Cutting Loose (8 page)

CHAPTER
NINE

Saturday, 6:15
A.M
.—Albuquerque, New Mexico

Albuquerque was a nice place, Zach decided, a few birds singing in the morning, the soft hush of dawn before everything from the pavement to the traffic started heating up, Johnny-on-the-spot cops, and the city's schoolteachers had incredible legs.

At least the one trying to get dressed in Charlotte's front seat did.

He kept his gaze forward, mostly, but there was no way not to be aware of Lily Robbins barely a foot away, shucking into her pants. He'd picked her outfit for the day, kept it simple—button-fly jeans, tie-dyed tank top, the suede cowboy boots, and a pair of socks.

“I've got ten thousand dollars in my suitcase,” she said. “You must have seen it, and you can have it all if you let me go.”

She finished with the buttons on her fly and reached down for one of her boots. She'd moved damned fast to get into her clothes once he'd taken off the handcuffs, and he had a feeling that as soon as she got her foot in the second boot, she was going to try and make a run for it.

She wasn't going to get far. He could guarantee it.

“I can have the money whether I let you go or not,” he said around a yawn. That much was so damn obvious, he wondered how she'd missed it.

He slid her a glance. She was on that second boot, jamming her foot into it, tugging it on.

He checked his watch.

Come on, Alex,
he thought. Every minute spent parked on the street, musing about Albuquerque and Lily Robbins's legs, was one more minute the Aston Martin spent speeding away.

“I'm just saying that kidnapping me isn't going to help whatever the hell this mess is all about, and ten thousand dollars is about nine thousand more than you could get out of my family in a good year, which this one hasn't exactly been.”

She got her foot all the way into the boot, jerked the pant leg down over the top of it, and sure enough, her hand went for the door handle.

“That's all I'm saying,” she said, her face still pale, her words a little rushed. “Whatever this is all about, you're better off without me.”

He noticed her fingers slowly curling around the handle.

“Where did you get the money?” he asked.

“You were in my suitcase. You saw the envelope. No name, no address. I thought it was from you.”

Well, that set him back a bit.

“And why would I send you ten thousand dollars and a plane ticket to Tahiti?”

Her mouth tightened ever so slightly, more a sign of distress than anger, and a warm blush of color came into her cheeks.

Oh.

This was sweet.

Damn sweet.

“I would have sent more than ten,” he said, and the color in her cheeks deepened. “We'd be heading for the Maldives, not Tahiti, and I would have signed my name. I'd want you to know what you were getting into.”

She dropped her gaze, and he saw the muscles in her arm flex, felt her fight-or-flight system kick into “flight” mode and settle into a holding pattern. She was actually trembling, and he wondered if she ever played poker, or if he could talk her into it. Her deception skills were—well, they were nonexistent, which absolutely fascinated and appalled him in equal measure.

“Don't,” he said.

It was an order, and his tone shouldn't have left a doubt in her mind, and still she was weighing her options. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind—
Could she make it? Was she quick enough? Would he shoot her, if she wasn't?

The answers to those questions were no, no, and no.

“Don't,” he repeated, something he wasn't used to doing. He was used to being obeyed, but considering that she was the only one currently available for him to order about, he figured his compliance ratio was about to hit an all-time low.

That would not be good.

“If you want to leave, you can. I won't stop you.” Personally, even by his own standards, which were damn high, he was an exceptional liar. “And I'm certainly not going to hurt you.” And that's how it worked for him: Every layer of out-and-out fabrication came with a layer of truth, albeit a thinner layer.

Much thinner.

He was quite capable of hurting her to some extent, if that's what it took to keep her where he needed her. And if it turned out that she wasn't a New Mexico schoolteacher inadvertently overtaken by events, and was actually an international thug out to make a few million selling the bracelet on the black market, appropriate measures would be taken no matter how blue her eyes were.

“But there are a couple of things I want you to consider,” he continued. “The first being that it wasn't my house that got shot all to hell this morning.”

It was an incredibly salient fact, but he still wasn't sure if she'd catch the significance of it right off the bat.

Her answer suggested that she did.

“I-it was mine,” she said.

“And I don't live in Albuquerque.” An equally salient fact.

“I do.” Her trembling increased, which had not been his intent.

“And when the shooting started, I was—”

“Standing in front of me.”

Yeah, she was getting the picture.

“This isn't about me, Lily. This is about you and the bracelet the pilot gave you. I'm only here to help.” In a manner of speaking. Help his country and his agency get what they needed. Helping her was a secondary consideration. No matter what it looked like so far, this was not a PSD, a personal security detail. “Do you know who those men were this morning at your house?”

Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Do you?”

He stared at her for a second. That was it? A question? No movement of her head to aye or gainsay his inquiry?

Oh, she was quick, and the only thing that saved her from his “I'm the one asking the questions here” speech was the ringing of his phone.

Thank God.

“Yes?” he said, answering his cell.

“Good morning. I'm calling from Steele Street at the request of Scorpion Fire. This line is secure.”

“Go on,” he said. The voice was female, which surprised him. He didn't remember there being many, if any, women at Steele Street, at least on the operational end.

“The car you're looking for has stopped on Santa Ana Drive between Seventeenth and Eighteenth streets. I'm cross-referencing that address now to see what's on that block, if it's a residential or business area. If you can give me your location, I'll map your route.”

He looked out Charlotte's window. “I'm on Linden Place, at nine twenty-eight.” He gave her the address of the house across the street.

There was a pause, before the woman came back on the line.

“Continue east for three tenths of a mile and turn north on Whedbee. I'm also tracking down the license plate of the Aston Martin and will have that information shortly.”

“Good.” He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and started the Shelby.

“You'll stay on Whedbee for two miles and turn left on Thompson Avenue. Let me know when you get there, and I'll give you your next direction. Until then, be informed that the Aston Martin is stopped at”—there was another slight pause—“the Sunrise Motel. I'm looking that up now and will give you whatever description I can, which will hopefully include a layout of the building. If I can access their computer, I'll give you a room number for…Jason Schroder. The Aston Martin, Nevada license plate number 01B-4381, is registered to Mr. Schroder. His address is three two two zero Klamath Street, Las Vegas. I'm running him through my databases now…and he is most recently affiliated with Thomas Banning's organization. Mr. Banning, as you may know, is a mob figure, with a base of operations in Las Vegas. I'll have a photograph of Mr. Schroder up in a moment.”

Uh, okay, Zach thought, beginning to wonder who was on the line with him, and how many computers she had running.

“Schroder is registered with a Paul Stark in room number two seven six at the Sunrise Motel,” the voice said in a matter of seconds, and he wondered, really, could anyone hack that fast? On the other hand, how secure could the Sunrise Motel's system be?

Obviously not very.

“Schroder is thirty-four years old, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred and eighty-five pounds, white-blond hair, brown eyes, looks to me like he's pumping a lot of iron.”

Okay, that information had to be coming up on a different screen than the one she'd used to jack into the motel's system.

“He checked into the Sunrise four days ago and is paying with a Visa card. If you need that number, I can give it to you.”

“Uh, no.” Who was this girl? She sounded kind of young, but how young could she be to be running Dylan's communications console?

“In about five…make that two minutes, I'm going to have you onboard with the Bazo PC concealed in Charlotte's tape deck, and all this information will be streaming to you.”

His gaze went to the eight-track slot on the dash. Well, that was an unexpected upgrade, a Bazo.

“I'll set the PC to automatically open a file and save everything I send,” the voice continued, “so you can access it at any time. In one minute, your tracking map will be in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.”

A small, hardly bigger than palm-size computer slid silently out of the eight-track opening. It tilted itself upright, then came on, lighting up with a stream of data scrolling across its screen.

“Thirty seconds,” the voice said. “Your speaker will be on, with two-way secure communication with me here at Steele Street, and I will terminate this call. The PC has a camera, which will also be turned on. Anything you want turned off, just let me know. Scorpion Fire has requested that we be of service to you. If you need something, ask.”

As a matter of fact, he did have a question.

“What can I call you?”

“SB303.” She no sooner spoke than a stream of pixels washed down the small PC screen—and there she was, in living color, in real time.

An odd, unexpected emotion gripped his heart.
SB303
. He didn't know her, but he did. It was in the chopped blond bangs and the platinum-blond ponytail. It was in the tattoo he saw snaking over the top of one of her shoulders. It was in the hot pink bustier, in her soft mouth and her button nose—and it was in her eyes, pale, silvery blue eyes looking straight through him.

SB303
. Street girl. She'd been there. A long scar coursed diagonally across her forehead and cut through one of her eyebrows.

She'd been hurt.

“Hi, Zach,” she said, a warm, surprised smile curving her mouth, her voice coming through the speaker in the onboard computer system.

The odd emotion intensified for another second, then another, before he was able to put it aside, compartmentalize it, and move on.

“SB303.” He nodded once. It was a street name, a tag, her initials and the Denver area code.

“Here comes your tracking map on the Aston Martin,” she said, and the map appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the small screen.

He heard the phone call get disconnected, and he pocketed his cell.

“You should know that as long as your Bazo PC is up and running, I'm tracking you,” she said. “If you want the signal terminated, I can give you the code, but we would prefer to stay with you and provide support.”

“We?”

“The team.”

The team. She meant SDF, and SDF meant Dylan, and he didn't doubt for a moment that if Dylan wanted to track him, he'd be tracked—unless a direct order to the contrary was forthcoming from Alex. The same went for voice communications. If he determined it was in the best interest of the mission to disappear off the grid, his call to Alex would be the last one Steele Street monitored.

He checked the map and made his next turn. The Sunset Motel wasn't far now, only a couple of miles.

“Can I use the Bazo as a secure line anywhere?”

“Yes.”

Good.

Any line of communication could be intercepted. The advantage of using the Bazo lay in its distance from him. No one would be listening for Alejandro Campos on a line routing from a 1968 Shelby Cobra, through Denver, to wherever he called—except, for now, SDF and SB303.

And Lily Robbins. She was listening to every word.

“Keep the signal on.” If something happened to him, it wasn't a bad idea for someone to know how to find her. “I have a passenger.”

“Lily Lamont Robbins?”

Yeah. Lamont. That was right. He gave the computer screen a quick glance.
Christ
. What didn't the woman know? The name had been in Lily's dossier, sure, along with her married name of Lily Bersani, but how had SB303 known she was with him?

“Sorry about the…uh—” the blonde said, giving her head a small shake, knowledge of her mistake written all over her face.

“Yeah,” he said. She shouldn't have used his name. The line was secure, yeah, but Charlotte's passenger seat wasn't. He should have said something himself.

He checked the screen again, turned onto the next street, and came up with two answers to his question. Rydell could have told her about Lily Robbins. The SDF operator knew Lily had been in El Salvador and knew she lived in Albuquerque. Zach had in no way leaked any information about Lily being with the pilot and filming his death, but it was known that they'd both been at St. Joseph's. His second answer was that, quite possibly, the baby-faced blonde in the pink bustier simply knew everything. Dylan would like that in a girl.

He'd like it a lot.

She'd known Zach's name, and he wasn't sure what in the hell to think about that.

He gave SB303 another look. Sure enough, there she was, looking like jailbait and sliding her way through cyberspace with all the skills of a world-class interface pirate. Still, no one at SDF could know anything about the bracelet or his mission.