Breaking Away (9 page)

She knew what she looked like. Old bruises green and yellow, new ones purple, red and black. She’d looked in the mirror and seen them for four long years. She peeled the tape free and jerked the patch off of her eye. Let them see. Let the world see what he did. A scream of pain and rage pushed against her chest. Maybe someone would stop him.
Someone has to stop him!

The door swung open. Sam covered her breasts with an arm.

“Of course she’ll see me. I’m her mother—”

A security guard gripped Paige Cross’s arm. Both froze at the open door. Paige’s mouth opened and closed as though she couldn’t catch her breath. The security guard turned his face away with a jerk. “Sorry ma’am.” He dragged Paige back out, grabbed the edge of the door and closed it.

“Who is that?” Tammi asked.

Sam fought the urge to crawl back under the bed, as she’d done last night. “That’s my mother-in-law.”

San Diego

Flash wrapped the stone seals and tablet in bubble wrap and shoved them into the cardboard box. Trusting this kind of merchandise to UPS seemed wrong somehow, but he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t exactly drive up to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s building and drop it off in person.

NCIS wouldn’t be brought into the investigation anyway—not yet. FBI guys didn’t admit they needed help or that they’d made a mistake. By sending evidence to NCIS, he might motivate someone to stir the pot a bit, and someone might turn a beady eye on the agents involved in the sting.

But then, Gilbert could tell them anything and they’d buy into it. Cops trusted cops.

But what did he have to lose by doing this?

He wrapped the cell phone he’d used during the mission. NCIS would access the voice mail and hear the message themselves. Thus far the phone and the answering machine audio file were the only proof he had he had been under cover as one of the smugglers.

And he was taking no chances. He’d also copied Dobson’s final cell phone message onto his computer’s hard drive. Just in case.

Captain Morrow, the commander in Iraq, could vouch for the FBI’s visit. And there would be a record of his participation in this sting at headquarters. It had to go through the chain of command. He had the short email message from HQ stating his orders were amended. But it didn’t state what the amendment was.
Hell, he’d been in a freaking war zone.
It wasn’t as though he could get letters every day. But he’d received the hard copy of his paperwork when he got home, and it was in his safety deposit box.

Why hadn’t he demanded more info?
Why hadn’t he double-checked with HQ?

Because his mind had been on other things
. Brett had been in a coma, Hawk was injured, Doc was messed up too, and everything was up in the air about whether or not they were going to make it back as a team.

As for the money, he didn’t know where the hundred thousand had come from. Dobson hadn’t mentioned a name. And he’d been cagy about some details of the mission.

Flash had acted out the scenario as he’d been instructed. Followed orders. There had always been a tracking device in the artifacts bag during each sale. But apparently not this time.

If there had been, the FBI would be in his face right now.

They obviously hadn’t thought they’d need to track the artifacts or turn in the money. And now that he had it instead, all they had to do was accuse him of exactly what they’d planned to do themselves.
With his juvie past and his gambling—he was the perfect patsy.

But why would they risk everything for a little over thirty thousand dollars each? There had to be more to it.

What if they were skimming money from each sale? And Dobson had discovered it?

Jesus! This was driving him crazy.
He was sick of going over and over the same scenarios in his head.

He read through the letter he’d written outlining the sting, folded it into a thin strip, then wrapped it around the phone and secured it with a rubber band. He stuffed the phone and the two FBI badges into the box with the artifacts and sealed it. As he wrote the address across the front, his stomach muscles tightened. He was trusting UPS with his future—and NCIS. He’d send the next package in a day or two, once he was clear of the area.

He went to the head, then stared at his reflection in the twelve by twelve piece of glass over the small sink as he washed his hands. The side of his face and head were still swollen from the trauma. Multicolored bruising encompassed his ear, temple and one eye. The trench the bullet had carved though his scalp was crusted with a beginning scab. It looked ugly.

He’d neglected to shave. A beard much darker than his brownish-blond hair shadowed the lower half of his jaw. He’d scare young children if he didn’t cover up.
Hell, he scared himself.

Returning to the galley to retrieve his ball cap, he adjusted the plastic clip at the back to accommodate the swelling and pushed a pair of cheap sunglasses onto his face to cover his eyes. The moment the side stem touched his head it triggered a dull throbbing.
Fuck! Just when it had eased off
. But he had to wear the glasses. People remembered eyes more than any other feature, and he still had no idea what steps Gilbert had taken to find him.

He shoved his arms into the sleeves of his windbreaker, slung the backpack over his shoulder, and picked up the box. Keeping his head down and his face shadowed by the bill of his cap, he strolled the four blocks to the UPS mailing office.

The early morning sunshine reflected harshly off the concrete sidewalk, intensifying his headache, so he moved into the shadows to avoid it. A car rental place came up on the right and he eyed it with longing. Paying for cabs sucked and limited his mobility, but he’d have to use a credit card to rent a vehicle. Had they found the car he’d leased? Would they have it staked out? It wouldn’t hurt to check that out.

Only three people were ahead of him in line, and while he waited he called a cab to pick him up outside the store. When he inched up to the counter, the woman looked up, and her gaze traced the bruising he hadn’t been able to cover with either the hat or his glasses. “Motorcycle accident?” she asked.

The lie came easy. “Car accident.” His car had been involved. It had more holes in it than he did.

She grimaced in sympathy and weighed the package. “Do you want to purchase insurance?”

How much insurance would he need to replace something that was irreplaceable? “No. I trust you to get it where it’s going in one piece. But you’ll need to stamp it fragile.”

She smiled and stamped the box, put a printed tag on the outside and taped both ends. “Just in case,” she said with a smile.

Flash forked over the ten-fifty and offered her a grin as she handed him a receipt.

The cab was waiting outside. The driver leaned against the side of the car, his arms crossed “You call a cab?”

“Yeah, that was me.” He slid into the back seat and gave the man an address four blocks from the parking structure where he’d left his leased Porsche. The San Diego traffic swallowed them, and he leaned back in the seat and, bending his head, took the glasses off and let the pain recede a little.

“What business do you want me to drop you at?” the driver asked.

“You can drop me at the corner of B Street and Sixth.” He shoved the glasses back on his face.

“There’s a bunch of lawyers got their offices on that street, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking about seeing one.”

“Looks like you got a good case. Better take pictures before the damage fades.”

“Good idea.”

The cabby fell silent and ten minutes later he whipped the car just past the corner.

Flash tucked money for the trip into his hand. “Thanks for the advice and the ride.” He slid out of the car and slammed the door. He waited until the cab pulled away before turning down Sixth Street. Then he wandered past the downtown businesses and entered the parking structure.

Instead of heading to the elevator, he took the stairs in the center of the building to the second tier, then jogged up the steep incline to the third level. The rows of parked vehicles stretched silent and shadowed. He scanned the area for anyone sitting in a car and eyed the one van parked close by. Nothing seemed out of place, and the only movement was a guy getting into a Hyundai. Flash waited for him to pull out and head down the incline before approaching his Porsche.

The Porsche’s cherry red hood reflected the dim florescent bulbs from overhead. She sat sleek and powerful, just waiting for him to slide behind the wheel. Why hadn’t they found the car and confiscated it? Had they found it and put a GPS tracker on it? Were they just waiting for her to move? Or had they forgotten about the lease? Gilbert might have believed he had returned the car to the dealership.

Were these wheels worth the risk?

Flash set his pack down on the concrete next to the front wheel, then circled the car, running his hands inside each wheel well. The Porsche sat close to the ground, so he lay on his back and scanned the undercarriage on first one side, and then the other, then checked out the front and the back. Satisfied the exterior had no tracking device installed, he pulled the key from his pocket and hit the button to unlock the car.

Though it took time, he then searched every inch of the interior and the trunk. Satisfied nothing had been touched, he got behind the wheel and started the car.

He sat for a moment waiting for his heartbeat to slow and the wave of anxiety to ease. If he’d missed a tracker, they’d be on him in a heartbeat. He pumped the gas and listened to the sound of the engine, allowing it to sooth him.
Fuck’em.
He put the car in reverse and backed it out of the space.

He was halfway to Gilbert’s apartment before he relaxed enough to enjoy driving the Porsche again. He wasn’t going to blend into any neighborhood with a car like this, but what the fuck. He shifted gears and settled further into the seat. It felt good to be mobile.

He studied Gilbert’s apartment complex as he approached it. Set within a residential area of condos and homes, the place was a step above his own apartment but not flashy. That wasn’t surprising. If you had bundles of cash you weren’t supposed to have, you didn’t wave your arms around to let everyone know.

He drove past the complex and parked two blocks down in the visitors’ slots of another apartment complex. Grabbing his backpack, he climbed out, locked the car and walked toward the apartment directly in front of him, then cut across the well-trimmed grass to the driveway of the complex next door.

Sticking to the trees that lined the parking lot, he followed the fence around the pool. Reaching the complex, he scanned the parking lot to make sure Gilbert’s nondescript car was absent before mounting the back steps to the third floor. A woman passed him going down, and Flash nodded but kept climbing. He slowed his pace and waited for her to get into her car and drive away. Then he pulled out the lock picks he’d cobbled together from an old umbrella he’d found in a corner of the boat.

Certain Gilbert wasn’t home, he still paused outside the door, braced himself, then knocked. If by some twist of fate the man actually was at home, he’d rush him and take him down fast. When no one came to the door or called out, Flash pushed the improvised picks into the flimsy door mechanism and, with an easy twist of his wrist, opened the lock. The dead bolt took a few more seconds.

He pushed the door open and scanned the living room.
Jeez Gilbert, you ought to have better security.
Pausing briefly to listen to the silence, he finally stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER 8