Authors: George Stephenson
Chapter 18
Debra awoke in Alex’s arms. A faint smile played across her lips. Amid all the craziness of her life lately, she found herself transported by a feeling of pure bliss.
“You want to know how I got into this in the first place, don’t you?” Alex asked as he gently massaged her shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m sorry but I’m dying to know.”
“It’s all right. It’s definitely the most interesting thing about me anyway. When I was a child, I was raised by my uncle. He worked in a circus.”
“What happened to your parents?” Debra’s sympathy for Alex deepened as he told her his story.
“We don’t know. We all came to visit my uncle Alfonzo the Magnificent. He was a sword-swallower and fire-eater. And then my folks disappeared without a trace. Leaving me there to be raised by him.”
“Oh my God, that’s so sad.” Debra kissed him gently.
“Well it really wasn’t so bad. My parents deposited me into a ready-made loving family. And I was taught a trade.”
“So what were you?”
“An acrobat, of course. It turned out that I was the perfect helper for my uncle. He’s the one who taught me the art of jewel theft.”
Debra’s ears perked up. One thing she never could reconcile within herself was the fact that unconsciously she was attracted to men like Alex. Men who were the polar opposite of her father.
“When I was twelve, I secretly followed my uncle on one of his late-night excursions. He’d been doing it for as long as I could remember. It was driving me nuts to know where he was going. So I followed him and he went across town to the most affluent neighborhood. Stealthily he crept up to the biggest house of all. And I followed him. He went over the perimeter wall. I went over the perimeter wall. He scaled the house and I was right behind him.”
Debra put a hand over her mouth and gasped. “Oh my God. What happened? I mean, what did your uncle do?” Debra could only imagine it in a scenario with her own father. Him coming unglued and barking out in drill sergeant something about her not being where she was supposed to be.
“As he crawled in through the window, I think he miscalculated, because he found himself in a moonlit bedroom; with the outline of two people asleep in the bed. I thought that would be a good time to climb through the window behind him and silently touch him on the back. He didn’t make a sound.
He just looked at me. The shock took a few seconds to wear off his face, but then he nodded silently for me to follow him and I did. He crept across the room to the woman’s vanity. He quickly opened the drawers. He scooped out handful after handful of jewels while the couple slept not three feet away.” Alex glanced at Debra and saw she was utterly spell bound.
“Then we climbed back through the window and beat feet back to the circus. We were three-hundred miles away the next day. We read about it in the paper. Alfonzo gave me a small cut of the take and from then on it was he and I on every job.”
“And jumping from one jurisdiction to the next must have left you two ice-cold to anyone putting together a pattern.” Debra couldn’t help thinking like a cop but her passion for it was gone. She finally realized it clearly. She didn’t believe in it anymore.
“How long did it go on?” Fascinated to the core of her being, Debra’s eyes honed in on his. Alex really was her dream man. The ultimate bad boy who always lived in the back of her mind and most of her fantasies.
“Until I was sixteen. That was the year Alfonzo died. There was a nasty strain of flu going around that year and he got it. He just wasn’t strong enough to beat it. He wouldn’t go to a hospital. In fact, I’m not sure if he’d been in the hospital his entire life. We buried him in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I stopped doing jobs and left the circus. I used what I’d saved, from all those jobs, to put myself through acting school. And that’s what I did until nine years ago.” Alex paused.
Debra knew from the article, she’d read, that this was the time frame of the death of his wife and son.
“I was doing great. Happy as a clam. My whole life everything seemed to come so easy. I fell in love with the most exquisite woman. Her name was Hala. She was Lebanese and she had the largest, most expressive eyes I’d ever seen in my life.”
Debra squeezed his hand. She could feel the heart break still in his voice.
“And then it all came crashing down one hot July night in Santa Barbara. Hala and my son Henry were driving home from his soccer practice when they got run off the road straight into a guard rail.”
Alex’s demeanor shifted. He suddenly appeared ghostly and fragile. In that instant, Debra understood how special his wife had been to him. She could see how deep a love this man was capable of. The last of her misgivings melted away. “There hasn’t been anyone since Hala?” Debra instantly felt awkward after she blurted that out. She massaged Alex’s neck as she slowly melted back into his chest. “So, how much did you keep?” she asked, shocked by her own words as they came out of her mouth. Though, truthfully, she had only been trying to change the subject.
“Enough. I’ve spent most of it on something important.”
Debra patted him on the chest.
“I saw you at the hospital yesterday.” Debra looked vulnerable as she ‘fessed up.
“Oh, well then, you understand. These rich assholes are sitting around with that kind of loot in their bedroom safes. What are those poor kids supposed to do?”
“Wow.” Debra sounded stunned as she said it.
“What’s the matter?” Alex studied her shifting demeanor.
“I . . . I’m on your side.” The words came out clunky and then sort of hung there. It was odd and jarring and completely unexpected.
“See, I knew you’d come around.”
There was that arrogant swagger again. But now Debra understood him well enough to recognize the teasing quality in his voice.
“After they were gone I began to wander aimlessly,” Alex said slowly. “I ended up in Europe, just bumming around, working as a dishwasher here and there. Mostly, I was just waiting to die really. Then, one night I was in a hotel in Stuttgart and I saw an American television show about the insurance industry and how they’re paying less and less on each claim and forcing people into their graves over a buck. It brought it all back as fresh as the day it happened. Except this time, instead of getting depressed I got angry.” Alex flexed his brow in a look of regret.
“And that’s when I got back into it. I was rusty at first. I was in Paris on my second job when things went wrong. I tripped an alarm. A camera got a bit of footage of my face and then on the way out the people on the sidewalk below got a decent look at me as I ran by. My uncle and I had always been so good that we didn’t bother to wear masks. I didn’t take into account all those years of inactivity.”
“What happened?”
“I managed to get away and had the good sense to get out of Europe immediately. I went straight to the airport after grabbing a bag of my stuff and burning everything else that could link me to my life in Europe. I came straight to Miami because it was the destination of the next available flight.
“I could have ended up anywhere. To be honest, after I got here I fell in love with Miami. Plus, it was as far away from Hollywood and acting as I could physically get. And now, for the past few years you know what I’ve been doing with my time.”
Alex let out a deep sigh as though he were getting something off his mind.
“So what do you plan to do now?” Debra asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. I have enough money tucked away.” He paused and thought a moment. “Hey, why don’t you and I take my boat and sail to Belize? We could dive for coral to sell to tourists?”
At first Debra just froze. Her mouth hung open just a bit. It was as if he short-circuited her mind. She tilted her head to one side and said, “I think that’s an excellent idea.” Something felt right for the first time. A broad, relaxed smile spread across her face.
Just then, her phone rang, breaking her out of the spell she was in.
“Hello. Ah . . . ha. Okay, thanks.” Debra snapped the phone shut. She could feel all the color drain away from her face.
“My God what is it? What’s happened?” Alex turned Debra by the shoulders to face him.
“That was Jazz. When I ran your picture through our facial recognition software, I got a hit on a newspaper article about your wife’s accident.”
“Yeah.” Alex drew a deep breath. “And?”
“Another hit just popped. It’s from Interpol. That piece of footage you mentioned. They have your real name and they can tie you back to the job in Paris.” Debra slumped over like a hundred-pound-weight suddenly rested on her neck. “Alex, you have to run. I really mean it this time. You have to leave, now.”
“What about you?” Alex’s gaze flitted across her face.
“I. . . I—” Debra’s phone rang again. She flipped it open. “Shit. It’s Frazier. I have to take this. Hello. Okay. Got it Chief. Be right in.” Debra snapped the phone shut with finality.
“Alex, you go to Belize. Go now. I’ll. . . I don’t know. I’ll find you but you have to go.”
“What is it, what’s happened?”
“They’re calling me in to be briefed about your case, because I was the Lead Investigator on it for the last seven months.”
“Okay, that’s no reason to panic.”
“Kane and Meacham are reading your address in the file as we speak.” Debra scrambled to get her clothes on. She grabbed her holster and keys. Draping her gun over her shoulder with one hand, she cradled Alex’s head with the other. She gave him a final deep kiss. It would have to hold her over for who-knew-how-long.
“Go, now.” Debra pulled away and dashed out the door without looking back. She couldn’t. If she did, she knew she wouldn’t be able to leave him.
Debra flew across town. Oblivious to lights and people. As she pulled into her assigned spot, she saw Kane and Meacham’s blue unmarked Crown Victoria already there ahead of her. She raced to Frazier’s office. Her pulse was pounding in her neck as the elevator doors opened and Frazier’s office came into view.
“Captain. Kane. Meacham.” Debra took a seat without being offered one.
The men followed suit.
“So, what have we got?” the Chief asked. Debra could feel Kane’s gaze on her like heat. Thank God, Frazier was the idiot he was. The tension between the three detectives was palpable. It would have been apparent to a five-year-old.
Kane and Meacham both stared at her with murder in their eyes. Debra stared at Frazier’s lips as he read off the Interpol report on Alexander Valentine.
Kane scribbled furiously as Frazier read off the Miami address. In his notebook was the last address Debra had stopped at and said was a dead-end in the bombing case. The addresses matched.
Kane’s eyes grew large.
Even Meacham threw him a dirty look as if to say,
Hey, jackass, settle down. Even Frazier will notice your wild-eyed clown routine
.
Kane composed himself and silently held up his notebook for Meacham to see what was causing his excitement. Then he, too, struggled to keep the clown expression off his face. He nodded at Kane.
“Okay, so that’s it. We got this prick. I want all three of you to lead the entry team. Let’s take this prick down.”
Frazier was ridiculous.
You should come along. You could point your inhaler at him,
Debra thought.
Kane and Meacham dashed out of his office ignoring Frazier’s last words. Debra quickly followed.
She sprinted across the squad room to the stairs. She knew they couldn’t make a move on her right there in the building. But, with these two clowns, she couldn’t be sure.
Debra watched their car pull out through the small box window in the door and then ran to her car. She froze in her tracks and leaped backward in the nick of time. Kane came screaming straight at her with his private vehicle.
“Oh, shit. They split up.” Debra shrieked and jumped in her car. She gunned it across town, taking the shortest route possible. She pulled into her driveway. Her eyes were scanning in all directions for Kane’s car.
Debra was too hyped up with adrenaline. She didn’t see Meacham, until he was standing right next to her, pressing his service revolver to the side of her head. He slipped her nine millimeter out of its holster and forced her inside her own house. Debra’s thoughts were only for Alex. She prayed he wasn’t still here. Finding love distracted her and made her lower her guard. Letting a buffoon like Meacham get the drop on her made that painfully obvious.
Meanwhile across town, Kane ran to Alex’s front door as fast as he could. He kicked the door open. The warrant was on the way, but Kane was racing to have a look around before any back-up arrived. He dismantled the living room, ripping books off the shelves. Methodically he ransacked cupboards and drawers. He was frantic with wild-eyed intensity.
An officer announced his presence and Kane was forced to ease up what he was doing. His actions were still explainable up to a point.
“He’s not here. You stand guard on this location.” Kane barked.
“Hey, where are you going?” the officer called out to Kane’s back as he dashed to his car.
He slammed it into drive and headed for Debra’s house to join Meacham. Alex and the jewels were probably there. Meacham probably already had them. That was what Kane was telling himself as he raced across town. The situation was quickly spiraling out of control.
Meacham had Debra at gunpoint as he searched every nook and cranny of her apartment. The whole while he drilled her with amateurish questions about Alex and his whereabouts. As Kane blundered in the front door without looking, he stepped right into Debra’s path and put himself between her and Meacham’s gun.
Debra grabbed Kane’s arm and shoved him into the wall as she grabbed his gun and pointed it at Meacham. But he was already drawing down on her. He was waiting for Kane to get the hell out of his way. Soon, Meacham fired off three shots in rapid succession. One drilled Debra through the left bicep. She yelped with pain as she returned fire and Meacham dove in front of the couch for cover. Kane sprawled out on the floor with his hands guarding his head.