Bulletproof & Locked, Loaded and SEALed

  The couple had approached Patel. They both sprang back at the same instant. The man got on his cell phone, and there was nothing more Austin could do.

  He pushed away from his station, slinging the case over his shoulder, where it banged against his hip as he ran toward the staircase. He broke down his rifle at full speed while he negotiated the steps.

  By the time he reached the bottom of the building, his rifle was in pieces. He leaned against the door to the street and stashed the parts back in the case. Then he pushed out onto the sidewalk and strode toward the parking structure.

  He found himself chanting Sophia’s name like some magical incantation—as if that would be enough to make her appear beside the car. The sirens in the distance quickened his pace.

  His bullets were untraceable, and if Patel had been shot, there would be no match between his bullets and the ones that had killed Patel. Who knew what the cops would make of it?

  Had the couple in the square noticed Sophia? Would they be able to provide some kind of description of her to the Boston PD? It didn’t matter. The FBI could get her out of anything at this point—if they wanted to.

  With his breath coming hard and fast, he turned into the parking structure. He zeroed in on his rental and his gut knotted. No Sophia.

  He pressed the key fob and the car’s lights flashed once. A head poked out from the post beside the car and relief swept through his body.

  He called out to Sophia, “Hop in.”

  He opened the trunk and hoisted his weapon inside. When he slid into the driver’s seat, he reached across the console and took Sophia’s face in both of his hands and landed a hard kiss on her mouth.

  “God, I’m glad to see you.”

  “Same.” She snapped her seat belt, which suddenly hit him as ridiculous after what she’d just been through.

  He laughed, and she scowled at him.

  “What happened to that man you shot at? You missed him.”

  “I missed him on purpose. There are just so many dead bodies we can leave on the streets of Boston. Besides, I didn’t see a weapon on him. I’m not authorized to commit murder.” He threw the car in Reverse and the tires squealed on the polished cement as he wheeled out of the structure. “He took off in the other direction from you. I guess he didn’t want to take his chances on where the next bullet would land.”

  “I didn’t even notice him coming up on me until you took the shot.”

  “What happened to Patel? I didn’t see that he was dead until you’d moved away from him.”

  “Someone slit his throat.” She squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to erase the image from her vision.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.” He checked his rearview mirror as he pulled up to the intersection. An ambulance flew past him. “They probably followed him or were able to track him. Even if they hacked into his phone, they wouldn’t know Dr. Fazal’s favorite place in Boston.”

  She hugged herself, and he wished it were his arms wrapped around her body.

  She tipped her head to the side, resting against the window. “I guess the one silver lining to this is that Dr. Fazal’s killers aren’t out to kill me.”

  “Yet.”

  Her body twitched and he clamped down on his bottom lip. He didn’t want to blacken the one bright spot she’d been holding on to, but he did want her to face reality and get rid of the crazy idea that if she opened up to these guys they’d believe that she didn’t know anything about Patel and Fazal and let her go about her business.

  They’d never allow that.

  “One thing they do know now…”

  “What’s that?” He glanced at her profile.

  “If they believed I was with some random boyfriend the other night in Cambridge who’d gotten lucky and disarmed a man with a gun, those crazy shots from nowhere just disabused them of that notion.”

  “You’re right.” He lifted his shoulders. “And that’s not a bad thing.”

  “Will it make them give up?”

  “Probably not, but it might make them more desperate and that might make them more careless, and that’s not a bad thing either.”

  They returned to the hotel and he hauled his weapon case from the trunk. Fewer people were milling around the hotel now than when they’d left, and nobody gave his strange case a second glance.

  When they got to the room, he locked the rifle up again and stored it upright in the back of the closet. He grabbed two bottles of water from the minifridge and tossed one to Sophia, who’d stretched out on the bed and kicked off her boots.

  He dragged a chair to the foot of the bed and slumped in it, facing her. “I wonder how they got around Patel to…to kill him.”

  “I don’t know. I wonder how long he’d been on that bench before I arrived.”

  “I guess all we really know is that they followed him and didn’t want him communicating any information to you. Also, the fact that they killed him indicates to me that they didn’t need any info from him…or they’d already gotten it.”

  She dragged a pillow into her lap and punched it. “I was hoping we’d get some answers tonight.”

  “We don’t even know who Patel is—was. That, at least, would have helped.”

  Gasping, she rolled off the bed and lunged for her purse. “We can find out.”

  He eyed the phone she had pinched between two fingers. “Did you take his picture?”

  “God, no, but this is even better.” She dangled the phone in the air. “I got his fingerprints.”

  “What?”

  “When I realized he was dead and that he wouldn’t be telling me anything about why he came into Dr. Fazal’s life, I got so frustrated. Crazy angry at him. I took out my phone and curled his hand around it.”

  “That’s what you were doing.” He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I thought you were holding his hand or something. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. How in the hell did you have the presence of mind to do that?”

  “Presence of mind? I felt like I was losing my mind. I didn’t even remember I’d done it until you talked about not knowing his identity.”

  “You did do it, and I think that’s amazing. I’m impressed.” He shook out a napkin from the coffee area and placed it on the table by the window. “Put it here.”

  “Can you lift the prints from the phone?”

  “Me personally? No, but the local FBI office can do it for me. I’ll contact them tomorrow, and we can find out who Patel is and his connection to Dr. Fazal.” Austin circled his finger over the phone. “Where are his prints?”

  “I pressed the pads of his fingertips against the screen at the top. I’ve just handled the phone by the edges and haven’t touched it since I brought it out just now. Will that work?”

  “Not only will it work, it’s brilliant. Really quick thinking on your part.”

  “Like I said, it was more like I was on autopilot.” She coughed. “As you’ve probably figured out from researching my background, I’ve had a lot of contact with the police over the years.”

  “I don’t know as much about you as you seem to think, but from what I do know, if you had a lot of contact with law enforcement it wasn’t your fault.”

  She wedged her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “You don’t strike me as the type of person who would make excuses for someone’s bad behavior.”

  Usually he wasn’t, but his impression of Sophia had done a one-eighty since he’d met her and spent some time with her.

  “Some excuses carry more weight than others.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he braced a shoulder against the window. “Do you remember much…about your father’s death?”

  She blinked, and her face tightened.

  For a minute he thought she was going to tell him to go to hell,
and maybe he deserved that for prying. Had anyone but the therapists ever asked her about that afternoon when she was four years old?

  “Interesting that you should ask that now.” She caught a strand of her dark hair and twisted it around one finger. “When I smelled the blood pooling around Patel, and before, when I smelled it in Dr. Fazal’s office, it reminded me of that day more than anything.”

  “I’ve heard smell is one of the strongest triggers for memory, so that makes sense.”

  “Yeah, except for most people it’s the smell of apple pie and Mom’s old perfume that tweak those memories.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I was in the bedroom when my parents started arguing.”

  “Was your father abusive? I know your mother didn’t get off on self-defense because, well…”

  “Yeah, she’s still in prison.” Sophia dropped onto the bed and fell backward. She continued as she stared at the ceiling. “My father wasn’t abusive, unless you call it abuse when a drug pusher yells at his wife for using his product.”

  His hands curled into fists. Her father was abusive—abusive for creating that kind of world for a child. “Is that what they were arguing about?”

  “Yes, but this time he miscalculated. My mom was already high…and desperate for more. When he denied her and called her a junkie, it was the last straw. She grabbed his gun, which he kept handy for drug deals, and shot him twice. Then she had all the crank she wanted. I’m sure she would’ve OD’d if a neighbor in the apartment next door hadn’t called 911 when she heard the gunshots.”

  “Is that when you came out of the bedroom?”

  “He was lying on the kitchen floor. My mother didn’t even try to keep me away from him. The first cops on the scene told me I had blood on my dirty bare feet.” Sophia spoke in a monotone, as if she were recounting the plot of a TV show and not her life.

  He joined her on the bed, sitting on the edge. “God, I don’t even know what to say. How you got to the point in your life where you are now after a beginning like that is a testament to your fortitude and spirit.”

  She rolled her eyes to the side, catching him with her gaze. “I had a lot of speed bumps on the way—running away from foster homes, fights, shoplifting—but not drugs, never drugs.”

  “Do you ever see your mother?”

  “She’s only about twenty-five miles away in Framingham.”

  “That means you do see her?”

  “Once in a while. She’s clean, remorseful, got her GED and found God.”

  “Sounds like progress.” He toed off his running shoes and stacked a few pillows against the headboard. “Is she getting out anytime soon?”

  “She got twenty-five to life. She’s coming up for parole soon.”

  “Will you be there for her?”

  “Was she there for me?”

  “No.” He eased back against the pillows. “I’m not implying you should let her into your life. Just asking.”

  She slid from the bed and grabbed the remote. “Do you think there’s anything on the nightly news about Patel’s murder?”

  “It’s past eleven. If the local news had the story, we probably missed it.”

  Sophia clicked on the TV anyway, probably to get away from his probing questions.

  The Boston-area news had already switched from hard news stories to the warm and fuzzy human-interest ones—and there was nothing warm or fuzzy about a man getting his throat sliced on a bench across from the Old North Church.

  Austin yawned. “I’m going to wrap it up. Once I get the go-ahead to bring your phone in for dusting, I’ll take it to the office, and if the FBI can’t find a match in the national database, the prints can be sent to Interpol—thanks to you.”

  “Do you think they’ll give me a medal?”

  “I think I can arrange for that.” He winked at her.

  “Actually, all I want is to be safe in my own apartment again.”

  “I think I can arrange for that, too.”

  She placed the remote next to the TV and started pulling cushions from the sofa bed. “Do you think the Boston PD will be able to identify Patel from his fingerprints?”

  “Not if he’s a foreigner. If they can’t ID him, they’ll send his prints to the FBI, anyway. We’ll just get the information faster this way. Like I said before, my operation is not going through the normal channels.”

  “But you think the FBI will take the prints from the phone, anyway?”

  “Someone there will receive special orders to do so.”

  “I always figured there was a conspiracy between law enforcement agencies that went completely over the general public’s head. In a way, I feel vindicated.”

  “The general public probably doesn’t want to know what’s going on.” He jumped up to help her pull out the sofa bed. “I don’t know why you’re getting this bed ready. This is mine.”

  “This is your room and you’re quite a bit bigger than I am, so you should get that comfy king-size bed.”

  “Shucks, ma’am. That wouldn’t be the chivalrous thing to do.”

  “Hey, if you insist. You don’t have to twist my arm.” She turned from the sofa bed and opened her suitcase, emerging with a bag dangling from her fingertips. “Can I have the bathroom first, too?”

  “Of course. I’ll get my bed ready.”

  “I’m kinda liking this chivalry thing.” She swept past him and clicked the bathroom door behind her.

  Clenching his jaw, he pulled out the couch and smoothed his hands across the sheets. If she could read his real thoughts on the matter, she’d rethink everything about him.

  Because he wanted nothing more than to lay Sophia across that king-size bed and explore every inch of her body—with his tongue.

  What would she think about his chivalry then?

  CHAPTER TEN

  The following morning, Sophia emerged from a sound sleep, one twitching muscle and one thought at a time. With her body fully stretched out and her mind fully aware of last night’s horrific events, she lifted her head to peer at Austin splayed out on the sofa bed.

  A tickle of guilt played out across the back of her neck as she eyed Austin on his stomach, his leg hanging off the side of the bed, his arm flung over his head and the sheets tangled about his body as if he’d been wrestling with them all night. He probably had.

  She scooched up to a sitting position, her eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom of the room. With the sheets shrugged from his broad shoulders and twisted around his waist, he looked like a Greek god who’d fallen to Earth for a nap between battles.

  On her hands and knees, she crawled to the end of the bed to get a better look, and got an eyeful of his smooth, bare back, strong enough to carry the weight of the world’s safety—or at least her own.

  He cleared his throat and thrashed his legs, the sheet bunching and scooting farther down his back.

  She released a small sigh when she saw the edge of his black briefs. Not that she was hoping for a glimpse of his bare backside, but it would’ve considerably brightened her morning after a bad night in a series of bad nights.

  Her gaze traveled from his buttocks, teasingly concealed by the sheet, over his smooth back and across those muscled shoulders until it collided with a pair of green eyes. She couldn’t see their greenness in the dim light, but she knew the color by now. She’d gotten lost in that color a few times.

  The heat surged in her cheeks, but he wouldn’t be able to see the blush any more than she could see the color of his eyes. “Oh, are you awake? I—I thought I heard your phone go off.”

  “My phone’s over there.” He rolled onto his back and flung his arm out to the side. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Isn’t it early?”

  She twisted around to see the gl
owing numbers of the alarm clock. “It’s seven twenty. Is that early?”

  “I guess not.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s so dark in here.”

  “Those drapes do a pretty good job of shutting out the light, and I think we’re facing west.”

  Closing his eyes, he made a halfhearted kick at the sheets wound around his legs. “Seems earlier.”

  “I’m sorry. You didn’t have a very good night’s sleep, did you? Bed’s too small for you.”

  “That’s not why. I can sleep in any condition, and have. This sofa bed is heaven compared to some of the mattresses I’ve endured—and some of the rock ledges that have doubled as mattresses.”

  She held her breath waiting for him to explain why he’d had a restless night. Could it have been because she was in the bed two feet away from him? No. A man like him? A woman like her? Just no.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “I was exhausted. I don’t think I slept so much as passed out.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Do you want the shower first since I had first dibs last night?”

  “You go ahead.” His legs finally free of the sheets, he stretched and all the muscles in his body rippled. “I’m going to make a few phone calls and see where we can take your cell to get those prints.”

  She peeled her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth. She really wanted to hang around to see him in his briefs, but she didn’t want to be too obvious, so she crawled out of the bed and shuffled to her suitcase.

  As she crouched beside her bag, she tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. She really needed to buy herself some new pajamas.

  She dug through her clean clothes and pulled out a pair of black leggings and an oversize sweater. At least it had a wide neckline that exposed one shoulder, so she wouldn’t be completely lacking in sex appeal.

  She hugged a camisole to her chest and shook her head. Sex appeal wasn’t required for submitting the fingerprints of a dead man. Had she lost all perspective?

  A soft noise behind her caught her attention and she cranked her head over her shoulder. Her eyes widened and her pulse throbbed as she took in the sight of Austin strolling to the window in nothing but his black briefs. Right now, this was the only perspective she wanted.