Operation: Midnight Rendezvous (2 page)

“We think the boy witnessed her murder.”

The knot in Madrid’s chest tightened. Poor kid. “Aw, man.”

“I’m sorry,” Cutter said after a moment.

The last thing Madrid wanted was sympathy. “If you want to make me feel better, give me this assignment.”

Cutter grimaced, softened. “Mike, I know you and Angela were…close.”

“It was a long time ago. She was a friend. That’s all.”

Judging from the look on his face, the other man wasn’t buying it.

Madrid didn’t waste his time asking any more questions. Cutter wasn’t going to tell him what he needed to know, and time was of the essence if he was going to bring that boy home. There were multitudes of ways to glean information, a task Madrid had always been very good at.

Reaching into his jacket, he removed his MIDNIGHT identification badge from his wallet. Next he tugged the Beretta .380 from his shoulder holster and set both on the conference-room table.

Cutter shook his head. “Don’t do this, Mike.”

“Then give me this case. Tell me what I need to know.”

“You know I can’t do that. Damn it, this isn’t about revenge.”

Another smile twisted Madrid’s mouth. “It’s always about revenge,” he said, and walked out the door without looking back.

M
IKE
M
ADRID WAS LIKE
a bloodhound when it came to tracking killers. Once he had the scent, there was no stopping him. After speaking with Cutter, he went back to his place and began calling in favors. He put his not-
so-aboveboard computer skills to work and hacked a secure database the feds had deemed unhackable. Within hours he had a name.

Jessica Atwood.

Twenty-eight years old. Waitress. Recent messy divorce. From Phoenix. No children. No immediate family. She and Angela had gone to college together some ten years ago. Atwood didn’t have a record, but Madrid knew that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of murder. Under the right circumstances everyone was capable of murder. The burning question now was what did she want with the kid?

He caught a flight from D.C. to Sacramento and drove straight to the small town of Lighthouse Point on the coast. Located on Luna Bay, the town was a shipping port and as picturesque as a turn-of-the-century seascape.

Surprisingly, no other MIDNIGHT agent’s were in sight. Some could be there, undercover, he knew but in his mind, the MIDNIGHT Agency should have been all over this. After all, one of their own had been taken out by a killer.

“I can’t believe Angela is gone,” chief of police Norm Mummert said with a shake of his head.

The chief’s office had been his first stop. Madrid had identified himself as an investigator with the U.S. attorney’s office out of San Francisco. Thanks to his vast stock of fake IDs, he had the credentials to back it up. But no one had questioned him.

“Angela was a police officer?” he asked.

“One of my best.”

“Tell me about Atwood,” Madrid said.

“She seemed nice enough. Pretty and young. She was staying with Angela. From what I understand they went to college together.”

“They were friends?”

Mummert nodded. “I made some calls and found out Atwood had some trouble back home.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Divorce. Things got ugly. She took some money and ran. She needed a place to stay. Angela opened her door.” He shook his head so hard his jowls shook. “I never had Atwood pegged as a killer.”

“Do you have evidence that she is?”

The chief looked at him as if he were dense. “She attacked my officer with a knife and made off with the boy. Her prints were all over the place, including the murder weapon.”

“Motive?”

“Hard to tell. We suspect she was after the child. It’s the only scenario that could even begin to explain this terrible tragedy.”

Mummert was a rotund man with sagging eyes and a drooping lower lip. Even though Angela had been murdered less than twenty-four hours ago, he looked as if he’d been up for a week. “Angela was like a daughter to me. She was a good police officer and a friend.”

“Any idea where Atwood is headed?” Madrid asked.

The chief sighed. “I’ve got every available officer working on this. The state police have put out an APB. I swear it’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Maybe she had an accomplice who picked her up.”

“We were pretty quick setting up roadblocks. I don’t think that’s the case.”

Having gleaned all the information he was going to get here, Madrid rose and extended his hand. “Thanks for your time. I’ll be in touch.”

On the sidewalk in front of the police station, Madrid looked around the small town of Lighthouse Point and wondered what Angela had been doing here. She’d been posing as a police officer. He wondered if her assignment had gotten her killed. The old emotions taunted him with unexpected force—emotions he would be a fool to acknowledge when he had a killer to find.

He got into the rental car and started the engine. He’d already been to the crime scene, seen the bloodstains and the trashed house. Though he’d processed dozens of crime scenes over the years, this one had shaken him badly.

Putting his hands on the steering wheel, he looked around the small town. “Where did you run?” he whispered.

He knew where Atwood had last been seen. The area had been thoroughly searched by cops on foot and in a helicopter equipped with infrared. Scent dogs had been deployed. The police were baffled that she’d escaped.

But Madrid had a distinct advantage over other law enforcement officials. An advantage not even his fellow MIDNIGHT agents possessed. He’d known Angela Matheson on a personal level. He knew her hopes. Her dreams.

He knew her secrets.

He knew Angela kept an undisclosed refuge. Most undercover operatives did, on the outside chance they needed to lie low during a mission.

From what I understand they went to college together.

The police chief’s words reverberated in his head. Words that reiterated the fact that Jessica Atwood and Angela had once been friends. There was a distinct possibility Angela had told Jessica Atwood about the cottage, particularly if Atwood was on the run from some abusive husband. Located on Wind River Island just a mile off the jagged coastline, it would make the perfect hideaway.

Finding her there might be a long shot, but Madrid had always been a gambler. He knew from experience that sometimes a long shot paid off.

“You can run,” he said aloud as he pulled away from the curb. “But you can’t hide.”

T
HE WATER SURROUNDING
Wind River Island was fraught with dangerous undercurrents and high surf; not many people ventured to the small, heavily forested island. There were two marinas in Lighthouse Point, and within the hour Madrid was able to ascertain that Angela had owned an open fisherman named
Riptide
. Though she hadn’t signed it out, the boat was not in its slip.

He waited until dusk and rented a decent-size fishing boat under the pretense of partaking in some early season king salmon fishing. But instead of going upriver where the salmon were beginning to spawn, he headed out to sea.

With a storm barreling in from the northwest, the heavy surf tossed the boat as if it were a toy. It took every nautical skill Madrid possessed to maneuver the treacherous waters. Using the lighthouse on the south side of the island as a beacon, he finally located the only inlet. It was nearly midnight when he docked at a dilapidated pier and tied off. By the light of a three-quarter moon he set out on foot to find Angela’s killer.

The island was small, but on foot and operating in darkness, he took an hour to find the cottage. It was a rustic clapboard structure nestled in a sparse forest of hemlock and cedar. The cottage was built on a precipitous slope. On the west side, high cliffs ran a hundred feet down to where an angry sea battered the rocky shore.

The perfect place for a safe house.

Pulling his .40-caliber rubber-grip Taurus from his shoulder holster, Madrid approached the cottage from the rear. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. If Atwood was there, she was being careful. But he could see a dim light coming from inside.

“Gotcha,” he whispered, anticipation whipping through him.

He slithered along the siding at the rear of the cottage and peered around the corner. A screened porch overlooked a tangle of wind-mangled hemlock. He could hear the roar of the surf below. Holding the pistol ready, he stepped around the corner.

“Don’t give me a reason to kill you.”

He jerked at the sound of the female voice coming from directly behind him. For an instant he considered
spinning, firing and maybe getting off a lucky shot. But the sound of a bullet being chambered changed his mind.

“Drop the gun,” she said. “Now.”

Madrid couldn’t believe he’d let a woman get the drop on him. A
civilian
. Not only was it humiliating, but dangerous. His ego was just big enough to be more bothered by the former than the latter.

“You got me,” he said, and dropped the Taurus.

“Get your hands up.”

He did as he was told.

“Turn around. Slowly.”

More disgusted with himself than frightened, he turned. The sight of her shocked him, like electricity snapping through every nerve ending in his body. She was not what he’d expected. Though he’d seen photos of her in the course of his research, none of them did justice to the doe-eyed beauty holding that deadly looking pistol.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she demanded.

“My name is Mike Madrid,” he said easily. “I’m a federal agent, and I’m looking for you.”

She blinked as if she hadn’t been expecting him to admit the truth so readily. Madrid studied her. Even in the dim light slanting through the window, he could see that she was small, but athletically built. She wore snug jeans and an oversize sweatshirt that revealed little of her figure beneath. But Madrid had a good imagination, especially when it came to women. He figured she was curvy in all the right places. A hell of a thought for him to be having when he was pretty sure this was going to end badly.

Her hair looked somewhere between blond and brown and fell in unruly tendrils to her slender shoulders. Her eyes were the same gray-blue as the ocean pounding the beach below. Her bow-shaped mouth was full and, despite the worried frown, perfect for kissing.

Not that he was going to be kissing her, he reminded himself. He might have a weakness for beautiful, dangerous women, but he drew the line at fraternizing with a cop killer.

“Why are you looking for me?” she asked.

“Because I’m going to take you in.”

She laughed, but it was a hopeless, humorless sound. “Get inside. Now.” She jabbed the gun toward the house.

“Whatever you say.”

That was when he noticed the sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Her complexion was ghastly pale, but her cheeks were tinged pink. Her eyes had a glassiness to them he hadn’t noticed before. A glassiness that wasn’t caused by adrenaline or fear. Drugs? he wondered, and prayed she hadn’t hurt the boy.

“Where’s the kid?” he asked as he opened the door.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He stepped inside and turned to her, careful to keep his hands up. “Give him to me and I’ll let you walk away from this.”

Anger flickered in her eyes. But the gun wavered as she closed the door behind her. “Why are you so interested in the kid?”

“Because I don’t want him hurt.”

“Or maybe you want to finish what you started.” Her teeth pulled back in a snarl that was distinctly feline,
and she jammed the gun at him. “Here’s a news flash for you. I will not let you hurt that child. You got that, slick?”

Madrid was adept at reading people. Now his well-honed instincts were telling him this woman truly believed he meant the child harm. But why would she think that when she was the one who’d kidnapped him and murdered his mother? Was she mentally unbalanced? Psychologically unstable? Or was there something else going on he didn’t know about?

“The police found Angela’s body,” he said. “You’re the prime suspect. Surely you know you’re not going to get away with this.”

“I did not kill Angela.” Her voice broke on the name, but she took a shaky breath and continued. “She was my friend. She was helping me.”

“Your prints are on the murder weapon.”

“I picked it up, but I didn’t use it.”

“You took the boy.”

“To save his life.”

“From whom?”

“The police. They tried to kill both of us.”

“You ran. They think you’re a killer. That’s what happens.”

“I didn’t run. I mean, not at first. I took off when I realized they were going to shoot us down in cold blood.”

He didn’t believe her. Not one iota. “Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know.” Wincing slightly, she motioned toward a chair at the small table. “Sit down.”

Madrid didn’t take the chair. He stood his ground and faced her. “What are you doing to do? Kill me, too?”

“I haven’t killed anyone. I’m just trying to stay alive.”

He watched her closely as she snagged a length of rope from the coatrack near the door. She leaned heavily against the table as she passed by it. She was shaking now. The tendrils of hair framing her face were wet and pasted to her skin. Fever, he thought. Was she sick?

“How did you find me?”

“That’s what I do. I find people.” He lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “It wasn’t that hard.” He cut her a hard look. “It’s only a matter of time before the police figure out where you are.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the darkened windows beyond. In her eyes Madrid saw the worried look of a hunted animal. One that was tired and ready for the hunt to end. Good, he thought. She was exhausted and scared, that gave him an edge. He moved closer.

She turned to him abruptly, jabbed the gun at the chair. “I told you to sit down. Put your hands behind your back.”

“You’re not going to get away with this. Why don’t you make this easy on both of us and give it up before someone gets hurt?”

“Someone already has been hurt,” she snapped. “Angela is dead and for some reason unbeknownst to me, the police think I did it. Now they’re trying to kill me and that innocent little boy.”