Hard Target (16 page)

A pregnant, knowing pause lingered between them. "Be careful, Dawna. Altitude sickness can cause fluid to accumulate around your heart, not to mention the less severe symptoms like bursting into tears or becoming clumsy. And it can affect your judgment, too."

He was concerned that she was alone with Tay. "I'm fine," she said as briskly as possible. "We'll be home ASAP."

"Check your map. I know when the vice president and I went up there, some of the vehicles took another route home."

"I'll look for one on the map."

"Or you can spend the evening doing up the report I want on my desk by morning."

His tone was only half-joking. Something to ease the tension, but also something to keep her focused on her task and not on Tay. Ambassador Legace knew her well.

"Ambassador, can you arrange to have Cabanelos' body autopsied?"

There was another distinct pause. "I'll get Lucy on it first thing tomorrow. Be careful." He rang off.

She set the phone down between them, before easing away from Tay. "The ambassador's going to try to arrange an autopsy." She stared out the windshield for a few minutes before dragging out her pen and pad. "I may as well start my report to him, while we're stuck here."

Chapter Nine

Tay doubted it was altitude sickness that made him act so strangely, but it was better for Dawna to think such a thing. What would she say if he'd told her he was haunted by his mother's voice, years after she'd died?

But it was definitely poor judgment that caused him to want to haul Dawna onto his lap and kiss her senseless. Until
he
was senseless. Yes, poor judgment, all right. This was a criminal investigation. Someone had tried to blow up the embassy and now Cabanelos, the sniper who'd fired on them two days after the blast, had just died from natural causes?

Too convenient.

He caught a glimpse of Dawna through the corner of his eye. She'd flicked on the small, passenger side dome light and was writing fast and furiously in her notebook. He didn't need to rekindle the fire between them. He had nothing to offer her.

Plus, he couldn't compromise the investigation by not focusing on it with all of his attention. Both he and Dawna, and the rest of the embassy staff for that matter, would be at risk.

A noise grated into Tay and he yanked himself from a light doze to full attention. The sun was barely over the eastern end of the plateau, and Tay looked out with surprise at the beautiful vista. It was morning and they'd both dropped off to sleep. Then someone tapped again on the tinted window.

Dawna jumped and peered past him. "It's the doctor."

Tay climbed out of the car, followed immediately by Dawna. The doctor shook his head in reproach. "You hear the road washed out. But you leave the church. Foolish."

"Yeah, well, we did," Tay answered bluntly. He looked beyond the rear of the car. A pair of domesticated llamas stood patiently at the edge of the smaller washout. 

A long, white bundle lay slumped over the larger of the animals. Cabanelos, Tay presumed.

"You'll make it over the washout, I imagine."

"Llamas are good for this, but Cabanelos is too heavy. Need two llamas." The doctor pointed to the skid marks near the smaller cave-in. "You two very lucky," he said in broken English. "Bad roads all the way down."

He looked over to the body. "I take man down now," he added. "Oruro Hospital will get him to the morgue in Cochabamba."

"So much for gathering the DNA and crime scene evidence," Tay muttered wryly, at the contamination of the body wrapped only in a sacramental cloth.

The doctor shrugged, probably not understanding what they said. "This is all I can give you."

But if Cabanelos was poisoned, maybe they didn't need anything but tissue and body fluids. "When will they repair this road?" he asked the doctor.

Again, the doctor shrugged. "Today, tomorrow."

Dawna picked her way around the car, choosing her steps wisely through the muck and scruffy, wet sod. She carried a map. "Isn't there another way down besides this road?"

"
Si
," the doctor said. He took the map and spread it across the trunk of the car. "Here, but very bad. You drive slow, okay? Watch for washouts."

"This road makes that cart path we were on look like a major highway," Dawna announced an hour later, after prying her fingers off the dash to ease a cramp in her hand. She wasn't being sarcastic. It was a horrendous road.

Surprisingly, Tay laughed. "It isn't so bad. Your basic driver training as a private must have been worse."

"No, it wasn't." They'd had to wait until the villagers came to fill in the lesser washout. She and Tay had tried to help with the hard work, but the thin air had made it nearly impossible for them to do more than a few minutes work. The villagers had laughed when Dawna dropped the shovel and plopped down on the edge of the cave-in to catch her breath.

"They're laughing at us, you realize," she had snapped at Tay, who still did his share of shoveling. "They must think we had no oxygen in our brains when we tried to drive down the mountain."

"We didn't," Tay had replied with a smile. "Let them have their fun. They're fixing the road, aren't they?"

So she'd let them laugh. Now, careening precariously over bumps and dips and inclines no doubt illegal in North America, Dawna forgot the lack of oxygen and the filthy grime on her body. Right now, she just wanted to get safely back down the mountain.

The path dipped once more, then leveled out somewhat as the hillside evened to a gentle roll. Dawna took in a welcome lungful of air.

No more poor judgment. She had nearly succumbed to reaching for Tay and was only too happy to blame it on the altitude. Crazy. And it won't happen again.

Dawna sank back against the chair in her office the next morning, and let the scorching coffee she'd just poured sear her throat.  

It had taken them four hours to crawl down the mountain to Oruro, and then a few more hours to drive back to Cochabamba. She'd spelled Tay off with the driving and then dropped him at his hotel as soon as they entered the city. Since the main staff had already left the embassy for the evening, she went home herself and crawled into bed.

"You beat me in this morning."

Dawna peered over the rim of her coffee mug. "And I washed out my mug. Thank you. Now, if you want a coffee, help yourself. I believe Ramos' mug hasn't been thoroughly cleaned in a few weeks."

Tay smiled. She hid the hint of a returning smile behind her coffee. Like the evening at the restaurant, he'd dressed in casual pants and a sports jacket. "Had two cups at the hotel," he said. "Sleep well?"

"Like a baby, all night long." Leaning back, she set down her mug. "How did you sleep? You seem the power nap type."

"I've done my share of power napping, but never on duty."

"Hah! You weren't a cop on duty for long enough. I did patrol in the north for longer than you were a Mountie."

Tay sat on the edge of the desk, looking relaxed and obviously unaffected by her scoffing. He lifted his hands heavenward. "What can I say? The military lured me away with a better pension."

Dawna let out a soft snort. "It's the same public-service pension. Well, as long as you're wide awake now, are you feeling up to an autopsy? The ambassador pulled some strings and arranged it for this morning. In fact, I just got a call from the hospital that Cabanelos has arrived and they're waiting for us."

"Let me stop and buy some Vicks."

Dawna laughed. "The smell isn't that bad. Lucy's cats' litter box smells worse. I took care of them once when Lucy went back to Ottawa late last year for a visit."

Tay frowned as he stood. "She doesn't have any relatives in Canada."

"She didn't say who she was visiting." Dawna let the smile fall from her face. "You're quite up-to-date on the staff here."

"The embassy was attacked. Of course I'm going to find out as much as I can about the staff. But there was only so much I could find before I flew down. Lucy's from Ottawa, isn't she?"

"Yes. She grew up and got married there. I believe her husband died quite a few years ago. They never had any children. What did you learn about me?"

 "Nothing I didn't already know." He met her gaze evenly, his expression revealing no more than hers had with her benign question. "Except that you like Cheez Whiz."

Dawna rose, smiling smugly at him. "That's where you're wrong. I
love
Cheez Whiz." Hearing the phone ring in the security office, she walked toward the noise. Marconi was on duty and had just hung up the phone.

"Sergeant," he said. "Ramos called in sick today. But he left this message for you."

Tay came up behind her as she accepted the folded note Marconi held out to her. Without opening it, she led Tay into the corridor. "Can you get the car out of the cage? I'm going to pull Ramos' file. We can read it on the way to the hospital."

Tay glanced down at the folded note, but made no request to read it. Dawna watched him disappear down the corridor to the drivers' room. Last night had been both difficult and yet satisfying. She couldn't explain it, except to say that brainstorming with Tay, even at a high altitude and close quarters, brought her an inexplicable sense of bonding. He was intelligent. If she could just keep their relationship on a business-only level, he would be a valuable asset. They still had far to go in this investigation, but she trusted his instincts. He was good at his job.

He was also good at other things, but she pushed aside those thoughts as another potent realization struck her.

So far, she'd learned to trust Tay more than she had expected. And with the trust came that disconcerting satisfaction.

She looked down the empty corridor, biting her lip. Tay had been here for mere days and suddenly she was ready to trust him again? It almost made real forgiveness possible. And with forgiveness, would she want to rekindle that spark from three years ago? She wasn't sure.

With a controlled sigh, she opened the note from Ramos.

'Sergeant
,' it read.
'Looked into the blue truck as you asked. A man named Joseph Martin rented it from an agency foreigners use a lot. He used an American passport and is staying at the Hotel D'Oro. The clerk remembered him because when he was looking at the passport, he noticed the man had come here directly from Buenos Aires, but did not have an international drivers license only a US one.'

Hardly anything suspicious in coming from Buenos Aires, but maybe the clerk had remembered it because it was expected that an American would have an international driver's license. She wasn't sure if it was required or not.