Hot Pursuit (18 page)

“And what?” Sam asked Alyssa now. “She lost her phone, which was coincidentally and immediately found by Mr. Pig Hearts R Us, who used it to make that call to Maria before he tossed it under the—”

“No,” she said. “No, you’re right. It’s not a coincidence. Whoever took Maggie’s phone took it because he knew Maria uses caller ID. They also knew that as a big donor to the campaign, Maggie’s phone number was one that Maria would always pick up.

“So really the two most likely scenarios,” she continued, “are that whoever did this stole Maggie’s phone on purpose. And yesterday, after literally years of being single, she hooked up with some new guy and is so totally in love that she still hasn’t noticed her stolen phone—” She broke off, shaking her head in disgust. “I don’t like
that
coincidence any better than the first one.”

“Which leaves the second most likely scenario,” Sam said, “that whoever did this took both Maggie’s phone
and
Maggie.”

Alyssa hated that idea, just as he’d known she would. “In which case, we’ve got the phone back, but where’s Maggie?”

He’d reached over and taken her hand, squeezing her gloved fingers, and she’d looked at him.

“We’ll find her,” he said.

“So far this trip sucks,” she pointed out. “Are you having fun yet? Because I’m not. I particularly hated the part where the police detective threatened to shoot you.”

She was fiercely, grimly pissed, but that, in combination with the bright red fleece hat that she’d bought in Times Square, made Sam smile. The hat was complete with earflaps, a little yarn ball at the top of an elfin point, and the eternal message
I (heart) New York
.

Despite being one of the most beautiful women he’d ever known, his wife had nearly always forsaken fashion for comfort or convenience.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, I know the hat’s plenty foolish-looking, thanks.”

“I was actually thinking it’s hot,” he teased. “With the right outfit—or lack thereof…”

Alyssa laughed, but it was all too brief before she sighed her frustration. “I honestly thought this job would be easy. I like Savannah, I really do. But she’s gotten a little”—she searched for the right word—“hyper-cautious ever since Ken was injured. I expected to have to give a few lectures on personal safety and pick out a relatively inexpensive alarm system for Maria’s office and maybe go see
Wicked
and have dinner at Sardi’s and visit MoMA and the USS
Intrepid
and …” She exhaled hard. “Okay, I’m done whining. Sorry. I honestly didn’t expect this threat to be reality based, so … And I
really
didn’t expect you to immediately become one of the walking wounded.”

“I am so sorry that I got hurt,” he said.

“People, particularly men like Callahan, are going to say all kinds of nastiness about me, and you’re going to have to—” She cut herself off. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Did you speak to Jules?”

Oh, glorious segue on a shiny silver platter.

“I did,” Sam said. And it was right around then that he first noticed
Don Quixote watching them, muttering, “It’s you, it’s you,” as he headed toward them, no doubt looking for a handout. “He and Robin are driving down from Boston tonight.”

“Robin’s coming?” Alyssa asked, surprised.

“His show’s on hiatus.” Sam reported what Jules had told him as he picked up their pace—ow—and steered Alyssa across the street to avoid the homeless man. “Art Urban had a heart attack—a bad one, so … Robin’s coming along to babysit Ash, if we want it, and, you know.
Be
babysat. I think Jules is looking at this like a vacation, too. A chance to hang with us.”

“I’d heard Art was in the hospital,” she said, “but I had no idea it was so serious. Is he going to be okay?”

Sam nodded. “He will be—if the show goes on hiatus. Which leaves Robin with a lot of free time on his hands. Jules didn’t say it, but… he’s a little worried.”

She was silent, lost in her own thoughts, so he cleared his throat and added, “Especially since he’s heading overseas pretty soon. He told me about the assignment in Afghanistan.”

Alyssa looked at him then, and at that moment the sky opened up and started dropping big, fluffy, fake-looking snowflakes all around them. It was ridiculously pretty.

“I’m assuming,” Sam continued, “that that was what the President called you about… ? You know, earlier today … ? Jules told me Max recommended you as an additional security consultant. Sounds like they’re creating one hell of a team.”

“Oh, my God, Sam, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have time to tell you, and then, to be honest, I completely forgot.”

“The
President
called and you forgot?” He believed her, but forgetting a phone call from the President deserved a certain amount of mocking.

“Yeah, I know.” She looked at him, amusement, chagrin, and apology in her eyes. “I need a vacation. Oh, wait. This was supposed to be one. Instead I got a break-in at a public official’s office, a missing
socialite, rotting animal organs, and, speaking of guts, an uncooperative police detective who apparently hates yours now even more than he hates mine.”

He nodded. “Total suck-ass day. We’re going to find Maggie Thorndyke, you know.”

Alyssa nodded, too, but he could tell that she wasn’t convinced. “Have you ever seen a pig heart?” she asked him, and he wasn’t surprised at all that
that
was the cause of her distraction, and that even now that he’d brought it up, her trip to Afghanistan was getting pushed back to the bottom of her priority list. “You grew up kind of in the country.”

“Kind of? It was the suburbs,” he corrected her. She’d lived in a city for most of her childhood. To her, the burbs of Ft. Worth, Texas, where he’d grown up, had no doubt seemed positively rural.

They’d rented a car once, during a lengthy layover in Dallas, and they’d driven past Sam’s childhood home. They’d also gone past the house where his beloved Uncle Walt and Aunt Dot had spent the bulk of their laughter-filled lives, and past the dusty airfield where Walt had first taken Sam and his cousin Noah up in a Cessna—where Sam had first discovered just how wide the world truly was.

“But didn’t you say there was some kind of farm that you used to go to?” she asked him. “Wonderland Farm or…”

“Wonderville Farms,” he said, amazed that she remembered that. He’d mentioned it maybe once, a few years ago. “It was a glorified petting zoo.” His elementary school had gone every year, in the spring, after the baby animals had been born. “And yes there was a pig there, but they never put its heart on display, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You studied some anatomy, though,” she persisted, “right? In the Navy? Basic stuff about the circulatory system?”

Sam knew where she was going. “I’ve seen pictures of a human heart, sure, and, yeah, it could’ve been. In that drawer. Except…”

“It
couldn’t
have been,” she finished for him. “I keep thinking that, too. Unless some total psychopath has targeted Maria.”

“So okay,” Sam said. “When we get back to Kenny and Van’s, we’ll jump online and find a picture of a pig heart, so we can compare.”

“What I need is the fucking lab report,” Alyssa said, her strong language betraying her frustration. “How hard could it be? Human—yes or no? I don’t need to know what kind of animal, just that no, it’s not human.”

“When Jules gets here,” Sam said, “we can ask him to make some calls, apply some pressure.”

“That,” Alyssa said, “would be good.”

They walked in silence for a block or two before she spoke again.

“I didn’t tell him yes,” Alyssa told Sam. “The President. I didn’t tell him no, but I didn’t tell him yes. I said I’d have to talk to you. He knew about Ash, and he knew we haven’t taken any overseas jobs since he was born. And he also knew that you’re usually my XO. But since this would be mostly advisory, the Troubleshooters team would be a small one, so—”

“Mostly?” Sam asked.

She nodded. “We’d be working with the advance unit, offering suggestions that the task force as well as the Secret Service would consider when making the final plans. Any red-cell work would be done with the assistance of SEAL Team Sixteen.”

Oh, that hurt, way worse than any broken rib ever could.

Red-cell assignments were those in which a group—in this case his former SEAL team, led by Alyssa—would attempt to breach the organized security, in order to illustrate the system’s weaknesses, flaws, and outright failures. Sam loved being part of a good red-cell attack, and in this one, he’d have had the chance to work with his friends from Sixteen.

Alyssa frowned. “Did Jules say that he was definitely going to be part of the FBI advance team? Even while Robin’s on hiatus?”

They both loved Jules’s husband, Robin. They truly did. But they were also both well aware of the young actor’s weaknesses, and of how hard it was for him when Jules willingly put himself into danger.

Hell, it was hard for Sam when Alyssa did it, and he
wasn’t
a recovering alcoholic, like Robin.

“Jules told me he was going to be over there for at least a month,” Sam reported.

“I wouldn’t have to be gone for that long,” Alyssa told him. “More like a week, maybe ten days.”

“But they want you for the full month.” He’d gotten that info from Jules, too.

She shook her head. “That’s too long. I’m not willing—”

“You could make your own schedule.” Sam knew that, too, and he’d already done the math. “24/6 it for three blocks of time, with four days off between each.”

“Four days isn’t enough to get me back home.”

“It’s enough to get you to Greece. Or Italy. I was thinking,” he said, tugging her to a stop and pulling her out of the flow of pedestrian traffic because they were just a few blocks from Maria’s building, “that if Ash and I went somewhere safe, but close enough for you to fly into … ? Robin, too. I was thinking of seeing if Robin wanted to hang with Ash and me. You know. While you and Jules are over there.”

She was so surprised on so many levels. It was rare when he rendered her speechless, and this time he clearly had, so he kissed her.

And then, because he couldn’t ever just kiss his wife once, he kissed her again. Longer, lingeringly.

“I’d never ask you not to go,” he told her quietly. “I’m proud that you got called, and I’m glad that the CIC’s smart enough to recognize
that you’re the right person for this job. And I want to go, too, I do, pretty damn badly, but… Jules’ll be with you, so—”

“Don’t you touch her! Don’t you dare touch her!”

Sam turned, and sure enough it was the homeless man who was, also surely enough, shouting—at them.

Alyssa turned, too, as the man shuffled toward them, his puffy coat billowing out behind him like the weirdest version of a superhero cape that Sam had ever seen.

“I’ll kick your ass!” he was saying now. And there was no doubt whatsoever that he was talking to Sam. Except with his slurred speech, he might’ve been saying, “I’ll
kill
your ass.”

Bottom line, there wasn’t much chance of either of those two options happening, given that Sam was nearly six and a half feet tall, and—despite that cracked rib—in the best shape of his entire life.

But his inner caveman—the part of him that often spoke or reacted before employing full use of his brain—stepped in front of Alyssa. And bumped into her trying to step in front of him. She shot him a look of exasperation and he shifted his position so that they were both facing the attack, even as he scanned and analyzed the threat.

The man’s left leg was a weak point, and his limp telegraphed his pain. He was carrying what looked like a piece of paper, and he was waving it at them angrily. His other hand was empty—at least there appeared to be no glint of knife-blade, or handgun, or broken bottle, or even a tin can. And he appeared to have nothing up his sleeve, since the coat was too small for him and the sleeves ended well above his hands, exposing quite a few inches of his bony wrists.

Wads of newspaper that he’d packed inside that coat for extra warmth fell around him in a surreal shower as he charged them.

Alyssa tried reason and called out to him, her voice clear in the cold night air, “Are you former Marine? We’re both former Navy.”

But the man didn’t answer or slow as he shouted again, “You get the fuck away from her!” And yeah, he was looking right at Sam.
Anger mixed with a serious dose of crazy in eyes that were framed by a heavily furrowed brow and bared teeth—signs that, despite the lack of weapon, Don Quixote de la Crazy-Pants here wanted to do them—or more accurately Sam—some serious harm.

The old adage “once a Marine, always a Marine” was true even among those that the system had abandoned and discarded, and because of that, Don Q had the unerring aim of a heat-seeking missile.

“Stop right there!” Alyssa stepped in front of Sam.

But he didn’t stop. And it was more than clear that this guy was going to go right through Alyssa to get to Sam, which meant they really only had one option.

Turn and run.

Sam grabbed Alyssa and beat feet toward Maria’s apartment building, as fast as he could move it.

Which was pretty damn fast, despite the obstacle course created by the relentless crowd of pedestrians, despite the fact that Sam’s side shrieked with pain, with every step he took.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry. Coming through!”

Lys was as smart as she was beautiful, and she understood why he’d chosen to retreat, but she couldn’t resist asking, “Didn’t think you could take him, huh?”

Caveman Sam, who had the IQ of a pinhead and the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old, answered with, “Oh, I coulda taken him.” More highly evolved Sam recognized that she was teasing, and turned it into a joke. “But I’ve already hit my quota and beaten up my allotment of old men for the week.”

But then she said, “Oh, no!” as she dug in her heels and slowed him down.

And he turned back to see what she was looking at, and he saw, too, that Don Quixote had taken a tumble and was lying on the sidewalk, motionless and silent.

Alyssa wasn’t the kind of woman who took kindly to phrases like, “Wait here,” or “Stay back.” So Sam didn’t bother to say anything
that stupid. He just made sure she didn’t get too far out in front as she jogged back toward the fallen man.