“Closer to nine-fifteen, maybe.”
Sherlock said. “Now, Melissa, I want you to think about when you arrived here at the apartment building tonight. Did you see anyone you didn’t recognize? Maybe someone running or walking very quickly here in the building or outside when you drove up?”
She paused to think, and that was good, Savich thought; she was focusing her brain. Finally, she shook her head. “No, I didn’t see anybody.”
Savich brought up hypnosis. Melissa said, “Do you think I could really remember more?”
“Yes,” he said, “I do.”
“Then I’ll think about it, I promise, Agent Savich,” she said, and turned back to stare down at her pink UGGs.
Maestro, Virginia
Monday evening
Rolling clouds scuttled over the black sky again, threatening snow before morning. It was only nine o’clock, but already the temperature had dived so low it was too cold to breathe comfortably without a wool scarf covering your mouth.
Griffin looked at Anna’s taillights, a couple dozen feet ahead. It seemed they were the only two people on the winding roads in Maestro. He knew she didn’t want to go back to her cottage, since she’d packed and locked her duffel in the trunk, but she hadn’t found Monk and she’d looked in all his hiding places. They’d find Monk together. When she’d said it was her fault because she’d spooked the cat, acted like a madwoman, he got in her face and told her not to be an idiot. He took her seriously when she’d told him if anyone at the B&B said anything about pets, she’d draw her gun and shoot them.
She hadn’t wanted to have dinner at the Nobles’ house, but Griffin had known she needed the distraction, needed contact with the real world again. He’d talked about Dix’s barbecued ribs and potato salad and Ruth’s green salad she always made for show until he’d swear Anna was salivating.
Anna wasn’t salivating now. She felt jumpy and worried, not only about Monk but about everything that was happening so fast she couldn’t get her mind around it.
When she’d backed out of her driveway to follow Griffin to the Nobles’ house, she was wondering if she’d ever see her cottage again after today. No, it was all over for her here in Maestro, and it was all on her record—she’d failed here, miserably. Arnie Racker had been murdered under her nose, and she’d learned nothing of value except that being in Salazar’s house had gotten him killed—that, and her vastly improved violin technique. Six months wasted, along with the taxpayers’ money and her time. All of it made her want to scream and cry at the same time.
Still, she thought now, Dix and Ruth had made her glad she’d come. It felt safe and warm in the Nobles’ house, and she’d felt herself relax with each passing minute. She’d packed away nearly as many ribs as the Nobles’ two sons, Rafe and Rob, good-looking teenagers who’d wanted to know everything about the shootings in Maestro. They groused and complained at the dinner table when their father cut short their questions, but they’d left happily enough to study, since that meant they wouldn’t have to help clean up.
Dix sat back in his chair when he was sure they were out of hearing and folded his arms over his chest, now dead serious. “Claus couldn’t locate Chigger Chivers, even went out to that fleabag shack he lives in. He’s probably okay; he can be hard to track down sometimes. But I agree with you, Anna, Chigger heard every word you guys said. Don’t know if he understood it all, since his brain’s been pickled for decades from all the moonshine he’s cooked over the years.”
They were distracted when they heard Brewster yipping madly, and heard the boys talking and laughing as the front door closed behind them. Ruth said, “Brewster likes to dance in the snow, catch snowflakes in his mouth. Unfortunately, he never remembers he always sinks like a stone.” She paused and looked at Anna. “We’ll plan something out first thing tomorrow morning, Anna. Are you sure you don’t want to stay here tonight?”
Anna carefully set down her coffee mug with MAESTRO COUGARS written in bold red across it. “Thank you, Ruth, but I’ll be fine with Griffin.” She looked at each of them. “I can’t stand that I’m afraid of those monsters. They can’t do this, guys. Not here, not to us.”
Griffin lightly laid his hand over hers. “We’ll get it done.”
She stood up. “I need to get back to my house and find Monk. Then I’ll follow Griffin to the B&B.”
Griffin rose to stand beside her as she said her good-byes and walked beside her out to her Kia, his hand cupped around her neck.
Yes, Griffin thought, they would get it done. His brain clicked back to the here and now and the casket-black darkness as he watched Anna pull her car into the driveway. He pulled in behind her. It boggled his brain when he realized he’d met her for the first time less than three days ago. He was thinking that over, starting to open his car door, when he realized something wasn’t right.
The streetlight was out.
He sat on his horn, shoved open the car door, and rolled out onto the driveway just as an automatic weapon opened up into his Camry, shredding the metal, shattering the windows, so many so fast the car seemed to lift and sway on the asphalt. He rolled behind the rear tire and was relieved to see Anna on her belly not ten feet from him, one arm covering her head, the other holding her Glock.
His ears were ringing, adrenaline pumping so wildly Griffin felt he could shoot Superman out of the sky, but his training took over, and he focused. He counted three separate weapons, firing at will, grouped in the woods on the driver’s side of the cars.
He saw she was still pressed against the asphalt, waiting. He yelled, “Anna, stay down!”
Then he heard it, a whistling sound, and he jumped to his feet, firing as he ran. He slammed down beside Anna, then pulled her beneath him as his car exploded into flames. He saw the car roof fly into the air. The backseat and the steering wheel crashed to the ground. He covered her head as hot debris fell down around them. One tire rolled into the street, and another was ripped to pieces, flinging scraps of burning rubber everywhere. He grunted when something struck him, and when she looked up at him, he said against her cheek, “We’ve got to move; your car’s next.”
He rolled off her, and together they backed away on their hands and knees as fast as they could, only twenty feet to a row of trees behind them. Bullets sprayed randomly around them, mostly over their heads.
Despite the billowing black smoke, Griffin knew they could be seen because of the mad orange flames firecracking into the sky, light so brilliant the shards of glass from his car’s windshield glittered like slivers of sun.
It happened fast. Two grenades struck Anna’s car, lifting it off the ground. The explosion sucked up the air, the force of it hurling them back. He saw a tire jack fly outward over them like a boomerang, and thick burning smoke clogged their throats. Then they heard a shout, a curse, then more gunfire. It was all around them, a rock splitting apart not a foot from Griffin’s arm, peppering the hard ground, sending frozen clots of earth exploding in the air. Then the spray of bullets moved away, toward the cottage. They were firing blind.
When they pressed behind a pine tree, Griffin knew they had a chance. He grabbed her hand and they raced another thirty feet into the forest. They stopped, panting, sucking in the clean air, and turned toward the light of their burning cars through the trees. They listened as the gunfire slowly died away. They heard men cursing in a mixture of English and Spanish. Someone was moaning.
Griffin said against her ear, “I must have hit one of them when I was laying down fire to get to you.”
They heard another man’s voice. “They’re dead. No way could they survive that.”
The best words Anna had ever heard in her life.
Griffin said, his voice a whisper, “Three different voices. They’ll wait, stay hidden and quiet, and see what happens. If they have a brain, they won’t step into the open, won’t take the chance either of us survived. Keep movi
ng back, quiet and slow.”
They slithered back as quietly as they could, and heard the blessed sound of sirens in the distance. “Okay, this is good.” Griffin pulled out his cell and punched in Ruth’s number.
Ruth’s frantic voice blasted out of his cell. “Griffin? What’s happening? Dix got a call from 911. What’s going on? Tell me the two of you are all right. We’ll be there inside three minutes.”
She punched off before Griffin could say a word. He slipped his cell back into his coat pocket. “That smell—you forget what burning rubber smells like. Did you hear an engine revving? The second they heard the sirens they were out of here. Too bad my car is history.”
Anna stared at him. She grabbed his face between her hands and kissed him hard.
He kissed her back, his hands in her filthy hair, stroking down her back, bringing her hard against him.
Between kisses, she said, “Who cares about a freaking car? I don’t care about mine, do you? We’re alive. That’s a miracle,” and she continued to kiss him.
Finally she leaned back in his arms. “Were you hurt?”
The instant Griffin heard the words he felt a burning pain in his left thigh. He grunted in surprise, and then his leg collapsed and down he went. He lay on his back, staring up at her, his hand pressed hard against his leg. “Your mouth—I didn’t realize how much I liked the taste of smoke.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, on her knees beside him, pressing down hard on his leg. Siren lights cut through the trees. They heard voices shouting, back where the cars burned, billowing up thick black smoke into the night. They saw a flashlight, heard a woman’s voice yelling their names. It was Ruth. When the flashlight landed on Anna, Griffin said, “You’ve got blood all over your face.”
Anna touched her cheek, felt the trickle of oozing blood, then the sting of a glass cut. “Not bad, and I don’t think your leg’s gonna fall off, either.” She grinned at him, leaned down, kissed him again, then jumped to her feet. “Apply pressure. I’ve got to find Monk.”
Henderson County Hospital
Late Monday night
It was strange to see Griffin in the very same hospital, lying in the same kind of bed Delsey had occupied. There was a drip in his arm, and his eyes were veiled with drugs, but he was thrumming his fingers on the light hospital coverlet. “Is that museum print a Monet?”
“Yep. Glad you can see it.”
“Only an impression.”
“Ha ha.” She leaned over him, covered his hand with hers. “But we made it. Guess what? You managed to draw the same doctor as Delsey—Dr. Chesney. She says you’re lucky to have the war wound everyone used to hope for: some stitches, a little soreness, and a sexy limp for a while, and best of all, some feel-good drugs and a bed for the night. She said you’ll be out tomorrow.”
He gave her a lopsided grin, took her hand in his, and pulled her down to him. He kissed her, hard and fast, and laughed. “You still taste like smoke. Tomorrow’s good. We’ve got lots to do. You’re really pretty, you know that? And the smoke, it really does taste fine.”
“Griffin, you do know you kissed me and not Dr. Chesney, right? I mean, how drugged up are you?”
“Maybe more than I’d like, but who cares?”
But I’m not drugged up at all, and a girl’s gotta take her chance when she gets one.
She leaned down and kissed him just as hard, just as fast, and thought, What a great decision that was. She cupped his cheek in her palm. “You taste pretty fine yourself.”
She started to straighten, but he grabbed her arm, kept her close. “Why’d you do that, Anna?”
She studied his drop-dead gorgeous face. Truth was, what she really wanted was to burrow right into the man behind those incredible eyes to learn every single thing about him. Even after only a few days, she recognized rare and special when she saw it. “What did you say?”
“I want to know why you kissed me.”
“I figured one good turn and all that.”
“Yeah? That’s it?”
“Okay, I wanted to.”
He nodded slowly. “Good. So did I. Did I mention I like your smoke taste?”
“Which time?”
His eyes were on her mouth. He gave her a grin that could lead a girl astray if she weren’t chained to the path. “I’ll take the first. No, wait, the second, when you kissed me. I gotta think about this.” And from one moment to the next, his eyes closed, his head fell to the side, and he was out.
She stood over him a long time, studying his face. That something special she saw in him—she was thinking part of it was pure grit. She had to admit she didn’t mind the pretty face, surely a treat to see across the breakfast table every single morning, but she knew if the Fairy Godmother of Good Looks hadn’t perched on his crib railing, she would still fly to him like a buzzed moth. As she’d journeyed through her twenties, she’d come to see herself as the consummate kick-butt DEA agent until—until what? Until she ran the Agency? Now, there was a thought—all alone at the top? Maybe there could be something else in her life now.
“Anna?”
She jumped, turned to see Ruth in the doorway.
“Sorry I startled you. How’s Griffin?”
“He’s out, but before he cashed in his chips, he thought he was winning the jackpot.” Well, she felt like she’d surely won.
The silly look on Anna’s face gave Ruth a very clear picture of what had happened. Very nice, she thought. Very nice indeed. “Nothing like anesthesia and drugs,” Ruth said. “Dr. Chesney said he’d be smiling and sleepy for a good eight hours. Then he’d hurt a bit, but he’ll heal quickly, and that’s all that counts. All the rest fades into the past over time.”
“He wants to be out of here tomorrow.”
“He’ll probably be good to go. We’ll see how he feels in the morning. We’ve got all our people out, federal and local, manning checkpoints and looking for those morons who attacked you. No luck yet.”
“What about Salazar?”
“Everyone’s agreed now, no more waiting. We’re serving a federal search warrant on Salazar’s place in the morning and bringing him in for questioning. In fact, we’re bringing in every MS-13 thug we can find in three counties. They’ve started a war by attacking you and Griffin, and they’re going to lose it.”
“Griffin’s gonna want to be in on all of it.”
“Sure thing, if he’s up to it.”
Anna looked down again at Griffin, saw he was breathing easily, deeply. “I think I’ll stay here with him tonight. Did you find Monk?”
“I finally found him under your bed. He’d ripped open the bottom of the mattress and burrowed up inside. I pulled him out with an EMT’s help, stuffed him into his traveling case, and took him home along with cat food and his litter box. He’s calmed down now.”
“What did Brewster think of a cat who could eat him for breakfast? Monk weighs a good twenty pounds.”
“It was Brewster who got him to come out of his carrying case. The boys were ready to hurl themselves in front of Brewster if Monk attacked him. The funny thing is, after the two of them stared each other down, sniffed, growled, and hissed, they decided to have a nap together. The boys are still hovering, in case. Don’t worry. When I left to come here, Monk was washing himself on the sofa, Brewster standing guard.” Ruth patted her arm. “Griffin’s okay, cat’s okay, all of you are safe.” Ruth looked at the Band-Aid on Anna’s cheek. Both of them were very lucky. She started to ask her if she’d rather come home with her, but kept silent. It was probably safer here, both for her and for Griffin, especially with the guard posted outside the door.
“You do need to rest, Anna; even if you didn’t get shot or burned, you’ll feel it tomorrow.” And because she knew Anna needed it, Ruth gave her a hug and said against her hair, “This will be over soon. It can’t be long now.”
• ?
?? •
WHEN GRIFFIN CAME TO at three o’clock in the morning, he knew where he was immediately, and that was good. He queried his leg. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel a lick of pain. The nurses had propped his leg up on two skinny hospital pillows and he was toasty warm, his brain still buzzed with sleep and drugs. He heard breathing and froze, reached out his hand to flip on the directional lamp fastened to the side of his bed. He saw Anna not six feet from him, sound asleep on a narrow hospital cot, covers pulled up to her nose. Her face was turned toward him, and her dark hair hung over the side of the cot nearly to the floor. He hadn’t realized her hair was so long, since she usually wore it braided or up in a ponytail. He knew her face well now, and after only two days. Amazing. He also knew how she tasted, how she felt against him, how she was so brave it scared him. He decided then and there that he wanted to visit Bosard, Louisiana, with her, wanted to look out at the bayou with her, and have her show him alligators. He wanted to meet her family and see if she resembled the mother who’d named her Lilyanna.
He’d met her Saturday, not Saturday six months ago, but Saturday only days before. Objectively, he should think wanting this woman in his life for the next fifty years, maybe more, was nuts. But now, in the middle of the night, with everything quiet and the air warm, and that long hair of hers hanging over the side of the cot, it seemed eminently reasonable. His brain snapped awake at that thought, and he chewed it over, decided it was an excellent thought, one of the best he’d ever had. What was even better, he was thinking in a straight line.
She moaned in her sleep, flopped onto her back. Was she dreaming about her car exploding, feeling that she couldn’t breathe, that death was an instant away? He remembered how time had almost stopped until he’d pulled her under him as his car exploded. He turned off the lamp and closed his eyes, content that his SIG was in his bedside drawer and a deputy was outside his door.
Why didn’t they blow up our cars at the same time? We’d be dead, gone. Why blow up my car before Anna’s? Because I saw the man running away in the alley last night? Because I was a witness, like Delsey is still a witness? She still wasn’t safe, he knew it, but there was nothing to do tonight.