Catch Her If You Can (13 page)

I did my best to keep busy until we quit for the day. I usually head home around five or five thirty but left a little early to primp prior to picking Mitch up.

Imagine my dismay when, in the midst of my preparations, I discovered I’d developed a serious case of fish breath. I brushed my teeth, gargled, brushed again, and popped wintergreen-flavored Tic Tacs all the way to the airport.

Mitch called when his plane touched down, so I was waiting at the curb when he walked out of the terminal. He looked so damned good with his long, easy stride and the sun burnishing his dark gold hair, that my toes curled against the soles of my flip-flops.

I’d worn my dressiest pair in Mitch’s honor. He calls them my Dorothy flops because of their two-inch-thick ruby red soles and sequined straps. I’d teamed them with snug jeans and a similarly sequined red tank. The color brought out the auburn highlights in my hair, which I’d left down—also in Mitch’s honor, although I’d had to tie it back during the drive to keep it from slashing my face and putting out an eye.

I had it properly tamed when Mitch tossed his carryall in the back and slid into the passenger seat. I leaned across the console and into his kiss, hoping the Tic Tacs had performed as advertised.

Evidently so, as he tugged me back for a second round before stretching out his legs and laying his arm across the back of my seat. “What’s with the dents and busted taillights? Or should I ask?”

Mitch and I had met during my pre-Sebring days, when I drove a Bronco with more scratches than paint. He’s ridden with me often enough since to know how the scratches got there.

“Long story,” I said, ignoring the way his foot instinctively stomped the floorboard as I muscled my way into airport traffic. “First tell me how it went with Jenny.”

“A lot tougher than I’d expected. She’s changed so much since I last saw her.”

“Two years is a pretty big leap in a girl’s life,” I agreed. “She’s about at the age where we stop playing with dolls and start playing with boys.”

“That’s the real bone of contention between Jen and her mother,” he said wryly. “Her so-called boyfriend. I gotta tell you, Samantha, it was hard as hell to remain neutral on that one. The jerk decks himself out in what Jen informed me is the emo look.”

“Dyed hair with a long sweep across his forehead, facial piercings, lots of eyeliner, band T-shirts, and black, skinny-leg jeans?”

“You nailed it. He’s not a bad kid as far as I could tell, but he’s got so many holes in his head I swear his brains have leaked out. He’s as thick as a board about everything but music.”

“You didn’t share that opinion with Jenny, did you?”

“I refrained but damned near bit my tongue off in the process.”

Lord, I hoped not! I knew from personal experience what he could do with that tongue.

We spent the rest of the drive to his place discussing his efforts to get to know the woman his daughter was fast becoming.

MITCH lives in an older neighborhood of ranch-style homes with swing sets and plastic Big Wheels dotting the yards. He insisted Margo take whatever she wanted when she and Jenny moved out. The woman literally cleaned house.

When we started seeing each other the place contained only the bare essentials. Since then Mitch has added some little luxuries—like a chenille bathmat so I don’t have to step out of the shower onto cold tile and the oversized, buttery soft leather sofa that sits three and sleeps two with room to spare. I had the sofa in mind as our eventual destination when we came in through the kitchen. Mitch had other ideas. Dropping his carryall, he caught my elbow and swung me around.

“God, I missed you!”

“I missed you, too.”

“I’d forgotten how bad it was with Margo. The tension. The resentment. The anger always simmering just below the surface.” He tunneled his fingers through my hair and tipped my face to his. “You’ve made me forget, Samantha.”

My heart pumped. That was as close as we’d come to the L word. I was about to make the final leap when he bent his head and trapped the words in my throat.

I’ve been kissed by a fair number of men. Yet I’ve never tasted the kind of slow, sweet hunger Mitch rouses in me. Or felt my entire body tighten in response the mere touch of his mouth on mine.

We didn’t make it to the sofa. Not the first time, anyway. Slow and sweet turned hot and heavy in a hurry. I won’t say it was my first time making love on a kitchen table, but it sure as heck was the most intensely, incredibly erotic. Mitch used his teeth and tongue and hands to ignite sparks in parts of me I didn’t know were combustible. I did my best to return the favor but he soon had me groaning and locking my calves around his hips.

 

IT wasn’t until later, much later, that he asked me about Charlie. We’d adjourned to the bedroom by then. I was so depleted from our reunion that it took me a moment to dredge the details from my near-comatose brain.

“Charlie took off with Brenda.”

“Who?”

“The top-heavy bimbette he borrowed all that money for.”

“Oh. Right. His wife. She followed him to El Paso?”

“She wasn’t the only one.”

Drawing on my last reserves of energy, I rolled my boneless body over enough to prop an arm on his chest. While he played with the ends of my hair I told him about: (1) Charlie sparking an electrical fire; (2) Pipe Guy’s attack; (3) Brenda’s sudden arrival; (4) her abrupt departure with Snoogs; and (5) the nasty possibilities raised by Junior Reporter.

As expected, the idea the attack might have been directed against me and not Charlie preempted everything else in Mitch’s mind.

“Hell, Samantha.” He gave my hair a swift tug. “Why didn’t you call and tell me about all this?”

“You were busy with Jenny. Besides, there was nothing you could do.”

“I could have called Paul Donati. Had him set up some surveillance at your place.” He gave my hair another tug. “Or
you
could have called him.”

I wasn’t about to admit I’d been more preoccupied with the fire and the question of the reward.

“I’ll call him tomorrow,” I promised.

“Damn straight, you will. Until then, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

 

MITCH held true to his word.

He insisted I stay with him that night and followed me home early the next morning. A rosy dawn was lighting up the sky when I unlocked the door to my apartment. Mitch checked the interior, fished my cell phone out of my purse, and handed it over with a brusque order.

“Call Donati.”

“It’s too early. He won’t be in yet.”

“They have a duty officer on call twenty-four/seven. Tell him or her it’s a code nine and they’ll patch you through.”

“What’s a code nine?”

“You don’t need to know. Just make the call.”

I popped him a salute. “Yes, sir!”

“Now, Samantha.”

“All right, already.”

“And let me talk to Paul when you’re through.”

I think I mentioned how cops tend to close ranks. Border Patrol agents are no exception. After the FBI duty officer got Donati on the line and I went through the litany again, Mitch gestured impatiently for me to hand him the phone.

“Get a copy of the responding EPPD officer’s report, Paul. Have them fax me a copy, too. Maybe we’ll pick up on something they missed. In the meantime, I want Samantha covered.”

He listened for several moments, cutting me a wry glance.

“Yeah. Yeah. I know! But she didn’t instigate this attack. Okay, not directly. But you can’t lay Duarte and those severed heads on her.”

“He’d better not!” I said indignantly.

“Just set up some electronic surveillance. I’ll keep her on a short leash until it’s in place.”

Leash? Did he just say leash?

My feathers puffed up like those of a western sage grouse in full attack mode. If you’ve never seen one, they’re pretty scary. I know because I’d flushed a hen from her nest by accident some months back and had to fend off her highly irate mate.

Isn’t it amazing what a difference a phone call can make? Less than twelve hours ago I’d been a kiss away from telling this man I loved him. Now I was all indignant and within a breath of suggesting he take his collapsible baton and . . .

Mitch snapped the phone shut before I completed the thought. “Paul says he’ll have a team here in an hour.”

DONATI’S team arrived at my door in less than fifty minutes. Unfortunately, Special Agent Donati arrived with them.

I don’t know all that many FBI agents so I don’t have a good database to compare Paul to. But I suspect not all field agents are as intimidating as he is. Given his dark, bedroom eyes and curly black hair, I’m not sure how he manages to project such a one-false-move-and-you’re-dead aura. He does, though. Trust me on this. He’s projected it more than once in my direction.

While his team went to work, Paul explained his quick response to my call. “DEA got a lead on the scuzz who hired Duarte to take out those three drug dealers up in Wisconsin. Word is he’s out to take over the entire Midwest market.”

It still gave me a twinge to think the drug barons of Central America and Mexico had extended their territory so far north. When I said as much to Paul, he burst my bubble.

“This baron is homegrown. He was born in a suburb of St. Louis called Dutchtown, hence his nickname Dutch, or the Dutchman. Bastard moved with his parents to L.A. when he was in his early teens and joined a gang. Didn’t take him long to graduate to the big time. Drugs, prostitution, racketeering—you name it, Dutch stuck a hand in every pot. Moved up the ladder by eliminating competitors and exacting swift, brutal revenge against anyone who crossed him. Or interfered with his operation.”

“Uh-oh.”

“ ‘Uh-oh’ doesn’t begin to describe this guy. We’ve been trying to nail him for five years, but he’s slick as spit. He’s also as ruthless as they come.”

Not
what I wanted to hear.

“I wish we had hard evidence that it was one of the Dutchman’s goons who attacked you. If so, we could use the attack to get to the man himself.”

I didn’t particularly want to hear that, either.

“My ex thought Pipe Guy was a Mob enforcer,” I said, clutching at any straw, “sent to collect on the fifteen grand Charlie owes some guy named Richie.”

“That’s possible,” Donati conceded. “I’ve got the folks in our Vegas office checking it out.”

“Or it could have been someone who heard about the reward and wanted a cut.”

“Also possible. And good reason to give you some security.”

“What about Sergeant Cassidy?” I asked with an eye to the two technicians mounting a camera in the corner of my living room. “And Pancho. Don’t they need surveillance, too?”

“Pancho refused it. We don’t think Sergeant Cassidy’s at risk since he was never mentioned by name in any of the news reports. You were the one whose name and face got splashed all over the airwaves.”

I made a silent vow to cut Cub Reporter DeWayne off at the knees the next time our paths crossed. I added Special Agent Donati to my personal hit list when he couldn’t resist a dig at my expense.

“You might want to think about lowering your profile, Lieutenant. Or better yet, refrain from getting stabbed, shot at, or run off the road.”

Mitch came to my defense while I was still sputtering with indignation. “Give her a break, Paul. Samantha doesn’t go looking for trouble.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Donati drawled. “It sniffs her out. Like that crazy device she was testing when she locked horns with Duarte.”

I went still, but my mind shot off into the ionosphere. Good grief! Was it possible . . . ?

“You don’t suppose . . . ?” I stopped, shook my head. “No, that’s too far out.”

“What is?” Paul asked.

“The device we were testing. I don’t know if you saw all the negative publicity . . .”

“That stuff about feeding off corpses and desecrating war dead? I saw it.”

“Snoop doesn’t feed just on dead things.”

“Snoop?” His brows lifting, Paul turned to Mitch. “You want to ask?”

“We probably shouldn’t but what the hell. ‘Snoop,’ Samantha?”

“As in Snoopy Sniffer. The children’s toy.”

I could tell by their blank expressions they’d never owned one or bought one for their kids. If Paul had kids. I’d have to ask. Later.

“The device’s inventor labeled it a Self-Nurturing Find and Identify Robot,” I explained. “SNFIR for short. So my team dubbed it Snoopy . . .”

“Sniffer,” Mitch finished. “We get it. What’s your point?”

“My point is that Snoop has the potential to become a perpetual motion machine. Suppose someone like the Dutchman saw one of those sensational TV stories or Internet blogs? Suppose he got to thinking about a new delivery vehicle for his products? One that could scoot across vast stretches of desert, avoid checkpoints and patrols, and arrive at a specific location, at a specified time.”