Damage: A Ghost Squad Novel, page 11
“I think he was distracted.” She glanced nervously down the hall. There was no sound except the air-conditioning.
“You told him we’re here, right? At the house?” When she nodded, Vincent squashed the faint vibrating panic behind his breastbone. Getting the squirrels wouldn’t help anything, goddammit. “Did he ask?”
“Not specifically; he just asked where we were.” She bit her lip, teeth sinking into softness, and that was powerfully distracting. Was she going to stretch tonight? Her palms were scratched up from the pavement, but she was moving all right. She wouldn’t really stiffen up until tomorrow; Vince wasn’t looking forward to his shoulder’s future protests if he managed more than a light doze tonight. “I don’t think he really cared. He sounded busy.”
Didn’t even give her a chance to get her own news out. Vince didn’t like that, either. “Does he usually listen to you?”
“Are you kidding?” Even stunned disbelief looked good on her. “Alan’s only interested in one thing.”
“What’s that?” It better not be what I think it is. And how strange was it that Vince was all of a sudden feeling possessive over a woman he barely knew?
“Himself.” She folded her arms, this time overriding a wince and digging her fingers in, and there it was again—that fragile, heartbreaking determination, courage much deeper than Vince’s own.
After all, he was trained for this shit and he had several inches on her, not to mention pounds of muscle. All she had was sheer bravery. And maybe some affection for little Eddie. “He sounds like a real winner.”
“You have no idea.” She probably had no idea she was hugging herself; no wonder she hadn’t immediately dialed Alan back.
Vince’s arms tingled. It would have been nice to get her close, reassure her a bit. But she might think he was just like Alan.
Was he? At the moment, he couldn’t tell. “Is it usual for everyone else to vanish when Marquez goes on a trip?” He’d asked before, but he wanted to be absolutely sure.
It would help him plan.
“Of course not. He comes back with no notice sometimes. But this time he gave them a couple weeks off with pay and didn’t tell me.” A curious look stole over her face, and Vincent waited. Civilians needed time to think; he just needed a few seconds to react. The difference wasn’t entirely training.
But the training helped. “He did?” he finally prompted.
“Emilia said Alan told her and Tomas about it. It isn’t like Mr. Marquez to pay them if they’re not working, but . . .I guess it’s possible. He would certainly leave it in Alan’s hands; maybe Dracula Cowboy’s making himself popular.”
“Dracula Cowboy?” Vince’s mouth twitched. He couldn’t help it. The name was incredibly appropriate.
She rolled her eyes, like a teenage cheerleader. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
“He won’t hear it from me.” No, not a cheerleader, he decided. She’d be an artsy type, one of those quiet girls everyone liked but nobody thought they had a shot at. The kind you knew would leave a small town in their rearview mirror and make it in the city, the type Vince barely looked at because it was useless to even dream. “Listen, ma’am—”
“It’s Cara. I think we’re past the ma’am bit, don’t you?” Now she was even more anxious, rubbing gently at her upper arms. Shock wasn’t a danger at this point, but he should still keep a watch for it. “I mean, you saved my life.”
Maybe. They could have been just interested in the kid. “Just doing my job.” It wouldn’t do any good to let her think otherwise, or to let her in on his suspicions. Especially about Alan de la Cruz. “Anyway, do you have a place to go if this gets bad?”
It was already bad. Getting her out of the fallout was a good move—if she’d go for it.
“I’ve got my passport, if that’s what you mean. But Eddie . . .” She shook her head a little too hard, driving away a bad thought. “His mom’s dead. Car accident, I think. If his dad’s arrested, where does that leave him? A foster home, CPS?”
Car accident? Alan told the kid his dad sent her away. Vince didn’t feel like telling Cara what that might mean. It could just be a kid’s misunderstanding.
The trouble was, there were too many coincidences and misunderstandings piling up. He didn’t like this at all. Then there was the fact that his nerves were hamburger and the doctors were using nice little terms like combat fatigue and paranoia. And that grandaddy of diagnoses, post-traumatic stress, which was a long-term ticket to nonfunctioning.
He couldn’t afford to be nonfunctional. Right now, Vincent Desmarais needed to be tiptop.
“This is a nightmare,” she said, softly.
He swallowed, hard. This brave, fragile woman didn’t have any idea what nightmare really meant. And he knew, all the way down to his bones, that he never wanted her to find out.
Which meant he had to do some thinking. But first things first. “Well, we’re in it together, whatever it is.”
Cara surprised him again. “Why?” Her expression wasn’t exactly mistrustful, but it was cautious.
The caution cheered him up, even as it made a strange sharp pain go through his chest. “Why what?”
“I’m really grateful, don’t get me wrong.” She probably used that placating tone a lot on de la Cruz. “But I’d like to know why a virtual stranger’s sticking around for this.”
Smart lady. “It wouldn’t be right to leave you and the kid in the lurch, ma’—I mean, Cara.”
She studied him for what felt like a decade or two, thoughts moving in her deep, dark eyes. “So you’re an honorable soldier.”
Hell no, ma’am. I’m the bastard on the ground who gets the job done. But . . . “I’d like to be.” That was the truth, or a truth, at least as far as she was concerned. “I’m trained for this, I took the job, and I’m going to see it through. Okay?”
She didn’t answer immediately, simply studied him afresh. He’d been under some searchlights in his life, but never with a pair of soft, liquid dark eyes digging right through every defense and touching something he hadn’t even known existed deep-buried inside his own head.
And, to be absolutely honest, inside his high left ribs too, as well as significantly lower down. She could give even the most hardened interrogators a run for their money.
Whatever she saw must have satisfied her, because her slim shoulders sagged and she leaned against the playroom door. “All right,” she said quietly. “Good enough.”
And Vince found himself hoping, from his haircut to his toes, that he would prove to be.
SHE RETREATED TO do her nightly yoga, and Vince used the time to go through the house top to bottom—except the playroom, of course—and get the cameras situated. There were a thousand and one blind spots, certainly, but he could train the electric eyes on the most likely routes for anyone who wanted to get their hands on the kid.
It was small comfort that he knew how he’d do it, so he knew how to arrange the defenses. He couldn’t be sure if the next attempt would be semi-professionals like the snatch team in the mall parking lot, or actual professionals, with the gear to match.
Hell, he couldn’t even tell if there would be a “next attempt.” It troubled him that the cops had merely questioned and turned them loose. It also troubled him that they hadn’t sent Cara and Eddie to the hospital, and hadn’t wanted to impound and process the Volvo for evidence of the rattlesnake. Then again, they couldn’t be sure any of the would-be kidnappers had touched the car, and they seemed to think the entire thing was just a scuffle, possibly not even a snatch attempt at all.
What did they know that he didn’t? If Marquez was on the wrong side of the law, they could just be waiting to see. But it wasn’t like cops to leave a six-year-old in the line of fire.
Was it? Vincent didn’t think the young Detective Sanderson would look kindly on that shit, but you never could tell about anyone with a badge. It wasn’t like the service, where you knew exactly what you were dealing with at any stripe level—mostly shit, but shit with rules. It was the considered opinion of Vincent’s buddies that if the cops were any good, they’d be in a branch of the goddamn service themselves. The badge was for those who couldn’t handle boot camp—or who had washed out.
He tried to keep his mind occupied with figuring out whether or not calling some of the squad was a good idea. It was both preparation and penance to take his time with setting up the house. He could have hurried back to the camera room and watched her bending and stretching, lithe and supple, her hair pulled back and her eyes closed, her breathing coming in deep even swells. The thought caused a few interesting reactions, especially below the belt.
He was pretty sure he could watch her all day, but how sick did that make him? It wasn’t battle stress. He was downright broken, and he knew it.
She wasn’t.
The hippies had it right, Sparky had said once after about six beers and a fuzzy number of tequila shots. One two three, what are you fighting for? Once you decide that, all the rest of the killing’s easy.
He was right, as usual. It hadn’t taken long for Vince to find out how right.
It was disturbingly easy.
Fortress, Prison
CARA SPENT THE night on the floor next to Eddie’s bed. She just couldn’t make herself stay in her own, and when she surfaced, blinking, to her cell phone alarm vibrating under her pillow, Eddie had slithered out of the red race car and curled up beside her, his thumb in his mouth and his olive cheeks rosy with slumber.
Dawn was rising; the house brimmed with sepulchral hush. Eddie didn’t wake when she put him back in his bed; Cara straightened, rubbing at her lower back. Pretty soon he’d be too big to carry. By that point Cara might be in another job, and he’d barely remember a woman who had fed him, bathed him, crouched instinctively over him in a hot parking lot while the world went mad.
There had been no night terrors, but maybe that was only because he’d been too worn out.
Or because his father was gone. They both slept better with Daddy Dearest away.
Señor’s been arrested at the border.
Now, with the benefit of a good night’s sleep, she winced at how stupidly she’d handled all of this. She had to call the agency—but what on earth could they do? Would Eddie end up in foster care? It was an unappetizing prospect, to say the least. It was entirely possible Marquez would bail himself out and come home, and if he found his kid taken into state custody he was apt to get unpleasant.
Something else bothered her, too. Normally Alan wouldn’t get off the phone until she hung up on him. But yesterday he’d been in a hurry, wouldn’t listen to a damn thing she said, and wanted to know precisely where she was.
I don’t want to be thinking what I’m thinking. Cara smoothed the sheet and blanket over Eddie and padded softly away. She stopped in the middle of the playroom to do a few sun salutations, wincing as her body reminded her of yesterday’s jolts. All in all, though, the stiffness wasn’t as bad as she’d feared.
The hall outside the playroom door was deserted. The kitchen, however, was full of bright warm light, and the coffeemaker burbled pleasantly. Vincent was at the sink washing his hands, broad shoulders straining at a navy T-shirt. Either it was yesterday’s or he had more than one; she couldn’t imagine he’d taken the time to do laundry.
So he hadn’t left. Painful tension she hadn’t even been aware of fled Cara’s own shoulders. “Good morning.”
He shrugged and grabbed one of Emilia’s much-bleached flour-sack towels. “Coffee’s on.” A husky start-the-day growl, gravel in his throat even though he didn’t smoke.
“You’re a true gentleman.” She headed for blessed caffeine. She should do a proper practice, but lugging her mat out to the poolside didn’t seem . . .
Well, it didn’t seem quite safe.
“Never been accused of that.” He finished drying his hands, half-turned so he could rest a hip against the counter, and examined her from top to toe. The second island was clotted and crowded with papers, and Cara’s stomach turned over. “I went digging. You’re not going to like this.”
“Because there’s so much about this situation to love already.” Cara glanced nervously at the kitchen extension, but the phone just sat there, black and cordless, a silent witness. She was in her pajamas, for God’s sake, and ludicrously unprepared for the direction this conversation, let alone the entire world, was heading. “I take it you went through Mr. Marquez’s desk.”
“File cabinets too.” At least he didn’t sugarcoat it. “Especially the locked ones. You must have suspected he’s not quite on the side of the angels.”
Cara focused on pouring coffee. At least it stopped brewing when you took the carafe out. “He passed the agency background check.” It was a prim, unhelpful thing to say, and it made her sound complicit.
Everything did, she supposed.
“And by the time you figured out he wasn’t completely kosher, you were already in love with the kid.” He folded the towel up with prissy exactitude, setting it back on the counter instead of hanging it up. “It happens.”
Cara opened her mouth, but her cell phone vibrated on the counter. This time it wasn’t the alarm, just a call. Coffee slopped inside her white china mug, and she almost let out a tiny, wounded little cry.
“That’s probably Alan,” Vincent said. His eyes were very dark, and his mouth was a straight line. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Cara picked up her phone. Her heart triphammered, and her hand shook. But she punched the green button anyway, and lifted it to her ear. “Alan.” She tried to sound severe instead of uncaffeinated, just awakened, and scared out of her goddamn mind. “You have exactly sixty seconds to explain all this.”
“Explain what, chica?” The smile was all but visible, his particular shit-eating grin. “Shoulda remembered you’re in a bad mood before coffee.”
How does he know? He can’t know, it’s six a.m. The thought that maybe Alan was somehow watching the house raised goosebumps along her arms and pooled dread in her stomach. “Thirty seconds, Alan.”
“What? I’m calling to tell you to bring the kid.” The way Alan said it, this was an entirely reasonable request. “Daddy wants to see Junior. Thinks maybe it’ll help him get out of hock.”
And I’m supposed to believe that? “You want me to bring him where?” Her gaze fastened on Vincent’s.
His forehead furrowed, and he approached cautiously, leaf-light even in his heavy boots. It was unreal, how quietly he could move.
“There’s a church out in Mesilla, I’ll text it to you. We’ll meet there and take you to el señor.” Alan’s tone sharpened. “Listen, where’s Emilia? I keep calling, nobody’s picking up.”
You gave her some time off, dammit. If Cara was alone in the house, would she believe this bullshit? Maybe. Fear did funny things to you. “I don’t know, Alan.” She dropped her gaze, staring at the papers. If she went through them, what would she find out? Nothing she wanted to know, that was for damn sure. “I’m alone in someone else’s house with a six-year-old, what am I supposed to think?”
“You called the agency?” Casually, as if it didn’t matter. And why would he ask that if he thought she was just upset about Marquez getting arrested?
“Not yet.” She inhaled to say but I’m about to, and furthermore to inform him there had been a kidnapping attempt and the cops were involved.
“Good, ’cause if you get reassigned, el señor’s gonna make me watch the kid. I ain’t no babysitter, chica.” Alan laughed, and there was another sound crackling through the speaker.
Voices. Dim and muffled, but obviously male.
He wasn’t alone. Why that should unnerve her so much, Cara couldn’t quite figure out, but the shaking was all through her now, and every internal alarm bell she had was ringing violently, threatening to shake her into pieces. She wished she’d had time to get some coffee down before this. “Alan, this isn’t right. I’m seriously weirded out here. And yesterday someone—”
“Just bring the kid to the church, and everything will be fine.” The voices around him quieted, as if he was in an echoing hallway. “Señor will even pay you a bonus. You say you’re all alone? Where’s Emilia? where’s Tomas?”
As if you don’t know. But why would he lie about that?
There was no good reason, and now that she’d had some sleep and wasn’t so frightened, she knew as much. “Nobody’s here, Alan.”
“What happened to the new guy?”
Another wrong note. Why would he care? And did he truly think her so stupid she wouldn’t check the security schedule? Cara’s gaze rose again to Vincent’s. Think fast. “He vanished.” The lie came naturally, instinctively. “I think he didn’t like being questioned by the cops.”
“Cops?” Alan swore. If he was acting, he was doing a damn good job. “They been to the house?”
“No. There was . . . Look, Alan, weird stuff is happening, and I don’t like it. Where’s Mr. Marquez’s lawyer? Shouldn’t he be—?” Shouldn’t he be calling me instead of you?
“He’ll be at the church.” Alan exhaled sharply. “Listen, I gotta go, they’re calling for me. Just bring the kid this afternoon, all right? Mesilla Baptist, three p.m. I’ll text the address.”
Then, he hung up.
Vincent stood a few steps from her, expressionless. Cara was suddenly very aware how, well, large he was. If he planned to do anything unpleasant, now was the time.
She set her phone down. Her mouth was full of copper fear, and she was cold. Colder than the air-conditioning. Positively arctic.
This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. A roaring-rushing filled her top to bottom, as if she’d been emptied and they were pouring something carbonated into a Cara-shaped bottle.
