Too Hard to Handle, page 11
Her mouth dropped open. Her eyes flew wide. Everything inside her came to a screeching halt except for her stomach. It turned upside down and spewed hot, stinging bile up the back of her throat.
Sweet Christ.
Dan cocked his head, his eyes narrowing into considering slits. “That is,” he said, “if you wanna be there.”
The image of her partner Julia’s charred corpse flashed before her eyes, causing a lump the size of the Rock of Gibraltar to form in her chest. The memory of that night, of seeing her friends reduced to ash and gore, cut into her like it always did. Like shrapnel. Leaving her bleeding and disoriented.
She was supposed to be done with this kind of work. Done taking chances. Done putting herself in harm’s way. But…all her teammates, all her friends, deserved justice. They deserved to have Winterfield spend the rest of his life rotting in a dingy, cold eight-by-ten. And, as Dan said, it was her right, her duty, not only to her lost friends but to the country she’d served for over a decade, to help put him there.
She paused a second longer, her inner war waging one final battle.
“Penni.” Dan placed a hand on her shoulder. The pressure and heat of his palm had her eyes jumping to his concerned face. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I just thought—”
“No,” she interrupted him. “You didn’t.” Then she slid out the clip, checked to see that it was full, and glanced back up at him. Now that her decision was made, determination burned like a hot coal behind her breastbone. “Let’s bring that sorry sonofabitch in once and for all.”
Chapter Eight
Plaza San Francisco
Friday, 9:12 p.m.
Helluva place for a homicide…
The thought ran through Dan’s head as, arm in arm with Penni, he passed by Chelsea, who was pretending to be a distracted tourist studying a map of Cusco while loitering on a park bench in the corner of the little square. Save for Chels, the place was deserted, thanks to the near-freezing temperatures that had descended the instant the sun sank behind the mountain peaks. The sightseers were back at their hotels, fighting the chill with a late dinner and drinks…or with each other. And the locals, having no one around to sell to, had closed up shop for the day and gone home to seek their own reprieve from the night’s frosty breath.
Cusco was one of those cities that rolled up the streets after dark. The only nightlife to be had was tightly contained around the city center, and the rest of the place pretty much turned into a ghost town.
“Ghost” being the operative word. Dan wasn’t given to melodrama—he left that to Chelsea—but the little square was spooky. The kind of setting that belonged in a Stephen King novel.
A few decorative streetlights lit the perimeter around the grassy area, leaving big puddles of inky black shadows everywhere, especially beneath the trees. The only sounds to breach the silence were the burble of the fountain and the shushing sound of his and Penni’s footsteps. And the air was redolent with the earthy smell of damp cobblestones and the sharp bite of an electrically charged atmosphere.
A storm brewed somewhere close by. And it was as if the sky overhead was holding its breath…waiting for something portentous to happen. A lightning strike and a low mist creeping across the ground would make the scene complete.
Dan shivered inside the warmth of his jacket and led Penni toward their rendezvous point. It was an old building around the corner and a block down from the square. Besides being in a great location, it was undergoing renovation so it was guaranteed to be empty. And batting three for three, it also sported a conveniently large portico that cast a massive black shadow they could easily dissolve into. Which is exactly what he and Penni did.
Shrugging out of his backpack, he set it on the sidewalk beside the double doors to the main entrance of the structure. Five seconds later, his lock-pick set was in his hands. Ten seconds after that, the door to the building was open. After replacing his lock picks in his backpack, he shoved the bag just inside the entry and turned to find Penni’s arms crossed, her mouth pursed.
“What?” he asked innocently. She glanced pointedly at the open door, and he quietly cleared his throat. “Let’s just say that growing up on the mean streets of Motor City taught me a thing or two.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, then shook her head when he couldn’t stop the smirk pulling at his lips. He sobered and pointed to her purse. “Keep it or store it?” he inquired quietly.
“Store it,” she said, pulling the strap over her head and handing it to him. He tucked it beside his backpack inside the building and then joined her in leaning against the outer wall. Silently, they waited for Chelsea to arrive and for Zoelner to check in and give them Kozlov’s location.
Dan and Penni had followed the Russian from the hotel when he’d left it a mere ten minutes after they’d finished the call to BKI—obviously the Russian liked to arrive early to these types of things. But they’d been forced to hand off tailing duty to Zoelner when Kozlov made one turn too many on his way to the square, and they feared their continued presence on his six would draw the Russian’s attention.
Kozlov was good. Cautious. Taking a circuitous route to his destination. But they were better.
I hope it stays that way.
Dan rubbed his hands together to calm his nerves at the same time Chelsea—having skirted around the block—approached from the opposite direction he and Penni had chosen to take. Penni shivered beside him. And without thinking, he threw an arm around her shoulders, hugging her close and offering her his body heat. She glanced up at him, the tip of her nose rosy with cold, and gifted him with a soft smile. It struck him as a sweet invitation to bend down and take a taste of her lips.
Some of what he was thinking must have been wallpapered across his face, because when Chelsea stopped beside them and shoved her glasses up her nose, she whispered, “Ugh. You two need to get a room.”
Dan offered her a withering glance he wasn’t sure translated in the darkness. “If you recall,” he said softly, “we had a room.”
A feisty smile split Chelsea’s face. “Oh, that’s right. So, besides the interruption of Kozlov’s call, how did that go?”
“Not as far as I’d have liked it to go. If we’d had ten or fifteen more minutes…then maybe,” Penni said.
Dan choked and glanced down to find her grinning up at him unabashedly. “You’re not making this easy on me,” he warned her.
“Good.” She winked. “Means I’m doing something right.”
And then they just stood there, staring at each other, grinning at each other, wanting each other.
“Holy crap,” Chelsea said. “I don’t know whether to be jealous or sick.”
“Be jealous,” Penni informed her, her tone heavy with innuendo. “Be very, very jealous.”
“Oh really?” Chelsea tilted her head toward him. “That good, is he?”
“Better,” Penni assured.
Both women turned to look at him appraisingly. And when he scowled, they dissolved into giggles. It had been his experience that when women got together, they just naturally joined forces and started making easy targets of the men around them. In an effort to divert their attention away from the invisible bull’s-eye on his chest, he released Penni to activate the button on the side of his diver’s watch. When the little light came on, he pointedly checked the hour. “Almost go-time,” he said, pulling his Ruger from his jacket pocket and gently thumbing off the safety.
His ploy worked. Instead of continuing to poke fun, Penni reached into her coat and transferred his little Bersa Thunder into the front waistband of her jeans.
Convenient, he thought, eyeing the placement and thinking of the ease with which the weapon would be available for a quick draw. If you’re a woman. If you’re a guy, you risk shooting your balls off.
Figuring a bullet in the butt was better than one through the dick, he placed his handgun in its normal position…tucked into the waistband at the small of his back. Maybe not as quick a draw, but he liked his pecker with just the one hole, thanks.
“Are you sure it was a good idea to give her a weapon?” Chelsea whispered, eyeing the Bersa and Penni with equal distrust, the feminine camaraderie having vanished so quickly Dan was surprised he didn’t see a puff of smoke.
He started to jump to Penni’s defense. But Penni grabbed his hand, squeezing his fingers and telling him without words to keep his mouth shut. Like a smart man, that’s exactly what he did.
“I’ve been trained to handle every kind of firearm, from a six-shooter to a sniper rifle,” Penni said quietly, her adorable chin jutting out just a touch.
Ho-kay. So she can definitely fight her own battles. Two things occurred to him then. One, the hotheaded New Yorker in Penni lurked just beneath the surface—he’d probably do well to remember that. And two, the woman had a set of balls on her to shame an elephant. Damnit! Both made him like her more.
“That’s not what concerns me,” Chelsea whispered. “What concerns me is that after what happened in Malaysia, you might be tempted to blur the line between justice and revenge. We need Winterfield alive. We have no idea what he’s sold or to whom. There could be a ticking time bomb out there somewhere. We have to bring him in for interrogation or we could find ourselves in the midst of another 9/11.” Chelsea’s golden eyes seemed to be on high beam when she pinned a look on Penni.
“Look,” Dan insisted quietly. Truth was, he enjoyed a good catfight as much as the next guy. But not when the cats in question were women he both liked and respected. “We’re all professionals here. Penni knows what’s at stake.”
Chelsea studied Penni’s face a second more, and Dan was about to remind her that regardless of what she thought, she wasn’t calling the shots. But before he could open his mouth, Chelsea must’ve seen something in Penni’s expression that eased her misgivings, because she nodded. “Okay, good. So then let’s do this the right way.”
She reached into her satchel and pulled out an earpiece and clip-on microphone. She handed both to Penni. “Mic up and do a quick sound check,” Chelsea instructed, tossing her satchel to Dan and motioning with her chin toward the door at his back.
Penni inserted the earpiece and clipped the microphone to the collar of her parka while he turned to place Chelsea’s satchel beside Penni’s purse inside the building.
Quietly shutting the door behind him, he almost jumped when Penni’s hushed tone slid through his earpiece. “Check, check. You guys copy me?” And either it was the intimacy of having her East Coast accent swirling around in his ear—you guys sounded more like yous guys—or it was the cold of the night, but something made goose bumps erupt up his spine.
“Copy that,” Chelsea said.
“Roger,” he managed through a clenched jaw.
“I’m picking you up too,” Zoelner’s whispered voice suddenly sounded in their ears. “Welcome to the show, Penni,” he said. “And taking a page from Chelsea’s book, let’s get straight to business. Kozlov is set up on the northwest corner of the square. He’s sticking to a dark spot between a building and an alley. And going by his body language and the fact his head is on a swivel, I’d definitely say he’s waiting for someone. I’m hanging back a couple of blocks. I suggest you guys take up positions near the other three corners so we can cover all the angles should Winterfield make an appearance or Kozlov make a move.”
“I’ll take the southeast corner,” Penni said, a consummate professional even if she no longer carried the Secret Service five-point star to prove it.
Before she could turn away, Dan laid a hand on her arm. When she looked up at him, there was a question glowing in her big, dark eyes. “Penni, don’t…” he began.
What? Don’t what? Holy shit, there were so many things he didn’t want her to do that he didn’t know where to begin. If this breaks bad, don’t try to be a hero. Don’t put yourself in danger; catching Winterfield isn’t worth losing your life. No matter what Chelsea said, don’t hesitate to take a shot if you have to.
“Don’t take any chances, okay?” was what he ended up going with. “You and I have unfinished business to take care of when this is all over.”
“That ‘hell to pay’ you spoke of?” she asked, one corner of her mouth twitching, one dark brow arched flirtatiously.
“Heaven,” he promised her. “I thought we agreed it’ll be heaven.”
Chelsea shook her head and Zoelner’s soft groan of disgust sounded through Dan’s earpiece. Right now he didn’t give a good goddamn that they had an audience. Neither did Penni, apparently, because with a wink and a quick squeeze of his fingers, she went up on tiptoe and kissed the side of his mouth.
“Don’t worry about me,” she breathed against his lips. “I’ll keep chicky,” she added.
Dan remembered the saying from Malaysia. It was her unique way of letting him know she was not only exercising her Second Amendment rights, but that she was zoned in and staying frosty. It should have calmed him, given him a sense of relief.
It didn’t.
And when she turned and strode purposefully down the sidewalk, sticking to the shadows, her footsteps barely audible, he was surprised to discover that letting her disappear around the corner was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do…
* * *
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing…
Penni shivered and cursed her English teacher to a life plagued with flimsy toilet paper and stray Lego pieces for introducing her to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Poe possessed a mad penchant for creating a sense of creepy foreboding with words alone, and why that particular stanza from his famous poem should come back to her now was a mystery.
Although, on second thought, maybe it wasn’t so mysterious after all. Because as she stood hidden on the dark stoop of a closed coffee shop, eyeballing the eerily quiet square, she could quite easily imagine a raven alighting atop one of the park benches, its shiny black head cocking, its beady eye glinting in the low light given off by the nearby street lamp, its cawing voice calling hauntingly, “Nevermore!”
Goose bumps peppered every inch of her skin. The hairs on her head stood stick straight. Her panting breaths crystallized in the night air, swirling and coalescing like specters in front of her before disappearing.
She zipped her parka up as far as it would go before shoving her frozen fingers back into her pockets. The place was atmospheric. She’d give it that. And maybe it was the lower oxygen level, but the air around the square seemed abnormally still. Almost breathless.
Or maybe that’s just me.
No joke, she was having a hard time making her lungs work properly. They kept wanting to seize up on her. Which could have something to do with the fact that her nerves were stretched piano-wire tight, the muscles in her entire body burning because she’d kept them tensed for so long. That inner war she’d thought was over and won continued to see the occasional skirmish, and she asked herself for the hundredth time since she left the hotel if she’d made a mistake in agreeing to help.
You already said you would, her old man’s voice whispered through her head. Some folks had little angels or devils sitting on their shoulders and giving advice. She had Sergeant Gerard DePaul. And you’re not a woman to go back on her word.
Flippin-A. In death as in life, her dad was right as rain. Which meant…
Relax. Breathe. Hold steady.
She was in the process of forcing her shoulders down from where they’d crawled up around her ears, twisting her head back and forth to relieve some of the tension, when Chelsea’s rusty-sounding voice whispered through her earpiece. “Penni, I don’t know what you just did, but there’s a faint silver sheen coming from your location.”
Penni glanced down and saw a strip of reflective fabric on the underside of her parka’s collar. When she’d raised her zipper, it’d revealed the strip. What the—? How could she not have noticed that when she bought it?
“Son of a suck-ass bitch,” she hissed, ripping her zipper down to once more conceal the offensive material. As if to add insult to injury, the teeth on the zipper made an overly loud scriiiiitching sound. She winced. Then she held her breath and waited.
They all did.
Utter silence reigned as one second stretched into two. Two stretched into ten. The pounding of her heart was like the ticking of a frantic clock. Lub-dub…tick-tock. And just when she was about to blow out a relieved sigh, Zoelner said, “Kozlov’s moving, ducking into the alleyway.” Her internal alert system flashed from yellow to red. “I’m following,” Zoelner added unnecessarily.
Pressing back into the doorway, Penni strained her eyes toward the northwest corner of the square. She could see nothing beyond the gentle glimmer of the water spurting from the fountain and the subtle ripple of shadows across the ground when a cold breeze rustled the leaves on the trees.
It went without saying that losing track of the modern-day equivalent of a Russian KGB officer in a back alley in Cusco was way down on her list of Safe Things to Do on a Friday Night. Unfortunately, that’s apparently what had happened when Zoelner cursed and said, “I’m at the mouth of the alley. He’s not here. Everyone maintain their positions until I can pick up his tail.”
Unease coursed through Penni’s veins. Come on, come on, Zoelner. Get eyes on.
“Okay, I’m at the other end of the alley,” Zoelner finally said. “Kozlov has ghosted. Fuck. Fuck. I’m heading south around the square toward Penni’s position in case Kozlov saw what Chelsea saw and he’s coming to investigate.”
“I’ll hold my location,” Chelsea whispered.
“I’ll make my way to Penni from the opposite direction,” Dan told Zoelner. “Penni, babe, you needa get the hell outta there.”
“One step ahead of you,” she said, looking both ways and sliding from the shadows to hastily descend the stoop’s two narrow steps. She’d gone no more than twenty paces when a massive baseball mitt of a hand emerged from nowhere and nearly yanked her out of her boots.
