Reluctant Runaway (22 page)

Gordon hung his head. “I was guilty once upon a time, but the blood has washed me clean. I’m not guilty of what they wish to accuse me of now.” He lifted his round face and stared into her eyes. “You were kind to me at the party and at the DC airport when Agent Lucano was rude and hostile. I would crave your presence while I tell him whatever I know that might help him find out who’s responsible for siphoning money from my company.”

The man blinked fast, wetness filling crevasses in his cheeks.

Pity stirred in Desi’s heart.
Yellow light, Des. Don’t
give
Tony an opening to say you’re a soft touch again
. One stranded-in-the-desert experience was enough. “I’ve got a cab waiting for me, Mr. Gordon.” She motioned toward the vehicle idling at the curb. The frowning driver waved for her to get in.

Gordon nodded. “If it would make you feel safer, you could follow my limousine to the FBI headquarters. Is that an acceptable arrangement?”

Desi studied Gordon’s face. Mottled complexion, dull eyes, and drooping stance confirmed an unwell man. But was he an honest sick person or a decrepit crook? “Can I call Tony and tell him we’re on our way?”

“Please do.” Lines of tension melted from his face.

Desi’s breath caught. If one pared away excess flesh, a hint of her father peeped at her in the line of a strong jaw and the way dark brows slashed across a bold forehead. Or maybe she saw those things because he had suggested the relationship. She swallowed against a tight throat. “Let’s go then.” She turned toward the cab.

Gordon moved forward, reaching for her door. Desi shrank away. Thunder cracked, and the rear passenger window exploded. Desi’s scream overlapped the driver’s. Gordon staggered backward and sat down hard on the sidewalk, eyes and mouth round Os. A sharp pain drew Desi’s gaze downward.

Oh, bother! A widening red stain marred her new shirt.

 Eighteen

T
ony jammed the number of the Albuquerque PD into the keypad of the landline phone. The dispatcher came on, but Tony interrupted her spiel.

“This is Supervisory Special Agent Anthony Lucano requesting a patrol car stop by the Coronado Center Mall and page Ms. Desiree Jacobs. There may be a situation developing—”

“Cars are already at the scene. A shot was fired. One casualty.”

Tony’s heart stalled. “Male or female?”

“Female.”

A dark film rose in front of his eyes. “Condition and identity?” Who asked that sensible question? He made himself drag in a breath, clench and unclench numb fingers.

“Unknown and unknown.”

His heart mule-kicked his ribs. “I’m on my way to the scene.”

“Ten-four. I’ll notify—”

Tony slapped the phone into its cradle and ran. Brain jammed into business-only he rounded up a car and driver. Outside, sunlight gleamed against dry tarmac, but the vehicle moved like sludge through spotty traffic. He tuned the radio to the police frequency.

Lots of meaningless chatter—a fender-bender, a high-speed chase on 1-25, a call for backup on a possible robbery in progress. Silence on the mall shooting. Necessary personnel must already be on-site. They wouldn’t do any extra jabbering and no mention
of a victim’s name. Too many people had scanners.

Just another crime scene. Keep a tight rein on speculation.
Desiree! I can’t lose you!

Two-hundred-sixty-two heartbeats later, the car turned into the mall parking lot. The driver honed in on the emergency vehicles. Tony leaped out before the car came to a stop.

He strode between an ambulance and an APD crime lab van. A female figure lay on the canopy-shaded sidewalk with a man in a dark uniform crouched over her … poking … prodding. Not the way an emergency response person handled a live victim. Dread slammed Tony to a halt. He sucked in air tainted with a flavor like a scorched frying pan—the taste of his own terror.

Who died? He had to know. Even if the truth killed something inside him, not knowing was worse.

He ducked under the crime scene tape. A police officer moved toward him, scowling. Tony flashed his credentials. The officer nodded and went back to watching the perimeter.

Tony took a step toward the dimness. Then another and another, gaze fixed on the slender, limp body haloed by a pool of inky liquid.

“Tony?”

The voice whipped his head around. He squinted at the woman running toward him. Someone else lumbered in her wake.

“Look out, Des!” He vaulted the yellow tape, snatched her around the waist, and hustled her to the far side of the lab van. She squirmed in his arms. Warm.
Alive!
He pressed her against the side of the vehicle.

She shook her head. “What in the world—”

He silenced her with two fingers against her lips. “Gordon’s following you. Stay here. I’ll take care of this.” He swept the area with his gaze. No one else nearby. Everyone intent on the crime scene. He moved to the front of the van, patting the empty spot
where his holster should be. Gordon came on. Tony flexed his hands. Stupid time to be without a weapon. He could halt the slimy pachyderm before he got another millimeter closer to Desiree, but now he’d have to—

A hand grabbed his sleeve. He stared down into furious hazel, eyes. Didn’t the woman have a grain of common sense? “Get back, Des. Now!”

Desi stepped away and glared up at him. “Hold your horses, Wyatt Earp. He’s my cousin.” She jerked her head at Gordon, who stopped and looked from one to the other of them. “At least I think he is. Maybe.” A trembly smile crumpled into tears. “Oh, Tony!” She flung herself at him and buried her nose in his tie. “That poor t-teenager was killed.”

Gordon lifted baseball plate hands. “I haven’t told the police, but the bullet was meant for me.” He grimaced. “I came to give you cart blanche to tear my offices apart in order to find whoever is destroying Gordon Corp. Yesterday I discovered that money is missing.” The man slumped, staring at the pavement.

“Ham isn’t well,” Desi wiped her eyes. “We should find him a place to rest.”

Tony stared at her. All of a sudden it’s long lost cousin Ham? “You’d better tell me water flows uphill, Des, because I’ll believe that before I buy you being related to this lowlife.”

Gordon stiffened. “My personal assistant assures me it is so. He’s brilliant at research. Took him mere minutes this morning to find out where Desiree was staying.”

Desi went pale and clapped a hand over her mouth.

Tony stepped into Gordon’s space, so close they breathed each other’s air. “Invasion of privacy is nothing to brag about. And you’ll excuse me if I need more than the word of a Gordon Corp employee about your relationship to Desiree. You don’t hire the salt of the earth.” His jaw muscles knotted. “One of your
truckers shot and killed a member of my squad two days ago. You remember Bill Winston? One of the pet crooks you keep in your kennel? You signed off on his hiring papers.
You are:
going down for the murder.”

The whites showed around Gordon’s eyes. “Oh, dear Lamb of God, help me.” The man staggered over to the van and collapsed against it, swaying and moaning. “Not my signature. He signs
for
me. I trusted … Why didn’t my Inner Witness tell me? Why didn’t I know?” The last word stretched out into a howl, like a wounded wolf.

The guy was sick all right, Sick in the head.

“Tony, don’t you get it?” Desi touched his sleeve. “It’s Mayburn.”

“Who?” He kept a corner of his eye on Gordon.

“Ham’s administrative assistant. It’s been him all along. Hope told me Mayburn has a finger on the pulse of everything to do with Ham’s business.”

Eerie warmth breathed over Tony’s skin. Like a crack had opened in the earth and released a puff of smoke from hell.

Desi squeezed his arms. “It makes perfect sense. We both know Ham’s been caught up in Inner Witness. What an opportunity for a ‘brilliant’ employee to step forward and do what he likes with the company.”

Tony looked at the miserable mound of flesh hunched against the vehicle. The guy was guilty of something, and he was going to prove it. No way Gordon didn’t know what his most valued employee was up to. But maybe this Mayburn was the mastermind. The bootlegging operation would take razor-sharp organization. Gordon was so far gone in the cult he didn’t have two thoughts to rub together about anything else.

Tony’s gut did a dive. As much as he hated to admit it, Desi’s conclusion added up. He’d had Gordon so big in his sights that he missed the evil hidden in the man’s shadow. Everyone at the
Bureau had, and today another innocent had paid for their tunnel vision. His gaze went to Desiree. A dark splotch on her shirt caught his eye, and his breath hitched. “You’re hurt.”

She looked down and touched the spot. “A pebble of flying glass hit me. Just a scratch, but it did ruin one of the two shirts I have to my name.” She shook her head, dark hair bouncing. “Unimportant.”

Tony touched her hair and gazed past her shoulder to the crime scene. His fingers fisted in the softness.

“Ouch!”

Tony jerked his hand away and jammed it into his pocket. “You couldn’t sit tight and wait until someone could escort you? Did you even call hotel security? What were you thinking? You scared another decade off my life, Des.”

Her chin came up. “I seem to have that gift. So tell me, please, what part of this—” she waved over the area—”is my fault?”

Tony choked on furious words.
She
was mad at him? “No one said anything about fault, but you need to think before—”

“Now I’m an airhead? You have no idea what I did to satisfy your concept of
safety
for me. But nothing will ever be enough, will it?” She swiped some of that beautiful mane behind one ear. A turquoise earring gleamed at him. He’d never seen that one before.

He pointed at it. “A guy like Gordon knocks on your door, and you go shopping?” The heads of bystanders and a uniformed officer turned their direction. He lowered his voice. “What am I supposed to think? Would it have been too hard to call the APD and have a squad car take you to my office? You should have been in protective custody until Gordon was rounded up.”

She turned toward the van and nodded at the big man slumped on the pavement with his head in his hands. “Turns out he was pretty dangerous.”

“Whoever fired that fatal shot was.”

Pain and horror filled her eyes.

His mouth filled with apology but he stuffed the words down. She needed to realize once and for all that some mad dog could snuff out her flame and not give it a second thought.

Her nostrils flared. “Seems to me your precious case is solved. Don’t waste time worrying about me. I’m going back to my hotel and booking a flight for home.” She turned and marched away.

Tony strode after her. “Ms. Jacobs!”

She jerked to a halt, spine rigid, head high.

Tony grasped her arm. “I’m detaining you as a material witness. Gordon, too.” Tony motioned to his driver, and the vehicle cruised up. He opened the rear door; Desi glared at him.

“Don’t look at me that way. This one isn’t used for transporting prisoners.” She sniffed and folded herself inside. Tony looked in at the driver. “Take her to the office, make her comfortable in a private room, and don’t—whatever you do—let her out of your sight. I’ll be along with Gordon in a patrol car.”

He watched the vehicle drive away. Desi didn’t look back. Hollow-chested, he turned to Hamilton Gordon. Maybe the man wasn’t behind the bootlegging operation, but he had a lot of questions to answer … and a lot to answer for.

Tony pulled out his cell phone and dialed Ortiz. She answered with a curt hello.

“Your talk with Tank not going well?”

She snorted. “The guy has the vocabulary of an ape and half the IQ. He kept moaning, I’m a dead man.’ I think he means it’d be for real if he talks. We wasted our time. Now Rhoades and I are chugging a gallon of coffee with the precinct captain and going over
again
what the PD has on Snake Bonney’s bikers. Maybe there are more living dead in the bunch.”

Tony took a step toward Gordon, who was pulling himself to his feet. “Haul Tank back into interrogation and mention the name Chris Mayburn. You may end up with a talking ape. As soon as he spills enough for a warrant, round up a small army and go arrest Mayburn and his friends at Gordon Corp. He’s our miracle worker and no doubt operating under a manufactured identity like the rest of them.”

“And you discovered this how?”

“I’ll tell you at the office. I’m coming in with Hamilton Gordon.”

Ortiz groaned. “Don’t tell me you strayed off the reservation.”

“Long story Another dead body.” And a wounded relationship with the most fascinating, frustrating woman in the world.

“ … the most annoying, frustrating man in the world!” Desi muttered as she paced the little room. It had a small sofa, even a TV Off, of course. Who could think about watching the idiot box when she needed to throttle somebody? Preferably somebody with dark hair that refused to lie flat and killer brown eyes that could x-ray lead.

Maybe she should conk him over the head and drag him off to a cave in the middle of nowhere. At least they could get to know one another without any bad guys disrupting their lives. Desi stifled a grin at the mental picture of her petite self trying to drag the big lug anywhere.

Sighing, she plopped onto the sofa and looked at the wall clock. She’d been here over an hour. A small table held the nibbled remains of a ham sandwich beside an empty orange soda can. She sent a sideways look toward the closed door. Should she make a break for it? Yeah, right. Dollars to doughnuts that fresh-faced agent who’d driven her here would be lurking in the hall.

Why was
she
under guard? She hadn’t done anything. Not like the last time she sat alone in a room at an FBI office building. But that was before she and Tony had made a twosome. Now he’d stuck her in this cubicle and hadn’t the courtesy to let her know what was going on.

She got up and resumed pacing. He could be raiding Gordon Corp right now, confronting armed felons masquerading as truck drivers, or throwing out a search grid for a desperate and dangerous Chris Mayburn. A picture zapped across her mind of yawning gun muzzles spurting bullets and a tall figure crumpling. It had happened to Ben. It could—

Stop it!

And he was worried about her. So not fair.

The door opened, and Tony stepped inside, his attention glued to papers in his hand. He left the door open. Mr. Fresh Face in the hallway flashed a smile and wandered off. Maybe she should fix him up with Hope of the Perky Ponytail. They’d make a cute couple.

She cleared her throat and glared at the source of her irritation.

Tony looked up, gaze sober but gentle. “Hey, sweetheart. Everyone treating you right?”

“If by everyone you mean my bodyguard-slash-jailer, yes.” She motioned toward the food on the table.

“Good.” He lowered the papers to his side. “Preliminary report from the mall shooting indicates that either you or Gordon was the target, and the young woman who was killed happened to step in the way. By the time the projectile reached the taxi, where it shattered a window, it had been deflected through her body. Otherwise, one of you.