Deadly Pursuit (SCVC Taskforce) (21 page)

“Londano couldn’t have gone far with him. Chief’s a big man. What I can’t figure out is how Londano got him in the first place.”

“He might have had help.”

Thomas shot Cooper a look. “The second guy the neighbor talked about?”

Cooper nodded, hand tight on the wheel. “Celina said the man who attacked her wasn’t Emilio. Similar, but not him.”

“Enrique?”

“Enrique’s still in jail awaiting his arraignment.”

“Are we sure about that?”

Cooper ran a red light behind the ambulance. Decided to see how far Thomas might go with his speculation. “That attack was pretty violent for a wimp like Enrique.”

“True. Enrique’s more into drinking and slutting around.”

“Not a lot of motivation. No balls compared to his brother.”

“Plus, he doesn’t have the emotional investment in Celina that Emilio does. Enrique might want revenge on her for screwing up their business, but he’d be less personal with it.”

Cooper cut his gaze to Thomas. “You’re starting to sound like a profiler.”

“I thought about joining them.” He took out his cell phone. “FBI tried to recruit me, but when I found out the profilers rarely get to shoot anybody, I quit taking their calls.”

Cooper reached out, patted him on the shoulder. “Good choice.”

Thomas made a call and confirmed Enrique was still in jail. As Cooper drove into the hospital parking lot, he found a slot, shut off the light, and sat watching the EMT’s unload Celina from the back of the ambulance and whisk her into the ER door. “Can you think of anyone else our second man might be? Anyone else that matches your profile?”

“What are you thinking, Coop?” Thomas was watching him.

Cooper was mostly thinking about Celina and how much he hated hospitals. Hated blood. Hated Emilio Londano and every other maggot like him and Valquis who lived and breathed Southern California air. “Celina says it was Petero Valquis.”

Thomas’s reaction was understated. He thought about it a minute, nodded. “It fits. At least it would if he were alive.”

“Enrique’s alive.”

Thomas drummed his fingers on his knee. “And maybe Val is too. Interesting. That makes it a whole new ballgame, doesn’t it?”

“Give me her bag.”

Thomas handed him the nylon bag and Cooper caught a whiff of Celina as he set it in his lap. He didn’t know if it was perfume, shampoo or what, but it smelled good. Clean and healthy and impossibly young. He handed the car keys to Thomas. “Go home, get some sleep. I’ll call you with any updates.”

“I want to stay. I can make some calls and do stuff from here. Keep your coffee cup full.”

Looking at his partner, Cooper saw a younger version of himself, understood Thomas’s request. He’d made a few like it when he was starting out in law enforcement. Thomas was a good kid and smarter than he usually let on. One of the things Cooper liked about him.

He nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“What’s that?” Celina asked the nurse. The woman was short and plump and holding a syringe filled with something the ER doctor had rattled off a few minutes ago in his orders. Celina figured it was the morphine she’d told him she didn’t want. The doctor had ignored her refusal and now the nurse was doing the same.

“That broken wrist must be painful.” Dark curls of hair framed the nurse’s face. Her nurse’s top was covered with cartoon cats. “On a scale from one to ten, ten being the most painful, give me a number for your pain level.”

Ten
, Celina thought.
Ten plus a few, actually
. Her wrist, her hand, her whole arm ached. The ER doctor had stripped the EMT’s handiwork off, x-rayed her wrist, confirmed she had a fracture, and then rewrapped it. Since her job required her to shoot a gun accurately, any problem with her wrist was serious. A specialist had been called in to discuss surgery.

Celina’s whole right side throbbed from the indelicate treatment. Her hand and wrist were propped on pillows. They’d moved her out of the ER and upstairs to the med/surg floor. Her stitches hurt too. The topical Novocain the doctor had swabbed her cut with before stitching the wound closed was wearing off. And, on top of all that, her head pounded. The man who attacked her had been strong. Emilio-strong. Still, she didn’t believe it was him.

Valquis. The weasel. She’d had little time around Emilio’s lieutenant while undercover, but she’d bet her last Mountain Dew it was him.

Eyeing the syringe, Celina ignored the part of her brain begging for the contents. Pain medication would make her sleep. Sleep made her an easy target. As the nurse tore open a small square pouch and pulled out an antiseptic wipe to clean a port on Celina’s IV, Celina shook her head. “I don’t want it,” she lied.

“Don’t be silly, young lady,” the nurse chastised. “This will help you sleep.” She stuck the end of the syringe in between her teeth and used them to remove the cap, but before she could stick the needle in the port, Celina sat up.

“I said no.” She jerked out the IV tubing and the syringe went flying to the floor.

“What’s going on in here?”

Cooper stood inside the door, his face a block of granite, looking from Celina to the nurse. In his hand was a soda Celina had requested. She choked back an unbidden sob of relief. Just the sight of him bringing her Mountain Dew made her want to weep.

“She’s refusing to take the pain medication the doctor ordered.” The nurse, pissed now, retrieved the syringe from the floor and placed the cap back on the end. “And wasting it in the process.”

“I’m sorry for making you drop it.” Vertigo hit and the room swam in front of her. “But I don’t want to sleep.”

“The doctor ordered—”

Something inside her broke, snapped as cleanly as the bone in her wrist. Shock and rage and guilt boiled inside her. “I don’t give a monkey’s pink ass what the doctor ordered.”

With her good hand, she grabbed the metal rail on the side of the bed to keep from swooning as the room continued to spin. “I don’t want pain killers. I don’t want to sleep. For three nights straight, a psychotic killer has terrorized me. He’s stalked me, killed an agent guarding me, and stuck a knife in my partner’s back.” Angry tears bubbled up in her eyes and she blinked to keep them from falling. “Tonight he beat me up and God only knows what he did to my section chief.” She used her shoulder to brush away a stray tear and lowered her voice. “If I don’t want the fucking morphine, than I damn well have the right to say no.”

Cooper must have moved in behind her and set down the soda, because she felt his hands on her upper arms. “It’s all right, Celina.”

He drew her back against the pillows and spoke to the nurse, who’d taken a step back and was looking at Celina as if she’d grown a second head. “Give us a minute,” he told her and the nurse sighed and gave him a curt nod.

As she retreated from the room, Celina called after her, “And I’m not a young lady. I’m a full-grown woman. An FBI agent.” The door shut and Celina glanced at Cooper who had one eyebrow raised at her. “What?”

“Jesus, give the poor woman a break. She’s just doing her job. You don’t have to take the morphine.”

Celina settled her injured wrist on the pillow and covered her eyes with her left arm. Her hair was a mess and she had no makeup on. She had exchanged the bloody T-shirt for a clean one but she smelled like the hospital: antiseptically clean and medicinal. It turned her stomach. “Damn right, I don’t have to.”

Celina heard a soft
ssss
beside her. Cooper had opened her Dew. She peeked under her arm and he held it out to her. “But you do need sleep.” He helped her sit up and take a drink. “It’s going to be hard to sleep if you’re in pain.”

Celina let him take the bottle out of her hand. She wiped her lips, rubbed her eyes. It felt weird using her left hand for everything. “You ever see
Nightmare on Elm Street
?”

“I don’t watch horror movies, but I know what it’s about.”

“This is like the Emilio version.” Celina slid down in the bed. “I close my eyes, the slasher comes after me.”

Cooper’s next words hit her hard. “I won’t let him get you, Celina.”

He looked worried, tired, burned out. His stubble was filling in; he’d have a beard in another day. What would happen in that time? If he stayed with her, would he be the next one to disappear? To die?

She shook her head. “You’re not responsible for me. You can’t protect me.”

He placed his hands on the bed rails and leaned over her. “I want you to take the medicine the doctor ordered.” When she started to protest, he stopped her. “A half dose of what he ordered if that makes you feel more in control, but you need to sleep. You can’t help me catch Emilio if you’re sleep deprived. I need you well rested and ready to go. I’ll be right in that chair,” he motioned to the chair in the corner. “I won’t let Emilio get you.”

He stared at her and Celina felt that familiar heat flowing between them.

“I promise,” he added.

Her heart beat a crazy little rhythm. Her left hand reached up and touched his face. The stubble tickled her palm. “You’re unbelievable,” she murmured, loving him for his courage and his strength. “But, if anything happens to me, you have to promise me you will not feel responsible.”

She saw something shift in his eyes. Saw them soften. “I can’t promise that.”

“Then no deal.” She dropped her hand, forced her voice, her demeanor to channel the Terminator. “No morphine, no drugs, no sleep. The next time you turn your back, I disappear, and I handle Emilio alone. I will not let you put your life in danger or make you responsible for mine.”

Cooper shoved off the bed, crossed his arms over his chest. She knew he purposely towered over her in an effort to intimidate her. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”

Celina turned her head away, focused on the wall. She was too tired to fight with him over the moniker. She hoped he didn’t call her bluff. Walking out of the hospital and going after Emilio on her own was out of the question at the moment. She couldn’t even sit up without getting dizzy.

“All right,” Cooper said, his acquiescence a bit too easy, too tidy. Celina knew he was cutting her slack. “I promise. Now will you take your medicine?”

Celina turned her face back to him. “A half dose, like you suggested, but just this once.”

Cooper smiled at her as he pushed the call button. The nurse returned and two minutes later, the morphine was spreading through her veins, the warmth it brought with it easing the aches and pains and forcing her to relax. Cooper pulled up the chair next to her bed, sat watching her.

“At least I got in a few good jabs.”

“Mary did, too, at the safe house. Guy’s got to be feeling a little pain tonight as well.”

“Have they found anything out about Chief Forester?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

Cooper shook his head. “Crime scene techs will turn up something. Don’t worry.”

She moved her arm pillow to the left side, turned her body toward Cooper and scrunched up in a fetal position. Laying her injured wrist on the pillow, she used her left hand to tug the hospital blanket over her shoulder. “How did he get Forester out of the room?”

They both knew who ‘he’ was. “Did you look through your overnight bag to see if anything was missing?”

“My cell phone,” she told him. “I had it next to me in bed when I went to sleep in case you called with news. It was gone when I woke up, but it’s probably lost in the sheets.” She suddenly straightened and pushed up on her elbow. “But what if he’s got my cell phone? He’s got my family and friends, all their phone numbers. He can find them, Cooper.”

“I’ll put Thomas on it.” Cooper pushed her gently back down as he went to the door. Sticking his head out, he called for Thomas.

Celina mentally groaned at the thought of another of her SCVC teammates seeing her lying in a hospital bed looking the way she did, but her concern over her family’s safety trumped her ego. She gave Thomas the names of everyone in her cell phone’s address book and as many numbers as she could remember off the top of her head. Maybe it was the morphine, or maybe it was the fact that she had set up most of her family and her closest friends in speed dial, but she found she couldn’t remember many. As Thomas left to go to work on notifying everyone, Celina closed her eyes. “I want protection for my parents.”

“Dupé will agree, I’m sure,” he said. He held her good hand, and as she drifted off to sleep, she heard him on his cell phone ordering security agents to be sent to guard each of her brothers and their families as well.

Chapter Twenty-two

Sara Rios felt Cooper Harris’s
eyes on her. She was standing in the bathroom of Celina’s hospital room giving him, Thomas Hawkins, Nelson Sanchez, and Mitch Holton an update on her hunt for Emilio Londano.

All of their gazes rested heavily on her, but Cooper’s eyes were especially intense. He was sizing her up from the tip of her head to the soles of her shoes. He was pissed and scared and it was pure, raw emotion keeping him standing. As much as his posture—head and shoulders thrown back, arms crossed—screamed top dog, leader of the pack, his eyes told her he was second-guessing himself. While it wasn’t her job to reassure him, she wanted to anyway. She liked him. He reminded her of another alpha male she just happened to be married to.