Deadly Pursuit (SCVC Taskforce) (7 page)

Forester disappeared behind the frosted glass, and for a split second, Cooper considered showing the chief his own shoe, but in his years with the DEA, he’d learned not to waste time on people and situations that did not further his purpose. Losing his temper with the Des Moines Unit Chief would only endanger his prestigious position with the SCVC taskforce. That did not serve his purpose.

Besides, karma was a bitch and it looked like Forester was due for a visit right along with that fucker Quarters.

Looking out the front door again, Cooper followed Celina’s progress across the one-way street toward the parking garage. She’d just quit because her job had come in conflict with her personal ethics code. Cooper remembered a time when he’d almost done the same.

A wise mentor had showed him the value of balancing judgment calls while keeping his ethics and morals intact. Hard to do, especially after seeing the rot-gut shit of the underground world for years. His deep-seeded ethics and morals had sometimes taken a backseat to his all-encompassing desire to clean up that world. He rarely thought in terms of ethics anymore, just laws.

Like today. He hadn’t given much thought to Richardson’s kids. If he’d thought about them, it would have bothered him, and he couldn’t perform his job properly if he was bothered over the ethical dilemma they presented. Arresting their mother and her boyfriend in front of them wasn’t a day at the park, but letting the two criminals go wasn’t an option. The damage they had done, and would continue to do to innocent lives, warranted definitive and immediate action. How could you balance that with two innocent children? It was a no-win situation.

“You goin’ after her?” the guard asked, bringing him back to the here and now.

Cooper started for the door. “Yeah, I’m going after her.” Using a shoulder, he pushed open the door. “God help me, I never could resist trouble.”

Standing by her Civic hatchback in the parking garage, Celina waited for Cooper. Her cheeks were hot, even though she could see her breath puffing out in little white clouds. Her heart hammered in her chest and her palms were sweating. It wasn’t bad enough she’d quit in the heat of the moment, but then she’d forced a showdown with Forester in front of Cooper. Not an impressive move for someone trying not to look inexperienced and overly emotional. Someone trying to prove her team-oriented approach to work so she could get back on his team.

Damn. This day was spinning further into the realm of unbelievable. Getting shot at. Running into Cooper. Finding out he had lied, if only by omission, about Dyer. Then Forester and Quarters trying to intimidate her during the debriefing and when she’d questioned their hasty and ill-thought-out take-down plan, they’d tried to stick her on administrative leave.

Administrative leave
. The words stuck in her throat, clogging it.

Already on edge and emotional after her argument with Cooper, she’d let her temper get the better of her. Damn Cuban temper.

Cooper entered the parking garage and stopped, eyes squinting at the change in light as he scanned the area looking for her. When his face registered her presence, Celina didn’t know what to do. Smile or cry? Apologize or demand an apology from him? Fall at his feet and beg him to take her back to California or grab her box and run from the lecture she knew was coming?

Undecided, she brought her hands up to her mouth and blew warm breath on them as he approached. His face was expressionless as she stretched out her arms to take the box filled with her scant personal stuff, but he stopped far enough back she couldn’t reach it. “You ever do anything half-assed?”

Celina searched his eyes for any trace of humor but what she saw was unreadable. She shored up her backbone just in case he was going to start the lecture. “No.”

It was at least a full thirty seconds before Cooper smiled. “Me neither.” He bypassed her, opened the hatch of the Civic, and dropped the box into it. Shutting the door, he leaned a hand on her car. “Buy you a beer?”

Letting go of the breath she was holding, Celina’s heart hammered in a different rhythm. Heat bloomed in her stomach as well as her cheeks. She decided to throw her last ounce of luck out as a wager. “Only if dinner’s included, and only if we stop by Child Services and check on Annie’s kids first.”

This time Cooper extended the silence for a full minute before he answered her, and there it was again, that almost palpable sexual energy. “You know, Celina,” Cooper started.

And then Celina heard her name echo off the concrete walls around her. “Davenport!”

Go away!
Celina wanted to shout back. Cooper was just about to say something like
I’ve missed you
or
I’m sorry I didn’t call you. Come back to the SCVC with me
. Celina didn’t care if there was a full-blown blizzard and an all-out terrorist attack descending on them at that very moment, she didn’t want to be interrupted.

As Cooper turned and Celina leaned around him to see who was calling her name, she closed her eyes in dismay.

Dominic Quarters, complete in parka and boots, jogged toward them.

She’d gotten out from under Quarters’ thumb in California, only to end up under it once more here. It was like career stalking. The man would not leave her alone.

But she’d just quit. Nothing he could do to her now.

“Celina,” he said, as he came to a stop near them. He gave Cooper a dismissive once-over. “This has all been a terrible misunderstanding.” He smiled at her; the same smile he’d given her earlier that afternoon in the Hy-Vee parking lot when he’d suggested she act as an Avon lady.

Unbelievable. Even after putting her, Ronni, and Annie’s kids in danger, and sticking Celina on administrative leave, he still had hopes she’d get busy with him.

“Tensions are running high and, well, my god,”—he forced a sad face—“you were shot at earlier. You’re stressed.”

Reaching out, he tried to rub her arm, but she jerked it away. Cooper leaned back against a black Durango parked behind him and crossed his arms, open interest on his face.

“You’re emotional right now,” Quarters continued. “I understand that. Believe me, I do. But quitting isn’t the answer.” Moving so he could put his arm around her shoulders, he drew her away from her car. “Let’s go back to my office and talk about this. I’ll make some reservations at Luigi’s and we can discuss your future over dinner.”

Celina almost laughed. Instead she rolled out from under his arm, shoved him away. “No thanks. In case I haven’t already made this clear, which I’m pretty sure I have, that scenario is never going to happen in this lifetime.”

Opening her car door, she met Cooper’s stare over the frame. “Mexican sounds good. There’s a great little mom-and-pop restaurant a few miles from here. You want to ride with me or follow?”

He didn’t miss a beat. Straightening, he uncrossed his arms and gave her a small salute. “I’ll follow you.”

Celina started the car and cranked the heater, relieved to be out of Quarters’ reach. As she put the car in reverse and drove out of the parking spot, Quarters said something to Cooper. Cooper’s response was delivered with a finger to Quarters’ face. Celina chuckled as Quarters stepped back and narrowed his eyes. Cooper smiled, patting him on the shoulder and walking around him to get in the Durango.

A minute later, at a stoplight, Celina snuck a look in her rearview mirror at Cooper idling behind her. Forget The Beast. The Terminator was back, his dark eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, jawline set belligerently. One hand was on the wheel of his SUV and he appeared to be staring back at her, but she couldn’t be sure.

She glanced away, convinced he looked more like a dangerous criminal than a man of the law.

Running her hands through her hair, Celina pulled it away from her face and secured it with a rubber band. As the light turned green and traffic started to move, she gave Cooper another glance and found she still couldn’t decide if he was looking at her or not.

Reaching over to the passenger seat, she retrieved her sunglasses and slid them on before shifting the car. Looking up in the rearview the next time, she saw Cooper was smiling.

The restaurant was on the outskirts of town, set off the main road a hundred yards with a gravel parking lot and a trailer park atmosphere that made Cooper’s skin tight. In ten years as a DEA agent and the three years before that as a street cop, he’d spent a fair number of nights in dives just like this one, hanging out with narks and drunks and losers in order to peg his criminal.

“You look like you’re about to have a tooth pulled,” Celina said, her boots kicking up little puffs of snow as she walked toward him. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail and her full lips now sported pink lip gloss that matched her rose-tinted sunglasses. Between the clouds and setting sun, Cooper knew she didn’t need the sunglasses. He also knew the lip gloss was for him.

Forcing his attention away from her lips, he scanned the rusting gutters, the lopsided sign claiming authentic Mexican food, and the peeling beige paint. The place was only one step below the Child Services building they’d just left. “Makes me want to get back on the first plane to San Diego.”

“We’re here for the food, not the décor.”

“True, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re afraid to be seen with me.” He wished she’d lose the sunglasses so he could see her eyes. Those eyes that had been so much a part of his fantasies in the past year. “Afraid some of those suits in your office will see you having dinner with a DEA man?”

Celina removed her glasses like he wanted. Her brows flexed down as she tried to decide if he was joking. “There are only two things I’m afraid of, Cooper, and neither of those concerns what my coworkers think about my personal life. I admire and respect you and if you’d prefer a nicer building, I’ll take you across town, but the food and the service won’t be as good.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Your choice.”

He didn’t give a rat’s ass where they ate so long as he got to look into those eyes and feed another fantasy. She was still pissed about the Dyer thing, and, like Quarters had mentioned back in the parking garage, she had been shot at earlier. With a sawed-off double-barreled cop killer. That wasn’t an experience most people shrugged off easily. Even experienced agents like him.

On top of that, she was still upset about her bosses’—former bosses, now—poor judgment calls. What she needed was a hot dinner and a cold beer. “Are we going to stand here in the freezing cold and yak at each other, Agent Davenport, or are we going to go in and eat?”

Cooper let her lead him between two pickup trucks and fell into step beside her. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you a job when I get back to California.”

She stopped and turned her gorgeous eyes on him. “Technically, I didn’t quit.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“I only quit the Des Moines unit. Says so in my written resignation. Tomorrow I’ll place a few calls, see where I can transfer to. This was never meant to be a permanent assignment and I’m done hiding. And just so you know, if there’s an opening on your taskforce any time soon, I plan to fill it.”

No doubt about it, Celina always gave it to him straight. Not an ounce of coyness when she knew what she wanted. “Look,” Cooper started, but she cut in.

“I know what you’re going to say. That I can’t come back yet, but—”

Now Cooper cut in on her. “I apologize for being a rude ass earlier today,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “And I’m sorry I never called and told you about Dyer.”

Her surprise was genuine. One glossy corner of her mouth rose. “Really?”

Shifting his weight, Cooper tried not to appreciate the relief in her eyes too much. He’d said what he’d wanted to. If he were a smart man, he’d forget about having dinner with her and head back to the hotel. Time and distance hadn’t changed the fact that she was still too young for him and he still wanted her too damn much.

If he were a smart man. “Yes, Celina, really.”

“Okay then,” she said, giving him a wink. “Are we going to stand here and yak all night, Agent Harris, or are we going to eat?”

The place was cleaner and neater than Cooper had expected. The smell of seared meat and stale beer mixed with cigarette smoke. A lone mariachi player strummed a guitar in the far corner, a man and a woman moving in time to the guitar player’s rhythm on a miniscule square of floor in front of him.

There was a host, a guy who’d tried to make up for his lack of stature by beefing up his biceps. Cooper gave him a back-off narrowing of his eyes after the guy looked Celina over. Leaving her name with the host, Celina motioned Cooper to the bar area. Finding a high table at one end of the room, they ordered drinks from a stocky waitress who left them a basket of freshly fried tortilla chips.

Celina shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair before sprinkling salt liberally over the chips in the basket between them. “Have you ever been shot?”

Cooper helped himself to a chip and dipped it in the salsa bowl. “Twice. Knifed twice too. Twenty-seven stitches on top of the knife wounds. Took a nail in my foot from a pneumatic nail gun once. Broke a rib and bruised a couple others.”

Celina stopped chewing. Swallowed, her eyes doubling in her face. “Jesus, Cooper. All in the line of duty?”