Sting (27 page)

“We hoped it was a coincidence, too, but we rushed down to Tobias to check it out.” Wiley tipped his head toward Shaw. “He talked to the young woman who was with Sherman when he was shot.” He covered the main points of that conversation. “Then she told him something that knocked our socks off. The killer talked through an electrolarynx.”

Jordie sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly. “So, it was Panella?”

The three men had been watching her closely to gauge her reaction, and she could tell they were shocked by the resignation behind her statement.

Hickam was the first to speak. “You aren't surprised?”

“Not all that much, no. I'll be right back.”

She left her seat on the sofa, went into her bedroom, and retrieved the cell phone from between the mattresses where she'd hidden it until she decided what to do about it. This new information had made the decision for her.

She went back into the living room and held out the phone where the agents could see it. She explained how she'd come by it. “Josh knows I proofread all printed matter before sending it on to the client. It was safe for him to assume that the box of invitations would eventually wind up in my hands.”

“What if somebody else had answered when he called that phone?” Hickam asked.

“He'd have hung up, I suppose. Or if he never had need of it, it would have gone unused, forever a mystery as to how it got into that box. When he heard about Royce Sherman, he panicked and called me. He believes Panella killed Sherman and is afraid that he'll be next.”

Hickam took the phone from her and turned it on.

While they waited for it to boot up, she related her conversation with Josh. Her account was interspersed with questions from either Hickam or Wiley, who asked when she was going to get around to telling them about the phone and the call.

“I admit I hadn't decided whether to tell you at all. Josh was having a paranoid episode. I was tempted to keep that line of communication with him open.”

“Is he suicidal?” Hickam asked.

“Even in the throes of a panic attack he's never threatened to take his own life, and he didn't today. But I believe he's on the brink of a complete breakdown. I thought that if I kept the phone, maybe I could eventually talk him down, persuade him to surrender. But in light of what that young lady told Shaw…”

At the slip of his name, she automatically looked in his direction. Since entering the suite, he hadn't uttered a word. No questions for her. No comments on anything she'd said. He had remained perfectly still in his chair, silent and listening, riveted on her, as watchful as a hawk.

Her involuntary glance at him now produced a purl of awareness, low and deep and sexual. It made her furious that he still had the power to evoke a reaction like that. It made her angry at herself for being susceptible.

Going back to the others, she said, “In view of what the girl said about the killer's voice, Josh's hysteria is justified.” She paused, then added, “Of course we could all be mistaken.”

Dangerous place, denial.

As though Shaw had spoken the words again, she looked across at him. He hadn't moved. His predatory gaze was still steady on her.

She said, “Royce Sherman could've gotten under anyone's skin. Any number of people could have followed him from the bar to that side road.”

“It was all I could do to keep from decking him when Hick and I interviewed him,” Wiley said. “So I would tend to agree with you, Ms. Bennett. Except I just wonder how many of Royce's potential grudge bearers would use an electrolarynx?”

The answer being obvious, as were its implications, Jordie sat down on the sofa and folded her arms across her middle in a subconscious gesture of self-protection.

“I don't think Uncle Clive killed him,” Hickam said.

“Me either.” Wiley sighed and looked down at Jordie. “This public hotel has become too public for comfort. As a precaution, we're going to move you to a safe house.”

“You checked me in under an assumed name, and only we in this room know that I'm here.”

“I'm not willing to bet your life on that,” Wiley said.

She didn't argue with him, but she didn't believe that relocating her would guarantee her safety. Panella had far-reaching tentacles and thirty million dollars' worth of resources. If he wanted to find her, he could.

All this time, Hickam had periodically been calling the unknown number on the cell phone. He called it again now. They could all hear it ringing, but there was no answer.

“I've called back several times,” Jordie told him. “He hasn't answered.”

“No hint of where he is?” Wiley asked.

“I begged him to tell me. He refused. He's afraid that Panella is watching me, that if I go to him, Panella won't be far behind.”

Wiley scratched his head. “Josh must be in the general vicinity, or he wouldn't have seen that news story about Sherman. What I don't get? Once he retrieved the car from the public storage place, he could've gone anywhere on the continent. Instead he returned here where recapture is much more likely. Also the first place Panella would look for him. So why'd he come back? It's not like he has a passel of friends and relatives who'd give him a place to lay low. In fact, there's only one person on earth who'd do that.”

On the last sentence, the agent's tone changed and he assumed an interrogator's stance in front of Jordie. She shifted her gaze to Hickam, who was holding the cell phone in his palm. Suddenly it looked incriminating. Going back to Wiley, she said, “I'm certainly not harboring him. How could I be?”

“By not telling us where he's hiding.”

“I don't know! I've told you everything that was said during my conversation with him. I impressed on him that his best option was to turn himself in and take his punishment.”

“He wouldn't hear of it,” Wiley said.

“Not…not exactly.”

“Then what exactly, Ms. Bennett? What did he say?”

You hope I die.
“Nothing. He hung up. But at the very least I believe I got him to thinking about surrendering.”

She looked at each of them in turn, gauging how much or how little of what she'd said they believed. The only return stare that unsettled her was Shaw's. She looked away from its unblinking incisiveness.

After a moment, Wiley said, “Well, every law enforcement officer in the state and beyond is looking for him. He'd be better off surrendering before he's caught, or injured in the process of being captured.”

“Or before Panella finds him,” Hickam said.

“Hope to God that doesn't happen. But we can't make a strong case for surrender until he contacts one of us again.” Wiley gestured to the phone Hickam had laid claim to. “Now that he's connected with Ms. Bennett, he'll more likely call her than me, so get one of the techies to sit on that phone like a hen on an egg.”

The meeting broke up after that. Hickam sat down at the desk and began making calls. Gwen excused herself to do the same. Wiley walked over to Shaw and ordered him out of the chair.

“I'm driving you to the hospital.”

“Fuck that.”

“Enough with the tough-guy shit. You're only human.”

“Oh, I'm human all right.”

“Okay, so give yourself time to recover.”

“I'll recover.”

“Not unless you rest.”

“I'm staying.”

“Look,” Wiley said angrily, “I don't want you dying on me of pure bullheadedness.”

“I'm not going to die.” Looking past Wiley, he addressed Jordie directly. “Panella is. I'm gonna kill him.”

G
wen Saunders was joined by two other U.S. marshals—fit young men in jeans and black t-shirts—who were called in to assist with Jordie's relocation. Among the marshals, Wiley, and Hickam, it was decided to wait until after full dark to make the transfer.

Shaw supported the postponement. That gave them several hours to plan how they would go about it and which safe house in the area would provide the best protection.

Shaw left the logistics of the process for the rest of them to sort out and took Wiley up on his suggestion that he sleep during the intervening hours. He didn't feel the need to be hospitalized, but his body was demanding some downtime.

“Take Gwen's bedroom,” Wiley said. “She's going to be busy and won't be using it.”

Jordie was in a huddle with Hickam and the marshals. Sensing his gaze, she looked at him, then quickly away. She was still furious at him for playing her. Or maybe her trip with Panella was the reason for her refusal to acknowledge him. Either way, she couldn't avoid him forever. Even if she planned to, he wouldn't let her.

He went into the bedroom and shut the door. The surgeon had instructed him not to get his incision wet for at least a week. He showered anyway, holding a plastic laundry bag over the wound with one hand, soaping and shampooing with the other.

He exchanged the bandage for a fresh one, which was among the items in the kit given him by the surgeon before leaving the hospital. Morrow had returned it to him when they were in Tobias. Also in the kit were several blister packs of antibiotics and a bottle of pain pills. He took an antibiotic capsule, but skipped the pain pill. He needed sleep, but not a hangover.

When he emerged from the bathroom, there was a room service tray on the nightstand. He scarfed down the grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of chicken noodle soup, reminding himself to identify and thank the Good Samaritan later. After finishing the meal, he gratefully lay down.

He wanted badly to throttle Jordie for not telling him about her Costa Rican excursion with Billy Panella.

He wanted badly to fuck her anyway.

Sliding his hand into his jeans, he tested the equipment and discovered to his relief that, despite the catheter, the anesthesia, and his overall weakness, it was in working order.

He was fantasizing about it in sexual congress with Jordie when he dropped into a deep slumber.

A tap on the door woke him. He sat up quickly and hissed a curse for forgetting to favor his left side. The room was dark. He checked the time. He'd slept nearly six hours and could tell already that it had done him good.

Hickam was standing in the open doorway. “Showtime's in about twenty minutes.”

“Thanks.”

Rather than retreat, Hickam stayed. “Do you ever get tired of it?”

“What?”

“Manipulating people. Misleading them. Lying.”

“Everybody lies.”

“That's your excuse?”

Shaw set his feet on the floor and stood up. “I don't need an excuse. I've got a job.”

He left Hickam standing there and went into the bathroom. He used the toilet, splashed his face with cold water, and swished with the wintergreen mouthwash provided by the hotel. But then he braced his hands on the rim of the basin and stared into it, Hickam's question swirling around in his mind like the tap water around the drain.

Raising his head, he gave his cold eyes and uncharitable visage a good, hard look in the mirror, seeing himself as other people must. “Goddamn Hickam,” he muttered.

Back in the bedroom, he checked his pistols, holstering the nine-millimeter on his belt and slipping the palm pistol into the customized scabbard inside the shaft of his boot. He put two of the blister packs of antibiotics in his jeans pocket, then went into the living room, where the others were similarly preparing.

Wiley asked, “How was your nap? Side hurt?”

“Like hell, but I feel better. Anything important happen while I was out?”

“We contacted the printing company that did the party invitations. Took them no time at all to look up the order. It was placed and filled over six months ago. Event was bogus, and Josh used a fake name, but the invitations were shipped to the address where he was living when he turned himself in. Ms. Bennett cleaned out the apartment and paid off his lease. She claims not to have found any invitations or such.”

“He probably received stuff there, but squirreled it away someplace else.”

“That's my thought, too,” Wiley said. “He stocked the essentials plus anything he might need in order to contact his sister.”

Shaw, who'd never met Josh, asked, “Is that a compulsion, you think?”

“Contacting her, you mean? Yeah, I think so. He had the gumption to steal millions, but then cratered before we really got tough with him. He had the wherewithal to defy us and escape, but he can't resist calling and checking in, with us, with Ms. Bennett. What does that make him, gutsy or a goofball?”

“Both.”

“Right. You never know what you're dealing with. Anyhow, Hick and I think he had his own safe house somewhere around here all set up and waiting for him.”

“Won't argue that. Speaking of safe houses, how safe is the one you're moving Jordie to?”

“Safe,” Wiley replied, looking peeved for having been asked.

“What's the game plan?”

“Three black SUVs leave the hotel garage one behind the other. Motorcycle police block traffic for their exit. Once they leave the hotel, each peels off in a different direction.”

“You don't think that will draw attention?”

“Exactly. If Panella is out there, he'll think she's in one of the SUVs. Also as a decoy, we're leaving Hick's car in the garage where we parked it when we got back from Tobias. But one of our agents left another car parked on the street. As soon as the SUVs peel out, Hick'll bring that car into the garage and pick up Gwen, Jordie, and me at the elevator.”

“How many officers watching the hotel?”

“A dozen uniforms. That many more undercovers in and around the lobby and at all the entrances.”

“They know to be looking for Panella?”

Wiley nodded. “To refresh memories, we circulated the last known photograph of him.”

“What's my job?”

“To make yourself scarce until morning. You have somewhere to stay?”

“Plenty of flophouses in New Orleans.”

“We'll reconvene early in my office. Hick and I will show you everything we have on Josh Bennett. Maybe you can spot a clue we've overlooked that would lead us to his hidey-hole.”

Shaw thought over the difficult chore ahead of them. He wasn't typically a team player, and he wasn't being embraced by everyone on this team, where cooperation was absolutely necessary. He looked over at Hickam, then came back to Wiley with a silent question mark.

Wiley, following both his glance and his thought, said, “He doesn't like you.”

“I'm crushed. But is he gonna continue being a pain in my ass?”

“I'll talk to him, encourage him to keep an open mind where you're concerned, because your particular skills might come in handy. Hick and I aren't fond of Josh, but we don't want Panella getting to him before we do.”

“I want to nail Panella.”

“So you've said.” Wiley cocked his head to one side. “This hasn't turned personal, has it?”

Shaw just looked at him.

Wiley sighed. “I was afraid of that.” Then he eyed Shaw up and down. “Try to stay out of trouble overnight. Don't scare anybody. And whatever you do, don't get arrested. I can't take two doses of Xavier Dupaw in one day.”

Shaw gave him a wry grin of understanding.

Gwen Saunders approached them. “Mr. Kinnard, are you out of my bedroom? I need to get my things.”

“Call me Shaw, and thanks for letting me crash in your room. Did you order the food for me?”

She smiled. “You looked like you needed sustenance.”

“I did. Thanks. Where's Jordie?”

“We got a vest for her. She's putting it on.” She indicated the closed door on the other side of the suite, then headed toward her own bedroom.

Hickam summoned Wiley over to a table where he was conferring with the marshals over the layout of the hotel and the routes they would take for their exit. Shaw pretended to be choosing an apple from a basket of fruit on the minibar. When no one was looking, he slipped into Jordie's bedroom and closed the door.

Without looking around, she said, “I'm coming.”

She had changed out of the pants suit into a pair of black jeans, a button-up white shirt, and sneakers. She was bent over the bed, zipping up a duffel. When done, she turned around and, seeing Shaw, drew up tall, her eyes narrowing with animosity. She pulled the duffel off the bed and walked to where he stood against the door.

“Get out of my way.”

“I had to make you believe it, Jordie.”

“I said, get out of my way.”

“There were times I hated myself for—”

“Then that makes two of us.”

“Other times I hated you for making objectivity impossible.”

“Oh, that's pretty. Be sure to write it down so you don't forget it. You can use it to manipulate your next hostage. That is, after you run out of cute innuendos, half truths, flat-out lies, and assorted other scare tactics.” She made to go around him, but he sidestepped and blocked her.

“Not all of it was manipulation and lies.”

She huffed a laugh. “Nothing you say will ever make me believe that.”

“Good. I'm tired of talking.”

He cupped her face between his hands, pushed his fingers up into her hair, and held her head in place as he turned them so that her back was to the door.

She went rigid. “If you don't get your hands off me, I'll yell this bloody place down.”

He lowered his face close to hers. “When I was lying there with that propeller sticking out of my gut, you didn't run. You didn't escape. Why not?”

“If I had it to do over—”

“You do. Here. Right now. You can yell this bloody place down. But I think that if you wanted to, you would have already.” His whisked his mouth across hers.

“Don't.”

She tried to turn her head aside, but he held it fast between his hands and kissed the corner of her mouth.

“Stop it. I mean it, Shaw. I don't want this.”

“No, you don't
want
to want it. Big difference.”

Then he angled her head and kissed her the way he'd imagined, the way his drugged mind had fantasized it, the way he'd craved to from the first time he got a good look at her face.

He didn't care how many ethics codes he was violating, or how many federal agents were in the next room, or—God forgive him—if Billy Panella himself was on the other side of this door, unless she put words into action and stopped him, he was going to get carnal with her mouth. He was going to mate with it for as long as she and time allowed.

She didn't stop him. When he pressed his tongue into her mouth, it met with no resistence. After a slow dance with hers, he withdrew it just far enough to touch the tip of it to the center of her upper lip, just inside, just barely a flick. It was so blatantly erotic that her breaths started coming as hard and fast as his. Wanting more, he sent his tongue deep again.

She let go of the duffel bag. It dropped softly onto the toe of his boot. He pushed it aside, inched closer to Jordie and leaned into her, making adjustments in alignment that fit them together like puzzle pieces and caused her breath to catch. He hated the damn bulletproof vest that shielded her breasts from the pressure of his chest.

Her hand came up between them. She ran her thumb across the scar on his chin, then scraped it lightly with her teeth. He took a love bite of her wet, plump lower lip. Then they were kissing again, frantically. Maybe it was the mad recklessness of this whole thing that made it so goddamn good.

But he thought it was more the woman than the circumstances that had him about to combust.

He slid one hand down her front, pausing to grind the heel of it against where he approximated her nipple would be, before moving it lower, pushing it between her thighs and caressing her there. She gasped and arched into his gently massaging hand.

Lifting his face away from hers, he whispered roughly, “I'm going to have you, Jordie.”

Her eyes were still angry, but now also lambent with arousal as she stared into his.

“You know it as well as I do, don't you?”

Slowly, she nodded.

A knock sounded on the door. “Ms. Bennett?” Hickam said.

Shaw squeezed her lightly before withdrawing his hand. He backed away from her then nudged her aside and opened the door. “She's ready.”

Before Hick left the suite, Joe reviewed some last-minute details with him. “Got your earpiece in?”

Hick tapped his ear.

“Keep it open. I'll advise when we get on the elevator.”

“The spare car is parked across the street and about half a block down from the entrance to the garage.” Hick held up the key fob that another agent had delivered to the hotel earlier. “Soon as the SUVs clear the garage, I'll wheel in there.” He looked over at Shaw Kinnard, who was munching an apple. “When you sent me to fetch Ms. Bennett, he was in the bedroom with her. He opened the door. Steam escaped.”

Before Joe could remark on that, Kinnard approached them. “Sure you don't want my help?”

“We got it.” Hick lifted the maroon hoodie from off a chair and passed it to him. “Don't forget this. You don't want to be recognized and apprehended as you roam the streets tonight.”

Kinnard made his opinion of the blankety-blank fleece furnace clear, but, anchoring the apple between his teeth, he pulled it on.

Hick left, taking the ladies' bags to stow in the trunk. The marshals went with him to take up their positions in the parking garage.