He shrugged noncommittally. “I did. Out in the hallway. They seemed…well-suited.”
“Sebastian says they dated back in college. That they were serious.” The baby began to squirm and she held her hands out for the child. “She’s a pig.” Melissa brought the baby to her breast.
As he watched Melissa and her baby, he imagined how one day Diana might also have a child. Watch it grow. Become a grandmother if…
He gave her a chance with someone else. Someone human.
“She should be able to experience this,” he said morosely.
“She’s the one to make that decision, Ryder. Not you.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if she comes back, she’s made that choice.”
Melissa obviously knew him well enough to know that he might second-guess Diana’s decision if she returned. And if she didn’t?
He met Melissa’s gaze and realized she recognized his dilemma. Understood the pain that would come regardless of whether he lost Diana now or lost her later.
“We’ll deal with whatever happens, Uncle Ryder.”
With a nod, he rose just as Sebastian returned. “Going already?”
“I’ve got things to do.” He departed with a surge of vamp speed before Sebastian could utter a word.
Diana faced a busy morning with lots of assignments. Some were already in place, like the extra surveillance on Lopez. In less than half an hour, she would hold a special meeting of the joint teams and hand over the search warrants they had obtained, courtesy of the information provided by Alex.
Her Alex, she thought, and sighed as she remembered the tender kisses they had shared, thought about the way he had looked at her as she’d held Sebastian’s new baby. It was almost too easy to imagine how it might have been if Fate hadn’t tossed them from their chosen path with the death of her father.
Wishful thinking, or thoughts provoked because she was on the rebound?
Even with Alex’s presence, she still missed Ryder, forced him from her thoughts more than she cared to admit. She even occasionally wondered what was up with his vampire friends who had turned out to be fairly likable once you got past that whole “creature of the night” thing.
When her mind wandered before sleep, the lack of Ryder’s big body next to her brought emptiness to her heart and longing for the way he understood her needs. He was strong enough to deal with the more complicated and severe facets of her soul.
But she had little time to daydream further. David walked into the conference room where she had been waiting for the team to assemble.
“Peter and Hank are here.”
She rose and greeted the two men and was about to get started on the briefing when ADIC Hernandez walked in, a broad smile on his face.
“Good news. Moreno’s lawyer just called. Moreno wants to talk.”
“Just like that?” Peter asked.
Her ADIC confirmed it with a nod and said, “Reyes was right that he would eventually break.”
“Seems convenient that he would do it now, doesn’t it? Right when we’re prepared to nail one of them as they pick up the device,” she said.
“You think Lopez planned this to delay us?” Hank asked, censure dripping from every word.
“I think we should go on this morning as scheduled.”
Her words earned an annoyed snort from the older agent. “You’re seeing ghosts everywhere, Reyes.”
“We will continue with our surveillance of Lopez and the others,” ADIC Hernandez said, stopping any further discussion. “Agent Harris. Detective Daly. I’m trusting you to get the task started while the rest of us go see Moreno.”
Hank pursed his lips and wagged his head in disbelief. “It’s your call, Hernandez.”
She rose from the table and leaned toward Hank. “No, Hank. It’s my call. You seem to forget that.”
“Like I said before—”
“It’s my ass on the line if we fail. I heard you the first time.” Straightening, she grabbed the search warrants and passed them to David and Peter before they left the room.
Hank rose. “I need a moment before we go,” he said, and exited without getting her approval.
She met her ADIC’s worried gaze. “He’s trouble, Jesus. I feel it in my gut.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong, Diana. Ready to go see Moreno?”
When she nodded, they went in search of Rupert, who stood outside the door, as if waiting for them. At their appearance, however, he did an abrupt about-face and walked away. Presumably toward the interrogation room.
Diana arched an eyebrow as she mumbled, “Definitely trouble.”
Chapter 16
M ax Moreno gave up the names of Steve Martinez and various CDA members in exchange for immunity. Based on his testimony and the information Alex had provided, they now knew where the weapon would be and who would be picking it up. None other than Antonio Lopez himself.
Diana glanced across the street, her gaze focused on Lopez despite the stream of traffic on Queens Boulevard. He entered a one-story, cinder-block building nestled beneath the Seven subway line. The sign on the side of the building indicated it was a metalwork shop.
She radio’d the N.Y.P.D. and FBI agents surrounding the building. “Lopez is in. Keep an eye on all exits. Do not move until we advise.”
David waited across the street near the mouth of a narrow alley. Rupert stood beside her, his stance anxious as they awaited Lopez’s exit. It took close to fifteen minutes before their target emerged with a long, rectangular cardboard box.
Diana asked Rupert, “Do the dimensions of that box seem right for the device?”
“Yes. Let’s move in.”
“All units, secure the target and location.” Diana raced across the street, dodging traffic. Rupert plodded behind her, his steps heavier and slower.
By the time she arrived at the building, David had Lopez stomach-down on the sidewalk, his hands and legs spread-eagled. David kept his gun trained on the man and a knee in the middle of his back. The cardboard box lay a few feet away at Peter’s feet.
“Antonio Lopez?” she asked.
The man looked up at her from his awkward position. “And you would be?” he said with not a whit of concern as David patted him down for weapons.
She flashed her badge and was about to answer when she heard over her earpiece, “All’s secure inside.”
“Do not let anyone move,” she instructed her team. Returning her attention to Lopez, she said, “Special Agent in Charge Reyes, Mr. Lopez.”
“What’s the reason for this unauthorized detention?” Lopez said as David yanked him to his feet and slapped the warrant on Lopez’s chest.
“Antonio Lopez. We have a warrant for—”
Lopez silenced her with a wave of the warrant in his hand. “I can read, niña. So search away.”
Cocky, she thought. How she wished she had Lopez somewhere else with some of her vamp friends. That cockiness would last all of a second. But she wasn’t in some back alley and Lopez clearly thought he had the upper hand. Which meant he was either totally stupid or smart enough to have realized he was being watched or…
She didn’t want to consider the last possibility—that someone had tipped him off.
Rupert approached with the box and she motioned for him to open it. He did. It contained nothing other than chrome custom-worked pipes and other smaller metal pieces.
“Well
?” she asked, hoping that once assembled it would—
“It’s not what we want,” Hank said.
She met Lopez’s smug and decidedly pleased look. Motioning to Peter, who stood off to the side with the SWAT officers, she said, “Can you search the van with Agent Rupert? David and I are heading inside the shop.” Over the earpiece, Diana instructed the two FBI agents to secure the back exits of the shop.
The building was much like one would expect inside. An assortment of pipes, sheet metal and other supplies lined one wall while lathes, punch presses and other metal-working machines took up the greater part of the space.
About a dozen or more individuals stood, hands tucked behind their heads as the two FBI agents, accompanied by a duo of SWAT officers, manned each corner of the room, weapons at the ready. The shop workers were edgy, some more than others. Most likely because they were undocumented aliens.
She called out, “No somos La Migra. Necessitamos informacíon sobre Antonio Lopez.”
At the news that they weren’t Immigration, a number of the workers relaxed, but not all. She continued onward, seeing nothing of interest until reaching the back of the building. The surfaces of the tables there held sundry parts, pipes, nuts and bolts. Three men waited anxiously, close to the exit.
This trio was different. Better dressed. Not as tired-looking. She approached one and asked him to show his hands. When he pretended he didn’t understand, she repeated her instructions in Spanish.
He lowered his hands and displayed the tops and then his palms.
Just what she expected—nothing. “Put them back up. Now!”
David peered at the table’s surface. “Di. Come take a look.”
She noticed it then. A footprint smack in the middle of the clutter. A short distance away, another one. She looked up at the drop ceiling.
“Does that one seem out of—”
She didn’t get to finish as the three men rushed the door. One man grabbed the FBI agent’s weapon, but not before David and she had drawn their guns. He didn’t get a chance to fire as they dropped him with a volley of shots, but the other two men escaped out the back door. “All units. Two suspects on the loose.”
A blast of gunfire meant the units were already responding. She and David raced to the door, where an injured SWAT officer motioned in the direction of another alley. “That way. They’re armed. Semi-automatics.”
David sprinted ahead of her.
She cursed the riskiness of his haste, but chased after him. As they reached one corner where the alley branched out, gunfire erupted.
“I got one,” she heard in her earpiece. As they rounded the corner one of the CIA agents stood over the suspect. A blossoming stain of blood marred the middle of the man’s chest as he lay flat on his back, his eyes wide open and glazed.
“Shit,” she said, and met David’s gaze. “We need them alive, damn it.”
He nodded and hurried down the alley in the other direction with her on his tail. The alley opened onto one of Corona’s busier streets. Mom-and-Pop-size stores lined both sides and people darted here and there at the sound of gunfire. All except one man about half a block ahead, who moved a little too slowly considering all the ruckus.
Diana laid her hand on David’s arm and motioned for him to follow her. She kept her distance for a number of reasons. First, she didn’t want a gun battle with so many civilians around. Second, the suspect might lead them to others.
As he crossed the street to a block with less activity, he realized he’d been spotted. Whirling, he drew his weapon and opened fire. Diana only had a moment to think. The first round made a loud thunk as it slammed into her body armor. She fired at his knee to drop him, but he kept on shooting.
The blow to her shoulder had stunned her momentarily, as did the loud explosion of David’s gun. A clean hit to the suspect’s shoulder. He still didn’t go down, which left her no choice.
She aimed and fired. Dead center of his forehead.
David placed a hand on her arm as she continued to train her weapon on the suspect’s body. “You okay?”
Her left shoulder and upper arm were numb. The slug the vest had stopped glinted brightly against the dark blue of her windbreaker. Looking at David, she noted a hole in his lower right side. “Are you?”
“For now. I know I’m going to be as sore as shit later.”
As she approached the suspect, she told the rest of the team, “Third suspect is down at the corner of…” She noted the location and called it out. She looked at her partner. “Will you stay here while I go back to the van?”
He nodded and she slowly walked back to the primary location, hoping that by the time she got there, she’d have use of her left arm again. At the corner, Hank Rupert waited for her, a pleased smile on his face. One she suspected had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with her discomfort.
“Have a little problem, Special Agent in Charge Reyes?”
“Fuck you, Hank.” She brushed past him, which only brought a painful twinge to the arm where pins and needles signaled the return of sensation.
Peter Daly stood by Lopez’s van while Lopez himself leaned against it, his hands cuffed behind him. Lopez grinned when he saw her, but said nothing.
Peter, however, rushed forward. “Are you—”
“I’m fine, but I’ll need a few men to help me finish the search inside.”
He motioned for some of his uniformed officers to help her.
“Thanks,” she said. As both she and Peter’s gazes shifted to Lopez, Peter asked, “What do you want me to do with him?”
What she wanted to do was wrong. She wanted Peter to kick the shit out of him until they had the information they needed. That would have been the vampire way. Efficient. Remorseless. Only she wasn’t a vamp even though they had influenced her life too much lately. Mortal rules still had to be followed. “We’re taking him into custody.”
In the shop, her team tore the place apart and discovered something they hadn’t expected—parts and semi-assembled launchers hidden in the drop ceiling. Right above where David had noticed the footprints.
As they bagged the parts as evidence, Hank finally strolled in. “Not good. They were making copies.”
Copies of a weapon that was still missing.
She cursed beneath her breath and clutched her shoulder as pain blossomed fully.
“You okay?” Peter asked. “You look kinda pale.”
A chill marked her skin and nausea roiled her stomach, a delayed reaction to the trauma of the bullet’s impact. She battled it back. There was still too much left to do. “I’m okay. Will you take Lopez in for me?”
“Sure.” He motioned to her shoulder. “You going to do something about that?”
She gingerly removed her FBI windbreaker and vest. “Later. Right now, we need to go talk to Moreno and Martinez again.”
Chapter 17
M oreno and Martinez, however, were dead. Moreno of an apparent heart attack and Martinez from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
After a quick briefing with all the staff involved in the investigation, it became obvious that the suspects at the various locations they had planned to search had not only been prepared for the FBI’s visits, but they refused to talk about anything. By tomorrow, news of Moreno’s and Martinez’s deaths would make them totally uncooperative. Worse, the authorities could only hold Lopez for twenty-four hours without charging him and they had nothing on
him.
She had no idea who she could trust outside of her closest circle of colleagues.
Hank Rupert seemed a little too smug about the setbacks. Given their hostility toward one another, that was not unexpected. But could he be a mole? Tough to contemplate, much less prove.
When she called it a night, she motioned for Hank to stay with her, David and ADIC Hernandez. He did so grudgingly, which only served to pique her interest.
“What’s the matter, Hank? Keeping you from a hot date?” she questioned with some bite, trying to goad the man in the hope he might reveal something. Anything.
“Old bones aren’t what they used to be.” He stretched to emphasize the point.
She didn’t believe him. Was he eager to leave so he could meet someone? Maybe whoever had been behind the two murders that day? If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Moreno and Martinez had been executed.
“Moreno’s heart attack is kind of suspicious, but nothing’s come up in the autopsy to indicate foul play,” she said.
Rupert shrugged. “People die of heart attacks all the time.”
“Seems to me you would know about that. Making it seem like a heart attack,” David said, surprising her. Although she had mentioned how uneasy she was about the two incidents, she hadn’t told David about her belief that someone had leaked information. What David proposed now went well beyond a leak. Amazingly, she didn’t think him wrong.
When Rupert didn’t answer, she asked, “Is it possible Moreno was poisoned and we won’t be able to determine it?”
Hank’s words were clipped and laced with anger. “You think I had something to do with this?”
“The CDA knew about the raids and someone made it clear what would happen to those who talked by disposing of Moreno and Martinez,” Jesus Hernandez interjected. “Any idea which CDA member might want to do that, Hank?”
Death Calls Page 11