One Wrong Step (20 page)

Translation: foster care. Until a responsible relative could be called in or until April got her act together enough to convince a judge she was a capable parent. According to the CPS caseworker, this wasn’t the first time her kids had been left overnight without supervision.

After the caseworker left, Chantal had called Celie into her office and launched into a tirade that began with the words, “It saddens me to do this, but…”

“Wow,” Dax said now. “Bitch of a night, huh?”

“You could say that.”

Dax reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a small prescription bottle. Her migraine meds. He handed her the container.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Something in your voice told me you might be needing this. I got it from your medicine cabinet.” He passed her a bottle of mineral water.

Celie was speechless. Dax was, quite possibly, the kindest man she’d ever met. Didn’t it figure they’d never have a shot at being a couple?

“Thanks,” she managed. She would
not
cry. She hated bawling in front of other people. It was the worst way to dump all your problems into somebody’s lap.

Dax stopped at an intersection, and Celie could feel him looking at her. She popped open the bottle and took one of the pills. As she replaced the cap, she noticed her doctor’s name on the label and thought about McAllister’s snooping. A little nosing through her bathroom, and he had discovered all her secrets: she took fertility drugs; she suffered migraines. She used acne cream and heartburn tablets. She hadn’t experienced night terrors in years, but she kept prescription sleeping pills on hand for emergencies.

McAllister had pried open a door into her private life, and he obviously hadn’t liked what he’d seen. Who could blame him? His reaction didn’t really surprise her, but it did make her angry. He’d snooped through her stuff and then used everything he’d learned as a reason to dump her. She’d been stupid to think she could trust him. Digging up dirt on people was one of his special talents, and no one was off-limits.

Dax battled the morning traffic across central Austin. Thankfully, he didn’t fill the silence with annoying platitudes. He sipped quietly from a mug of coffee and left Celie to herself.

After finishing the bottle of water, she leaned her head back. If she was lucky, the pill might stall the migraine for a little while. Most likely, she’d still spend the better part of her day in a silent bedroom with the blinds sealed shut. Celie closed her eyes and tried to do yoga breathing.

Dax turned down the stereo. “Celie?”

“What?” She opened her eyes and glanced at him. Just as she’d expected, he looked worried.

“There’s something you need to see.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

She almost laughed at that. What could he possibly show her that could make this morning worse than it already was? She took a deep breath. “What is it?”

Dax reached into the backseat and scooped a newspaper off the floorboard. He handed it to her. A cold sense of foreboding settled over her as she unfolded the paper and read the headline.

“Drug wars rage in Austin.” Beneath the headline was a photograph of the Lamar Street Bridge swarming with emergency personnel. In the background of the picture, among all the ambulances and squad cars, a blonde woman stood beside what looked like a gray Volvo. Her back was to the camera, but any enterprising reporter could probably track down the license plate and figure out who owned the car.

Celie shook her head. She’d known this was a possibility last night, which was why she’d stayed away from the media. Or so she’d thought. “Well, at least my face didn’t make the front page.”

Dax shot her a disbelieving look.

“What?”

“That’s it?” he asked. “I only skimmed the first few paragraphs, but I thought you’d be much more upset.”

Celie glanced beneath the picture and started to read. Before she got halfway through the column, her gaze jerked back to the byline.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “He didn’t.”

R
owe trained his gaze on the hospital entrance, looking for a young brunette with her arm in a sling. Kate was scheduled to be discharged at 10:00 a.m. today, and James Kepler’s silver Tesla Roadster in the pickup driveway indicated this was still the plan.

But it was 10:45, and still no Kate.

Rowe settled lower in the Buick’s front seat and adjusted his baseball cap. If anyone he knew saw him out here like this, he’d be forced to say he was here checking up on a witness, which—as excuses went—was pretty damn weak. In reality, Rowe had no official business here whatsoever. Yet here he was, checking up on a witness, the witness he’d failed to protect, the witness who was, at this very moment, being transferred to a rehab hospital so she could recover from the gunshot that had wreaked havoc with her right arm. According to Kate’s doctors—whom Rowe had interviewed under the flimsy pretense of tying up investigative loose ends—Kate might never recover the full use of that arm, and she certainly would have nasty scars on it for the rest of her life. On the upside, given Kate’s young age and otherwise excellent health, her doctor thought her stint in rehab might be as short as a few months.

Rowe’s cell buzzed. He checked the number and snapped it open. “Any updates?”

“I’ve got good news and bad,” Stevenski said. “Which do you want to hear first?”

Rowe hated this case. “Bad.”

“Okay, Zapata’s team down in Michoacán has some new info. About eighteen hours ago they recorded a phone call—from a San Antonio pay phone again—informing Saledo his guy had been arrested trying to intercept the money, and his two hundred thou had been seized by the feds.”

“Let me guess,” Rowe said. “Saledo wasn’t happy.”

“No, he was pissed.”

Rowe gritted his teeth. This was precisely why Rowe had been arguing with George Purnell about the need to get Cecelia Wells to a safe house. But the SAC, who suffered from a lack of funds and an even bigger lack of imagination, had said that was unnecessary. Saledo knew his money was gone, right? So why should the FBI waste resources babysitting a civilian who no longer had plans to act as bait in an important sting operation? As a token measure, Purnell had assigned an agent to keep tabs on Cecelia for a few days.

“I’m not hearing any good news,” Rowe said, imagining yet another civilian casualty on his conscience.

“The good news is, Manny Saledo seems to have completely lost interest in Cecelia Wells.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

The hospital doors parted, and out came Kate in a wheelchair pushed by her father. She was trailed by a hospital staffer laden with overnight bags and a floral bouquet. James Kepler rolled Kate to the curb, where his covertible sat waiting.

“Believe it,” Stevenski said. “Saledo told his informant to get his ass down to Michoacán. Saledo’s convinced there’s a power struggle afoot, and he’s gathering his guys together for a meeting.”

James Kepler opened the car door and helped his daughter in, taking care not to disturb her arm, it looked like. Kate wore sunglasses, a black tank top, and white shorts that showed off her slender legs. Rowe couldn’t take his eyes off her, or the sling, and he wondered once again how bad her pain was.

“What’s that mean, ‘power struggle.’ Is there something going on we don’t know about?”

Stevenski scoffed. “Of course. We don’t know shit. But we
do
know that there’s an elevated level of chatter among all the major families. And this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this rumor about a power struggle. Saledo’s circling the wagons, it sounds like.”

In an ideal world, it wouldn’t matter. Cecelia Wells would have her safe house, Enrique Ramos would have a mother who gave a shit, and Kate Kepler would have a full-time FBI bodyguard to protect her for the rest of her long life.

“So let me guess,” Rowe said. “Purnell is using this new intelligence as an excuse to nix the safe house idea for Cecelia Wells.”

“You got it. The safe house is officially off the table, but he’s agreed to keep surveillance for the next couple weeks until things settle down with Saledo.”

Kate’s dad loaded her luggage into the Tesla’s minuscule trunk and got behind the wheel. The nurse gave Kate the flowers and waved good-bye as the car eased forward. Rowe watched it pull away from the hospital with a soreness in his chest.

John pushed through The Overlook’s beveled glass doors and mustered a smile for the security guard behind the counter.

“Hey, Terrance, how’s it going?”

This was John’s fifth visit to Celie’s building in two days, and he knew damn well he was making a pest of himself. His boundless knowledge of Houston Rockets trivia was the only thing keeping him in Terrance’s good graces.

“She in?” John asked, as he approached the granite reception counter.

Terrance gave him a suspicious look, which John took for a yes.

“Man, people been stoppin’ by all day,” the guard said. “I’ll tell you what I told everyone else. The girl is
not
home.”

John smiled slightly. “But she is, right? Come on, Terrance. Her car’s in the garage.”

He frowned. “You supposed to park in the visitors’ lot.”

John leaned on the counter. “I did, but I can still see her car in there. Just buzz me up, okay? I know she wants to talk to me.”

Terrance tipped back his swivel chair, making his navy blue uniform strain across his belly. “She wanna talk to you so bad, how come she don’t pick up the phone?”

“Hell, how should I know? Maybe she thinks I’m one of those reporters coming by to cop an interview.”

“Man, you
are
a reporter. I seen your name in the paper this morning.”

Damn. Now what? John hadn’t heard from Celie in almost three days. In that block of time she’d been interrogated by police, fired from her job, and hounded by the media. John was getting worried. He’d tried calling Dax to get into the building, or at least get an update, but the man wasn’t home.

John gave Terrance an earnest look. “Tell me one thing. Have you seen her at all today?”

Terrance frowned. “Shoot, I could get in trouble, you know. Ms. Wells told the building manager she didn’t want
nobody
bother’n her.”

“I won’t get you in trouble.”

Terrance shook his head. “You didn’t hear this from me, but she just left a few minutes ago. Don’t know where she was going.”

“How’d she leave if her car’s here?”

“Someone picked her up out front.”

“Man or woman?”

“I didn’t see.”

“You get a look at the car?”

Terrance heaved a sigh. He probably thought John was whipped.

And he was probably right.

“One a those little hybrid things,” Terrance said finally. “White.”

Who drove a car like that? Not the bodyguard. Maybe one of her girlfriends? It sounded like a woman’s car.

John tapped on the granite with his knuckles. “Thanks, man. Tell her I came by, okay?”

Terrance nodded, and John retraced his steps through the double doors. The instant he got outside, he was hit by a gust of hot air. He squinted up at the sun.

John had planned to spend his Saturday afternoon rappelling with some guys from work, but instead he’d devoted most of it to tracking down Celie. He’d been to the Bluebonnet House, where he now knew she no longer worked. He’d been to campus. He’d even been by the neighborhood Starbucks, but he couldn’t find her.

A red 6 Series BMW rolled by and slid into a visitor’s space next to John’s Jeep. Andrew Stone got out and locked the car with a
chirp. Lone Star Monthly
probably paid better than the
Herald
, but John preferred to think Stone was indebted up to his eyeballs.

John scowled at Stone as he crossed the lot.

“What’s up?” Stone tucked a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses into the pocket of his starched white shirt.

“Cecelia’s not home.”

Stone propped a shiny dress shoe on the curb. “That right? I just talked to her on the phone.”

John gritted his teeth. No way had Celie taken a phone call from this dickhead if she was dodging reporters. Stone was full of shit.

“Yeah, well I just talked to her, too, and she was on her way out. Tell me what you want, and I’ll make sure she gets the message.”

The side of Stone’s mouth ticked up. “I imagine I want the same thing you do.”

John crossed his arms.

“You know, you’re pretty smooth, McAllister. I knew I recognized her from somewhere, and then it finally hit me. The Sixth Street Rapist trial. You were sniffing around that one, too, if I remember correctly.”

John didn’t say anything.

Stone lifted his gaze to the upper floors of Celie’s building. “She’s a good little scoop, isn’t she? Got a knack for getting herself in trouble. Pretty, too. Makes for a compelling human-interest story.” He flipped his Beamer keys onto his palm and smirked. “But you already know all that, don’t you?”

Still, John didn’t say anything. Stone was baiting him, and John refused to give him a reaction.

Like smashing his fucking nose in.

“Is that your message?” John asked blandly. “I’ll be sure to give it to her.”

Stone smiled and nodded at the double glass doors. “Thanks, anyway, buddy. I’ll give it to her myself.”

Celie was walking past the Clock Tower on campus when her cell phone rang for the third time since lunch. She checked the caller ID, expecting McAllister’s number to pop up again, but, to her surprise, it was her mom.

Celie answered the phone. “Hi. What’s wrong?”

Her mother never called her mobile. She considered it impolite to use cell phones in public, which pretty much negated the point of having one.

“Cecelia. Do you have any idea what day it is?”

It was Thursday, but her mother’s chilly tone told her she wasn’t asking the day of the week.

“I give up.” Celie sighed. “What’d I forget?”

“Abby’s
birthday
was yesterday. She said you didn’t even call her.”

Celie sat down on the low concrete wall near the student union building. “I’m sorry, Mom, I’ve been so busy—”

“I swear, Cecelia, sometimes you act like you’re the very
center
of the universe! Is it too much to ask for you to give your sister a few minutes of your time? Or are you too busy partying up in Austin?”

Partying. Yeah, right. Then abruptly Celie realized what this was really about.

“Did Abby get anything special this year?” she asked, even though she knew she hadn’t. If her sister’s long-term boyfriend had finally gotten around to proposing, Celie would already have been summoned home to shop for bridesmaids’ dresses.

“Don’t be spiteful, Cecelia. You know how sensitive Abby is about this birthday.”

“I know, Mom.”

Actually, Abby wasn’t sensitive about this birthday, but her mother was. There was an unwritten rule in her mom’s bridge club that all daughters must be married off by the time they turned thirty, or it reflected poorly on the family.

“Cecelia?”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll give her a call.” She glanced up to see Andrew Stone standing in front of her. He flashed her a smile and tucked his hands into the pockets of his tailored slacks.

“Mom? Sorry, but I’ve really got to get to class.”

Celie clicked off, and Andrew took a seat beside her on the wall.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“I knew you were a student, so…” He shrugged. “I figured you’d be around somewhere.”

Sure. UT had only about fifty thousand students, so obviously if he just showed up on campus, they’d bump into each other.

He’d accessed her schedule somehow. He’d probably followed her straight out of the social work building when her last class let out.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I just wanted to say hi.” He smiled, and she understood why McAllister hated this guy. He seemed completely incapable of a sincere facial expression.

She stood up. “Well. Hi. I hate to rush off, but I have a seminar in five minutes, so—”

“Wait.” He took her hand, and Celie felt a spurt of irritation. She didn’t like men touching her without her permission.

Except McAllister.

She pulled her hand away, and he pretended not to mind.

“I’ve got a project I’m thinking about, and I thought I’d run it by you,” he said smoothly.

“Let me guess.” She zipped her cell phone into her backpack. “‘Married to the Mob,’ but with a Texas flair? Or wait, how about ‘Fugitive from Love’?”

“I beg your pardon?” He acted confused.

“I’ve heard half a dozen this week. Mostly from local TV producers, though. I guess, if you interview me, I’ll be a
statewide
celebrity. That’s something to look forward to.”

He frowned. “It wouldn’t be like that. I don’t work for a tabloid—”

“No offense, but they’re all the same to me. My private life is private, and I’d rather not discuss it with the news media.”

Andrew’s eyebrow tipped up. “Last I checked, the
Herald
was a media organization.”

She waited for him to finish his point. If he so much as
suggested
that she’d given McAllister some kind of special treatment…

“Just give it some thought, okay? I know you’ve been through a lot.” He stood up and gave her his “sympathetic friend” look, complete with reassuring arm squeeze and furrowed brow. “You might find it cathartic to share some of your experiences. It might help bring closure to this chapter in your life.”

She brushed her hair out of her face and looked at him. “I think what would bring me closure would be for you and everyone else in your profession to just leave me be.”

She turned and walked away, cutting across the grass to get to the student union, where she could lose herself in the mob of students seeking snacks and coffee. She wove through clusters of people and headed down a stairwell to hide out by the vending machines. The basement of the building was a place she knew well—it provided refuge when bright light and noise threatened to bring on a headache, like the one worming its way into her skull right this minute.