how does a trust fund baby wind up as an FBI agent?”
Before she could answer, he added, “Are you active or is that a fun title?”
She pulled her leather wallet from the small bag, reminding herself that you just never knew when you might need your credentials, but she hadn’t thought it would be to impress the men her mother constan
tly dragged past her. None stuck. This one wouldn’t either.
Holding up the wallet with the only ease she felt tonight, she then watched as he inspected it with a grin. She felt compelled to add, “I don’t touch the trust fund.” And though she also felt compelled, she didn’t say, “Because half of it belongs to my murdered sister.”
There were too many questions generated by that one sentence, and not even the obvious ones. Unfortunately, he was now a little too enamored with her status, and she took a moment to assess if it was her. Surely one of these days, her mother—even if purely by accident—would throw an interesting man her way. It hadn’t happened yet.
She smiled at him just as she caught the end of his sentence.
“—would you put me in handcuffs?” His subtle leer made her regret her own smile.
No, she had not been too uptight. Eleri grinned wider. “I don’t carry handcuffs. I carry a tazer.” Then she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “A good number of grown men piss their pants when they’re tazed.”
Then she stepped back, let loose a grin she learned from a girl on some disturbing meds in the hospital, and polished off her champagne. Surely this shit had to wind down soon. Weddings, funerals, and her mother’s summons could not be missed.
Eleri turned to find her parents on the dance floor, her father gazing into her mother’s eyes. They seemed good together, despite the fact that they’d lost a child young. Despite the time they’d spent apart because her mother couldn’t deal with the loss and her father wouldn’t.
Though she’d grown up in their house—or houses—she’d never understood how her parents lived their life. From the moment her sister had disappeared, they’d all had different reactions. For a long time, her mother lived in a pretend world where Emmaline was just a little bit lost and would be back in a short while. Her father had thrown himself into his work. He couldn’t save his daughter, but he could build an empire. And Eleri had needed to be useful.
She’d been on the fast track to the FBI since age ten. Wanting desperately to be like the men and women who’d searched for her sister. Somehow, she’d wanted it deep in her bones despite the fact that those men and women had failed. Or maybe because of it. Even though she’d known for a while what no one else knew—her sister would never be found alive.
“Hanging out at the edges, are we?” Haley Jean Bellamy sidled up to her, a rounded glass of warm red wine in her manicured hands.
“Nice fingernails.” Eleri replied with a genuine grin. “Did your momma take you out for a manicure?”
“You know she did.” Haley Jean laughed. A PhD botanist, Haley Jean dug into her trust fund with as much joy as she dug in the dirt. She owned a wooded property with three greenhouses. The houses had some kind of distinction that Eleri could never keep straight, even with her own biology degree and Haley Jean’s ever enthusiastic descriptions. “Should we kiss, so our mommies think we’re gay and stop trying to set us up?”
“Tempting.” Eleri replied, wanting to hug her friend and catch up, but a school girl display was frowned upon here. “Sooner or later doesn’t she have to throw me something decent?” she asked, echoing her own earlier thoughts.
“Given her taste, no.” Haley Jean plucked a chocolate from a passing tray and ate as though her own mother wasn’t watching. “I saw she threw the young Canders buck at you. Do not go there. It’s disturbing.”
Eleri couldn’t hide the genuine laugh as it burbled out. “He asked if I’d use my handcuffs on him and I told him I’d taze him . . . and that he’d piss his pants.”
“Oh, good for you.” Haley Jean, like Eleri, maintained a passive smile and smooth lilt to her words. “I threatened him with a variety of botanical poisons.”
“Nice one.” Canders had clearly not been the lucky shot her mother had to someday take, and Eleri wondered exactly how much longer she would have to stand here in this whale-bone supported gown that flowed around her ankles and made her look like a slim goddess with class and bit of sugar. It so wasn’t her. “Want to meet up at the bar later and have something without a French name and catch up?”
“Love to. What’s the time frame on this shindig?”
“Oh honey,” Eleri mimicked her mother. “There is no time frame on class.”
Haley Jean’s laugh covered the sound of Eleri’s phone at first. She had it on silent, but she felt the fuzz of movement tug the strap to the small purse at her wrist and she pulled the phone out to check it.
Donovan. But she’d just talked to him. Turning sideways again, she let Haley Jean shield her from the guests. It was just so tacky talking on her phone all the time. “Donovan?”
There was no preamble, nothing. Just, “We just got pictures from Walter. She tailed Davies to the Calabasas group. Where he met up with Kellen and opened a duffel bag of guns and distributed them.”
“She has photos of this?”
“We do. Now.” His voice was tense. No wonder. Terrorism, illegal arms distributions to probable terrorists. Her heart rolled in her chest.
“How is she transmitting?” Surely she wasn’t using her cell phone. “If it’s radio frequency, get her out of there now.”
They would sweep. The cell wouldn’t last long if they weren’t regularly sweeping for spyware. Ken Kellen or anyone who’d been special ops would know better, and Walter herself would know better. The tension Eleri felt let go as quickly as it had gripped her.
“Cell phone.”
It popped back into place, the bands that tightened her chest, and she reminded herself that Donovan was new, but he should have learned from the Academy—
His voice interrupted her thoughts. “FBI issue, set solely for transmission.”
Her shoulders relaxed, probably obviously to everyone around her. The pale russet gown her mother had chosen was gathered and twisted in a slim strip over one shoulder only. Leaving the other bare to be seen as she tensed and relaxed each time.
She went for a more important topic, glad she hadn’t accused Donovan of being a dumbass. “So Kellen just armed the entire cell? Handguns?”
“Only a few. Bigger game hunting.”
He wouldn’t list the makes and models over the phone, it wasn’t like this call was secure, but he did say, “Three long range, with scopes.”
His voice was somber. He knew what that meant. So did Eleri. Sniper rifles. “I’m on my way.”
“See you.” He knew she was a few from being there, but it was better than coming back tomorrow. Even before she turned to tell her friend, Haley Jean was on it.
“Give me your room key. I’ll get your things. You get a flight and kiss your momma goodbye.”
Eleri handed everything over and held onto the thought that while she didn’t need a boyfriend, she did need her friends. She made a mental note to call Haley Jean soon and see her after the case was over. It had been too long. Then she wound her way into the fray for the first time tonight and found her mother.
The woman was a master of social cues, but somehow managed to miss that Eleri was running down an emergency. Or the woman had caught the hint and was actively ignoring it.
“Mama, Daddy,” She broke into the conversation with another older couple. “I’m so sorry, I’ve been called on an emergency and I have to go.”
“Oh baby, not tonight.” Her mother then turned her frown to a grin in a way that Eleri always thought would make her highly suspicious if she were interrogating the woman. “Just tell them no.” When Eleri started to shake her head, her mother put up another front. “Let someone else handle tonight. It’s not like no one else can do what you do.”
Eleri felt her head snap back. It wasn’t intended as an insult, and it wasn’t even the value judgment that got to her. She was used to them from the mother who hadn’t understood a single one of Eleri’s life choices since the day her sister had disappeared. It was that Eleri suddenly realized that her mother had it all wrong. No one else could do what she could. With her appointment to NightShade, that had a
ctually been recognized.
“Mother, this is my case. I have to go handle it.” With that she took a page from her mother’s book and kissed the woman on the cheek as polite as could be, but brooking no argument.
Her father was another story. He’d accepted a long time ago that his girl wasn’t going to live the life he chose for her. Still, he inserted his choices wherever he could. So after a short, strong hug, he told her, “Go get’em, Cupcake.”
As if Eleri was anyone’s “cupcake.” She smiled and turned away, weaving her way out through the partiers, casually brushing off anyone who tried to stop her, congratulate her on her parents’ long marriage, or ask about her work. In deference to her mother she waited until she hit the doors leading through the maze into the hotel before she pulled out her phone and started looking up flights.
Shit. She could barely make it if—
And there was Haley Jean, sitting politely with the bag Eleri had brought and hadn’t even really unpacked. Her friend looked ridiculous, sitting on a lobby couch in her long, deep red dress, her pearls around her neck and dripping from her ears, and Eleri’s plain black bag sitting next to her. Eleri was about to look even more ridiculous. “Thank you so much.” She hugged her friend, “But I need to get a car and there’s a flight—”
“I already got you one, Sweetie. It will be here in two minutes.” Haley Jean hugged her back and said, “When you get done with this, just show up at the farm. We need a girls’ week.”
The grin came easily. The lapse since she’d last spent time with Haley Jean suddenly unimportant in the way of real friends. “You know I will.”
The car pulled up and Eleri climbed in, pulling her gown behind her as Haley Jean loaded in her bag. She tried not to fret her way through the drive, traffic was going to be what it was, and it was Vegas, there would always be another flight to LA.
She must look ridiculous, but there hadn’t been time to change.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2) Page 21