Most Wanted (24 page)

Jasmine sprang to her feet, knocking over her metal chair and taking several steps back, her eyes focused on a point beyond Melanie’s shoulder.

“Jasmine, please, wait!”

Melanie leaped up and tried to grab for Jasmine’s hand, but a vague sense of someone approaching from behind distracted her. She took her eyes off Jasmine for a split second, turning to see who was there. Just then the girl bolted, and Melanie watched in astonishment as Jasmine plunged frantically into the crowd of customers swarming the concession area, running as if she feared for her life. Melanie hesitated for a second, wondering if she should go after Jasmine or let her calm down before they talked more. But the next instant a man brushed by her from behind, following Jasmine’s receding figure in its blue pantsuit. Jasmine hurried toward the escalators on the other side of the mezzanine—the man, clad in baggy black jeans and a tan T-shirt hanging to his knees, hot on her trail. He matched Slice’s general description. Medium height, slim build, close-cropped brown hair. But didn’t a lot of people? Melanie couldn’t be sure it was Slice unless she saw his face.

She took off after them, yelling Jasmine’s name. Jasmine whirled, panic-stricken when she saw the man gaining on her. As Melanie fought her way through the crowd toward them, Jasmine turned and ran, colliding hard with an overweight woman wearing a loose-fitting black dress.

“Aaagh, you crazy bitch, I think you broke my arm!” the woman cursed, grabbing hold of the lapel of Jasmine’s jacket.

Caught in the woman’s grasp, Jasmine hauled back and punched her in the head with all her strength. The woman hit the floor with a thud, the crowd surging in confusion around her prone figure, further obstructing Melanie’s path. Jasmine ran. The man sidestepped onlookers, doggedly pursuing her. Melanie tried desperately to follow, but it was like swimming against the tide, with more and more people rushing over to gawk at the fallen woman.

“She’s out cold! Is there a doctor here?” a man shouted.

“Call 911,” somebody else suggested.

Her own progress toward the escalators virtually stopped, Melanie watched with her heart in her throat as the man caught up to Jasmine and grabbed her by the arm. The phony, terrified smile plastered on Jasmine’s face as he yanked her around told Melanie everything she needed to know. She’d never gotten a clear look at him, but she didn’t need to. It had to be Slice. Who else would Jasmine try to mollify with that pitiful smile? Just then the crowd closed ranks, and Melanie lost sight of them.

By the time Melanie fought her way to the escalators, crucial minutes had elapsed. She hadn’t seen which way Jasmine and Slice went, and now they were nowhere in sight. Think, think. Jasmine was trying to escape. She would have headed down, toward the exits. Melanie hopped onto the down escalator, scanning the floor below for them as she moved. Everywhere she looked in the crowd, tall girls in powder blue leather pantsuits tricked her eye. None of them was Jasmine. Desperately, she pulled her cell phone from her bag, dialing Dan’s pager as she rode downward, beeping him to her phone. Where was Dan now? Could he already be inside the Javits Center looking for her? Please, let him be. She needed backup, fast.

She stepped off the escalator onto the convention-center floor. Which way would Jasmine have run? Which way would Slice have taken her if he caught her? Straight for the nearest exit probably, but which way was that? She sprinted off in what seemed like the right direction, but again the crowds made for slow going. Running on the uneven floor was difficult—one moment plush carpeting dragged at her high-heeled shoes; the next, without noticing it, she’d stepped onto a rotating platform.

Disoriented and out of breath, she almost didn’t stop to investigate when several people ahead of her, who’d been milling around an enormous red Hummer, began pointing upward, toward the skylit ceiling. But then she heard their gasps.

“What the hell is that girl doing?” one of them asked.

“She’s out on the catwalk!”

Melanie looked up. Fifty feet above her head, a delicate metal catwalk hung suspended, connecting the mezzanine to the outside of a sky booth that overlooked the main floor. Jasmine Cruz stood completely motionless halfway across its expanse, gripping the flimsy handrail, paralyzed with fear. Up. Running, crazy with fear, Jasmine had gone up.

Melanie pulled out her credentials, displaying them as she waded into the crowd.

“U.S. Attorney, coming through, coming through,” she said, elbowing her way to a spot directly under the catwalk.

“Jasmine!” Melanie shouted as loud as she could. “What are you doing? Go back! Go back, and I’ll meet you at the top of the escalator.”

Jasmine didn’t appear to have heard her. The girl didn’t move a muscle. Melanie turned and ran back toward the escalators. Her phone began to howl from inside her bag. She dug it out as she ran, nearly dropping it.

“Hello?”

“You beep me?” Dan asked cheerfully.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Just pulled into the parking garage. Why, what’s wrong?”

“Slice is here! He chased Jasmine out onto a catwalk that goes to the sky booth! I’m trying to get up there to help her off!”

“Go! I’m coming as fast as I can.”

She hung up, throwing her phone into her bag. She was just about to step onto the up escalator when a piercing shriek split the air behind her. She whirled around to see Jasmine’s blue-suited figure hurtling to the ground, black hair streaming up toward the soaring ceiling.

MELANIE CLIMBED ONTO THE SLOWLY REVOLVING platform and approached the silver concept car, lit so brilliantly by overhead spotlights that it seemed to exude a supernatural force. Jasmine lay on her back on the car’s broad hood, staring numbly at the ceiling turning many stories above her. The stretchy blue leather of her pantsuit still hugged every curve of her perfect body, but her slender limbs were oddly twisted—splayed out, rigid, her feet in their stiletto-heeled boots pointing inward. Beads of sweat glistened on the heavy foundation makeup that coated her forehead.

“Just hang on, sweetie, help is on the way,” Melanie said softly. Jasmine’s hand hung off the side of the car. Melanie reached for it, squeezing the long, slender fingers, already cold and clammy to the touch. Feeling the slightest return of pressure from Jasmine’s fingers, Melanie stood on tiptoe and leaned forward.

“Do you want to say something?” she asked.

Jasmine’s lips worked, but no sound emerged at first. Melanie leaned closer, placing her ear against Jasmine’s mouth.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Des-tiny,” Jasmine whispered hoarsely. Her daughter. She was thinking about her daughter, just as Melanie would if she were about to die.

Two paramedics carrying a folded stretcher made their way through the gawking crowd.

“EMS! Over here, over here!” Melanie screamed.

“Somebody move her?” the taller paramedic, a commanding black woman with a powerful voice, asked, climbing up onto the platform. Her name tag read B. JONES. “The call said assault victim on the mezzanine level.”

“That’s somebody else,” Melanie said. “Take care of this woman first. She fell from that catwalk up there.”

“Two of ’em? Jesus! Miguel, call for backup while I get the collar on her,” Jones instructed her companion as she removed a large neck brace from her satchel. “Decerebrate posturing, indicates brain damage. We need to get her in right now!”

Melanie jumped out of Jones’s way, praying something could still be done. But Jasmine expelled a long, sighing breath—and then stopped breathing.

“Shit, went apneic on me!” Jones shouted to her colleague. Clambering onto the hood of the car, she began administering CPR as Jasmine’s eyes stared unseeing at the light streaming in from above.

“YOU SURE IT WAS HIM?” DAN ASKED Melanie as they watched the medical examiner’s van holding Jasmine Cruz’s body pull away from the Javits Center.

The afternoon was hot and airless. The scorching sun beat down on her as she struggled to breathe through the exhaust fumes. Dan and the police had searched the Javits Center thoroughly, but Slice had apparently made a clean getaway.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Melanie exclaimed furiously, overwrought that they hadn’t been able to stop Slice, to save Jasmine, or even to apprehend him after the fact. “I never saw his face, but I
know
it was him!”

“I had the exits sealed as soon as I got off the phone with you. A guy at every door, couldn’ta been more than five minutes after we talked.”

“That obviously wasn’t fast enough to catch him.”

“I’m keeping an open mind, but you should, too, okay? Just hear me out on this scenario. You’re putting the screws to Jasmine. She freaks out, gets up and runs off like a bat out of hell, bumping into people left and right. She punched that broad so hard she fractured her jaw, you know. A guy grabs her. Not Slice, okay, just some moke she pissed off by bumping into him. He grabs her, but he doesn’t
do
anything to her. End of the day, she’s so freaked out, she runs out onto a catwalk, and she falls. By accident. A hundred people saw it. Every one of ’em says she lost her footing accidentally.”

Incensed, Melanie shook her head. “No, no way!”

“Okay, why not?”

“
Because
! The guy came from behind me. Jasmine only ran in the first place because she saw him coming, over my shoulder. And he followed her—I watched him. He followed her all the way to the escalator, at least fifty feet through a crowded room, before he grabbed her. That’s why! I’m telling you, it was Slice! I’m not saying he pushed her. But he chased her out there. He
caused
her to fall.”

Dan looked down at her steadily, an indulgent smile slowly spreading over his face.

“Okay. Melanie Vargas is so damn sure that’s what happened, then that’s what happened.”

“Don’t humor me. It’s condescending.”

He sighed. “What do you want me to say? Based on all the facts, honestly, maybe it was Slice, maybe it wasn’t. You never saw his face, so you can’t say for sure. Even if we caught him, you couldn’t ID him. Plus, maybe it’s too upsetting for you to think Jasmine freaked out after talking to you, ran away, and fell off a ledge, right?”

She grabbed Dan’s arm fiercely, her fingers digging into his forearm. “You’re kidding me! You’re not seriously suggesting I’m imagining things so I won’t have to feel guilty? I’m not like that.”

“Uh.” He looked down at her hand. “No, I take that back.”

She let go. “Sorry.”

“Man, wouldn’t want to face
you
down in a dark alley!”

“I may be upset, but I know what I saw.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

“Don’t you even care that this girl is dead?”

“Of course I care. Jasmine was a civilian, even if she went with that animal Slice. She wasn’t a bad kid, and she was actually a decent mother.”

“Mother? You knew about her baby?” She looked at him sharply.

“Oh,” he said, startled, “yeah.”

“You knew she had a baby with Slice?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Guess I heard that at some point.”

“You heard it
when
? Why didn’t you say so when I told you about that tape last night? You acted like you didn’t even believe she was Slice’s girlfriend!” She took a step backward, hands clenching. “What the
hell
is going on?”

“Whoa, calm down, okay? Let’s get my car, and then I’ll explain.”

“How are you gonna explain
that
? I feel like you lied to me, Dan. You better not’ve, because you’re the only person in my life I trust right now.”

As she said that, she realized how true it was. The thought scared her as much as anything else that had happened recently.

He took a step closer, looking down at her with earnest blue eyes. He had such an honest face. Such a handsome, all-American, innocent face. Could he be lying with a face like that?

“Melanie, please. Don’t be upset. I promise, I want to catch this guy every bit as bad as you do, okay?”

“Then why cover up the fact that Jasmine and Slice had a baby together?”

“I was protecting a source.”

“You were
protecting a source
, so you lied to me?”

“Hey, I didn’t lie, all right? Maybe I didn’t give up every last detail, but that’s a big difference.”

She said nothing, shaking her head incredulously.

“You gotta understand,” he said, “I have my own priorities and obligations. Every agent does. But we’re still on the same team.”

“Oh, gee, glad to hear it.”

“That’s right! Never doubt it either. You’re upsetting me, you know.”

“
I’m
upsetting
you
!”

“That’s right!”

He looked away, seemingly stung. She had a powerful urge to reach out and touch him. But she kept her hands at her sides. Dan obviously had his own agenda, and she had no idea what it was. Maybe this whole thing was a con, start to finish—his admiration, the way he looked at her. She was surprised how much that idea hurt. But it would serve her right, for being weak. She’d known the instant they met that she found him attractive. She knew how vulnerable she was, how devastated by Steve’s affair, and yet she’d let her guard down. It wasn’t smart. She had to stop. She’d fight it harder. Keep her eyes open. Remind herself not to trust him, not to like him too much.

Dan looked back at her. “I’m only this upset because I care what you think.”

Can it, she wanted to say. With everything I’ve been through, I’m sharp enough to see through
your
bullshit.

“Dan, please,” she said instead. “Can we focus on Jasmine right now?”

“Sure. Of course.” His eyes were wary, as if he expected her to say something else to hurt him.

“Do you have an address for her?” she asked. “We need to notify the next of kin.”

“Us? That’s not our job. Somebody from the ME’s office—”

“We’re doing it,” she said flatly.

He looked at her and saw how much it mattered.

“Okay, yeah. I know where she lived. Come on, my car’s down in the garage.”