'We had no choice. I'll explain everything, but we've gotta get outta here first.'
She led the way to the door, but Shane stopped her before she could exit. He kissed her one more time, her mouth soft on his, feeling such sweet warmth radiating inside that it brought tears to his eyes. He released her, then cautiously opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was empty.
'What's your backup look like?' he asked.
'Jo-Jo Knight-tall, black, linebacker type- fashion disaster… Dacron shirt and plaid Bermudas. The other one is a little round Cuban, Luis Rosario. They never stop rippin' each other, but they're pretty good guys. They're tasked outta Treasury.'
They left the room and ran down the corridor into the stairwell, where a tall, wide-body African American was waiting with a radio.
'Howdy-do,' he said. 'I'm Agent Knight. Hang on a sec while I check in with Beaner Central.' He triggered his walkie-talkie. 'Two, this is One. How we lookin' out there?'
'Smooth as Cuban cookin'. Bring 'em on.
Got ya covered,' a soft voice with a Cuban accent replied.
'Where's Miss Shake an' Bake?' Jo-Jo asked.
'In the bar. Got the gringos in there all pitching tents in their pantalones. We'll go out the back, through the service entrance.'
'Roger that,' Jo-Jo said, looking up at Shane. 'Your friend Lisa.'
'Business associate,' Shane corrected, wondering if Alexa knew about his relationship with the sexy tobacco executive.
They took the stairs two at a time, finally exiting into a service area, where they found a short, round Cuban with a dark complexion, infectious smile, and porkpie hat.
He glowered at Jo-Jo Knight. 'Your people maybe got rhythm, but you got no timing? I'm gettin' flat arches out here, waitin'.' Rosario turned and led the way through the service area and down a narrow corridor that was filled with laundry hampers.
They ran out the back door to where a car was parked. Jo-Jo got behind the wheel; the Cuban opened the back door and they piled in, then the car pulled out and headed across town.
Shane held Alexa's hand, squeezing it hard, afraid to let go. He couldn't believe he was sitting next to her again, couldn't believe she was alive and back in his life.
Her room was on the beach at the Divi-Divi Resort Hotel, on the outskirts of Oranjestad. Luis Rosario and Jo-Jo Knight took cover positions where they could watch the front and back of the hotel. Alexa opened her suite, then she and Shane entered.
Once the door was closed, she turned and they kissed again. Finally she pulled away, reluctantly.
'Fun as this is, we don't have much time,' she said, still holding his hand. 'I'm sorry for what we did to you, Shane. It wasn't fair. I didn't want to do it, but the DEA-SAC in L. A. insisted. Tony finally had to go along.'
'Good old Tony.'
'Don't blame him. He didn't want to. Sit down, I'll fill you in.' She led him to the bed where they sat side by side.
She looked into his eyes and began her story. 'After you didn't report in, we went to your house. We saw blood on the kitchen floor, the broken screen and window in the bedroom. We knew you'd been kidnapped. Tony picked me up and we had a meeting in his office. Right about then, the Questioned Documents Division broke the number code on the logbook we found in Mark's safe. It was Medwick's account of how the Vikings were formed, how all five of them were removed from the city payroll records. You were right. The whole experiment was set up under Deputy Chief Mayweather.'
'There were six of them,' Shane said. 'Jody, Tremaine Lane, Victory Smith, Lester Wood, Hector Rodriquez, and some Hispanic cop they killed and buried up in Oxnard.'
'The records say only five. There's no mention of anybody named Tremaine Lane…'
Shane thought about that for a minute, and a new idea started to form, but for the moment he filed it. 'Okay… Go on.'
'The whole parallel-market thing was in Mark Shephard's logbook, including the Fortune Five Hundred companies, Aruba-everything. It was undoubtedly written before Jody decided to go bad and take over Leon Fine's business. Once Jody made that decision, like you suspected, he had no choice but to kill Medwick and Shephard because they knew what the Vikings were working on. Chief Filosiani notified Washington and brought in a Treasury SAC from the L. A. office. Once those guys were aboard, everything started to play like a James Bond movie.'
'Those two feds outside play more like a Cheech and Chong movie.'
'They were Chief Filosiani's picks. He worked some joint-ops cases with them when he was in New York. They're best friends, and good guys once you get past the constant ethnic ribbing.'
'I shot you with a Black Talon,' Shane said. 'How could you have survived that?'
'Remember those paintings in Chief Brewer's office?'
Shane nodded.
'He sold them to get new equipment. Flack vests.'
'Yeah.'
'Well, they weren't just ordinary vests. It was brand-new body armor designed at the Pentagon. They're level-three tech vests, called Ultimas, capable of stopping anything, including Cop Killers, Teflon loads, armor- piercing stuff-the works. Tony was afraid that Jody would switch guns on you, so he had me fitted for one as a precaution. And then, to make it look real, he got a friend of his, a Hollywood special-effects man, to rig a blood squib and give me a bladder full of cow blood. I had a pump I could squeeze down on under my arm.'
'Why? Why would you do that? I was so fucked up, I almost-'
'I know… I know… I guess that was sorta my fault. I told them you thought Jody could read your thoughts. Then the Treasury SAC began to wonder if you could pull it off. He felt if you believed you really killed me, your reaction to my death would be more authentic. Your life was at stake, so Tony and I finally agreed. But when we lost you after the shooting, our plan got totally scrambled. We didn't count on a helicopter being in that hangar. We didn't think we'd completely lose contact with you. When we didn't know where you were, the DEA decided we had to put on a full media funeral… Because that's what would have happened if I'd really died two days after winning the MOV. They were afraid that if Jody was in L. A. and it wasn't a big media deal, he would know it was all bullshit, and he might kill you. We didn't know where you were, so I sat home and watched my own funeral on TV.'
'And Chooch?'
'I told him. I forced them all to let him in on it. I couldn't let him think you'd killed me and gone bad. It wasn't fair. Buddy knows, too.'
'For whatever it's worth, they were right,' Shane said. 'Jody told me he probably would have suspected something if I hadn't been as screwed-up as I was.'
She nodded, then went on. 'We knew that the Mantoors were part of this because it was all in the logbook. We hoped you would eventually show up in Aruba, so I came down here with Luis and Jo-Jo and we waited. This morning, when that jet pulled up at Mantoor Aviation and you got off, my heart broke, baby.' She put her hand over his. 'I could see how far down you'd gone. Sometimes I can see inside your head, too. Maybe I can do it even better than Jody. I knew you were close to the edge, so I begged them to let me contact you, and Tony agreed. He finally just overruled that tight-ass Treasury SAC in L. A. and did it without their approval.'
'You were almost too late.'
'I was waiting in your room, with Rosario watching Lisa, hoping she wouldn't come back before you did.'
'I'm sorry about Lisa, I-'
'Shhh,' she said softly. 'You thought I was dead. You don't talk about Lisa St. Marie, I won't talk about Mark Shephard. We'll mark it down as history and move on. Fair enough?'
'Fair enough.'
'I love you, sweetheart,' she said softly. 'I can't tell you how bad I feel about the way this went down.'
'It's okay… It's okay. It's over now. I have you back.'
'But you've got to go. You can't be missing for too long.'
'I need a gun,' Shane said. 'I had to lose mine.'
'Here…' She opened her purse and handed him a Spanish automatic. It was a 9-millimeter Astra with a short barrel and an eight-shot clip. Shane chambered it and stuck it into his ankle holster. 'I've only got one spare clip,'
