Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)
Page 14
“How?”
“He would go out, buy an entire box of ammo, and sit in the apartment with the shotgun pointed at the door all night.”
She laughed. “Based on what I’ve seen of him, I think you’re probably right.” She wound through the city streets and put her playlist on the stereo.
Rueben smiled. “Je Ne Sais Pas.”
She smiled at him, surprised under her dark shades. “You know them?”
“Yeah, I know them.”
They were an art-rock band out of Montreal that he had discovered after his breakup with Rachel. Their entire second album was the ultimate breakup anthem, and he had fallen so much in love with their music he had almost gone to Montreal for the quintessential fan experience, May Fest. When he first started talking to Aki, he found out she had gone almost every year since college. In fact, she and her college friends had been just short of Je Ne Sais Pas groupies. But he had died multiple times since their first conversation about it, and it hadn’t come up since.
She navigated the road with one hand and leaned the other against the door, clicking her acrylic fingernails. “I can’t believe you know them. I used to—”
“Go to May Fest.”
“Yes! Oh my gosh, you went?”
“No, I never made it. But I know you used to go all the time.”
She sat quietly for a few minutes, then turned the music down. “What else do you know about me?”
He gulped. “What kind of a question is that?”
“I figure you’ve probably spent time with me that I don’t remember, right? Because you’ve time-warped back to the past?”
He answered simply and honestly. “Yes.”
“Okay, so tell me what you know.”
“I know you weren’t really in love with Mike Fury. I know that you knew it hadn’t been working out long before he started having anger management issues.”
She didn’t respond. She only watched the road.
Rueben wasn’t quite sure how much more to say or when was too much. He opted for more trivial information. “I know that your parents were wealthy, and you have a trust fund. Then they decided to sell their house and move to Sedona, Arizona and be in a hippie cult. They changed their names to Sitar and Pegasus. I know you check on them using company resources, and you keep them safe.”
She shifted in her seat, and he knew he had hit her heart. He stopped talking, and they drove in silence for a while.
Finally, she asked, “Have we ever…”
He blushed and scratched the back of his head. “Uh, no…we’ve never… But we did make out a couple of times.”
She laughed. “Is that right?”
He blushed and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah…in a car on a stakeout and during the Pout thing. It was in a warehouse.”
“In a warehouse, huh? I wish I could remember that.”
He scratched his forehead. “I wish you could, too. It’s a good memory.”
She was quiet for a while. “It’s weird, you know. You wonder where that part of you went.”
“Yeah. I know. I think about that all the time with Buzz and Martha, especially. Buzz seems to get over it pretty quickly. I think Martha has a harder time with it. It seems almost like an invasion of privacy that they did things only I remember.”
“Yeah, I can see that. It’s cool, though.” She nodded as she contemplated the thought. “It’s pretty sexy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It makes you mysterious and somehow more badass than anyone I’ve ever met.”
He smiled, and all the frustration of being a science experiment faded away. She still thought he was badass.
She slowed as they hit a traffic jam. “Damn. It’s the summit.”
“Summit traffic already? That’s not for two more days.”
“Trust me, they’re already all in town with all their security details, and all their staffers, and all their staffers’ staffers. There are only two hundred delegates, but there will be close to a thousand people in that building on Monday.”
“Pete knows what he’s doing.”
“Terrorists usually do.”
They got stuck in stop-and-go traffic, and Rueben noticed a limo in the next lane over with Just Married scrawled on the back of it. He thought about Rachel and if they ever would have made it down the aisle even if she hadn’t found that other guy. That stupid, stupid dancer who was better than him.
Oh well, she wasn’t worth it. He recalled how his secretive work with the CIA kept cutting into their “alone time” when he was on big cases and how irritated Rachel was that he couldn’t tell her anything about it.
Aki had expressed that she thought two agents couldn’t be in a relationship, but the way Rueben saw it, two agents made the best partners. They would understand each other’s work better.
The traffic inched forward at an agonizing pace. Suddenly the door to the limo flew open, and the bride, in full dress, jumped out of the car.
Aki whipped her head around. “What the hell?”
The bride leaned her head back into the limo and yelled, then stormed off down the side of the road, holding her skirts and train the whole way.
Rueben laughed. “Trouble in paradise, I see.”
“No kidding. What do you think he did?”
“Ohh, that’s a tough one. It could be anything.”
She flicked her tongue over her teeth. “Come on, take a guess.”
“Ah, off the top of my head, I would say he texted another girl.”
“So uncreative. Come on. You gotta come up with something better.”
“Okay, let’s see…ooh…she complained that the dress was bothering her from sitting the whole time in that limo.”
“I can see that.”
“So, then he said that she over-ate at the wedding reception.”
She laughed and smacked the steering wheel. “That’s great. That would do it.”
“All right, you do one.”
“Okay, let’s see…her dad drank too much at the reception and got in an argument with the groom. Not only that, he trashed the groom’s dad, and it went from there.”
“I can see that one. Oooh…what about this? It just came out that once upon a time, the groom slept with her sister.”
“Oh yeah, that would do it, too.”
The bride stood on the side of the road, head buried in her hands and crying with traffic at a virtual standstill.
Finally, the groom got out of the limo and dodged through traffic to get to her. The groom helplessly placed his hand on the small of her back.
Rueben pointed. “She didn’t push him away.”
“Oh, then it couldn’t have been too bad. She wanted to make a point.”
After a few minutes of talking, the bride reluctantly followed him back to the limo. She passed right by their windows this time, and tears streaked her face. The groom apologetically waved to the honking vehicles along the way.
Aki laughed. “Yeah, that won’t last. That’s a bad omen right there.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
The bride and groom got back in their vehicle, and the traffic picked up in pace.
Aki’s lips twisted to one side. “But it does give me an idea.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
She smiled mischievously and turned to Rueben. “You want to get married?”
Rueben’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I mean, not for real. But as a sting.”
“How would that work?”
“Well, we stage a fake wedding, and of course, what would a wedding be without my new father-in-law?”
“You want to lure Marshall in with a fake wedding?”
She winked.
“You know I have to live with him after this, right?”
“Yeah, but he’ll make it out of this alive.”
Rueben scratched his head when he thought of what Marshall would do once he found out he was lying. Of course, maybe Marshall would finally st
op acting like less of an asshole all the time if he thought Rueben was going to marry somebody as hot as Aki. This plan might work.
She winked. “Have a little fun. Perk up. We’re getting married.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sunday, May 21, 6:30 a.m.
It was early Sunday morning, and Martha arrived at the precinct with a mental to-do list and a cup of steaming hot coffee. She would need it for this.
She was going to have to get on her A-game for the rest of the weekend. Alister Pout was the past. There was no phoning this in or coasting on past accolades. This new terrorist Pete meant business, and she needed to find out everything she could to stop what he had planned. She now had less than twenty-four hours until the day of the summit officially began.
She summoned the elevator and muttered, “You can do this, Martha. You’re a hero, right?”
Knowing what she knew about Pete, she didn’t feel convinced.
She arrived on the precinct floor to find the office nearly empty, as she had hoped. There was an open receptionist desk, and fluorescent lights ran on low power over rows of abandoned cubicles in the bullpen.
The overnight staff still mingled over coffee and chatted in low tones, and the morning crew wouldn’t be in for another hour at least.
Good. She didn’t need any distractions this morning.
By the time the day shift started, she wanted to have enough of a lead on the terrorist attack to get the captain on board with the case. If all NYPD was on alert tomorrow, they stood a better chance of catching the bastards. She made her way down the long hallway to her office.
Her office.
Just the thought gave her step a little spring. Yes, she had an office now. It wasn’t much, merely a glorified closet with a table, a swivel chair, and a laptop. Compared to what she had before—a cubicle about the size of a bathroom stall—this was a penthouse suite.
The best part was, she had her name on the door.
She smiled and ran her fingers across the letters. This was what happened when you took down an international criminal.
She dropped her bag on the desk, sank into the vinyl orange-and-brown chair, and powered up the laptop. Today’s goal: stop the attack.
It was a tall order, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to break it down into smaller pieces. That was the problem with “Rueben cases.” Criminal investigations based on nothing but Rueben’s time warp ability were difficult to start. There were always clues, but they weren’t easy to spot. You had to keep looking every time you hit a dead end. In Alister’s case, dead ends were about all they had the whole way through. But they had managed to bring that one in on an explosive, fiery home run. Figuratively speaking, of course. No bombs had detonated, thank God.
They could do this one, too.
Rueben had said the bombing would be during the keynote address. So, when was the address, and what were the weaknesses during that time?
She ran an online search for background information on the World Summit. By about the twentieth news article, her head started to hurt. “I need more caffeine for this.”
Martha headed down to the break room. It was getting later, and the day shift early birds were already in. Everywhere she walked, colleagues nodded and smiled at her.
Two officers, Tom and Mark, stood talking in the hallway. As soon as they saw her, they quieted and stepped aside, raising their coffee mugs in her direction.
God, that felt good coming from them. She smiled and breezed past them. “Hello, gentlemen.”
Tom nodded vigorously to her. “Martha. Hey, hey, good to see you. You doing all right?”
She kept walking as she answered, “Well, there’s air in my lungs and sunshine outside. What more can I ask for?”
Mark laughed too loud at that. The twenty-three-year-old baby-faced officer was the human embodiment of a “follower.”
Tom winked at her inane comment. “I hear ya.”
Martha swished on, making Tom basically jog to keep up. She barely contained a smile. Three months ago, Tom and Mark had been stalwart members of the precinct “boys’ club” and had relegated her to “The Tampon Squad.”
They told her to stay focused on her beat—petty theft and little old ladies getting flashed. Leave the real cases to the big boys. Watching them eat their words made her day, all day, every day.
Tom cleared his throat from behind her. “Hey, Martha. Uh, you know, if you were working on another big case at all, let me know. I’d love to chip in.”
She turned to face him. “I think you’ve got your hands full with your beat, Tom. Aren’t there some little old ladies getting flashed or apartment tenants with noisy upstairs neighbors? We couldn’t have anyone disturbing the peace, now could we?”
He sipped his coffee, and a smile played about his face. “Look, Martha, I know we all like to bust balls around here. It’s part of the job, you know.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t have balls, and I don’t appreciate the sexist reference.”
Tom grimaced. “Point is, everybody messes with everybody. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team out there. We’re all the good guys.”
She arrived at the break room, a roomy, glassed-in kitchenette. “What do you want, Tom?”
He leaned against the glass wall. “I feel bad about the way things went before. I was a dick, all right?”
She raised an eyebrow, and he caught himself. “Apologies for the sexist reference. I was an asshole.”
She cocked her head in agreement.
“And you know, I’d like to help you out a little.”
She pursed her lips. He’d had her until that last sentence. “What makes you think I need your help?”
“I mean, come on. Well, first of all, props, man, props. Alister Pout, that was…that was something. Damn. Respect.” He made a bowing motion with his hands, but she still didn’t buy it. He continued, “It’s just…beyond that, you haven’t been on the force that long and—”
“Oh my God, Tom.”
Granted, she had been on the force for just over a year compared to his decades wearing the badge. But then, why was she on that stage Friday night and he wasn’t? Why did she have an office and he still had a cubicle? After ten years?
She jerked the door to the break room open and stormed inside.
He followed her, grabbing the door just before it hit him. “Hear me out. I think we can mutually benefit from working together.”
Martha grabbed the coffee carafe and ran it under the faucet. “Mutually benefit? Now I get it. This is what this is all about. You need something to impress Kenneth.”
Captain Ken Kenneth was their boss. It now occurred to her that ever since Martha’s promotion, Kenneth had distanced himself more and more from “the boys’ club.” In fact, Tom was already there when she came in early. That meant only one thing. “How’s the graveyard shift working out for you these days?
Tom didn’t say anything but leaned against the counter.
“Nice to get your workday all over with and done before eight a.m., right? Then you can have your days to yourself to get a massage or catch up on your Netflix. Who needs a career when you’ve got Cobra Kai?”
Tom buried his tongue in his cheek and smiled. She owned him. “You’re good.”
She found a filter and searched for the coffee, pretending she wasn’t enjoying the moment as much as she was.
The precinct hadn’t yet upgraded to the K-Pod movement, and it was the one thing around here that she would love to change now that she had achieved semi-celebrity status. She made a mental note to bug Kenneth about it.
Tom slid a red can of Folgers across the counter toward her. He caught her eye, and she took the can but didn’t say anything.
He finally spoke. “It’s not about that. Well, not entirely about that. I can help you—we can help each other. I mean, honestly, how long do you think you can dine on Alister Pout?”
“Oh Christ, Tom. Do you even hear yourself?”
He also fancied himself a young James Patterson, which rendered him utterly useless as a street cop. But his penchant for conspiracy and scandal made him adept at cases like Alister—a fact that made him a particularly attractive candidate for the tedium she faced today.
Zach sauntered up to the coffee bar. “Good morning, gang.”
Tom pushed the Folgers canister out of sight, and Martha purposely hogged the carafe.
Zach grabbed bottled water instead. “How is everyone this fine day?”
Tom shoved away from the counter. “Shut it, kiss ass.” Then he walked out of the room.
Zach glanced back at him, then at Martha. “What was that about?”
Martha shook her head and poured her cup. “Nothing. I think the better question is what are you doing in here on a Sunday? Your internship is unpaid.”
Zach inhaled deeply and threw back his shoulders in a proud pose. “Oh, you know. Saving people. Hunting leads. The police business.”
“So…book research.”
Zach’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. Book research.”
“Good. Then you have time on your plate to help me today.”
Martha and Zach sat at the table in her office. She had a dry erase board propped up on a chair against the wall and made another notation.
Zach whistled as he read from a printout. “Okay, this is going to be a massive event, you know. There are over a thousand attendees alone, and that’s not including the staff. There’s no way we can map out all the associations.”
“I know. I want to make sure we know as much as we can in case something fishy goes down.”
Zach laughed. “Fishy? I mean, you’ve got, like, two hundred world leaders and all their security details. I’m sure the security and background checks are airtight. They’ve got to have the entire global intelligence community involved, including our CIA and everything.”
Martha answered with certainty. “They do.”
“Then what does that have to do with us? They know what they’re doing. All their super-cool Jason Bourne-hanging-from-ceiling spy antics and shit.”