Double Vision (27 page)

With slow, careful movements, JT flipped open his badge.

A grim-faced agent shone his flashlight in the window, stared at their faces, then examined the badge. After checking Rina's ID, and a brief conversation into a handheld radio, he motioned them on.

When they had cleared the barrier of FBI and both state and county police cruisers, JT peeled off his lip mike and picked up a phone. A brief call later and he went back to driving. “Taylor's in the clear. Bayard had her choppered out to the nearest hospital. She's unhurt, but Lopez had her under sedation. They picked up Slater and a number of other smaller fish. Lopez either escaped or he wasn't there.”

Relief that Taylor was safe eased some of her tension, but she couldn't repress a shudder at the thought that Alex could have been in the enclave. As much as she wanted him caught, she didn't relish the thought of coming face-to-face with him again. The memory of the cold way he had executed Cesar was still too fresh.

JT slowed for an intersection, then turned right, heading south. Sometime over the past hour the heavy clouds had cleared away, and now it was a beautiful night. The moon had just risen over the coastal hills, spreading a silvery light over the landscape and giving the sea a limpid, metallic sheen.

JT reached over onto the backseat, found a jacket and handed it to her. Rina draped the buttery-soft leather over her legs. Now that the cloud cover had gone, the temperature was cooler and crisper, a big change from Beaumont.

Warmth seeped into her legs. She relaxed a little more, letting the rhythm of the car soothe her. She glanced at JT's profile. “How did you find me?”

He sent her an enigmatic look. “There was a second transmitter in one of your photo frames. You were also tailed by one of Bayard's boys from the airport. I took over when I got into town. I just missed you at the bank, then the interior design place. I picked you up again when you got the rental and headed north.”

She stared at his profile. A second transmitter. No wonder she hadn't been stopped. The realization that she had been tailed since she had left Beaumont was sobering. JT and Bayard hadn't reeled her in for a reason: she had been too useful.

J
T pulled over into the brightly lit area out in front of a motel. He stepped out of the car and peeled off the body armor, black T-shirt and his weapons belt, and stowed them in the trunk. Reaching into the backseat, he extracted a fresh T-shirt from a nylon gear bag, pulled it on and slid back behind the wheel. “You've got two options. You can call Marlow and get out now, or you can come with me.”

Rina hadn't expected to get a choice. “Isn't that breaking the rules?”

His gaze locked with hers. Suddenly they were back in relationship territory, and it was…complicated.

He leaned forward and kissed her, taking his time. “Does that make it easier?”

“I can't promise to do everything you tell me.”

“You're going to have to.” He put the car in gear and nosed back out onto the highway. “Two days ago, the Chavez compound in Colombia turned into a crater. The press is blaming the military. The military are blaming a rival cartel. I haven't received confirmation yet, but we think the missile is one of a batch of scrapped warheads that Lopez was in the process of smuggling out of the country, in which case the hit was very personal.”

Rina frowned. The thought that someone wanted to kill Alex so badly that they had used a missile was bizarre. “Who wants to kill him?” She was certain there was a long queue, but using a missile put whoever had launched it right at the front.

“The people who have been using Lopez. They brought him into the country as an adolescent, gave him a new identity and helped him set up in business. Lopez has been importing cocaine into the States, exporting guns and ammunition and brokering terrorism for a group known as the cabal ever since. He's their primary link into Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A few months ago the stakes went up, when they asked him to move missile components.

“The missiles were an exception to the rule. Normally, they don't pull that kind of stuff. The manipulation has usually been high level and subtle—influencing armament contracts, inserting key personnel into foreign postings, manipulating information to keep the war machine turning over and the money flowing into their pockets.”

She stared at the cold landscape they were passing through, bare hills and miles of open sea. She knew what a cabal was, a group involved in political intrigue. The term was old-fashioned, but the crimes were up to date. “Just who are the cabal?”

“They're the children of Nazis who escaped from Germany on a ship called the
Nordika
a few weeks before Berlin fell and took refuge in Colombia. That's where Marco Chavez came in. He hid them for a price.”

The connection with Nazi Germany raised gooseflesh. It was another layer, another weird twist she hadn't seen coming.

 

She must have fallen asleep. When she woke, JT was still driving and the night sky was once again shrouded in a bank of cloud, blocking out the moon and stars. The clock on the dash said it was after one in the morning.

Rina stretched, ironing out the cricks in her neck. “Where are we going?”

“You're going to San Francisco. I'm going south.”

She sat up. “How far south?”

“New Mexico. I've booked a flight out of Oakland airport. I get into El Paso at six.”

Getting details from JT was like extracting blood from a stone, but eventually she got what she needed. The same South American informant who had previously supplied information about Alex had tipped them off about a party that was being thrown as a cover for a meeting Lopez was having with a cabal member. According to the source, Alex had had his appearance surgically altered since the bust in Winton—a process he had started when he had left Colombia as a teenager. Apart from the surgical alterations, he would also be in disguise.

The party itself was being thrown by a charitable organization to celebrate the opening of an art exhibition of “lost” works that had been recovered by a private collector. The tickets ran to five figures, and counting.

Rina stared at the ribbon of road ahead, caught in the powerful beam of the headlights. El Paso was right on the border, the perfect meeting place for criminals, with a quick escape into Mexico just minutes away. The thought that Alex would slip away again made her stomach clench. She needed to be there. She needed to make sure he was caught. “I'm coming with you.”

JT's glance was cool. “No. I'll meet up with you in a couple of days.”

“Without me, you'll lose him. Even if he's disguised, I can ID him for you. Pull over, and I'll show you.”

 

Five minutes of tense debate later, JT pulled over into a deserted picnic area. With the headlights off, the night was pitch-black, but not dark enough.

“Now blindfold me.”

A spare T-shirt from JT's bag, folded so it formed a pad over her eyes then tied tightly, served as a blindfold. Rina turned to face the road and directed him to walk into the shrubs that fringed the picnic area and position himself so she couldn't see him.

When she turned back, JT was instantly visible. Despite being mostly hidden behind shrubs, he glowed in the dark. A bright turquoise around his head flowed into a deep, pure blue around his shoulders and chest. The colors were clear and distinct, nothing like the murky hues around Slater and Eady or the unusual bisection of black and red that marked Alex.

Slowly she walked toward him, taking care, because while she could see JT with her eyes closed, she couldn't see anything else. “You're partially hidden by the sign, but your colors are clear and distinct.” She walked up to him and planted her palm on his chest. “I can find Alex for you. No matter how much he disguises his physical appearance, I'll be able to see him.”

 

Rina avoided a waiter with a tray of champagne and the press of expensively dressed guests in favor of drifting past the impressive walls of paintings.

Wearing a blond wig and an elegant black gown, and wired for sound and video with a set of state-of-the-art earrings, spectacles and a brooch, she should have been too tense to notice the “lost” art. But the works, mysteriously recovered by a reclusive European collector, were mesmerizing: Gainsborough, Chagalle, a breathtaking oil by Turner, and a previously undiscovered set of dancers by Degas.

JT's hand tightened on her elbow. They'd been mingling for more than an hour, drifting between the garden and the beautifully appointed reception room of the large private mansion in which the party was being held. So far the only positive IDs made had been of an A-list movie star and his entourage, and a long list of the financially advantaged.

JT bent close to her ear. Wearing a mustache and spectacles, his hair artificially grayed at the temples, he looked fifty-plus, but the fiction was periodically blurred by the fluid way he moved, and the fact that the tux couldn't disguise the set of his shoulders. “I'm going upstairs. Kurt thinks he's spotted one of Lopez's men. Wait five. If you don't hear from me, walk to the car and stay there.”

Rina checked her watch as the seconds crawled by. Stepping outside, where there was less of a crush, she did another circuit of the pool, then paused in the shadowy lee of a statue situated directly opposite the open doors of the reception room. Closing her eyes, she tried to sort out the confused mass of color. Singly, people were easy to “see.” In a crowded room, it was like trying to search for colors in soup—everything blended.

“Waiting for someone special?”

Her eyes popped open. There were a lot of men at the party; they outnumbered women by a ratio of about three to one. Her blond wig had attracted plenty of looks, but so far she hadn't had any approaches because JT had been with her. In a white tux, his hair caught back in a sleek ponytail, this guy had to be a member of the movie star entourage. “Sorry, you're not him.”

He shrugged and walked on. She checked her watch. Two minutes to go.

A voice jerked her head around. She caught a glimpse of movement in the shadows of a gazebo, the unmistakable outline of a heavyset man. A gleam of light flashed over a profile that, thanks to the gallery of photos Bayard had shown her shortly after she had been moved out of Winton, was shockingly familiar. Edward Dennison.

The improbability of Dennison's appearance here, now, knocked her off balance. He had been working for Alex twenty-two years ago when Esther had been murdered. Since then he had disappeared off the scope. According to Bayard, his new job had been running Alex's Colombian operation after the death of Marco Chavez. Since then, Dennison hadn't been seen on U.S. soil, but, with the destruction of the Chavez compound in Colombia, he had plenty of reason to return home. If Dennison was here, it was a certainty that Alex was, too.

Touching the jewel on her brooch that activated her mike, she relayed the information to the communications center, which was a catering truck parked out on the street. Stepping past the statue, Rina fell in behind a couple strolling up the patio steps, and trailed Dennison into the crowded reception room.

Dennison moved into a long conservatory-style gallery dotted with lush palms, its doors flung open to the garden. This room was packed, and most of the guests were men. Suddenly she felt a lot more conspicuous than she had been in the main reception room.

A waiter offered her a glass of champagne. She refused the drink, stepping around him to keep Dennison in sight. He was walking with purpose, not stopping to make conversation, or to eat or drink.

Her unease sharpened. An unsettling feeling, as if someone was watching her intently, made her spine tighten. Paranoia—maybe. She hadn't felt this way since she had been at Winton.

With a shudder, she kept moving, sliding between knots of guests. Dennison had merged with the sea of black tuxes and disappeared. She glanced around the room, just in case he had changed direction or doubled back behind her. It was possible he had stepped back out into the garden. One thing was certain, he had come inside to find someone.

The feeling that she was being watched, very specifically, coalesced into certainty. Suddenly she was sure that Alex was here. He was in the room, and he had seen her.

Stomach tight, she threaded past a large mixed group, high on champagne, and ducked down beside a small forest of potted palms. Seconds later, she had removed her blond wig and tossed it behind a palm. The most singular thing about her appearance had been the wig. Aside from that, she was dressed to blend in black. If Alex had been using the wig to keep her in view, he had just lost his point of reference. Bending, ostensibly to adjust the fastening of her shoe, she relayed the information that Alex was in the gallery.

The order came back to stay where she was until JT or one of the other agents could get to her. She lifted a glass of champagne from a waiter's tray and hovered at the edge of the large, partying group, making herself even less conspicuous as she scanned the crowd.

She caught a glimpse of Dennison. She studied the men around him, looking for a match for Alex in height and build. Hair color was unreliable. If she could wear a wig, Alex could, too—or alter the color of his hair.

Closing her eyes, she tried to see colors, but this room didn't look any different to the way the main reception room had looked from the garden: soup.

A door to her left popped open. JT, Kurt and a third agent stepped into the gallery. The instant JT's gaze locked with hers, she knew something was wrong. He lunged toward her. Time seemed to slow, stop. He caught her side on, sending her tumbling. The champagne glass smashed on the tiles, and a muffled spitting sound froze the blood in her veins. The potted palms behind her shivered, leaves shredding as JT's weight crashed down on her. The spitting sound came again, followed by the heavier detonation of a gun that wasn't silenced. Screams erupted, and the gallery became a stampede of panicked guests. Seconds later, the room was plunged into darkness.

When JT didn't immediately move, panic surged. She could smell blood. The gunfire had been aimed at her, but aside from a bruised hip and elbow she wasn't hurt.

JT's weight shifted, pinning her more securely. “Stay still.”

His voice was flat, almost unnaturally calm; he wasn't hit, just making sure she didn't get to her feet.

She picked up the faint static of JT's mike and snatches of his almost-soundless replies, enough to know that Dennison had been hit, and someone had pulled the fuses.

Seconds later, JT rolled off her. Oxygen flooded her lungs. His fingers gripped her arm and she found herself back on her feet and moving. Her hair, now loose from the clips that had held it flat beneath the wig, tumbled around her face and shoulders.

Her shoulder brushed a doorjamb. They rounded a corner, then another. The narrow beam of a flashlight flickered over richly embossed walls. “Where are we?”

“Just off the main hallway.” JT opened a door and pushed her inside a room. The brief skim of light identified it as a library, with a bank of French doors opening out onto yet another garden vista. “Wait here. Don't move.”

The command made sense. The gallery, the hall and the main reception room were awash with panicked people. The chance that someone would get hurt, or even accidentally shot, was high. Added to that, the possibility that Alex would attempt to grab her under these conditions was remote, but it couldn't be discounted.