by Debra Webb
Whatever it was, she wasn’t going there.
Shifting her attention elsewhere, she surveyed the pub. “Quiet tonight. I guess we beat the crowd.” There were seven or eight couples spread around the dining area that was usually filled to capacity.
If he just wouldn’t stare at her that way, through hooded eyes that reached right inside her. If her own mutinous gaze didn’t keep straying to his lips, damp from the whiskey, or to those ridiculously sexy whiskers darkening his jaw. Then she might be able to pretend that he couldn’t in a million years get to her that way.
But all of the above prevented her from pretending.
“What is it you’re not telling me, Grace?”
The waiter arrived with their sandwiches. Vivian smiled and thanked him, more for the interruption than the food. She consciously relaxed her posture. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He dragged a cigarette from his pack and planted it in one corner of his mouth then lit it. As much as she disliked smoking, she observed each action with utter fascination.
“What’s the deal with Worth?”
Oh damn.
As if God had suddenly taken pity on her, her cell phone buzzed against her stomach. “Excuse me.” The relief in her voice came out way too obvious. She checked the display. Worth. So much for a welcome interruption. “Grace,” she said in greeting. Worth cut straight to the chase, his words souring the wine in her stomach. “I understand,” she assured him. She closed the phone and slid it back into its holster, a chill invading her bones.
Steeling herself as much against what Worth’s call meant as the questions McBride would no doubt have, she looked directly into those piercing blue eyes. “We have to go back to the office.”
The glass he had lifted for another sip froze halfway to his mouth. “Any particular reason?”
He asked the question as if he could care less but she didn’t miss the trace of curiosity and maybe the slightest hint of uncertainty in his tone.
“There’s been another e-mail.”
CHAPTER SIX
8:30 P.M.
Tutwiler Hotel
The Pub
“I want to know who he is.” Nadine Goodman watched the seemingly quiet conversation between Special Agent Vivian Grace and the unidentified man dining with her at a table across the pub. Nadine knew all the agents employed by the Birmingham field office. But this man … she studied him more closely beyond her companion’s shoulder … was a wild card.
“He could be from another office,” Thomas Jacobs, one of Nadine’s few confidants, suggested. “Montgomery or Huntsville, perhaps.”
Nadine moved her head side to side. “No. He’s not a fed. He isn’t nearly polished enough.” She sipped her wine and considered the roguishly handsome man. “I suppose it’s possible the Byrnes hired a private investigator or one of those freelance negotiators.”
“Possibly,” Thomas agreed, “but then that theory begs the question, why would he be having a drink with a rookie? Why not with Worth or one of the more seasoned agents?”
“True.” Her friend’s point was definitely a valid one, adding another layer of mystery to the man in question. Nadine hadn’t dealt directly with Agent Vivian Grace, but from what she had seen, the agent wasn’t exactly the sort to kiss and tell. This cozy dinner seemed quite out of character.
Though Nadine had not been formally introduced to Grace, she, like any other person representing law enforcement in Jefferson County, would know Nadine. Having come directly from the cemetery after covering Alyssa Byrne’s rescue for WKRT, Nadine had improvised a disguise by pulling her long, trademark black hair into a clip and wrapping a colorful scarf around her neck to drape over the shoulders of her gold jacket. Being recognized by Agent Grace would not be a pleasant encounter. As an added precaution, Nadine had called for backup from her friend Thomas. He lived in a downtown loft and had managed to arrive before Grace had finished procuring a room for her friend.
Another of Nadine’s contacts, one who worked as a dispatcher for Magic City Cabs, had tipped her off to the pickup on Seventeenth Street. She had gotten all she was going to at the cemetery so she had followed Grace and the gentleman. Nadine’s lips lifted into a wry smile when she considered that she was definitely using the term “gentleman” loosely. He looked more rogue than gentleman.
She definitely needed to know who this man was. While this story was still hot, preferably. She looked directly at her partner in crime. “I need you to find out for me, Thomas.”
Thomas sighed. “Oh dear. I should have seen that one coming.”
Nadine settled her stemmed glass on the table and placed a hand over his. “You know I rarely ask a favor of you like this. But there’s something going on here. I can feel it. This isn’t over …” She searched for a reasonable explanation of what she sensed but couldn’t quite pinpoint it. “Yes, the child was rescued, from all reports unharmed, but there’s more.” She considered the stranger again. “A lot more.”
“What makes you think I have any contacts at the Bureau?” Thomas countered, but his eyes gave him away.
The man might have a penis but his mind was as feminine and intuitive as Nadine’s. The wheels were already turning inside that pretty blond head.
Before Nadine could pursue the exchange, Grace received a call on her cell, prompting her and her guest to leave, drinks unfinished and food untouched. Nadine considered following them but she needn’t worry. If anything big were going down, her contact at Birmingham PD would let her know. And she was just about to land a possible contact at the Bureau. Her former contact there had retired to New England a couple of months ago. It was time to cultivate a new one.
“You have that …” Nadine pursed her lips and tried to recall the name. “That nice-looking gentleman I saw you out with that night.” She didn’t have to mention the name of the club. It was the sort of place one didn’t forget. Sodom and Gomorrah some called it. “I’m certain you remember, Thomas.”
His lips twitched with the impulse to divulge explicit details. Nadine knew how he loved to go on about his conquests, but he loved the feeling of power … of making her beg so much more.
“I can try,” he allowed. “I make no promises but I will try. He and I … well, we haven’t run into each other since that night.”
Nadine glanced at the time on her cell phone. She had done the segment at the cemetery live, breaking into the regular broadcasting. As a follow-up, she would do another short segment for the ten o’clock news. For that she would need to get to the station soon. But she could push it another fifteen minutes or so, long enough to finish her wine and seal this deal with Thomas.
She leaned forward, her more cutthroat instincts pushing good manners aside. “Remind him what the two of you shared that time. I’m certain he’ll tell you anything to keep that quiet.” It didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess what went down that night after the intense making out she had interrupted. Thomas had a voracious sexual appetite. He loved a man who still had one foot in the heterosexual world. He devoured them like Godiva chocolates.
A wicked gleam flashed in Thomas’s eyes. “Perhaps it won’t come to that, but I’ll talk to him.” He swirled the wine in his glass. “I might be able to sweet-talk a little something out of him.”
Nadine picked up her glass once more. “I know you have your ways. I’ll trust you to make it happen.” She took a swallow and savored the merlot. “This is going to be big, Thomas. I can feel it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
1000 Eighteenth Street
10:20 P.M.
He should have had a double while he had the chance.
McBride hated to wait. Worth had called and demanded their presence then kept them waiting in his office for fifteen minutes.
There’s another e-mail.
This thing wasn’t going to go quietly away. Murphy’s Law McBride style: Nothing was ever easy. This was supposed to be a one-shot deal. Come, do what he could to save the kid, and then leave.
He regarded Grace from the corner of his eye rather than looking directly at her. Eye contact would prompt conversation and just now he had no desire to talk. He was relatively certain she didn’t know any more about what was going on than he did. She sat perched on the edge of the other designed-for-discomfort chair stationed in front of the SAC’s desk, looking as miserable as he felt. But that wasn’t possible. You had to have hit a place so low that it didn’t even register on most people’s rock-bottom radar in order to feel this. It took skill to fall this far.
The door burst open and Worth rushed in, his posture as rigid as any general’s. “I apologize for keeping the two of you waiting.” He rounded his wide mahogany desk, placed a folder atop its gleaming surface, and rested his hands there as if bracing for war. “I’ve just come from a teleconference with Quantico.”
That he focused on McBride as he made the statement was an added indication that this wasn’t going to be good for him. The idea of having some hotshot agent he’d once mentored or supervised show up to tell him what to do ranked on about the same level as pissing broken glass.
“Since we don’t yet have a second victim,” Worth went on in that authoritative tone he’d refined to a monotonous roar, “and we’re still waiting on the forensics folks to get back to us with any evidence found at the scene, there isn’t a lot Quantico can do to assist us with developing a profile.”
Typical. “That all sounds just dandy,” McBride interrupted when Worth would have launched into the next segment of his monologue, “but you called us here about an e-mail.” He inclined his head in question. “Is there an e-mail we need to see? You’re cutting into my personal time with a friend.” In this instance, his friend was Jack Daniel’s. No offense to the lovely Vivian Grace. He doubted she would be caught dead spending any more time with him than necessary. If he was smart, he would adopt the same attitude.
Next to him, she shifted in her chair, a clear signal that his high-handedness with Worth was making her nervous.
She’d just have to get over it.
“Yes, McBride,” Worth said, his tone reluctant, as if what he was about to say were a last resort. “There is another e-mail from the unsub who refers to himself as Devoted Fan.”
Worth opened the folder he’d placed on his desk and removed a single sheet of white printer paper. He passed it across his desk. “Read it for yourself.”
McBride read the words, each one adding another layer of suffocating tension.
McBride,
Bravo! You saved Alyssa Byrne. I am sure you recognized the simplicity of this challenge. I wanted to give you a practice run in case you were a little rusty. Now, we shall remind them just how good you really are. The next one will not be so simple. Get a good night’s sleep. I will e-mail your new challenge tomorrow. Soon they will see!
Honored,
Your Devoted Fan
McBride passed the page to Grace without meeting her eyes.
Who the hell was this guy?
He scrubbed his hand over his face. What the hell did the bastard want from him?
Finding the Byrne child had been a piece of cake. Like the e-mail suggested, the clues had been simple, the timeline ridiculously ample.
That was where the good part ended.
Didn’t this nutjob get it? He was rusty. The “special agent” in him was over, a has-been. There was no going back to the legend he used to be. Not now, not tomorrow.
Determined not to entertain Worth, McBride grasped the arms of the chair to prevent his hands from shaking. Maybe if he e-mailed this Devoted Fan and told him straight up that he wasn’t that hero anymore, the guy would go away.
Yeah, right. And immediately afterward he would e-mail .his Christmas list to Santa. One of those plans was about as realistic as the other.
“This far from over,” Worth said when Grace lifted her attention from the page. “For now, whoever this Devoted Fan is, we have to assume that he’s serious about this plan to … ah”—his gaze settled on McBride—“make you a hero again.”
That he said the last with a distinct element of derision didn’t really bother McBride. He’d been insulted by more important pricks than this one.
“Looks that way,” McBride agreed. No point in denying the obvious. “So, do you and Quantico have a plan?” That was the usual strategy in situations like these. Even if Quantico wasn’t sending a profiler or team in to assist, they generally had advice.
“We have no choice but to react.” Worth lowered himself into his chair and gave the impression of relaxing but McBride didn’t miss the tightening along his jawline, around his mouth. “I’ll assign three of my best agents, Talley, Aldridge, and Davis to work with you until this is done. Once we have a clearer picture of where this is going, Quantico will provide whatever else we need. At this point we don’t have a pattern or any usable evidence. We don’t have anything.” Worth kept his attention steady on McBride, didn’t spare Grace so much as a glance. “We’ll, of course, accommodate you at the Tutwiler as long as necessary. Since you didn’t come prepared for a prolonged stay, Agent Davis will see that you have any personal items you require.”
Worth had been a busy little bee.
“As much as I appreciate your attention to detail, especially the personal ones,” McBride admitted without his standard sarcasm, “nothing about that careful plan you just laid out addresses the fact that I have an employer to answer to or that I haven’t agreed to stay.” He forced his fingers to unclench, his posture to relax. He might not have a lot of choices in his current circumstances but there were at least two he intended to make whether or not Worth or Quantico liked his decisions.
“We can’t make you stay, that’s true,” Worth allowed, the tension McBride had already noted ratcheting up visibly. “We’re all assuming, of course, that you’ll want to do the right thing.”
Oh yeah, the right thing. “You mean the way the Bureau did three years ago when I got the boot?”
Worth nodded, his expression smug. “You see, that’s the thing that gives us pause, McBride.” He tapped the folder on his desk. “No one has anything to gain by proving what a hero you are or that the Bureau made a mistake three years ago. No one, except you. Don’t you find that ironic?”
Yeah, that term just kept popping up lately. Apparently, Fate had a hell of a sense of humor.
Time to cut the crap.
“Here’s the deal, Worth.” McBride nailed him with a look that warned there would be no negotiations. “This unsub hasn’t left me a choice, so I’ll do whatever I have to. Your boys can be on standby to provide whatever backup I need, but the only agent I’ll work with is Grace. That’s my deal, take it or leave it.”
The stare-off lasted all of five seconds.
Worth leaned forward. “Let me just get this out of the way,” he said, his tone seething, “I don’t like you, McBride. You’re all about flash and dazzle and breaking the rules. Well, I’m real happy that worked for you for a while, but the fact of the matter is, that’s exactly why you’re where you are now and I’m where I’m at.”
He reclined into his chair once more and released a big breath. “That aside, we’ll play this your way for a little while. Agent Grace will provide support for you until further notice. But don’t think you’re going to go all Dirty Harry on me. I’m still in charge. You will report to me. The decisions made on this case will be a team effort, no exceptions.”
McBride leaned forward this time, stared straight into his eyes with cold, unflinching conviction. “But the final vote will be mine. Since,” he added mockingly, “we’re playing this my way for a while.”
Worth didn’t cave immediately, at least he didn’t say the words. But McBride knew he’d won. He knew exactly how the Bureau felt about him before Worth had given his little speech. There wasn’t an agent on active duty, including Grace, that McBride could trust. But she was a rookie, and a woman; he would take his chances with her. He might be rusty, but he wasn’t a fool. He unde
rstood where his strengths lay.
“The final vote is yours,” Worth agreed.
Vivian had had enough. “Don’t I have a say in this?”
The attention of both men swiveled her way. Until that moment she had felt as if she weren’t even in the room.
“Do you have a question about your orders, Agent Grace?” Worth leveled a look on her that said she should not try playing hardball with him.
She hesitated, but didn’t back down. “Yes, I do. What voice do I have in this? I’m supposed to do whatever McBride says?” She glanced at him, didn’t dare linger. Putting up with him for the day was one thing, but if she was going to be working with him for an unknown period of time, she wanted clear boundaries. The man had absolutely no respect for the concept, and bottom line, he scared the hell out of her. There was absolutely no way to gauge what his reactions were going to be in a given situation. Kidding herself would be stupid.
Before Worth could respond to that part of her question, she went on, “It’s been three years since McBride was on active duty. A lot has changed. I need clearance to ensure that current procedures and protocols are followed.” That he was staring at her made her want to fidget, but she defied the impulse. She wasn’t backing down. Not on this.
“That goes without saying, Grace,” Worth said, his tone subtly reprimanding. “Both of you”—he looked from her to McBride and back—“will be expected to follow the rules. These circumstances aren’t an excuse to do otherwise. Until we get this guy, we have a somewhat unique situation, but that situation does not”—he sent a pointed look at McBride—“I repeat, does not, give either of you carte blanche for ignoring authority.”