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The system would work until someone realized that the same vehicles always showed up in the area, and perhaps even after, if the drivers could pass themselves off as locals with legitimate business in the area. And when the federal vehicle arrived, that would give them one more to play with, he thought, leaning forward to adjust the recording level on one of the machines.
That was one good thing about working with the feds, he thought wryly. They had a lot more leeway when it came to permits for wiretapping and any other kind of surveillance. And the bugs that Quisto, doing his near-perfect migrant-worker imitation, had planted, were working beautifully.
“You stand out too much,” Quisto explained with a superior air. “Me, I just blend, like a chameleon.”
“Okay, Mr. Lizard, get on with it,” Chance had said, smothering a laugh.
Yes, Quisto had gradually worn down that wall of wariness, mostly, Chance admitted, through sheer persistence and a stubborn refusal to be ignored. He had—
The sharp rapping on the back doors of the van cut through his thoughts. Damn, what the hell? He glanced at Jeff, who shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment. The rapping came again, louder, and Chance scrambled to the back of the van and peered through the mirrored, one-way glass.
“That stupid son of a bitch!”
Jeff jumped, both at the sudden exclamation and at the suppressed fury in Chance’s voice. “What…?”
“Eaton,” Chance spat out as the pounding came again. “He pulled up in a damned government car, complete with labeled plates.”
Jeff gaped at him. “What is he, some kind of a nut?”
“Worse. He’s stupid.”
The door handle rattled, and they heard a muffled voice. “Come on, Buckner! I know you’re in there!”
With a snarled curse, Chance braced himself against the roof of the van and reached for the door. With a swift movement he threw it open, reached through with one leanly muscled arm and yanked the startled Eaton into the van. Despite his bulk, the man flew through the opening as if catapulted, and Jeff Webster stared in awe.
“What do you think you’re—”
“Why the hell don’t you just hang out a sign?” Chance snapped, cutting off Eaton’s protest.
“Get off it, hotshot! Mendez left here an hour ago.”
“And just where do you suppose his right-hand man is right now?” Chance bit out. “He’s inside and, unless we’re luckier than you deserve, calling Mendez to tell him there’s a government car sitting in front of his new business. Which means he’ll be looking for one at home. Congratulations, Eaton, you may have burned two stakeouts at once.”
He opened the door again and practically threw the agent from the van. Chance followed him and shoved the man into the plain gray car that stood out like a sore thumb. “Now get the hell out of here!”
Eaton was furious, but something in Chance’s eyes made him stamp down on the accelerator. Staring in disgust as the car sped away, Chance called lowly to Jeff through the door of the van.
“I’m going to see if I can tell if they made us.”
The tap from the inside told him Jeff had heard him. He turned on his heel and strode off, still fuming. He’d go to the building next door, he thought. It was a large office building, and they’d discovered a spot on its roof that gave a bird’s-eye view of what was apparently being converted into an office.
Damn, he thought, I should have grabbed the binoculars from the van. But I was so damned mad, I didn’t even think of it. God, I hate working with the feds. The troops are good, but the generals are just—
“Ouch!”
Chance barely kept himself from going down; he didn’t know how the person he’d just crashed into had stayed upright. He flushed as, muttering an apology, he knelt to pick up the book that had bitten the dust—or the concrete sidewalk, in this case.
Poetry, he noted as he lifted the thick volume. He dusted it off and began to straighten up to give it back. And stopped dead before he’d moved an inch.
There before him were the most beautiful legs he’d ever seen. Small feet were encased in short, bright red socks and pristine white tennis shoes, the ankles were slender and delicate, the calves bare, smooth and shapely. Even the knees were lovely, and the thighs…
He gulped, aware that he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Where the reality of that long stretch of golden leg ended at the edge of a short white skirt, his imagination had kept right on going.
After a long moment he managed to make his reluctant muscles respond and bring him upright by telling them that it was safe; the rest couldn’t possibly match those legs.
He was wrong. He knew it the moment his eyes slipped over the white skirt to the fluffy, bright red sweater that topped it. The soft plushness did little to disguise the full, feminine curves beneath the cheerful color, and Chance found himself gulping again. He didn’t want to look any further, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he was afraid the rest wouldn’t be as incredible, or afraid that it would.
He looked anyway. It was.
He didn’t realize it at first. Her face was shadowed by the brim of the cheerful red-and-white cap she wore, covering what appeared to be dark silky hair. Then she tilted her head and took his breath away again.
Her mouth was a little wide by classic standards, but her lower lip was so full and soft he barely noticed. Her nose was small and pert, her skin creamy and smooth, but once he saw her eyes he forgot everything else. They were huge, framed by thick dark lashes, and deep, smoky gray. And at the moment, those eyes were looking at him with a mixture of wariness and amusement.
“Uh, sorry,” he mumbled again, still staring.
“I hope you’re coming from and not going to.”
He blinked. “Huh?” Oh, brilliant, Buckner. But damn, what a voice. Husky. Silky. Sexy.
“Whatever turned you into the original raging bull.”
He flushed again, then wondered what the hell was wrong with him. “Whoever,” he said hastily.
“A whoever I don’t envy.”
Amusement was winning in the gray eyes, and Chance felt himself responding with a speed that startled him.
“I promised myself I’d wait until tomorrow to kill him. If he’s lucky, I won’t want to by then.”
She looked him up and down consideringly. Contrary to Quisto’s earlier comments, he wasn’t at all sure the total she came up with was favorable. What he was even less sure of was why he cared.
“Why am I not sure you’re kidding?”
His mouth twisted wryly. “Maybe because I’m not sure.”
She smiled suddenly, and took his breath away for the third time. The wide, full mouth started a pulse beating somewhere deep inside him, and the sparkle that had turned her eyes to a glittering silver made it begin to race.
“I’ll have to remember not to read a paper tomorrow,” she said in the silky voice that was a feather up his spine, “in case he’s not lucky.”
“Maybe I’m not so mad at him after all,” Chance said slowly, fascinated by the silver gleam that had lit the gray eyes when she smiled. What would those eyes look like when she laughed? What would they look like hot with passion?
He jerked himself upright and backed up a step hastily. What the hell was he doing?
“Uh, here’s your book.”
He held it out with an uncharacteristically choppy motion. She reached for it, her hand narrow and graceful, her fingers long and slender. Her nails were gleaming red, but a neat, attractive length and shape instead of the daggers he saw so often in this expensive town—nails that made him think of the old mandarins who had thought long nails a status symbol, an indication that they were wealthy enough not to have to do menial work with their hands.
He realized suddenly that he hadn’t released the book and that she was looking at him rather oddly. He let go hastily, pulling his hand back as if the embossed leather cover had burned him.
“Thank you.”
He nodded, wondering what had gone wrong with his coordination that made every move he made seem awkward. He decided the answer was not to move at all, and he didn’t as she replaced the thick volume in the crook of her arm.
“You…like poetry?”
“You get an ‘A’ for deductive reasoning,” she said. Chance suddenly felt as if he’d blushed more in the past five minutes than he had in his entire thirty years. Yet there hadn’t been any real sarcasm in the husky voice, merely the sound of an amusement, matching that in her eyes.
Quisto wouldn’t believe this, he thought ruefully. He’d figure the real reason I ignore all those woman is because if I try to talk, I’ll make a fool out of myself. Hell, maybe he’d be right. “He always is,” he muttered.
“What?” She was looking at him quizzically.
He grimaced. “Just trying to remember back to when I could carry on a conversation.”
“Maybe you knocked something loose here.”
Again there was no sarcasm in her voice, just a touch of the amusement that had been there since he’d first met her eyes. I wish it was only that, he thought, suddenly afraid something had shriveled and died inside him for good.
“Probably permanently,” he said wryly.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
She glanced at the elegant gold watch that banded her slim wrist, her eyes widening when she saw what time it said. He read her look and moved out of her way. She took a step in the direction she’d been going when he had careened into her, then looked back at him.
“About tomorrow…whoever he is, he’s not worth it.”
He let out a breath, then chuckled as he nodded. “Go ahead and read the paper tomorrow.”
The smile came again, even wider this time. He stared after her as she walked away, appreciating the subtle feminine motion of her hips in the short white skirt. He watched her until he realized people were watching him, then he turned around to head toward the other building.
He’d gone only a few steps when he realized he’d never asked her name. It seemed suddenly important, very important, and he turned back to see if he could catch up with her. She was nowhere in sight.
His eyes flicked over every person on the sidewalk in disbelief. She couldn’t have disappeared so fast, she had to be there. But she wasn’t. Damn, Buckner, maybe you hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe she didn’t exist at all.
By the time he gave up and headed once more for the office building that they had scouted out earlier, he was half convinced he had dreamed her. He must have, he thought. No real woman had affected him like that in years. Forget it, he told himself. Get moving.
Chance slipped in the side door of the office building. He passed the elevator and headed for the stairway. He took the four flights at a run, thinking that with working on this case, neither he nor Quisto would have the time for the cutthroat games of racquetball that kept them both in shape.
He was breathing deeply but not, he noted with satisfaction, puffing when he pulled the door open at the top of the stairwell and stepped on to the flat roof of the building. He found a spot quickly and crouched down behind the low parapet.
The first thing he realized was that this vantage point wasn’t going to be useful to them for much longer; he could see a stack of window blinds sitting on a table just inside the now bare window. But more important, he could see, sitting at the desk, Pedro Escobar, Mendez’s lieutenant. Or I guess I should say Pete, he thought wryly. Paul de Cortez seemed to have made some sweeping changes in the names of his employees, as well as his own. I wonder if the Mendezes back in Colombia mind.
The man appeared cool and calm as he worked on something at the desk. Chance’s mind was racing. If he’d made them, he would have already had time to call Mendez, but it was unlikely he’d be sitting there so calmly. From what he knew of the man, Escobar had a tendency to go off half-cocked. Maybe, just maybe they might have lucked out.
No thanks to Eaton, he thought as he kept an eye on the figure at the desk. His report hadn’t even mentioned Escobar; Chance had called a friend in the Miami office for what information he had. Eaton was a prime example of incompetence rising to the top, he thought, wondering cynically how many good men he’d gotten killed along the way.
Eaton. The whoever that had sent him crashing into that vision in red and white. Unless, of course, she really had been a phantom. He ran a hand through his hair, thinking that it was entirely possible. His mind had been doing some funny things lately. Quisto kept telling him he needed a vacation. Actually, what Quisto kept telling him was he needed a vacation and a woman, and not in that order. Maybe he was right.
He knew, of course, that that was the last thing he needed. Or wanted, anyway. Although for a pair of smoky gray eyes, he might think about it….
“Damn,” he muttered, a little stunned at himself. Had she really had that strong an impact on him, to make him think of things he’d sworn off for so long? Had she—
Escobar had moved, and Chance jerked his wandering mind back to the matter at hand. The man had risen from the desk and started to walk toward the door. Before he got there it swung open, and a man in a bright red hard hat stood there. About the red of her sweater—
Knock it off, Buckner, he ordered sharply. The man was smiling, and so was Escobar, nodding and shaking the man’s hand.
As Mendez’s right-hand man turned to walk back to the desk, Chance ducked quickly out of sight. They were safe. They had to be. Escobar didn’t have it in him to remain so calm if he knew they were here.
So, I won’t kill Eaton. At least not yet. Not in time for tomorrow’s paper, anyway, he thought, smothering a grin. Then he settled down to wait until the coast was clear for him to leave.
“Nothing,” Quisto said in disgust. “Absolutely nothing.”
Chance shrugged. “He wouldn’t have all these people after him if he was stupid.”
“I’m the one who’s starting to feel stupid. He hasn’t dealt with anything that even looks like china white, let alone the real stuff. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the guy was opening a legitimate business.”
“Maybe he is.”
“Sure, and politics is a clean business.”
Chance shrugged.
“Damn it,” Quisto said, “all he’s done for a week and a half is talk to decorators, food suppliers, and interview chefs.”
“Hey, now there’s a thought. You could sneak in as a chef. We could close him down in a night.”
Quisto scowled. “One little mistake at a home barbecue and they never let you forget it.”
“It’s your mother who can’t forget it.”
“It was only one fire engine, I don’t see—”
Chance cut off the words with a quick gesture as a silver Mercedes coupe pulled into the driveway behind them. He watched it in the rearview mirror until it pulled into a marked parking stall and Pedro Escobar got out.
“Alone,” he said, and settled back down in the driver’s seat of the black BMW he and Quisto were sitting in.
The car had been, along with a luxurious motor yacht that was moored down at the marina, the spoils of the biggest bust ever made by the Marina del Mar police, two years ago. Under the Federal Forfeiture Statute, they got a large chunk of the hapless drug dealer’s cash in addition to the boat and the car. Chance had been instrumental in that case, and it gave him no small pleasure to know that the man’s resources were being used to bring down others like him.
“Speaking of my mother,” Quisto said as the vigil began again, “she wants to know when you’re coming for dinner.”
“Sometime. When there’s less than twenty of you around,” Chance said dryly. He liked Quisto’s family, especially his energetic, vivacious mother, but sometimes they were daunting just in sheer number. For an only child who’d been a loner most of his life, the chaos of seven brothers and sisters, plus assorted spouses and children was a little overwhelming.
“She worries about you, you know.”
“She worries about everyone.”
“Yes, but when she worries about you, I’m the one who constantly hears about it.”
“Tell her I’m fine.”
