Forged in Ash (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel)

by Trish McCallan

  Frustrated, Mac faced forward and ground his shoulders against his backrest. “If we are being followed, we can’t afford to lead them to Cosky’s attacker. Head back to the ER. I’ll call Hollister and Russo in. They’re on standby; they’ve got time to cruise for her.”

  “We need to get some surveillance on ourselves,” Mac continued, as he texted Russo and Hollister to call him. “See if we’re being tag teamed.”

  If someone was tag teaming them with three or more cars, it would be nearly impossible to identify the tails. The vehicles would trade out before being made.

  “Tag teaming would be as expensive as hell,” Zane said slowly. He frowned and shook his head. “Hell, if they had a team on each of us, we’re talking fifteen to twenty men.”

  “Judging by their operation in Seattle, the fucking money’s there.”

  “Or maybe it’s a coinci—” Zane glanced in the rearview mirror and broke off, frowning. “I’ll be damned,” he said slowly, staring in the mirror, before jerking his eyes away and focusing on the line of traffic in front of them. “A blue hatchback just pulled in behind us. Seven cars back, too far away to make the driver or plate.”

  Now that was one lovely coincidence.

  “What do you want to do?” Zane asked, glancing in the rearview mirror again.

  Mac frowned. “Don’t tip him off. Keep your eyes open. See how many repeating vehicles we can identify. When we have more intel, we’ll set a trap. For now head to the ER.”

  Zane nodded in agreement and took the next right. “What about the prints Rawls pulled? We sending them to Amy?”

  Yeah…tension flooded his muscles and sizzled through his blood as Amy’s name hit the air again—which was all the more reason to limit his interaction with the fucking woman.

  “I already texted them to Radar.” He scowled at the questioning look Zane sent him. “Amy would have to call in a favor to get the prints run. We know Seattle’s FBI field office has a mole. We don’t need her reaching out to the wrong person.”

  Which was all true, but had nothing to do with the reason he’d contacted Radar.

  Amy knew better than to contact anyone in Chastain’s old field office. There was no doubt in his mind she’d get the result back without alerting their mole. The real problem was that sending the prints to her meant interacting with her, repeatedly. Fuck, he was still hard from their thirty-second conversation earlier.

  How the hell a Goddamn voice could light such a fuse to his libido was beyond his understanding. But he’d already gotten his exercise today thanks to one fucking woman. He didn’t need another one sending him out for a minimarathon in the middle of the night.

  His cell phone rang as Zane pulled into the ER’s parking lot.

  “The plates came back stolen.” Radar’s crisp voice informed him.

  “Location?”

  “Portland. A month ago.”

  In other words, it was another dead end. Mac expelled a frustrated breath.

  “Fucking perfect.” He drew a ragged breath and regrouped. “Look, I hate to ask, but we’re up a creek. I’m having a strip of tape brought in to you. Will you find someone to run the prints on it?” He smiled tightly at the immediate agreement. “Thanks, we owe you.”

  Before he even dropped his hand, his cell rang again. He checked the caller ID. Russo. Thirty seconds later Echo Platoon’s lieutenant commander had agreed to meet him at the ER. “Radar’s going to take them?” Zane asked.

  Mac nodded and picked up the length of tape Rawls had left curled in the cup holder. Rawls had stuck a second length of tape to the side with the smudged prints, thereby sealing the prints in plastic. “Not much of a shot here. Rawls smudged them just sealing them for mailing.”

  Zane shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

  True, although they had another avenue to pursue now as well. A hard smile spread across Mac’s face as the hatchback and Accord came to mind. Not to mention Cosky’s crazy stalker.

  “Has Rawls heard anything on the scanner?” Zane asked as he set the parking brake and pocketed his keys.

  “She’s still in the wind.” Mac pushed open the passenger door and climbed out of the van. “Probably gone to ground.”

  Which was to their benefit, because the longer she avoided the police, the better their chance of nabbing her.

  “I’ll wait here for Russo,” Mac said, waving Zane toward the emergency room. As he waited, he scanned the parking lot for familiar vehicles. No blue hatchback or silver Accord. Several minutes passed and a gray Civic pulled into the parking lot. It parked in the very back. Nobody got out of the car. He shifted against the van, trying to get a better look without giving his interest away.

  More minutes passed and a Jeep Cherokee pulled up beside him. The door opened and Russo climbed out. His dark gaze swept the parking lot and settled on the Civic. “You got something?”

  “Not sure,” Mac said with another glance at the car in question. The driver looked like he was eating lunch. “Swing by it on your way out and text me the plates.”

  Russo simply nodded and turned to stare at the entrance to the ER. He ran a lean hand through crisp black hair. “How’s Cos?”

  Mac shook his head. “Doesn’t look good. He caught the same fucking knee when he hit the ground. Smashed it to hell and back. Again.”

  “Damn.” Russo wiped a hand down his grim face and took the tape Mac handed him, then swung back to his Jeep. “Tell Cos I’ll be by later. We’ll do a couple more grids for his lady, unless the cops run her down first.”

  Mac watched him climb into the Cherokee. The engine fired and the jeep took off. Without waiting for Russo to cruise past the Civic, Mac headed for the ER. His phone chimed several minutes later indicating that he had a text message. He forwarded the plate number onto Radar with a request to check it out.

  He stopped at the front desk and received directions to Cosky’s room—or curtain was more like it. A low murmur of voices sounded behind the cloth, so low he couldn’t hear what was being said. Which meant whatever they were discussing was sensitive. His hunch was confirmed a second later when he pushed his way through the curtain and the voices stopped in mid-drone. Zane turned back to the bed as soon as Mac closed the curtain behind him.

  “So when are they releasing you?” Zane asked.

  “Hell if I know.” Cosky exchanged an odd look with Rawls. “They want to take more X-rays.”

  The comment was delivered without the irritation or frustration that Mac expected. In fact, Cosky seemed strangely satisfied and relieved. A marked departure from his attitude as they’d loaded him into the ambulance.

  “Have they scheduled surgery?” Mac asked, stepping up to the bed. Cosky’s knee was covered in ice packs, but considering the damage it had sustained, surgery seemed not only likely, but imminent.

  “Yeah.” Rawls coughed. “The leg didn’t take nearly the hit we thought. Surgery won’t be required.”

  “No shit,” Mac said slowly, watching another round of looks pass between his men. His bullshit meter flexed. “It looked pretty bad to me.”

  “Yeah.” Rawls coughed again, a dead giveaway a lie was to follow. “It looked worse than it actually was.”

  “Really?” Mac’s bullshit meter warped into the red zone. What the fuck were they lying about? And why? He reached for an ice pack. “You don’t mind if I take a look?”

  Cosky didn’t blink. “Knock yourself out.”

  The casual response should have eased Mac’s suspicions—would have—if Rawls and Zane hadn’t traded sidelong glances.

  What the fuck was going on?

  Before Mac had a chance to ask, or to clear the ice packs and get a look at Cosky’s knee for himself, the curtain separated. A tall man in a tired suit, with a shoulder holster clearly visible against his white dress shirt, stepped into the room.

  Flat brown eyes locked on Cosky. He cocked his head, the skin of his bald head gleaming beneath the overhead lights. “Marcus Simcosky?”

 
Mac scowled. Motherfucker, just what they didn’t need. A cop. Sure, the locals were bound to show up sooner or later. He’d been hoping for later.

  “Yeah?” Cosky said. The word climbed toward the end, turning it into a question.

  The stranger moved into the middle of the room, his gaze drifting from Cosky to Rawls to Zane and finally coming to a rest on Mac’s face.

  “I’m Detective Pachico, with the Coronado Police Department. I have some questions.”

  Of course he did, the bastard wouldn’t be here otherwise.

  “You got some ID?” Mac asked, more to be an ass than from any real suspicion. He ignored the warning glance Zane sent him.

  Pachico reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. He flipped it open, exposing a silver badge. He held the badge up to Mac’s face for a count of five, before silently pocketing it again.

  “This woman who attacked you, did she give any indication as to why?” Pachico asked, his flat brown gaze returning to the bed.

  “I went over this with the officers at the scene,” Cosky said, staring steadily back.

  With a slight inclination of his head, Pachico acknowledged Cosky’s comment. “I find it helpful to conduct interviews myself rather than relying on the officer’s report.”

  Mac snorted. More likely he conducted the interviews himself to compare against the officer’s report. Discrepancies in the witnesses’ accounts would raise flags.

  The detective flicked Mac a look, but ignored the nonverbal commentary. “Did the woman say anything?”

  Cosky shrugged. “She claimed she knew me. Called me a lying, murdering bastard and then pointed the gun at me and screamed ‘this is for my babies.’”

  The detective frowned. “She accused you of killing her children?”

  “No.” Cosky countered. “She pointed the gun at me and said ‘this is for my babies.’”

  “And she didn’t say anything else?” Pachico’s voice dripped disbelief.

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “You expect me to believe, that this woman—who targeted you not just once, but twice—didn’t explain why she wanted to kill you?”

  Cosky stared steadily back. “I can’t help what you believe. What I can do is tell you what happened, which I’ve done.”

  “And you’ve never seen this woman before?”

  “No.”

  “Take me through what happened. Both times.”

  Mac listened to Cosky recite the events leading up to the first attack, including the woman following him and the aborted showdown at the mall.

  “And she just walked away?” Pachico asked, only he sounded thoughtful rather than disbelieving.

  “That’s right,” Cosky said. “I thought she’d mistaken me for someone else. When she didn’t come back, I took off.”

  The detective nodded slightly and motioned for Cosky to continue. At the end of the recital, Pachico stirred. “And she didn’t say anything more? Anything at all?”

  Mac crossed his arms and set his feet. “How many fucking times does he have to tell you—no, he doesn’t know her, and no, she didn’t say anything else—before the words sink in?”

  With a slow swing of his hips, Pachico turned on Mac. “See, here’s my problem. If he didn’t know her, if none of you knew her, then why are members of your team canvassing the streets?”

  Mac shrugged. “She tried to take us out. Cosky the first time. All three of us the second. Call us curious.”

  “Really?” Pachico cocked an eyebrow and regarded Mac levelly. “I would have thought the fallout from the last time you took the law into your hands would have cured you of such curiosity.”

  Mac’s hands clenched. “We have no intention of apprehending her.” He pushed the lie through his teeth. “If we spot her, we’ll call it in.” He paused and sent the bastard a gritty smile. “Christ knows your boys can’t seem to find her.”

  Pachico held his eyes, his cold face knowing. The bastard wasn’t buying a damn word of it. Luckily, he couldn’t prove a thing.

  “So, if you find her, you’ll turn her in?” he asked point-blank.

  Mac bared his teeth. “Absolutely.”

  Not. You motherfucker.

  Pachico matched him toothy smile for toothy smile. He’d give the bastard one thing: He had balls. Mac didn’t find that quality particularly appealing under the circumstances.

  “Is that all, Detective?” Cosky broke into the pissing match.

  “For now.” Turning toward Cosky, the detective reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a white business card, and flipped it onto the bed. “You find her, you call. If she contacts you, you call. If you remember anything new, you call.”

  Without waiting to see if anyone picked the card up, he pushed back through the curtain. Dead silence claimed the room. After a few minutes, Mac poked his head outside. The corridor was empty.

  Which didn’t mean dick; the bastard could be listening from the curtained-off rooms to their right or left. From the watchful looks on Cosky’s, Rawls’s, and Zane’s faces, they realized the lack of privacy too.

  Guess he wouldn’t be getting the answer to the big puzzle of the day, which was what the hell his men weren’t telling him.

  Twenty-four hours after she’d ditched the van, a transformed Jillian slunk out of the house she’d broken into. She’d whacked her hair off just above her ears and dyed it a deep, rich auburn, courtesy of the Clairol package she’d found in the master bathroom’s medicine cabinet. Sunglasses and a baseball cap swallowed her head and most of her face. She’d traded the poncho for loose jeans, blue-and-white pin-striped sneakers, and a red University of California sweatshirt. The sweatshirt’s huge middle pocket—which extended from the right to left—was the exact length of the butcher knife she’d sheathed inside.

  Everything was a size too big, but she wasn’t picky.

  With luck, the owner of the house wouldn’t return anytime soon and alert the cops to the broken window and missing clothes. At least not until Jillian had finished what she’d set out to do.

  She kept to the main streets as she walked, trying to mimic the easy confident stride of someone who didn’t have anything to hide, who belonged here, who didn’t have murder on their agenda. Apparently she was a better actress than she’d thought, because she passed three cop cars and not one of them looked at her twice.

  A baseball game was underway in the park across from the apartment complex she’d tracked Simcosky to. She took a seat in the middle of the steel bleachers and settled back to stake out the building. Within fifteen minutes, four cop cars had cruised past the baseball diamond. The police were certainly making their presence known, but she didn’t see anyone actually guarding the front entrance.

  Of course they could be waiting inside the lobby, out of sight.

  On the bench below her sat a trio of tanned, toned, and chatty Barbies. Jillian ignored their theatrical falsettos, concentrating on the apartment complex across the grass.

  “It was terrifying,” Blond Barbie said, her voice rising to compete with the cheer that shook the crowd as the bat connected with the ball. “That psycho tried to hit me. I barely jumped out of the way in time.”

  Psycho?

  Jillian’s head snapped down. She shrugged the sting off and scanned the back of the Barbies’ heads. They looked like an ad for Clairol—silky, soft hair in blond, brunet, and strawberry hues.

  If she’d almost hit them the day before, they must have been on the sidewalk, which meant they probably lived in the apartment complex. There had to be some way she could use them to get to Simcosky.

  Another cheer rolled through the bleachers, and the steel bench shook. Jillian grabbed hold of the metal seat and fought back a surge of nausea. She should have eaten something before leaving the house, ransacked the fridge as well as the closets. But the thought of food had turned her stomach inside out.

  “Check out all the cops. They must not have found her,” Brunet Barbie said. “I wonder how
Kaity’s boyfriend’s doing?”

  “A lot better than if she’d actually shot him or hit him with the van,” Strawberry Barbie said.

  “Did you get a look at him?” There was avid interest in the brunette’s voice. “Talk about eye candy. Kaity has all the luck.”

  Jillian leaned forward.

  “No kidding,” the blonde said. “Now that he’s seeing Kaity, maybe his friends will start hanging around. Did you see his blond friend? Oh. My. Fucking. God.” She made kissing sounds. Interesting.

  Apparently Marcus Simcosky didn’t live in the apartment complex. His girlfriend did. She frowned, rolling that information around in her head. A girlfriend would come in handy. She could use this Kaity to get to Simcosky. Assuming she could find out what apartment this Kaity lived in and what the woman looked like.

  Turning, she stared across the park at the towering apartment complex. The place was huge. At least seven or eight floors. What were the chances the women below knew everyone who lived there? Not very likely.

  Clearing her throat loudly, she scooted down a bench, until she was directly behind her quarry. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m new here. Just moved in over the weekend. What happened yesterday? I heard all the sirens, but by the time I got downstairs, all the action was over.”

  Blond Barbie fluffed her hair and twisted to look behind her. Pale-blue eyes scanned Jillian’s face, and then dropped to her clothes. “Some crazy homeless person tried to kill Kaity’s boyfriend.”

  Jillian released a relieved breath as contempt rather than recognition flooded the sharp angles of the blonde’s face. She sniffed and turned back to her friends, dismissing Jillian.

  Leaning down again, Jillian pressed her luck. “Who’s Kaity?”

  The brunette answered without turning around. “The tall blonde in apartment 607.”

  Blond Barbie gave the brunette a shoulder nudge and then the three huddled together, whispering.

  Jillian tensed, certain they’d recognized her, waiting for their cry of alarm.

  And then their voices drifted up to her.

  “… freak…my God did you see her fingernails?”