Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I do,” Jules told him. “Sir. But you don’t want to hear it.”

  “Try me,” Max said. “But do it after you get up here. Room 1235.”

  “Yeah, um, about that . . .” Jules said slowly. No way could he share a hotel room with Max. It didn’t matter that the man was relentlessly straight. Someone would find out and ugly rumors would spread. He couldn’t let that happen. “Really, sir, it’s probably not a good idea—”

  “What are you going to do?” Max asked. “Sleep in your rental car?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  Max sighed. “Just get up here, Cassidy. I’ll take my chances. What am I supposed to be afraid of anyway? That you’ll get some of your gay on me?”

  “Sir, believe me, people can be pretty awful. They’ll talk—”

  “The hell with ’em.”

  Jules tried again. “Sir, your career—”

  “Okay, look. It’s your room. You come up here, I’ll go sleep in your car.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Jules said.

  “Yes,” Max agreed. “Yes, it is.”

  Jane’s shiny black dress looked as if it had been painted on.

  Cosmo had been waiting for quite some time when the limo pulled into the driveway. Tess Bailey and Jimmy Nash were the first out, followed by PJ. They were all wearing dark suits—wherever they’d been, ties had been required.

  Cos joined them, duffel bag over his shoulder, as Jane emerged. They surrounded her, diamond pattern. He was on her left as they hustled her to her front door.

  Decker had told him she was going out tonight, but he hadn’t gone into detail as to where.

  Apparently, she’d been partying in the land of the painted-on clothing.

  “Hi, Cos, how are you?” she greeted him, genuinely glad to see him. She smelled like cigarette smoke and wine. He caught only a faint trace of her now-familiar perfume.

  “Fine,” he said as he helped her inside, sticking close until the door shut behind them. PJ stayed outside, shouting an adios, racing to spend the rest of the night with his girlfriend. Tess and Nash, despite the security system that was on and working, left to do a quick search of the house.

  “Any luck finding that car—or your truck?” Jane asked.

  “No.”

  She knew it was bugging him. He spent a lot of time standing out in the yard, trying to get a feel for where the shooter had been when he’d fired that rifle. Trying to figure out where that freaking bullet might have gone.

  It was starting to be a joke among the other members of the team. “Hey, Cos. Find that bullet?” “Any sign of your truck?”

  Your truck.

  Murph hadn’t gotten a plate number for the car. It—like the truck’s—had been obscured.

  Probably intentionally.

  But yeah, okay. Mud happened.

  Tonight Cos had gone prowling again around the neighbors’ driveways and garages.

  There were twenty-three homes past Jane’s. About a mile down, the road dead-ended. There was only one way in and one way out.

  Cosmo had found that six of the ten vehicles on his list belonged to those neighbors. The seventh had had out-of-state plates. Eight was an eighty-thousand-dollar sports car that didn’t meet the FBI’s profile of the man Jane had dubbed “Mr. Insane-o.” As for nine and ten . . . there was no sign, anywhere in the area, of either the beat-up Pontiac that Murphy had seen or “Cosmo’s truck.”

  “How was your evening?” As if he had to ask. He could tell Jane was jazzed about something.

  What he couldn’t tell was how she could possibly be wearing underwear beneath that dress. And what the hell kind of fabric was it made of? It was so shiny it almost looked wet.

  “Awesome! What an incredible night!” She sat on the stairs to take off her stilts. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

  “Congratulations.” Cosmo watched her rub her feet as her already short skirt rode up and up and . . . He turned to check the security system’s panel of lights, slipping his bag off his shoulder and onto the floor. Everything looked good. Although, granted, some things looked a little too good. “What am I congratulating you for?”

  “HeartBeat wants to put together a distribution deal for Fool’s Gold,” she told him, pulling herself to her feet. “It’s a romantic comedy Robin and I made a few years ago. It’s never been released.”

  “You made a movie without knowing you were going to be able to distribute it?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Jane grinned. “Crazy, huh? You have no idea how many movies get made each year that never see the light of day. The lucky ones go direct to video; some just sit in the can and gather dust. It’s definitely a gamble. And my luck has been, well, less than, since I refused to make Hell or High Water Two.”

  About that . . . “Robin told me you could’ve had it easy if you’d done the sequel—”

  “And the sequel to that and the sequel to that . . .” She rolled her eyes. “No. Thanks. I refused to be forever measured by a screamingly successful fluke. Wait. That sounds like I’m bashing myself. For the record, I think Hell was a terrific movie. The script was good, and my actors rocked. The fluke was that anyone at all saw it, outside of my film school professors. But okay, it happened. Big-time. And yes, as a result, I had plenty of offers—to do Hell Two. Except I didn’t want to write the sequel. And even if I did . . .”

  Cosmo nodded. He got it. It would automatically be compared to the original, and how could it possibly compete?

  “So I wrote something completely different,” Jane told him. “Which flopped because since it wasn’t Hell Two, it didn’t get the distribution it deserved. Which meant I had to make Fool’s Gold on my own. It took two years to raise the money—most of which was mine. Hooray for credit cards—which I’m still paying off.” She gestured toward the metal pails that were scattered about the entrance hall. “Believe it or not, this is not just a quirky yet bold decorative choice.”

  “Yeah, I kind of guessed,” he told her.

  “Anyway, I did it, hoping that when I was finished someone would see the movie and want to distribute it. Which they didn’t. See it, I mean. At all. By that point, Hell was so five years ago. Nobody was interested—I’d dropped off the map.” Jane laughed. “This is a crazy place. I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m having a comeback. Which is how it all works here. Everyone’s careers has highs and lows. So even when your movie doesn’t get picked up right away, you just hang on and wait for the next wave. If you play it right, you get noticed again, and whammo, old projects get snapped up, and you can maybe recoup your expenses.”

  If you play it right. “The Party Girl Producer,” Cosmo said.

  “J. Mercedes Chadwick to the rescue.” Jane pulled her hair up and off her shoulders and neck, giving him a better look at the details of that dress. And here he’d thought the front neckline was low. But now he could see that the opening in the back was held together only by three slender strips of fabric. It went all the way down to . . . Yes, she had a tattoo—it looked like the Chinese character for happiness—low on her back.

  “God, I need a shower. Did you smell my hair? I usually go out by the pool during parties because there’s breathable air out there, but this time I had to stay inside.” She did a quick spin of joy. “Oh, Cos, it was wild—everyone made a big deal about closing the curtains, and I had so many people ask if they could get me a drink because the bar was outside. Sofia Coppola. Sofia Coppola got me a Diet Coke. It almost makes it worth it. You know, the whole psycho killer Mr. Insane-o thing.”

  Her enthusiasm plus that dress was quite the combination.

  “You must be exhausted,” Cosmo said. “As soon as Tess and Nash give us the all clear—”

  “You’re kidding, right?” she countered. “I am so wired. And there’s actually something I was hoping you could help me with. If you don’t mind.”

  Um . . .

  Tess Bailey saved him for the moment, coming down the stairs. Nash was right behind he
r, looking svelte and sophisticated in his expensive, well-tailored dark suit. “All clear,” Tess announced with a smile, looking none too shabby herself.

  For the first time in a long time Cosmo felt underdressed and self-conscious about his clothes. Cargo pants and a T-shirt. Damn, he dressed like a fifteen-year-old.

  “Touch base in five,” he said as he closed the door behind them. Nash was off duty, but it wasn’t likely he was going to leave while Tess was still here.

  Cos turned back to Jane, hoping she was too tipsy to remember that she’d just asked him for some unnamed favor. There was no doubt about it—Diet Coke wasn’t the only thing she’d had to drink tonight. “You’re good to go take that shower,” he told her.

  But she didn’t start up the stairs. She just stood there, silent for a moment.

  “So was that an evasive no?” she finally asked, lower lip caught between her teeth, visibly subdued. “It’s okay if you don’t want to help me—it really is. I just wasn’t completely sure . . .”

  Way to be the Grinch to her little Cindy Lou Who.

  “I’m happy to help with whatever you need,” Cosmo told her. And wasn’t that the truth. “But why don’t you shower first and, uh, you know, change. Meet me in the kitchen.”

  “That’s why you’re acting so weird, isn’t it?” she said, realization in her voice.

  What? He wasn’t acting weird.

  Was he?

  “You hate this dress,” she accused him.

  She was so direct. Before he could figure out what to say in response, she added, “No, actually, you don’t hate it. You just disapprove of my wearing it in public. That’s what it is, right?”

  And that he could respond to. “If you want me to be honest . . .”

  “I do.” She crossed her arms, which was distracting as hell, considering that neckline.

  Cosmo focused. “I think there’s more to you than your body,” he told her. “I think you’re selling yourself short, Jane. You walk into a room looking like . . . Well.” He gestured to her. “What do you think people think when they see you?”

  She knew where he was going and it obviously pissed her off. “They think, ‘Golly gee, look at her—she must be wicked-ass smart.’ What am I supposed to do, Cos? Wear a burlap sack? Just because God said, ‘Hey, I have a good idea—let me make this one stacked?’ Just because I refuse to starve myself? If I’m hungry, I’m going to eat! Screw you, Ally McBeal! And why am I responsible for other people’s stupidity? If they look at me and can’t see past my body, why is that my fault?”

  “It’s more than the way you dress,” Cos said. “It’s the way you act. The do-you-want-to-do-me-now-or-right-now? attitude. You perpetuate the myth.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s perfect. You’re lecturing me on perpetuating the myth? Your entire professional reputation is based on a myth. How many people did you kill while they were sleeping on some mountaintop on the other side of the world? Was it two hundred, Chief, or was it three? Nobody quite knows the number, and you haven’t exactly stepped forward to clear it all up.”

  Jane had heard The Story. Of course she had.

  “It was eighteen,” Cosmo told her. “Total.”

  She took a step back, and he knew that, despite her taunting words, she believed what she’d heard about him. He didn’t know why that should make him feel so disappointed, but it did and he was. In fact, he felt almost sick.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Somehow we always end up fighting. I didn’t mean to . . . Congratulations on the movie thing. Really.”

  “We’re not fighting,” she countered. “This isn’t fighting. The other night, that was fighting. This is healthy disagreement. You don’t like my public image, well, tough shit, dude, because I don’t particularly like yours, either. If you killed eighteen people, you must have had a reason for doing it. It was probably because they would’ve killed again, and they needed to be stopped or . . . There was a reason you did it. I don’t care what people say about you— you’re not a robot. It couldn’t have been easy to do, and you couldn’t have done it without feeling something. I don’t buy into that. I don’t. But most people do. And you just let them think what they want, don’t you? You even kind of like it, because it keeps them at arm’s length.”

  If. She’d actually said if he’d killed eighteen people.

  She was standing there, gazing at him, scrutinizing his face, as if she were trying to read his mind.

  Cosmo just let her look, even though he no longer knew what she might see in his eyes.

  And then she asked him. Right to his face. “It’s not really true, is it? That story . . . ?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but Jane just waited.

  And waited.

  He could have stalled until dawn, and she would’ve still been standing there.

  “You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that,” he finally admitted.

  She was honestly surprised. “Are you serious?”

  Cos nodded. “Not everyone’s like you, Jane. In fact, hardly anyone is.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll take that as a compliment, thanks.”

  “It was meant as one.”

  “So it’s not true,” she guessed. “Or is it? Because you haven’t exactly answered the question.”

  “Take a shower,” he told her. “Then come downstairs and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Okay, you win.” Jane raised her hands in surrender. “I’ll go change. God, you must really hate this dress. For your information, I wore it tonight because it photographs well.”

  It was impossible not to watch her as she went up the stairs, and Cosmo had to laugh. Hate that dress?

  She had no freaking clue.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  J ules carried his towel with him as he came out of the hotel bathroom. “I’ll hang mine over here, on one of the coat hangers,” he told his boss, who was sitting at the room’s one desk, glaring at the screen of his laptop, chin in hand.

  The TV was muted but still playing CNN. It was possible Max would leave it on all night.

  And sleep with one eye open, watching it.

  This was beyond weird—rooming with his boss. Please, Heavenly Father, don’t let either of them fart tonight.

  There were two beds in the room, one rumpled, one still neatly made. Jules pulled back the hideously floraled spread of the bed that was as yet untouched. From the looks of the other, along with Max’s rather intense bedhead, it was obvious that he’d attempted to sleep earlier this evening.

  Attempted and failed.

  In all honesty, Max looked like shit warmed over.

  And it was only partly due to his red plaid flannel pajama pants, faded Jimi Hendrix T-shirt that clashed, and his totally out-of-character uncoiffed hair. He had bigger than usual bags under his eyes, and although he wasn’t known for being a smiler, his mouth and jawline were set on extra unhappy.

  The man was a tension convention.

  Of course, Max had never been particularly good at relaxing, but he’d been stress personified ever since his girlfriend, Gina, had left him. Or rather, since he’d let Gina leave.

  Unlike when Adam had left Jules, if Max had gone after Gina, if he’d gotten down on his knees and begged her to come back, she would have. He might’ve been smiling right now, thinking of her waiting for him in their sweet little condo in Dupont Circle—no, wait, it was Jules who wanted to live in Dupont Circle, not Max.

  God only knew where Max wanted to live.

  Other than in a world free from terrorist attacks.

  “Is that something I can help you with?” Jules asked his boss now.

  Max glanced up. “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” He shut the laptop, but he didn’t move out of the chair. “So why’d you turn off your cell phone today?”

  And there it was. The quest
ion he’d been dreading.

  When Jules first came into the room, dragging his rolling luggage behind him, they’d discussed all of the obvious topics.

  What was Max doing in L.A.?

  His being here had nothing to do with the Mercedes Chadwick case. He had a meeting in the morning with the Los Angeles office of Homeland Security. He caught the flight out before Laronda had discovered the dearth of hotel rooms.

  What was new up in Irving, Idaho?