A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) (40 page)

"No! That's bullshit! I'm the mayor, goddammit!"
 

Darlington bolted to the right and the agent met him at the trunk of the car and tried to grab the mayor's arm.
 

Mayor Darlington wasn't ready to give up the fight. He grabbed the agent's arm with both hands and shoved, the unexpected aggression surprising the federal agent, who stepped backward. Darlington took advantage of the momentum and shoved again, sending the agent to the floor. He then ran in the other direction, toward another exit, a door that Lindsey knew led to the lobby of City Hall. The mayor turned his head, looking back as the agent got off the floor and started after him.
 

As he continued his sprint toward the exit, the door flew open. Three local television news reporters burst into the garage, cameramen in tow. Lights clicked on.
 

"There he is! Are you getting this?" one of the reporters yelled.
 

Mayor Darlington slid to a stop and started backing up, holding his hands up in front of himself to protect his reputation from the glare of the cameras.
 

"No! No!"
 

The mayor backed into the federal agent, who cuffed him easily and forced him back toward the councilwoman and the other officer. Four men in suits burst through the door that the mayor and councilwoman had used to get into the garage. Two of them headed toward the pack of television cameras and created a buffer between the two handcuffed officials and the press, but Lindsey and Rich were still on the other side walking with the mayor and councilwoman and their escorts. Rich's camera clicked as the agents read the two officials their rights and led them through the garage.
 

The red-faced mayor yelled at Lindsey, "I'm innocent! You have to believe me. They've got nothing! You put that in your paper, goddammit!"

The agent leading the mayor caught her eye and she saw a slight upturn in the corners of his mouth.
 

"I did nothing wrong! Nothing! That bitch sold me out! She said no one would read the fucking contracts. No one reads them and no one understands them. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. It was all on the up and up. It was all public!"

Lindsey wrote it all down, word-for-word, in her notepad and she could have sworn that the agent slowed his pace to allow the mayor more time to talk.
 

Rae Waters, though, was silent, her face pale. Her hair, usually perfectly coiffed a good five inches above her head, was mussed and listing to one side. Her dress, smudged with dirt and oil, was twisted around her body from the roll down the parking garage ramp with the agent. Her expression was stony.
 

"I swear! I was going to declare the watch. As long as you declare a gift, it's legal," the mayor continued to ramble as they approached a black SUV that pulled up and parked in front of the small group. "And the deadline wasn't until the end of the year, so you've got nothing on me! And we didn't even vote, so you can't arrest me!"

"Shut up, you idiot!" Rae Waters kicked at the mayor, but the agent leading her pulled her back and she fell short of her target, her foot swishing harmlessly through the air. "You moron! Stop talking! I want a lawyer!"

A young female agent got out of the front seat and opened the back door and Lindsey caught a glimpse of a mesh separation between the front and back seat and a sophisticated radio attached to the dash. The agent helped Mayor Darlington into the backseat, then shut the door. He conferred briefly with the driver, looked at the councilwoman whose face was fixed in an expression of pure rage, and shook his head.
 

"Get another one down here. I'm not putting them in the same car," he said to the driver, who immediately spoke into the radio. The agent caught Lindsey’s eye and tilted his head slightly at the councilwoman. "If you wanted to talk to Ms. Waters, this would be the time."
 

Rae Waters stared at the blacked-out windows of the SUV with a murderous look on her face. It was a good thing the mayor was safely secured inside.

"What's the charge against Ms. Waters?" Lindsey asked the agent.

"We're starting with bribery of a public official. I wouldn't be surprised if the charges eventually included wire fraud and money laundering."
 

Lindsey scribbled frantically. "Ms. Waters, do you wish to comment on the charges?"

"I did nothing wrong." She said it with an imperious tilt of her head at odds with the handcuffs and the fact that she had just run down several flights of stairs trying to outrun two very fit federal agents. "I am innocent. If anyone should be arrested, it's that bitch Teri Schulman."

Lindsey prayed her pen wouldn't run out of ink. "What did Ms. Schulman do?"

Rae gave Lindsey a disgusted glare.
 

"You already know, don't you? You know all about the money from EFB. God damn it. Teri's your source, isn't she? Did she cut a deal? Is she snitching us out? Well, let me tell you something. You have no idea what's going on. She's the one. She's the one who said this wasn't any big deal. She said it was okay to approve the contracts. No one would ever care if we got gifts on the side. As long as we declared them on our disclosures, it wasn't illegal. She told me that! I have it on tape!"

The younger agent guiding Rae Water raised an eyebrow. The second car pulled up and parked and the FBI agent helped the cuffed councilwoman into the backseat, still protesting her innocence until the door slammed and muffled her voice.
 

As the car pulled away, Rich gave Lindsey a huge grin. "Damn, girl! I don't care if you are crazy, I'm working with you again. That was awesome! How did you know? Never mind. I don't care. Damn!"
 

He grabbed her in a bear hug, lifted her off the ground and spun her around. Then he set her down and ran off to transmit his photos to the newspaper's photo editor. Behind him, the two black vehicles slowly pulled away, red lights flashing in the grills, illuminating the crowd of TV reporters and cameras.

"I have to call Sam."
 

Lindsey fumbled in her bag for her cell phone. She withdrew it and held it up, trying to get some reception in the underground garage. No luck.
 

She walked a few steps, glanced up from the screen, and looked right into the eyes of a very angry and very familiar face.
 

The bike messenger who had been stalking her.

From his vantage point at the bottom of the stairs, Ben had a clear view of Lindsey in the midst of the chaos in the garage. On the edge of that chaos was Spider Barlowe. And, like Ben, he only seemed interested in the reporter in the middle of the scrum of people.
 

Ben tried to make his way across the chaotic garage to Lindsey, dodging a television reporter carrying a shoulder-mounted camera and a couple of federal agents. He watched as Matt Pritchard put the cuffed councilwoman in the back of a black sedan. Most of the reporters scrambled after the car as it headed for the exit.
 

Lindsey stayed behind to talk to an agent, taking notes furiously. Then she, too, started for the exit. The agents ushered Ben and a few other witnesses to the side of the garage to let another vehicle—a black SUV with dark, tinted windows—pass by slowly. Ben recognized the driver as Matt Pritchard's partner who had been at the interview that morning with Lyle. The agent gave Ben a smile and nod as he drove by.
 

Once the SUV passed, Ben headed toward where he'd seen Lindsey. She was completely out of view. He cursed, looking in both directions.
 

She was gone.

And Spider was gone, too.
 

"Not good," he said to himself, jogging past the rows of cars toward the exit one floor up. He peered between the vehicles as he hurried up the sloping floor, but there was no sign of Lindsey.
 

His footsteps echoed in the nearly empty structure. A slight murmur of noise came from the floor above where he imagined the FBI vehicles were leaving with a trail of reporters and onlookers in their wake.
 

Lindsey could be there, too, but if she was wearing her usual footwear, she couldn't have had that much of a head start on him. He listened for the sound of her high heels on concrete, but heard nothing.
 

Ben stopped at the corner that opened into a long three-lane-wide drive that led to the exit and saw the taillights of the FBI's last vehicle as it turned on to the street.
 

"Damn it," he said, scanning the crowd of reporters yelling into cell phones and setting up live shots with the cameras. Lindsey was not among them.
 

He turned back down the way he'd just come and then back toward the exit. Where could she be?
 

He took a few steps toward the exit and paused at a sound to his left. His gaze fell on something red, lying on the painted white line between a minivan and a sedan. He tilted his head, listening again. The minivan shuddered slightly. Ben realized that the red item was a high-heeled shoe.
 

He stepped between the cars and picked up the shoe. As he started to straighten, a dark blur filled his peripheral vision. Ben ducked as the passenger door on the minivan flew open, missing his head by millimeters.
 

"Son of a—" He propelled his body backwards to avoid the blow to the head and saw Lindsey struggling to get out of the vehicle and an equally determined Spider Barlowe in the driver's seat trying to keep her in the car.
 

He heard the too-familiar hiss of a pepper-spray canister followed by a yelp as Lindsey scrambled out of the van, knocking Ben backwards. They rolled away from the van and came to a rest behind it.

The brake lights flashed and Ben pulled Lindsey out of the way just as the minivan reversed and swerved, taking off the side-view mirror from the sedan next to it. Lindsey and Ben scrambled out of the way as the driver put the van in gear and lurched forward, tires squealing on the slick concrete floor.
 

The van clipped the bumper of another car and veered toward the gates at the exit. It straightened out and accelerated, then rammed into a concrete post next to the pay station with a loud bang and crunch of metal.
 

Steam billowed from the crumpled front end of the minivan and the driver’s door opened as far as the damaged metal would let it. Ben bolted toward the vehicle as Spider tried to climb from the twelve-inch opening. Two security guards ran from the booth near the exit, one calling for assistance on a radio.
 

Spider had managed to squeeze the upper part of his body out of the opening, and the guards were trying to help. The bike messenger’s face was red from exertion and pepper spray, his eyes were narrowed to slits. Lindsey must have given him a face full of the spray. No wonder he’d played bumper cars all the way to the exit.
 

The two guards pulled at Spider's arms as he twisted to escape the wreckage. But as Ben approached, Spider suddenly jerked away from his rescuers and tried to climb back into the car.
 

"Oh, no! No, stay away from me!" He tried to close the door but the metal screeched and refused to give way. "Get away from me!"
 

The guards eyed Ben warily. He held up his empty hands to assure them he was no threat. That's when he realized they were looking behind him. Turning, he saw Lindsey striding toward him, a determined look on her face and that damn canister in her hand.
 

She headed to the passenger side, where Spider had thrown open the door and was halfway out.
 

"Stay where you are," she yelled, pulling the trigger on the pepper spray.
 

Ben covered his mouth and nose and backed up, but Lindsey's aim had improved with practice and the stream hit her target. Spider tumbled backward into the van, trying to get away from the spray. Lindsey slammed the door behind him, trapping Spider in the vehicle with a cloud of gas.
 

"Lady, back off. This man is hurt," one of the guards yelled.
 

"He's a very bad man," Lindsey yelled back and waved the canister in the guard's direction. "He just tried to kidnap me!"

This stopped both men in their tracks.
 

"It's true," Ben said. "You need to call the police."
 

"They're on their way," one of the guards said. He raised his hands and took in Lindsey's torn shirt and bare feet. "Miss, are you all right?"
 

She nodded and put the pepper spray back in her bag. Ben let out a long exhale as soon as she was unarmed. Sirens sounded in the distance and the cops would be there within a minute.
 

"My shoes," Lindsey said, looking back toward the corner where the van had been parked.
 

"We'll get you new ones," Ben said, taking her arm. "Let's get you home."
 

"No!"
 

She stopped in her tracks and looked up at him.
 

"What?"
 

His eyes met hers and he saw the passion there. Her face was flushed with excitement and she gripped his hand tight.
 

"I need to get to the newsroom. I have a story to write."

He grinned and shook his head. “Okay, then let’s get you to the newsroom.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Lindsey jumped out of the Jeep as it rolled to a stop in front of the
Beacon
building. The sidewalk was warm under her bare feet.
 

"Lindsey, wait!"
 

Ben hurried after her, the Jeep parked haphazardly in the loading zone.
 

"Just because Spider Barlowe's in custody doesn't mean you're safe yet," he said, matching his step to hers as they rushed toward the front doors of the newspaper office. "Until we know who he's working for and that guy's also in jail, you're stuck with me."