Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  At this point . . . whatever.

  As the plane lifted into the air, I leaned my forehead against the window and touched my fingers to the cold whiskey glass. I watched the lights of Mexico City spread out below me, pinpricks in an ocean of darkness.

  Malik, falling away from me while I sat at an impossible distance. I went to Mexico hoping to save his life. But all I’d had to offer was a handful of promises.

  Try taking that to the bank, young man.

  An icy breeze wafted through the cabin, as if someone had opened a door. I gripped the arm rests and turned in my seat.

  Behind me sat two dead men, staring at me with molten eyes. Two of the six men whose lives I’d taken months earlier, while on an investigation with the Denver PD. The men had been killers, rapists, torturers. But they’d also been sons, brothers, husbands. And I’d killed them.

  Our ghosts are our guilt.

  You failed, one of them said, his lips a ruin.

  You will always fail, the other sneered.

  They scowled at me, their presence an accusation I had no way to refute. How do you apologize to the dead?

  “Can I get you a blanket?”

  I jerked back around. The flight attendant stood in the aisle, a crease between her blue eyes.

  I nodded, and she handed me a soft square of cloth before offering a compassionate smile and moving on.

  You’ll never be warm, a voice breathed from behind.

  My own set of Greek furies. Furiae. Erinyes. The infernal ones. Their presence cast me as the tragic hero of my own story, an Odysseus doomed to wander forever without peace.

  I forced away my self-pitying thoughts and returned to more practical matters, back to the man who had been murdered at the airport. I wanted to believe I had a guardian angel, even if I’d prefer a less violent one. But I suspected the truth was darker. I figured there were multiple parties involved in whatever was going down, and someone had just upped the ante.

  At least the risk wasn’t all one-sided.

  What I felt about the man who’d died was a sense of satisfaction. And that scared me more than anything. As soon as you are no longer bothered by death, maybe even approve of it, you’ve lost yourself on a dark path.

  I slammed down the rest of the whiskey and reclined the seat. The lights dimmed. I pulled the blanket to my chin and let my eyes drift closed as memories swam to the surface.

  The boiling sun set over Iraq, yielding to the silver knives of moonlight that carved up Camp Taqaddum, slicing through the barracks and the rec center and the motor pool. Outside the barricade, someone fired an AK-47, the rounds echoing in the empty desert around us.

  Insurgents.

  I touched the sidearm in my thigh holster to make sure it was still there.

  Combat—24-7-365.

  “We’re safe,” said Corporal “Conan” Tomitsch.

  “You think?”

  “Sure, Lady Hawk.” My own nickname.

  I ducked into my tent and curled into a fetal position on my cot, breathing in kerosene fumes from the canvas. I must have finally slept, because sometime later I was startled awake by my commanding officer, the Sir, who knelt next to my bed, the red beam of his flashlight illuminating his face. He pressed his finger to his lips and tipped his head to indicate I should go with him. I reached for my uniform, but he handed me a pair of sweats and a hoodie, and I noticed that he was dressed in civvies. Uneasy, I pulled the sweats on over my T-shirt and shorts and followed him, weaving my way past my sleeping tent mates. Outside, the warm wind threw dust in our eyes while overhead, the Milky Way glittered like treasure from Ali Baba’s cave.

  The Sir said, “I’m going into Habbaniyah, Corporal Parnell, and I could use your help.”

  “This an order, sir?” Knowing something was off by his manner and our clothes.

  “No, Corporal. Your choice.”

  He knew damn well I would crawl to Baghdad if that was what he needed me to do.

  “Should I get Ayers, sir?” I asked. “For security?”

  He regarded me with sudden alarm.

  “No,” he said. “No one can know about this. Especially not—no. Do you understand, Corporal? You can’t tell Doug Ayers.”

  “I won’t, sir. But, sir, you’re giving me a bad feeling.”

  “Want to back out?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I trust you, Parnell. It’s why I chose you.”

  “Yes, sir. You can trust me.” I trust you, too.

  “This way, then.”

  After a layover in Dallas where I went through Immigration and Customs, then boarded a different plane, I awoke a second time when we touched down in Denver at zero dark thirty. A text greeted me as soon as I switched my phone out of airplane mode: Cohen and Clyde were in the cell-phone lot, waiting for my text.

  Once off the plane, I found the nearest bathroom and cleaned up as best I could. A bruise had bloomed across the bridge of my nose, edging toward my left eye, and there was no hiding that. The bleeding from my side was now only a seep. I reapplied paper towels and tucked my blouse to hold them in place.

  I checked myself in the mirror one more time. Bruises. Check. Bloodstains. Check. Glowering rage with a side of panic. You bet. Everything I needed to make Cohen wonder what the hell I’d been up to.

  No chance to dance around it any longer. It was time to tell this good man the truth. Even if it drove him away.

  “Grab those bootstraps,” I whispered to my reflection, “and pull hard.”

  Back on the concourse, the tourists streamed around me, talking sleepily. I shot Cohen a text, then called Hal Beckett, damn the hour. I’d tried to reach him while I was waiting to board the plane in Mexico and then again in Dallas.

  As before, his phone went straight to voice mail. This time I left a message. “It’s Rosie. We have to talk.”

  Hal was one of the few allowed to use my middle name. Father figure. With a caveat.

  I snorted and wondered if this was how Luke felt about Darth Vader.

  As I walked through the eerily quiet airport, I worked over how I would tell Cohen about my secret life. But as I fumbled over possible segues into my checkered past, I found no gracious way to tell him that I’d gotten myself eyeball deep in some serious shit. And that, through no fault of his own, he was hip deep in the cesspool with me.

  Not for the first time, I reflected on the fact that if our roles were reversed, if he’d been the one who spent our time together getting all “I can’t tell you or I’ll have to kill you” on me, I would have walked out months ago.

  I startled when a ghostly figure emerged from a janitor’s closet on my right. The Sir.

  The truth shall set you free, I imagined him saying.

  “You’re probably right, sir.” Probably far freer than I wanted to be.

  The glass doors leading outside whooshed open, and I stepped onto the sidewalk, leaving the Sir behind. A deep, joyous bark echoed from somewhere farther down the passenger pick-up area, and then there was my partner, my war buddy, my best friend, bounding toward me, the handful of travelers parting before him as if he were Moses dashing across the Red Sea.

  I dropped my duffel, squatted, and braced for impact. Clyde sailed over the last few feet separating us and bounded into my open arms, planting his front paws on my shoulders and sending me staggering. We were eyeball to eyeball for all of two seconds before I squeezed my eyes shut, and he mopped the tears from my face with one sweep.

  “Good boy!” I cried in the high singsong voice he loved. “Good Clyde!”

  I wrestled him to the ground and onto his back, ignoring the pain from my injuries. His tail thumped against the sidewalk, his back leg spasmodically kicking as I rubbed his belly beneath his service vest. Then he rolled back over and sprang at me again, and this time we both went to the ground.

  “You’d swear I kept him chained in the basement, barely alive on dry kibble,” Cohen said from somewhere above us.

  I wrestled out from under Clyd
e and let Cohen pull me to my feet.

  We took each other in for a moment. He processed the bruise and the dark stains.

  “Rough landing?”

  “You should see the runway.”

  His thumb brushed my bruise, then his hand drifted to my hair. “Suddenly a brunette?”

  “Think of it as getting to sleep with another woman.”

  But he shook his head at me. “You could shave your head and dye your scalp orange, and I’d be good with it.”

  “I’m saving that for when the Broncos go to the Super Bowl.”

  He stared at me a moment longer, then wrapped me in his arms. I pressed my face to his shoulder and inhaled his scent. For a few long moments, words ceased to matter.

  If only we could stay this way.

  At the car, he opened the back seat for Clyde while I got into the front. Clyde shoved his head between the seats and tried to get to work on my face again. Gently, I pushed him back.

  “I’m clean enough now, thanks,” I said.

  He doggie-grinned.

  “You want to stop at a doc-in-the-box?” Cohen asked as we left the airport and hit Peña Boulevard, heading toward I-70. Maybe he’d seen me wince when I got in the car.

  For a moment, feeling a fresh seep of blood, I considered asking him to drop me off to see my Grams. She was a nurse who’d tended to more than her share of traumatic injuries. Plus, it would give me a chance to warn her and my honorary aunt, Ellen Ann Lasko, about the Alpha.

  Then again, right now nothing connected the Lasko residence to me. Grams and Ellen Ann were safe for tonight as long as Cohen and I didn’t unwittingly lead someone there.

  Cohen’s voice broke in. “Sydney? Make a stop?”

  “Nah. I just need a bandage and some lidocaine.”

  “That I can handle. With a Marine in the house, I’ve learned to stock up.”

  “Glad I’m doing my part for disaster preparedness.”

  Our playful schtick wasn’t going over well in Peoria. Cohen tapped the steering wheel twice, then said, “I didn’t expect you back so soon. You get done what you’d hoped?”

  “Some of it.”

  I caught an angry flick in his eyes. Cohen possessed the patience of Job. But even Job had his limit. I reached out and ran the tips of my fingers across his knuckles and around to the flesh of his wrist. His skin was warm, familiar, beloved. A sudden image rose in my mind of those hands on my body. On my shoulders and ribs and waist. On my breasts.

  Everywhere.

  I snatched my hand back. “I’m ready to talk, Cohen.”

  “What?” He actually laughed. “I didn’t even have to waterboard you. Say it again. Wait, let me turn on a recorder.”

  “Laugh while you can.”

  He glanced over with the look on his face that I loved. Open, curious, eager. Mingled in was relief. And a tenderness that wouldn’t last once I started talking.

  That’s right, Detective Cohen. Make what I have to say even harder.

  “Sydney, don’t you get it? Whatever you have to tell me, it won’t change anything. I’ll still—”

  “Stop.” This time my hand went to his lips. “Don’t say anything you’ll have to take back. Once you know what you’re dealing with, then you can decide how you feel about me. Just give me a few minutes to figure out how to say what I have to say.”

  He breathed out a sigh and nodded. His posture went soft, as if he’d just settled into a comfy chair. Might as well let him enjoy it while he could.

  It lasted the few seconds it took us to get from I-70 to I-225, and then his shoulders came up again.

  “You probably haven’t heard.” He reached out and took my hand. “I’m sorry to tell you. Jeremy Kane was killed yesterday.”

  And there we were. The opening I both wanted and dreaded. Cohen knew that Kane and I were acquaintances—I’d talked to Kane during the Elise Hensley case. But he had no idea what really tied us together.

  “I saw an article in the paper,” I said. “The case is yours?”

  “Most everyone is on deck for this.” He put both hands back on the wheel. “A lot of footwork involved. Lead is a detective named Bill Gorman.”

  Gorman and I had worked together briefly on a theft case before he moved to Major Crimes.

  “He’s a low-hanging fruit kind of guy,” I said. “Or did I miss something?”

  Cohen stayed silent as he merged with the westbound traffic on the interstate. It was answer enough.

  “How’d he get the assignment?”

  “He was up in the rotation.”

  I stared out the windshield. I was pissed, but in truth, a lazy or lousy cop made my task less difficult. He was likely to let me work on angles and not ask too many questions. The fact that Cohen was only peripherally on the case made it both easier and harder. Easier because I wouldn’t have to keep him embroiled. Harder since I also wouldn’t have access to much information. Cohen often shared his cases with me because, as he generously put it, my view of the world was warped.

  Sometimes I fit perfectly.

  He took the I-25 ramp heading north, then exited at Hampden and turned west. In the back seat, Clyde lay down. But he kept his head on the console, and I continued to rub his ears. As always, his company was a solace. I figured he felt the same way about me.

  That’s what it means to have a war buddy. No one gets it like those who’ve been there.

  I wondered if Cohen could understand what I was about to share. He’d hunted gangbangers, gone undercover with drug dealers, and as a murder cop, he’d peered into the darkest recesses of the human soul.

  But he’d never been to my kind of war.

  Michael Walker Cohen lived in Cherry Hills, a neighborhood where the houses cost more than what I’d make putting in forty years on the job. My first glimpse of the place had made me feel like I’d landed on Mars. I’d warned myself not to get involved with a man who could start and finish each day in a bubble so rarified it almost demanded its own supply of oxygen.

  But when I learned it was family money and he was every bit as uncomfortable with it as I was, I overcame my hesitation. Now, well . . . I couldn’t say I hated it. The manicured grounds, the gourmet kitchen, the fact that no matter how much junk you had, there was a cupboard for it—it added up to something. Plus, Clyde seemed to prefer trees over fire hydrants. Cohen’s deceased grandmother’s library—which ran to history books and noir mysteries—along with a wine cellar that held mostly whiskey stored upright in glass cases like museum specimens . . . these things helped ease the transition.

  So far, I’d worked my way from Ken Bruen to James Cain and, with Cohen’s help, through most of a bottle of Ardbeg Renaissance.

  The money also told me what made Cohen such a great detective—he was motivated by his sense of justice, not a pension.

  That counted for a lot.

  The family mansion loomed before us, our headlights illuminating gables and flashing off leaded glass windows. His grandmother—the only other Cohen to venture west of the Mississippi—had lived in the house until her death. Now, the only people going in and out were the cleaning staff.

  Cohen lived in the carriage house out back.

  As he took the curve around the manor and approached the carriage-house driveway, the headlights caught a small security sign planted near the stairs to the front door.

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s new.”

  Cohen shrugged self-consciously. “Had a break-in the day you left.”

  A ghostly hand pressed fingers to my neck. I forced my voice to remain casual. “Here in the land of entry-coded gates and a roving security force? You’ve destroyed my faith.”

  The garage door sensed his vehicle and opened obligingly. Welcome home, sir.

  He said, “The insurance guys told me they’d keep my rates down if I bought into a security service. Makes sense. But it’s embarrassing as hell for a cop. Anyway, I wrote the security code down for you. It’s by the phone in the kitchen.”

&
nbsp; “They take anything?”

  “Not as far as I could tell.”

  “So how did you know—?”

  “They left a calling card.”

  A ragged thread in his voice made me sit up. “What kind of card?”

  “Sydney—”

  “Tell me.”

  “They left a dog in the house.”

  “A dog?”

  “Not a live one.”

  That shut me down. My hand reached back for Clyde, and I buried my fingers in his fur.

  “Looked like a pooch they found on the street,” Cohen said. “Thin and filthy. Someone strangled it. My top suspect is a guy I put away for robbery who just got paroled. A piece of work, that one. Started every job by shooting the pets. His PO is following up with him. In the meantime, I changed the locks and hired the security service.”

  “Where did he leave the dog?”

  Cohen’s eyes flicked to Clyde. “Doesn’t matter. I took care of it.”

  We got out of the vehicle, and Clyde and I followed Cohen up the stairs. Once inside, the first thing I noticed was Clyde’s new bed in the living room. I raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s where the dead dog was?”

  An elaborately casual shrug. “Clyde needed a new bed anyway.”

  Clyde, at least, seemed to agree. After I removed his service vest, he gave the fabric a good sniff, then circled in place for a few seconds before plopping down. He unfurled a tongue long enough for a photo shoot at the Oscars and grinned at me.

  My hands curled into fists. They could not have him. Not Clyde. And not Cohen.

  Payback was going to be hell.

  Cohen’s phone buzzed. He looked at the number, then excused himself and went into the kitchen area. I popped into the bathroom to use the promised ointment and bandages, then took a seat on the couch and tried to spend a few minutes enjoying the pleasure of home.

  Not my home, I reminded myself. Cohen’s home.

  The distinction was important. In a few minutes, everything might change.

  The main floor of the carriage house consisted of a great room—a living room and a partially walled-off kitchen that filled the immense space. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the front of the room. Exposed beams spanned the ceiling. Quietly tasteful furniture was arranged in elegant groupings. At one end of the room was a basketball hoop; at the other stood a fireplace that would comfortably fit a pair of roast pigs.