Hard Evidence (25 page)

More knocking—or was that her heart?

Then someone shouted her name.

Tessa peeked around the corner.

It was Margaux. She stood before the front window, holding up a shining silver CD, a sheepish smile on her face.

"Sorry!" she mouthed.

Tessa let out a relieved sigh, her heart still hammering. She slipped the .22 surreptitiously into the waistband of her jeans and covered it with her T-shirt, hoping Margaux hadn't seen it. The hag would probably laugh at her for overreacting.

She walked to the front door, then hesitated, tempted to let Margaux wait until Julian had come home. She had no desire for a rematch of yesterday's verbal battle, no desire to even speak with Margaux. Then again, Margaux was trying to help.

Tessa unlocked the door.

"Not in a hurry to let me in, were you?" Margaux said, brushing past her in a tight pair of black jeans and the same red leather jacket.

"I was in the shower and had to get dressed." Tessa had just started to shut the door when she heard the unmistakable tromp of heavy feet running on the porch. "Oh, God!"

Fueled by adrenaline, she threw herself into the door, tried to slam it, but they were faster and much stronger. She found herself hurled backward as two men forced their way inside. She hit the wall, felt the bite of steel against her hip.

The gun.

It all happened in a heartbeat.

The pistol in her hand. The squeeze of the trigger. The recoil.

Pop! Pop!

A grunt. A spray of blood. A man down.

Then pain exploded against her stomach, doubling her over, driving the breath from her lungs. She clutched at her belly, the little revolver falling to the floor. For a moment she thought she'd been shot. Then with a sense of astonishment, she realized Margaux had kicked her.

And the pieces slid into place. Margaux had led the men here. Margaux had betrayed her. Margaux had betrayed Julian.

Margaux was the leak.

"Fucking stupid bitch!" Margaux kicked her again, her boot connecting painfully with Tessa's ribs, splaying Tessa across the floor.

"Oh, Eddie!" a man's voice shouted. "She popped Eddie!"

"Forget about him, and worry about your own ass!" Margaux snapped. "Make it quick!"

And Tessa knew she was dead.

She heard the unmistakable
click-click
of someone sliding the rack of a semiautomatic, felt rough hands grab her by the hair, felt the hard kiss of steel against her temple. "Stupid whore! You killed Eddie!"

Tessa coughed, drew in a shaky breath, expecting it to be her last.

But it wasn't fear she felt. It was regret.

Regret for the years she'd lost with her mother. Regret that she would never see Julian again. Regret for the grief her death would cause them both.

Tears pricked her eyes, and she sent her thoughts skyward.

Find happiness, Mama. And please, Julian, don't blame yourself for this!

"Quit fucking around!" Margaux bent down, picked up Tessa's pistol, slipped it into her pocket. "She's already made enough noise to draw in the neighbors."

Tessa coughed again, croaked out the words, "Julian… will kill…!"

Margaux laughed. "No, Julian will die."

Tessa expected a bullet, but instead she found herself being held down, the man's knee in her back, his iron grip around her arm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a syringe.

They were going to drug her.

"N-no!" She tried to pull her arm away, twisted, arched, kicked.

But he was too heavy. With his dead weight thrown over her, she couldn't budge. She felt a sharp poke and a rush of warmth in her vein.

"Not too much!" Margaux hurried across the room, unplugged Tessa's laptop and grabbed her files. "If she dies before she gets to Burien, he'll make you eat your balls."

They were taking her to Alexi Burien.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have opened the door? If only she'd waited for Julian.

Julian!

Tessa wanted to fight back, wanted to leave some kind of clever clue for Julian. She wanted to warn him about Margaux. But a strange euphoria had muddled her mind, dulling her pain and fear, leaving her to drift in confusion.

Chapter 25

Julian sat at the bar at Pasha's, locked in the personality of Tony Corelli, while one of the three teenagers he'd pretended to screw this past week danced onstage. "She's really something! Ain't she something?"

Chet nodded, grinned, poured him another shot. "Great ass."

Julian smacked a ten onto the counter, saw Irena watching him from a nearby table where she sat topless on Sergei's lap, the misery in her eyes an indictment. He'd seen the bruises on her face, seen through the heavy layer of makeup to the signs of violence beneath. And although the bruises were proof of Sergei's brutality, Julian knew it was the emotional wounds that hurt Irena most.

Staying in character, he winked, blew her a kiss, smiled.

It was almost seven p.m., early in the evening for a place like this. The room reeked of booze and testosterone, alcohol putting a disorderly edge on the pervasive horniness. Up front, a group of college kids had just gotten started celebrating some guy's twenty-first birthday by doing body shots off one of the girls. The sullen forty-something in the southeast corner had been warned not to jerk off by the bouncer. Two guys who looked like they hadn't had a hard-on in twenty years watched the stage longingly.

Julian felt itchy. He wanted to get out of this hellhole and go home to Tessa. He wanted to try to clean up the mess he'd made with her. What did she mean she didn't expect anything from him? Did she really think he'd leave her to face an unplanned pregnancy alone? Did she think he cared so little for her that he'd knock her up and run?

Have you ever given her reason to think anything else, Darcangelo?

No, he hadn't. Well, that was going to change. He might not be able to marry her, but if she was pregnant he'd make damn good and sure she had everything she needed.

But he couldn't go home to her—not yet. His night here was only beginning. He'd made good use of his time behind the guarded doors this week to scope out cameras, alarms, exits. He knew there was a stairway near the rear exit that led down to a basement and that the stairway was always guarded. He knew eight men were usually on guard duty, armed discreetly with high-caliber pistols. Before he left tonight, he wanted to get another crack at that basement.

He'd passed all of this on to Irving, whose most trusted men were gradually infiltrating the neighborhood around Pasha's. One had gotten a job at the gas station. A team was always on watch in the upstairs hotel room, where tape was still rolling. Plainclothes officers now watched the parking lot twenty-four-seven, prepared to tag the white minivan with a GPS monitor the next time it showed up. Hopefully the device would give them the most important bit of information— where Burien was hiding.

The pieces were sliding into place.

"So you think she'll be free for a bit of nookie after her number?" Julian pointed to the dancer with a jerk of his head.

"Could be." Chet gave him a knowing grin. "Want me to check?"

Julian grinned, licked his lower lip. "Oh, yeah."

He hated doing this, hated himself for doing it, but she was his backstage pass. Unless he was a paying customer, the only way to get behind the guarded door was to start shooting, and it wasn't yet time for that. He'd just raised the shot glass to his lips when his cell rang. He pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the number.

It was Irving.

Julian answered with Tony Corelli's accent. "Yeah, I'm kinda tied up now."

"Get home now, Darcangelo."

Julian felt a hitch of fear in his stomach. 'Tessa?"

"Go now! I'll meet you there." Irving hung up.

Phone still in hand, Julian pushed blindly through the tables, past the bouncers, and toward the front door.

"Hey, Tony, what about—?"

"I gotta go!" he shouted back, forcing his way out the door.

Then he was running, oblivious to surprised stares, to oncoming traffic, to the slamming of his own heart. Through the parking lot. Down the street. Around the block. Up to his truck.

If Burien had her… If he'd killed her…

Oh, Christ!

Fear, cold and sharp, twisted in his gut.

He unlocked his truck, jumped behind the wheel, and tore off down the street, swerving to avoid a car backing out of its parking spot, just making the yellow light.

If Burien had hurt Tessa… If he had her…

His police scanner spat static—and a request for crime-scene cleanup at his address.

Jesus God, no!

He gunned the engine, his blood slick with adrenaline, the seconds measured in heartbeats as he burned through the streets, the chaos in his mind fusing into a semblance of a prayer. "God, let her be alive! Let her be safe!"

Left onto Eleventh. Left onto Mariposa.

Squad cars. Red-blue-red-blue-red. An ambulance.

Let her be alive!

He burned rubber into the driveway and had just leapt from the driver's seat when he saw the EMTs step outside guiding a gurney. On it lay a body zipped in thick black plastic.

Dead?

Julian's heart burst inside his chest, knocked the air from his lungs, his throat constricting as if squeezed by invisible claws. Somehow he stayed on his feet, carried forward on wooden legs. 'Tessa?" he whispered.

His hand reached out of its own accord, tugged at the zipper.

The plastic fell open to reveal a man's face.

Not Tessa. Not Tessa. Not Tessa.

Breath filled his lungs, and his thoughts coalesced into a single burning question.

Where was she?

He shoved his way through his own front door, shouted for her. 'Tessa!"

"She's not here." Irving stood beside a pool of blood, talking with a detective.

And Julian knew.

Burien had her.

"Goddamn it!" Julian slammed his fist into the wall. "When?"

"Neighbors heard a couple shots, called it in. I'd say it's been about thirty minutes."

More than enough time for rape, for brutality, for torture. More than enough time to put her on a private plane headed for Mexico, Turkey, Serbia, or any one of a thousand places where men would be willing to pay for a pretty young blonde. More than enough time to pull a trigger.

Julian fought to control his regret, his rage, his fear. He needed to think clearly if he was going to find her.

You're a special agent, Darcangelo. Act like one.

He took in the scene at a glance, forced his mind to focus on the details—the intact door and lock, the disarmed alarm, the single pool of blood on the floor, Tessa's missing computer and files.

"Looks like an inside job to me," Irving said, echoing Julian's thoughts. "No sign of a break-in. The alarm didn't sound."

"Who's the DB?"

"I was hoping you could make him. Looks like she lit him up with her little twenty-two—a couple slugs to the chest. The son of a bitch didn't make it three steps inside the house before she popped him."

A vicious sense of satisfaction surged through Julian.

Good for you, Tess.

But the feeling was quickly washed away by his certainty that Tessa had been terrified when she'd pulled that trigger. She'd been fighting for her life and had killed a man—and he hadn't been here.

"The question is, how'd he get in?" Irving walked to the back door, checked the lock, then turned to face Julian. "Either she let them in, or they had a key."

"She wouldn't have unlocked the door—not unless it was someone she felt certain she could trust." Julian forced his mind to think through it. "The guy in the bag is proof that she didn't trust them. She doesn't usually carry the pistol. She would have had to run and get it. She must have known something was wrong before they got in."

That probably meant they'd had a key.

Two people knew where he lived, but only one of them had a key to the house.

Dyson.

The realization left him feeling hollow, sick, utterly betrayed. He had known it had to be someone close to Dyson, but he'd hoped to God it wasn't Dyson himself.

That's when Julian saw it—a small silver disk sitting in the middle of the table. It looked like the disk from a high-end digital camera. Dread knotted in his gut, the images from the e-mail Burien had sent Tessa flashing through his mind.

"That doesn't belong to you?" Irving asked.

Julian shook his head, held out his hand for a pair of nitrile gloves.

Irving slapped the gloves into his palm. "You don't have to look at it."

"Yeah, I do." Julian pulled on the gloves, picked up the disk by its edges, and carried it back to his office, surprised to see it that the door was still closed and intact. He unlocked it, saw that his files were still there, his computer untouched. Clearly, they'd come for Tessa and weren't concerned about his evidence. Or perhaps the shots Tessa had fired had made them jumpy, forced them to hurry.

Almost unable to breathe, he booted up his computer, placed the disk in a plastic adapter case, and loaded it, watching as his multimedia program launched, the seconds ticking by like hours.

A blurry image opened on his screen. Tessa her head down, golden curls hiding her face, her hair swaying back and forth as if she were walking or being carried. And then a man's voice.

"A bit of Mexican tar, and there's no fight left in her."

Heroin.

They'd drugged her.

Julian felt his teeth grind.

The camera pulled back enough to show Tessa being led toward the front door, a man's arms beneath hers, holding her up. She looked dangerously close to a fatal overdose, her body almost limp, her head nodding as if she were barely conscious.

But she was alive. At least she was alive.

"No!" She gave a weak cry, made a helpless effort to twist away.

Julian's gut burned with helpless rage.

Then the man's hand grabbed Tessa's hair and jerked her head back.

"Say hi to the camera! Say hi to Darcangelo!"

"Julian?" She searched for him as if she expected to find him standing there, hope slowly fading from her eyes, tears spilling onto her cheeks. Then she seemed to focus on the camera, her words slurred. "The camera crew… let the lion kill… the cheetah cubs. That's okay. They did… their job."

Pain ripped through Julian's chest as he realized what she was trying to say.

Despite the drug, despite her fear, she was trying to send him a message. She was trying to tell him to stick to his assignment—
even if it meant letting Burien brutalize and kill her
.

Julian swallowed the rock in his throat, forced himself to keep watching.

"Whatever, sweetheart." The man who held her up laughed, clearly mistaking her words for drug-induced babble. 'Take a good look, Darcangelo, because we're going to make a star out of her. Next time you see her, she'll be on DVD!"

Not a fucking chance, asshole!

Beneath me man's words, Tessa's voice had taken on the tone of a child singing a nursery rhyme, except that the words to mis rhyme made no sense.

Then the clip ended.

Julian clicked PLAY, watched it again and again until every second of it was burned into his brain—the hopelessness in Tessa's tear-filled eyes when she realized he wasn't there, the raw courage beneath her slurred message, the cruelty in the voice of the man whose fist was bunched in her hair, her nonsensical little rhyme as she drifted away in a heroin haze.

It was clear that Burien intended to brutalize her on camera and send Julian the recordings. That fit Burien's sadistic M.O., his warped sense of fun. On the one hand it meant he didn't intend to kill her right away. On the other…

There were so many ways to destroy a woman.

Three years ago Julian had let his emotions interfere with the job, and Burien had escaped. God only knew how many women Burien had hurt since then, how many lives he had ruined. Every one of them was Julian's responsibility.

And now the bastard had the woman he loved.

The words came to his mind so naturally that it was a moment before he realized what he'd just admitted to himself.

He was in love with Tessa.

God, yes, he loved her. He'd loved her since the night she'd taken his rage inside her and answered it with tenderness. He'd loved her since she'd peeled off his Kevlar and kissed his bruised muscles, her concern for him spilling out in tears. Hell, he'd loved her since she'd melted against him in that hospital linen closet.

Not that it did her one damned bit of good. He had tried to protect her from Burien, but he had failed. With leaks in the police department and a leak in the FBI, would he have been able to keep her safe anywhere?

Yes. He could have taken off with her, gone underground, hidden her someplace even Dyson couldn't find her. He could have stuck to her twenty-four-seven. He could have been here.

Instead, he'd stayed with his assignment. He'd done what a federal agent was supposed to do. He'd done his job.

And it was a job he was going to finish—tonight.

But it wasn't Tessa who was going to die. It was Burien.