exited through his right eye socket, and General Cole Biscayne’s fresh corpse slumped forward onto the lush lemon-colored carpet of his sister Beverly’s living room.
Sebastian Taylor holstered his gun.
There.
That was finally taken care of. The general’s sister would find him later when she got home. Too bad he’d made such a mess of the place.
Now it was time to visit Cassandra Lillo and finish up one more piece of business.
I phoned Lien-hua and found out she’d gone back to the hotel.
I told her to wait for me there, and then I dialed Tessa’s number but was only able to reach her voice mail. I left her a message to call me as soon as she could.
I hadn’t wanted to check on Tessa’s location again, but if Shade was threatening the people I cared about, I needed to find out where she was. So, even though I knew she would hate me for doing it, I called cybercrime to have them check her phone’s GPS, and after a couple minutes on hold, found out she was still thirty-three thousand feet in the air, forty-five minutes from Denver. Good. I was actually glad her flight had been delayed. Tessa was safe.
The main arteries of the city were clogged and traffic was only inching along, so I left the highway behind and began to pick my through the backstreets of San Diego.
I speed-dialed my parents and found out they were already at the airport. “Listen,” I told my dad, “I’ll have some officers meet you there. Go with them until things settle down here. I’ll try to make it home tomorrow.” He agreed, we hung up, and as I cruised through a yellow light I called my friend Lieutenant Kurt Mason with the Denver Police Department and explained what was going on. “Kurt, have two officers meet Tessa and my parents, Martha and Conor, at the airport. I’ll be back as soon as I can, probably a day or two. I’ll take care of everything when I get there. Guarantee me Tessa and my parents will be safe until then. If for some reason they’re not at the airport, send a car to their house.”
“You have my word, Pat. I’ll pick them up myself.”
“Thanks.”
I was almost to the hotel. I’d be with Lien-hua in a matter of minutes.
As they approached the club, Riker slid his arm around Tessa’s waist. His tight muscles flexed against her side, and it felt good to be so close to a guy. She didn’t pull away.
It felt good.
So good.
She wondered if this was how a young bird must feel, leaving the nest. Independent and free, spreading her wings against the wind.
Exciting.
So exciting.
The thrill of walking on the edge of the forbidden.
At the door, a mound of a man with a cement-block head held up his hand. His voice sounded like it came straight from a subway tunnel. “IDs.”
Riker pulled something out of his pocket, leaned over, and slipped it into the big guy’s hand. Tessa caught a glimpse of green paper. The man closed his mitt around the bills and waved them through.
Now inside. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“No prob.”
Pulsing, pulsing music roamed through the air and pumped and echoed all around Riker and her as they walked through a dark throat of a hallway. On each side, the shadows held impatient lovers groping each other in the cyclical, winking light. A few of the guys nodded toward Riker from the recesses of the hall as he and Tessa strolled to the dance floor. Then Riker spoke to her, raising his voice loud enough to be heard over the sound of the music. “They know me here. I come here a lot.”
Techno music throbbed through the air, through the walls, vibrated up through the floor. Tessa loved it. Loved it all. “This place rocks,” she called out.
“One of my favorite clubs.”
She saw a few surfer types, but most of the people in the club seemed to have a darker edge to them. Partly Tessa felt at home.
Partly she felt unsure. Then Riker took her hand and pulled her onto the dance floor, into the swirl of sweaty, swaying, leather-clad bodies. Tessa had been to clubs before, but never one like this.
Never so intense.
Exciting.
So exciting.
The trance-like beat of the music rolled over her and through her. Seemed to course through her veins. She watched Riker shut his eyes and rise into the music, his whole body finding the driving rhythms of the song. She wanted to feel his arms around her again so she glided closer to him. Let the side of her leg nudge against his.
His eyelids parted, he smiled in a roguish way. Drew her close.
Exciting.
So exciting.
Tessa trembled. Maybe it was his touch.
But maybe it was the distant echo of her mom’s voice that day on the frozen lake in Minnesota. That warning, faint with the years, telling her to turn around, to stop wandering out so far onto the ice.
Tessa closed her eyes to the laser lights, ignored the muffled warning from her childhood, and danced in time to the music pulsing beneath her skin.
93
I needed to make sure that both Lien-hua and the device were safe, but I also wanted a way to draw Shade into the open. I figured I could use myself as bait, but not if Lien-hua and I were at the FBI field office or police headquarters. Besides, I still wasn’t exactly sure who to trust.
So after considering my options, I decided it made sense for Lien-hua and me to find a place to rest and regroup for a few hours where we could wait to hear from Ralph about Victor Drake, and also see if Shade would contact me again. After all, I’d invited him to bring it on and I figured he would be more than willing to take me up on the invitation.
So after Lien-hua and I picked up some fast food, we located a beachside hotel on the outskirts of San Diego called the Surfside Inn.
Along with the small suitcases of clothes we each carried, she brought in the food and I toted the laundry bag containing the device.
At the front desk, we checked in under phony names.
“One room?” asked the man behind the counter.
“Yes.” I glanced at Lien-hua and whispered so that only she could hear me, “For security reasons.”
“Oh, I see,” she whispered back. “So you need me to protect you?”
“That’s not exactly what I-” She turned to the man behind the registration counter. “Can we make that a two-room suite?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A few moments later he handed us each a room key, and as I followed her onto the elevator she said, “Security reasons? I’ve never heard that one before.”
“What can I say? I’m a safety-conscious kind of guy.” I heard her mumble something about ulterior motives, and a couple moments later the doors opened and we exited to find room 524.
Once inside the suite, Lien-hua and I took a few minutes to check for intruders or listening devices-you can never be too careful.
Then we sat down to finish supper. “I’m glad Tessa’s not here,” I mumbled, after swallowing a mouthful of cheeseburger. “Sometimes it’s nice to eat something that never had roots or leaves and not feel guilty about
