“Everyone okay?” he called into the restaurant. “Has anyone been hurt? Check your neighbor!” The patrons scrambled to check limbs and look each other over, sending thumbs up his way to indicate they were all right. With no immediate injuries to handle, he turned his attention back to Yasmine.
“You all right?” The way she favored her left knee looked worrisome.
“I’m fine,” she said. She crouched next to him behind the next set of booth seats. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
“Not until I know it’s safe.” He touched the gun holstered on his side, reminding himself it was there if he needed it. He peered around the corner of the booth, scanning for any unusual movement across the street, but at seven o’clock, the descending twilight made it difficult to see anything out of place. Plenty of cars zoomed through the intersection just outside the front door, oblivious to the goings-on inside the restaurant.
“How will you know that?” Yasmine sounded impatient. “I feel like a sitting duck here. We should move.”
“No. We wait for the police.”
“Whoever shot at me will be gone by then. If it’s a sniper, he won’t have had time to set up again and will be on the move. We can spot him. It’s not like it’s easy to disguise a sniper rifle. Let’s go!”
Noel stared at Yasmine, whose entire body seemed to tremble with the need to get up and move. “No. We let the police handle it.” He pulled out his phone and began to call the direct line to the station, but a growl of frustration stopped him short.
The sharpness of Yasmine’s glare could have cut him in two. “I thought you were the police now.”
“In a manner of speaking, but this isn’t my jurisdiction.”
“Sounds like an excuse. I’m not going to cower here. This is the second attempt on my life today, and that shooter might have information about why it’s happening.”
She had a compelling argument. But it seemed foolhardy to run into danger, though it was still early evening and the streets crowded. A sniper would certainly be in retreat, and she made a good point about being able to spot him.
He ran a hand across his face and groaned. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Of course not. Make the call on the way if you have to. Let’s go.” Without waiting for his assent, she clapped him on the shoulder and ran in a crouch past the remaining front windows. When she reached the door, she scanned the roofs of the nearby buildings, then took off outside. Noel scrambled after her, trying not to show the shock he felt at her audacity. What made her think she could take on a sniper?
For that matter, how had she gotten away from all those gunmen who’d come after her less than two hours ago at her apartment building? And how was she keeping her cool so well? There was more to Yasmine Browder than he remembered. Something had happened to turn his delicate and shy but sarcastic childhood friend into a woman of strength and confidence.
When he stepped out of the restaurant, he saw Yasmine weaving between people on the sidewalk, heading away from the police station. He was loath to leave the crime scene, but there were many eyewitnesses inside who could explain what they’d seen. And when the police finally caught up with him and Yasmine...well, flashing the shield was inevitable at this point.
“Black!” she called him, gesturing while looking down the street. “This way.” He noticed she took care to position herself near garbage cans and mailboxes along the block as she went. She’d learned how to seek cover, how to make herself less of a target. And she claimed not to know anything about these people after her? Believing that was becoming more and more difficult.
He caught up to her. “Don’t run off like that. If we’re going to find this guy, we need to stick together.”
“Yeah, well, if I hadn’t waited for your go-ahead, I’d have him already. The delay cost us. He’s probably long gone.” Her glance at him was not friendly. “I thought Feds were trained to protect the public from danger, not sit around and wait for local PD to think about maybe doing something.”
He felt his hackles rise at the insult. “Listen, Yasmine, I don’t know what makes you think you can—”
“There!” She pointed down the sidewalk, two blocks away. A man with a large black backpack had just crossed the street. There was nothing otherwise incriminating about him, but the moment Noel saw the man’s profile, his newly honed instincts kicked in.
There was something off about that guy, and Yasmine had found him before Noel did. Some new Fed he was turning out to be.
“Come on, Black.” Yasmine began walking quickly down the sidewalk. Noel followed close behind, keeping one hand on his sidearm, but at this distance he noticed again that she favored her left leg. It didn’t seem to slow her down, though, and they started to gain on the man.
Noel tried to memorize a description of the individual as they drew closer. Dark clothing, close-cut dark hair, small ears, sharp nose. The backpack was black and had no logo, and if a shooter had the dexterity to take a shot and disassemble his weapon quickly, it would fit inside the main compartment of the bag.
The man approached the next intersection as the light turned red. Noel and Yasmine were only half a block away. Noel gripped the handle of his sidearm, ready to act. They’d reach the man in a matter of seconds.
The man looked to his left and right as he waited. And then over his shoulder. He locked eyes with Noel and, in an instant, shifted from person of interest to suspect.
The man took off, dodging oncoming cars as he sprinted across the road. Horns blared and onlookers shouted in surprise, and of course Yasmine was right behind, taking advantage of the braking cars to weave the same path. Adrenaline shot through Noel’s system as he drew his gun and raced after both of them.
“Stop, FBI!” His shout only spurred the suspect on. In a burst of speed, the man continued down the sidewalk, pushing people out of the way. Noel ached to stop and help them, to make sure they were okay, but if the runner was also the shooter, he’d do far greater good by catching the man and bringing him in.
“This way,” Yasmine said suddenly, grabbing Noel’s arm and pulling him off course.
“What are you doing?” Noel growled at her, but their momentum had already been redirected as she led them down an alley behind a building. Their path, unimpeded by passersby or sidewalk signage, brought them to the other side of the block. They emerged from the alley moments before the suspect turned the corner, looking back over his shoulder for his pursuers.
With practiced efficiency, Yasmine grabbed the man’s shoulder and pushed him to the ground, twisting his arm behind his back. He tried to rise, but Yasmine managed to grip his other arm and hold them both in place.
“Get off!” The man shouted. “I’ve done nothing wrong!”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Noel said, training his gun on the struggling suspect. He really needed to find out how Yasmine had learned that move, too. He leaned over and carefully, with Yasmine’s help, pulled off the man’s backpack. The man groaned in pain as Yasmine held him in place. “I don’t want to hurt you, sir, but I am armed and authorized to use lethal force if necessary.”
“Get her off me, man. She’s going to break my arm.”
“You’ll be fine,” Yasmine muttered. “It’ll just hurt for a few days.”
But the last thing Noel needed on his first day as an official special agent was an assault charge on his hands. He kept his firearm trained on the man and waved the backpack. “Yasmine, I’m throwing this to you. Release his arms. He’s not going anywhere. Right?”
“Whatever,” muttered the man.
Yasmine released her hold, and Noel tossed her the backpack. She unzipped it and looked inside, then nodded at him. The gun was there. They had the sniper.
“Who sent you?” Yasmine looked angry enough to rival any FBI interrogator. “Why are you shooting at me? Who shot up my apartment?
”
The man on the ground flipped onto his back, looked up at her and grinned. His jaw tensed as though he’d bitten down on something, and a shiver ran down Noel’s spine. Something about this wasn’t right...
Suddenly the man’s eyes rolled up, and he began to convulse.
“Yasmine, get back!” Noel reached for her and pulled her next to him, stepping away from the suspect.
Foam rose from between the man’s lips as he shook. Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. The man didn’t move. His eyes were open and glazed, lifeless. Horror seeped into Noel’s insides as he considered the meaning of the man’s seizure. He stepped up to the body and knelt, pressing his fingers against the side of the man’s throat. No pulse.
“What just happened?” Yasmine stared at the man on the ground. “We had him. We had him and he was going to tell me why I’ve been used for target practice today.”
Noel shook his head and stepped back. “No, he wasn’t.”
Yasmine regarded him with wide eyes. He didn’t want to have to tell her this, to explain that he suspected something very big was going on and that she had to know why. She had to be hiding information. No one got targeted twice in one day.
Even fewer had their assailants commit suicide upon capture.
“Yasmine?” He tried to keep his voice level, for her sake. It had taken only seconds for this seemingly fearless person before him to go from warrior to worried young woman.
“What?” Her hands shook as she held the backpack, and he wished he knew what thoughts swirled through her head.
“You said when we were in the police station that you suspect your brother’s death wasn’t an accident. Regardless of what Officer Wayne believes, I think we need to sit down so you can tell me why. Because if it’s true, seems like the death of one Browder wasn’t enough. Somebody’s eager to make sure you’re out of the picture, too. It’s time to tell me what you know.”
THREE
Yasmine’s hands trembled as she waited in the police station for Noel. She held a lukewarm cup of coffee that she’d accepted more for the warmth radiating from the beverage than anything else. She felt cold, so very cold, and her stomach hurt. Whether from lack of food or the strain of the day, she didn’t know. Did it matter?
She rubbed the side of her left knee, feeling for the place a bullet had grazed her as she ran through the apartment building only hours before. It still stung, but it hadn’t bled too much, and going to the hospital to stitch it up seemed a needless waste of time. It would heal if only she stopped running away from shooters and watching them die in front of her.
It didn’t make sense. Why would anyone want to kill her? And why would the shooter, once caught, commit suicide to avoid talking? The only thing she could figure was that this whole day had to be a case of mistaken identity.
Noel had wanted her to talk immediately about Daniel’s death, but the police had arrived on-scene—thankfully Officer Wayne hadn’t been among them—and they’d had to give those reports first. Besides, she felt a little silly for having blurted out her suspicion to him earlier. She’d been pumped up with adrenaline after escaping the shooters in her apartment, not to mention unexpectedly seeing Noel again after ten years. When it came right down to it, her hunch about Daniel’s death was just that—a hunch. She had no proof, nothing concrete but a knowledge that Daniel was an exceptionally careful worker and that the routine investigation into the work accident that claimed his life had been wrapped up in less than forty-eight hours. Packaged up with a little bow and presented in a press release in the local paper. Unfortunate tragedy, they’d said. Completely preventable, if only Daniel had taken the correct precautions during his shift. Yasmine couldn’t believe that her brother, the safety fanatic, would have done anything to endanger himself or others.
And it only added to her uncertainty about the whole thing that just a few days before, Daniel had said something she wished she’d paid more attention to at the time.
“I think I stumbled across something at work today,” he’d said as she rushed to pack herself a lunch at quarter to five in the morning. Daniel wasn’t usually up so early, but sometimes he had trouble sleeping and spent time online playing games or working on lesson plans for the online engineering courses he occasionally taught through a local adult education center. She’d hardly paid attention to him as he spoke to her that day. “I was waiting in the boss’s office to present him with a briefing, and I saw one of the reports I’d filed a week earlier. It didn’t look right.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she’d said, barely giving him a second glance. “Not right, how?”
“The numbers on the inspection sheet... I didn’t get much of a chance to take it all in before Clarke returned to the office. We got caught up in conversation, so I forgot about it. But now that I think back, it can’t have been right. Those numbers were not the same.”
“You probably missed the date or something,” she’d said. “Maybe you were looking at an old report. You said yourself that you didn’t get much chance to take it all in.”
Daniel had rubbed his eyes and sighed. “That’s true.”
“So why are you losing sleep over it? And if you’re worried about a problem, you should talk to your boss about it, not me.” She’d closed her lunch sack and tucked it into the colorful patchwork messenger bag she used as a purse, a gift from one of her Amaran cousins. “He might even be grateful—if there is a problem, he might be too busy to have spotted it. You might be doing the place a favor.”
He’d nodded, but even when he agreed with her, his voice sounded uncertain. “Yeah. Maybe. Thanks, sis. Hope you don’t burn anything today.” He’d playfully punched her in the shoulder and she’d punched him back. “Bring me home a cinnamon roll or some baklava.”
“You don’t need any more sweets, Daniel.” She’d given him an appraising eye, just like their mother used to do when either of them took a second helping of dessert, and they’d both laughed. He’d waved her off and she’d headed to work, forgetting about the conversation moments after closing the apartment door.
Days later, he was dead. And it wasn’t until a week after the funeral that she’d recalled their conversation and realized that maybe—just maybe—she’d told him to do the very thing that had gotten him killed.
It was supposition. Pure conjecture. But still, she couldn’t shake the awful feeling that somehow, Daniel might actually have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. And she’d told him to tell his boss about it.
The timing all seemed a little too convenient.
On the other hand, without proof or anything to substantiate her feelings, nobody had any reason to take her seriously. Especially not Noel, the big FBI agent.
“Ready to go?” Noel crossed the station toward her, tossing a set of keys up and catching them as he moved. Officer Wayne came with him, his expression flat and unreadable. “I went through your old reports with Wayne, and we’re set to go.”
“You have your car back?” Yasmine made a point of not looking in the officer’s direction, but that meant she needed to focus on Noel—and it was hard not to notice once again that the physique of her childhood friend had changed considerably in the past decade. He’d been such a scrawny thing back in the day. It was going to take some getting used to, seeing him filled out and carrying himself with the utmost confidence. What on earth had inspired timid Noel Black to enter the FBI, anyway? She also hadn’t yet had the chance to ask him about his family. What a day this was turning out to be.
“No.” Noel sighed. “Not yet. But Officer Wayne here knows a guy and had him bring over a car for us.”
“Us?” Yasmine narrowed her eyes at him.
Noel cleared his throat and clutched the keys as they dropped once more into his hand. “Yes, us. I’m taking you to my parents’ place. You’ll be safe there. You can’t go back to your apartment tonight, and I’m sure my
mom would love to see you.”
Yasmine almost laughed. “I’ve seen your mom more than you probably have, Noel. I own a bakery here in town, and she’s come in a few times.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, and she was flooded with the memory of Noel and Daniel as they joked together while playing board games. What was that old one, Mastermind? They loved to play that, though they always seemed to make up their own rules. “I guess she wouldn’t have mentioned I went to Quantico, since I didn’t even tell her at first. I wanted to make sure I could hack it, since the drop-out and dismissal rate is fairly high.”
“She did mention once that you’d gone through police training a few years ago or something like that.”
Noel grimaced at her words but didn’t elaborate. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“FBI and Police Academy,” Officer Wayne muttered. “That explains it.”
“Anyway, I can stay with my aunt.” She didn’t want to, really didn’t want to. “There’s no point in me putting your mom out, especially not when I have family here in town. Officer, are you sure I can’t go back to my apartment and pick up a few things?”
Officer Wayne frowned. “No.”
“Maybe by tomorrow?” Noel glanced at Officer Wayne, who only shrugged. Was that remorse she saw on Wayne’s face? Had he finally realized that Yasmine hadn’t been overreacting all this time? “I wouldn’t recommend going back by yourself,” Noel said.
“Not until we’ve got a better handle on what’s happening here.” Officer Wayne looked at the floor for a moment before training his steely gaze on her. “We’re going to find out who did this to you and why.”
She swallowed down a sarcastic retort about the police’s refusal to take her earlier suspicions seriously. “So you’ve been reexamining the reports I’ve given to date?” When Officer Wayne grunted in the affirmative, she stood and pulled out her cell phone. “Good. You know how to reach me if there are any further questions. I’ll have my aunt come and get me.”
Outside the Law Page 3