by Linda Howard
Cotton studied the street, the people around them, before asking mildly, “You didn’t recognize him?”
“Recognize him? Should I have?”
“He’s the man on the balcony.”
Jackson stared at Cotton, astonished. “The man on the balcony,” as they called him, had been a source of frustrated conjecture for months. He had simply vanished, and they’d never discovered how. Jackson sat back in the seat and looked straight ahead as he mentally compared the man in his memory to the one he had just seen standing in the park. “I’ll be damned. Good eye, Cotton.” He drummed his fingers on his leg. “She’s probably been with him all this time.”
He hoped she had been, anyway. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he had a kind of soft spot for her. When she’d been with Salinas, he’d pitied her, because she’d been like this pretty, useless doll that Salinas dragged out whenever he wanted to play with her, but otherwise had no interest in her. Whoever the balcony guy was, though, she loved him. Jackson was a hard-core realist, but being a realist meant he recognized what was right in front of him. When the guy had appeared right behind them, as silently as a damn ghost, both he and Cotton had damn near had coronaries, but when she’d turned around her face had taken on a luminous expression—exasperated, but luminous, as if the sun had just come out in her world. She might be a tad pissed off at the sun, but she was glad to see it all the same.
She was different, and it wasn’t just the shorter, darker, straighter hair. It wasn’t that she no longer dressed to show. In a way she was more eye-catching now than she had been before, but not because of the flash. There was something in her expression, a serenity, that hadn’t been there before. Sometimes her attention seemed riveted to something in the distance; once he’d turned around to check if someone was behind him, but there was nothing, and when he turned back she had refocused on him. That was another thing: when she looked at a person, she really looked, deeply and thoroughly. With that stare turned on him, he’d had to fight the compulsion to look down and check his zipper, to see if that was making her study him so intently.
Reading the guy wasn’t as easy as reading her. Hell, his expression hadn’t so much as flickered, and the damn sunglasses hadn’t helped. He’d been as blank as a store-window mannequin. But Jackson had looked back and seen the guy take her hand and link their arms, and something in the way he’d touched her told Jackson that the feeling between them was mutual.
Jackson was glad, for her sake. From the conversation she’d had with Salinas on the balcony that day, they knew that he’d given her services to the guy as if she were just a whore to him. They knew she’d been extremely upset. Then, the next day, she was gone. They knew she hadn’t packed her clothes and moved out, because they kept track of everyone who entered and exited the apartment building. The last time they’d seen her, she had gotten into a car with one of Salinas’s thugs, and when he came back she wasn’t with him.
When she’d disappeared, there had been a lot of upheaval in Salinas’s routine, and Jackson had wondered then if she’d been killed and her body disposed of, for reasons they could only guess at. Thinking of those days immediately following her disappearance, he suddenly made another connection. “Hey! Remember that meeting Salinas had in Central Park? We couldn’t get a shot of the other guy’s face. Remember? I think that was him, then, too—the man on the balcony.”
Cotton considered the possibility, dredging his memory for the few details they had of the man Salinas had met, and he gave a single, considering nod. “I think you’re right.”
What that meeting could have been about was anyone’s guess. Remembering the chain of events, though, Jackson thought Drea had walked out on Salinas and gone to the other man, and Salinas hadn’t had any idea where she was. Maybe he’d arranged the meeting to ask, or even to hire the other man to find her. The Bureau had no idea who the man was, or what he did, so the possibilities were endless.
He couldn’t resist a challenge, never had been able to. His agile mind began running through all those possibilities and scenarios, testing them against the few facts available, discarding some, expanding others, entertaining himself so thoroughly that it wasn’t until later that he realized Cotton hadn’t answered his question.
SIMON FELT THE chill of his old friend Death creeping over him. He wasn’t a man who agonized over his choices; he identified them, analyzed them, and then made the best one and moved on. This choice, however, left the tang of bitterness in his mouth. It wasn’t that he regretted it, because he didn’t, couldn’t. But he didn’t like it at all, didn’t like being forced into it, even though he’d have made the same choice without outside intervention. He would protect Andie, period. That was his bedrock.
He took her back to the Holiday Inn and escorted her to her room; he had to see for himself that she was safely there and that no one had broken in. Then he framed her face with his hands and kissed her, long and slow, letting the taste of her and the feel of her soothe him.
“I have things to do,” he said when he finally lifted his mouth. He wanted to take her straight to bed and lose himself in the hot clasp of her body, but he was nothing if not disciplined. “Don’t wait up for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Her blue eyes darkened with concern as she stared at him. “Don’t go,” she said suddenly, even though she had no idea what he’d be doing. He’d noticed that her instincts, always sharp, had gone beyond sharpness into another realm, as if she knew things that she couldn’t possibly know. Was she even aware of how much time they spent staring into each other’s eyes, until he sometimes felt their separate identities blur? He didn’t think so. In most ways she was still very much of this world—a little crabby, a little impatient, a lot sexy—but every now and then she went away, not inside her head but somewhere out in the ether, and when she came back she always looked a little more radiant.
However it had come about, she read him better than anyone ever had, as if she had an inside track to his head.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, kissing her again. “Wait for me. Don’t let those FBI assholes talk you into anything before I get back. Promise me.”
Her brows snapped together and she opened her mouth to blast him for demanding a promise from her when he wouldn’t honor her request. He laid a finger across her mouth, his eyes crinkling at the corners in amusement. “I know,” he said. “Promise me anyway.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then turned to look at the clock. “Give me a definite time. I’m not buying that ‘I have things to do, I don’t know how long I’ll be’ crap. Two hours? Five?”
“Twenty-four,” he said.
“Twenty-four!”
“It’s a definite time limit. Now promise.” Twenty-four hours wasn’t a stretch, either; he’d need every one of them. “This is important to me. I need to know you’re safe.” That got to her, because she loved him. She loved him. The unreality of it shook him, yet the rightness of it went straight to his core.
Because she loved him, she grudgingly said, “All right, I promise,” even though she didn’t like it one little bit. He kissed her again and left, standing out in the hall until he heard her chain the door and turn the deadlock. By the time he got to the elevator, he’d already placed the most crucial call of all.
“This is Simon,” he said when Scottie answered the phone. “I need a favor, probably the last one ever.”
“Whatever you need,” said Scottie promptly, because it was due only to Simon that his daughter was alive. “And it’s your call whether or not it’s the last one. I’m always here, for whatever you need.”
He explained what he needed. Scottie thought a minute, then said, “You got it.”
That taken care of, he began analyzing the situation more minutely. The two things you needed in order to kill someone were a weapon and the opportunity. All the other details fell into one of those two main categories. Getting a weapon was no problem; getting an untraceable weapon, and a good o
ne, was easy if he had enough time, but time was the one commodity he didn’t have. Normally he would spend days working out the details, the logistics. This had to be done fast, then he would grab Andie and get out of the country while he could.
That pissed him off, too. He didn’t like being forced to leave his country, and he knew going into this that he might never be able to return. If he worked everything just right, maybe. Only time would tell.
If he’d maintained his apartment in the same building as Salinas, he wouldn’t have any problem, but he’d let it go months ago and relocated to San Francisco. Likewise he didn’t have time to establish Salinas’s routine, so he’d have to initiate the meeting. Drawing him out wouldn’t be a problem, because Salinas had already been trying to contact him about another hit. Now he’d never know what big scheme Salinas had going on, he thought, then gave a mental shrug because it didn’t matter. Salinas wouldn’t live to see it through. Somewhere in the world, someone would live another day.
He’d have to do a street hit, which greatly increased the risks. On the plus side was the weather, which was still cool enough that coats were needed. On the minus side was that he’d not only have to carry his weapon, but adding a sound suppressor to it greatly increased the weapon’s visibility by doubling the length.
Having to suppress the sound added all sorts of complications to his plans. To begin with, using a pistol meant he had to be close, and Salinas was always surrounded by his men. Because of how their mechanisms worked, a suppressor could turn a semiautomatic pistol into a single-shot weapon by preventing the slide from unlocking, but because a pistol meant close work, he had to have more than one shot available to him, in case one or more of Salinas’s men were trained well enough to function through the surprise and initial confusion. He’d need an advanced suppressor that overcame that problem, or he’d have to use a different type of weapon.
The more the sound was suppressed, the harder it would be for them to pinpoint the location of the shooter. He’d go with a smaller caliber weapon, he thought, a blowback design with a fixed barrel; they were more effectively suppressed. He’d never yet seen a real weapon that could be suppressed to Hollywood standards, but with all the street noise added in, the resultant sound wouldn’t immediately be recognized as gunfire. Most bystanders would have no idea they’d heard a shot, at least at first, because it was neither the soft “spit” of what they’d heard in movies, or the sharp crack of unsuppressed gunfire. When Salinas fell and his men grabbed for him, the bystanders would be confused, and they’d either mill around watching or they’d rubber-neck but keep walking. Salinas’s men would pay more attention to the walkers, figuring the shooter would be among them, trying to slip away. Instead he would be right there in the middle of them, under their noses.
Between now and then, however, he had a gargantuan number of tasks to accomplish.
A LITTLE AFTER noon, Rafael Salinas emerged from his apartment building, surrounded by his usual coterie of seven men. His driver was parked at the curb, motor running. One guy, his long hair tied back with a thin strip of leather, came out first, his head swiveling in all directions. He surveyed the street and the pedestrian traffic, though most of his attention was reserved for cars. Seeing nothing suspicious, without turning around he gave a brief nod of his head, and seven more men exited the building: Rafael Salinas walking in the middle of six men who used their bodies to block sidewalk traffic so Salinas could go in a direct path from the door of the building to the open door of his car. People stalled, tried to side-step, growled “Get out of the way!” or worse, all of which was ignored. One bent old guy with a cane lurched a little off-balance.
A bus rumbled by and there was a barely audible pop over the roar of the diesel engine. Rafael Salinas stumbled, his hand going out as if to catch himself. A second pop, right on the heels of the first, made several people look curiously around, wondering what that noise was. Salinas went down, a red spray arcing from his throat.
The first man out of the building realized something was wrong and wheeled in a half-circle, his hand already emerging from his jacket, clutching a semiautomatic.
Pop.
The first man, a red blossom growing on his chest, reeled back into the driver. The weapon fell from his suddenly limp hand and went spinning across the sidewalk. People realized something was wrong and a few random screams pierced the air, followed by a flurry of pedestrians suddenly running or diving to the sidewalk. The old guy with the cane was pushed down and he landed behind the back bumper of Salinas’s car, half on the sidewalk and half in the street, his cane several feet from his outstretched hand. His lined face wore a startled expression as he tried to crawl for his cane, only to sprawl on the ground when his strength gave out.
“There! Go!” One of the remaining men pointed down the street, where a young guy was flying through the crowd, trying to get as far away as possible. Two of Salinas’s men took off in pursuit. All of them had weapons drawn by now, pointing them at first one person and then another in a serious lack of muzzle discipline. They circled around Rafael Salinas as if they could protect him now, despite the evidence of their eyes. The red spray from Salinas’s throat had stopped; his heart had beat only a few more times after the first bullet ripped into him. The second shot, thrown off by Salinas’s sudden lurch forward, had caught him in the throat.
The old guy tried once more to get his feet under him. “My cane,” he kept bleating. “My cane.”
“Here’s your fucking cane,” one of the goons said, kicking it toward him. “Get outta here, gramps.”
The old guy picked up the cane, his gloved hands trembling, and with difficulty levered himself to his feet. He hobbled behind the next parked car and stood there staring around as if he didn’t understand what was going on. “What happened?” he asked several times. “What happened?”
No one paid any attention to him. Sirens began blasting as New York’s Finest tried to bull their way through traffic. The old guy worked his way through the crowd and continued on down the street—back in the direction he’d come from. Fifteen minutes later, a uniformed cop found the murder weapon, a pistol with a sound suppressor threaded onto the barrel, lying on the pavement under Rafael Salinas’s car.
SIMON CALLED ANDIE’S cell phone. “Get packed,” he said quietly. “We’re leaving.”
“Leaving? But—”
“Salinas is dead. You don’t have any reason to stay. Now get packed, because we have to move fast.”
Numbly she closed the phone. Rafael was dead.
She wasn’t stupid; she didn’t need things spelled out for her. Horrified, she realized exactly what Simon had done. In a daze she gathered her toiletries and dumped them in a suitcase; as she hadn’t unpacked, getting ready to go took only minutes.
Simon appeared at her door within half an hour. The closed, set expression on his face kept her from asking questions. He took the suitcases and she followed him in silence, her eyes as bleak as his.
Two hours later, they took off from a small private airfield in New Jersey, with Simon in the pilot’s seat. Andie had never been in a small plane before, and she didn’t like it. She sat frozen, her hands gripping the edge of the seat as if she could keep the plane up by keeping a tight hold on it. The late afternoon sun was at about two o’clock in her window, telling her they were heading southwest.
As time wore on and they didn’t crash, she lost the sharp edge of terror that had paralyzed her. She managed to say, “Where are we going?”
“Mexico. As fast as possible.”
She absorbed that, looking at his stony profile. He wasn’t angry with her, but he had shut himself off, and she felt helpless to reach him. “I don’t have a passport,” she finally said.
“Yes, you do,” he replied. “It’s in my bag.”
Silence fell once more, a silence she couldn’t seem to overcome even when he had to land to take on more fuel. Life as she had known it was over, and she thought there probably wouldn’t ever
be any going back. Simon would be wanted for murder, and she wouldn’t let him take his chances in a courtroom. He had done that for her; she wouldn’t let him sacrifice anything more, not one minute of freedom, no matter what.
No matter what.
“YOU AIN’T GONNA believe this,” the tech said, swiveling around in his chair. “That camera’s out.”
“What?” Jackson turned on him in disbelief. He could almost feel his hair lift as anger surged through him. “Are you telling me the one feed we need the most, out of all the cameras in the city, is out, and no one fucking noticed? How can you people not notice a fucking blank screen?”
“Because the fucking screen isn’t blank,” the tech shot back at him, his tone hot with annoyance. “Don’t get in my shit, buddy.” He swiveled back to his keyboard and began furiously typing commands. “Here, come here and see for yourself. Look.” He pointed at the screen, at the silent black-and-white images marching with unknown purpose.
Jackson forced himself to rein in his impatience. Getting this guy’s back up wouldn’t accomplish anything, and the hell of it was, he thought whoever had killed Salinas deserved a parade. He wouldn’t turn this into a personal crusade, but he had to do the investigation. “Is that the camera?”
“That’s it.”
“Looks to me like it’s working,” Jackson said, but he dialed back the sarcasm until it was barely noticeable.