Force of Nature (39 page)

“I’d have sex with Robin Chadwick,” Ric continued, “before getting naked with the lieutenant. And since the probability of my having sex with Chadwick is somewhere between negative two billion and never…”

It had been a one-time-only thing—thank you, Jesus—the true blessing being that the lieutenant reconciled with her husband mere days later. But it had been far from the awfulness that Ric no doubt imagined. Still, it was a night Martell chose to remember only selectively, squinting to dull the clarity of his memories.

“You know,” Ric said pensively, “I think I’d have sex with Pierre, before—”

“Shut up,” Martell said, laughing. “You’re such a prick. You ask me to do you a favor and then you dis my woman?”

“Your woman?” Ric repeated in disbelief.

“She was fucking hot,” Martell said, just to make the prick squirm. Also because it was not a lie. He threw one in for good measure. “She wore leather and made me call her ma’am.”

“Man, I so don’t want to know that,” Ric said. “Please tell me you’re shitting me.”

“I’m shitting you.” He stood up. “I gotta go.”

Ric stood, too. “Call me after you check in on Annie. Leave me a message if I don’t pick up.”

He was seriously concerned about her safety, so Martell didn’t make a joke about either comforting her or alleviating her loneliness. Instead he just nodded. “Will do.”

Ric followed him into the kitchen, where Martell helped himself to some Szechwan chicken that was still out and open on the table. “You sure you don’t want this?” he asked, even as he took a plastic fork from Ric’s drawer and started eating right out of the white cardboard container. It was cold, but damn good. He was hungrier than he’d thought.

“I’m sure,” Ric said.

There was a smaller container of steamed rice, and Martell unglued some of it, combining it with his chicken. “Because you know what they say about Chinese food. It tastes great, but you’re hungry again thirty minutes later.”

For some reason, Ric found that really funny.

“Bro,” Martell told him as he went down the stairs to the front door, Ric following to lock up behind him. “You’re losing it. Get some sleep while you can.”

“Thank you again for helping,” Ric said. “When you see her, tell Annie that I love her.”

Martell turned to look at him in surprise, but he’d already shut the door.

Smiling, he stabbed another piece of chicken with his fork as he walked to his car. Considering Ric was one of the best detectives Martell had ever known, it had taken him much too long.

But apparently he’d finally gotten a clue.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

R
obin was coming down with the flu.

Had to be.

His head was pounding, he was sweating as if he had a fever, he couldn’t sleep, and his nausea level was off the charts.

Which, of course, made Dolphina’s 5
A.M.
phone call all that much more fun.

“I really don’t want to do this right now,” he mumbled into his cell as he staggered into the bathroom to take a leak.

“Are you drunk again?” she asked sharply.

“No.” He leaned against the wall above the toilet, too ill to stand without support. “I’m very much undrunk. I was sleeping.” He’d finally managed to nod off when his phone rang, jolting him awake.

Dolphina, finally back from her cousin’s wedding in Orlando, had told him earlier that she’d call when the PR genius that HeartBeat Studios hired had come up with a plan of attack regarding the YouTube debacle. But this was ridiculous.

“Can’t we discuss this in the morning?” he asked, flushing the toilet.

“By morning the story will have broken,” she said. “Robin. Listen carefully. I just got a call from a reporter from TMZ dot-com. He wants a comment—from you—regarding the man who came into your hotel room last night.”

Robin made his way back to his bed, where the bottle of water on his bedside table was empty. “There were no men in my hotel room last night.”

“Last night,” she repeated. “Not tonight.”

He put his head in his hands. “You mean…”

“I’m talking about the night from the YouTube video,” she clarified.

“There were two men,” he told her, “in that video. I’ve never seen either one of them before.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, but then Dolphina said, “Robin, did your…special friend come to your room that night, too? Because this reporter says he’s seen new footage of a man who came into your room and kicked everyone out. It’s just gone up online, and he’s giving us a chance to comment for the story he’s writing—a story that’s going to break in just a few hours. A story that outs you.”

Ric came out of a really good dream with a hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear. “Ric. Alvarado, come on. Wake up.”

It wasn’t Annie’s voice, which was disappointing—doubly so when he opened his eyes to see Jules standing over him.

“Sorry,” the FBI agent apologized. “I knocked on your door, but you were out cold.”

“What’s up?” Ric sat up, pushing his hair out of his face, aware of both his lack of shirt and his raging hard-on.

In his dream, he’d been sitting on the lounge chair out on the screened porch and Annie had appeared, the way Annie often did in his very best dreams. She’d whispered his name as she’d straddled him, pushing him hard and deep inside of her.

Yeah. Good dream. Really good dream.

He bunched his blanket in his lap.

But Jules had already moved back across the room to the doorway, respectful of Ric’s privacy. “Junior called on my cell,” he reported. “He said he’s running late, but that he should be here by noon.”

Ric looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was slightly after 5
A.M.,
and the first faded pink hint of the coming sunrise was lighting the sky.

“He used the words
our little field trip to Myakka
,” Jules said.

“Myakka,” Ric repeated. Myakka was a state park, filled with alligators and long desolate stretches of swampy river. It was the perfect dumping ground for murder victims. As a cop, he’d helped drag the river many times.

Jules nodded. “I’ve spoken to Yashi. He’s got three different teams already on their way out there. They’ll be in place by the time we leave. By the time
I
leave with Junior. I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s no reason for you to go, too. Which is why I woke you. I don’t want you here when Junior arrives.”

He was serious.

“And Junior’s not going to think that’s weird?” Ric asked. “That I’m not along for the ride?”

“Not when I tell him that your father had another heart attack, and that you went to the hospital,” Jules replied.

That was a good cover, but…“You’ll be alone,” Ric pointed out.

“My entire team will be in place.”

“And what if this Myakka thing is disinformation?” Ric countered. “Your team will be in Myakka and you’ll be God knows where.”

“Then I really don’t want you with me,” Jules told him.

“You think something’s going to go wrong.” Ric’s jeans were on the floor next to his bed, and he grabbed them and pulled them on, yanking up his zipper so they could have this conversation face-to-face.

Jules didn’t try to deny it. He was standing there, in the doorway, in jeans and a T-shirt, with his feet bare and his hair sticking straight up in places like a frat boy with chronic bedhead. “I hate to go all Han Solo on you, but yeah. I got a bad feeling about this. So take a shower, get dressed, and go over to the hospital.”

“Jules, come on…”

His face got hard and the frat boy vanished. “That wasn’t a request. That was an order. This isn’t a democracy, Alvarado. You work for me. So get your ass to the hospital.”

“Okay,” Ric said, holding out both hands as if he were trying to reassure Pierre when Annie had been gone for too long. “Whoa. Wait. Let’s not go into panic mode just yet. We’ve got plenty of time to, I don’t know, think up a counterplan.”

Jules laughed. “You don’t think I’ve got a counterplan? I’ve got teams coming out here within the hour. They’ll be in place to provide backup, long before Junior arrives. They’ll follow, wherever Junior takes me. Plus, the body’ll be trackable. Go to the hospital, Alvarado. Don’t make me break your arm to send you there.”

Those were fighting words, meant to piss him off, but Ric wasn’t going to argue that one. “Look, man, I know you can probably beat the hell out of me if you want to. And yeah, maybe you’re going to have to, because I’m
not
going anywhere. You had to know that my leaving you alone with Junior and his men just wasn’t going to fly. I can see that something’s got you spooked. I’ve been there. You get a feeling, you don’t know why, but you’re usually always right. So okay. Let’s work this through—”

“I’ve worked it through,” Jules said again, “and you’re going to the hospital.”

“I realize that you’re afraid for me,” Ric said, “and I appreciate that, but…it goes both ways. I’m afraid for you, too.”

Jules didn’t move. Ric didn’t know how he did it, but one second he was standing there, the hard-ass FBI team leader, and the next, he’d completely changed. It was as if he’d flipped a switch and morphed into someone else.

“I had no idea you cared,” Jules said so softly, Ric almost couldn’t hear him. And his eyes, which had been so hard, were now filled with heat. He gave Ric a long, slow once-over, looking at him in a way that Ric had never been looked at by another man before. It was extremely disconcerting.

But Ric knew exactly what Jules was doing. Or rather,
trying
to do. It wasn’t going to work. He didn’t scare that easily. He wasn’t going to run away.

Instead, he called Jules’s bluff. “Come on,” Ric said. “Let’s take a walk on the wild side,
babe.
” He purposely used Robin’s term of endearment for Jules. “We’ve got a couple hours to kill…”

Ric went as far as to step toward Jules—who took a big step back, away from him. Just as Ric had known he would.

“What,” Ric pushed. “Isn’t that what you want?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Jules said. The heat was gone from his eyes—in fact, he was finding it difficult now to meet Ric’s gaze.

“Oh,
I’m
the asshole?” Ric asked. “I thought we were friends. I thought that you respected me. But if you were really thinking you could scare me into some kind of, I don’t know, homophobic panic…? Fuck you, for thinking so little of me. And fuck you, too, for apparently assuming I wasn’t paying attention when you were talking about Robin. Christ, if anyone out there is a one-man…man…” Damn, but that was weird to say. “It’s you. Asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Jules said, his eyes now contrite. “And you’re right. I’m an idiot. But you’re still going to the hospital, where you’ll be safe.”

Ric didn’t get a chance even to open his mouth to begin to argue.

Because his doorbell rang.

This was not good.

This was very, very not good.

Annie hit play, and Robin’s laptop computer ran the latest digital video, this one posted on a popular celebrity news website. In it, Jules was here, in this very hotel suite.

“Tell your friends it’s time to go.” That was definitely Jules’s voice, even though it took the camera several moments to find him. And then there Jules was, wearing the same suit he’d worn to Gordon Burns’s party, sans tie.

Whoever was filming him must’ve been using their cell phone, the quality was so poor.

But they got a good close-up of him as he turned away from the sliders to the living-room balcony, as someone nearer to the phone’s mic said, “Robin Chadwick invited us here. Who the hell are you to tell us to leave?”

It was then that Jules just stopped. He not only stopped moving, but he practically stopped breathing.

Robin was sitting next to Annie, reading a printout of the impending accompanying TMZ article. “Look at how much he wants to just say it,” he breathed.
“I’m his lover…”

Annie glanced over to see that he’d looked up from the article and was transfixed by the image on the screen. By Jules.

Tears gleamed in Robin’s eyes. “God, I wish he had,” Robin whispered.

But Jules finally spoke. “I’m one of his producers,” he said. “I’m also a good friend. I make sure people don’t take advantage of him. Close the door on your way out.”

The camera followed him as he headed toward the French doors that led into Robin’s bedroom. He disappeared through them.

There was a cut, and the film jumped to an even grittier, lower-light shot of Jules, crouched next to Robin, who was facedown on the tile of the bedroom balcony.

It must’ve been a woman holding the cell phone camera now. Her voice was clear as she spoke to Jules.

He asked her about any drugs that Robin might’ve taken.

She brought up Viagra, and the expression on Jules’s face was not that of a mere friend. The filmmaker knew it, and froze on it, zooming in as tightly as possible.

Annie risked another glance at Robin, who’d started to cry. He didn’t cry the way he did in his movies, with one tear and then another sliding down his perfect face. Instead, he tried to hide it from her, wiping his eyes, trying to blink back all of his emotion.

“I can’t believe I did that to him.” Robin’s voice shook. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

That was the end of the video, but the website included links to photos, as well as another video link—no doubt to the now infamous Robin Chadwick YouTube footage. Annie clicked on the first of the photos. It was a still of Robin and Jules. They looked to be standing on a soundstage, and Robin was wearing some kind of old-fashioned military uniform.

“That’s from when we were filming
American Hero
,” he told her. “It was taken two years ago.”

Jules looked the same, but Robin was obviously younger. He was much skinnier back then, his face more boyish and slender.

In the photo, the two men were smiling at each other, as if sharing a joke. A private joke. Their gazes were locked, and their attraction was palpable.

The second link led to a photo that must’ve been taken just seconds later. They were still standing in the same spot, but in this picture Jules had looked away while Robin still gazed at him. Neither man was smiling now, and the look of sheer longing on Robin’s face was heartbreaking.

“I was in character,” Robin said. “I was playing Hal Lord, who was gay, and I was still in character.” He paused. “That’s what we’ll say.”

Annie looked at him. “Or…you could tell the truth.”

“I can’t.” Robin stood up, taking the article with him to the sofa. Annie had already read it, and it was all conjecture, but pretty damn accurate.

She swiveled in her chair to face him. “Sure, you can.”

“No”—Robin raised his voice—“I can’t.” He pressed his hand to his forehead. “God, I have a headache. I think I’m coming down with something.” He flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. “Yeah, Dolph,” he said into it, “it’s me. Here’s what we’re going to do. You call the reporter back, you identify Jules—his full name is Julian Young.” He spelled it for her. “You tell the reporter that he’s a friend of mine, that he’s a producer, that I’ve known him for several years.”

Annie turned back to the computer as Robin continued speaking to Dolphina. She clicked the back button and clicked on the link to the second video.

There was a pause while the computer downloaded it into Media Player and then…

Oh, shit.

This was not the video she’d expected.

“Robin,” Annie said, “you better come look at this—right now!”

“My cell service is down,” Ric reported.

Jules’s Treo, too, was completely useless. “The signal’s being jammed,” he realized.

Ric swore. “The landline’s dead.”

It was, of course, Gordie Junior and three members of his goon squad, standing on Ric’s front stoop, ringing the doorbell again. The fact that they were here at dawn when Junior had just called to say they’d be delayed until noon was ominous. Disinformation, anyone?

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jules decided. “You’re going out the back—”

“Two more men on the back porch,” Ric informed him. “And e-mail’s not an option. They must’ve taken my cable out, too.”

“You’ll have to hide,” Jules told him.

“You think they won’t search for me?” Ric countered. “I say we play it like we don’t know they’ve taken out our phones. We’ve got the tracking device in the body…”

That was assuming Junior was going to take the body with them. Of course, if they played it as Ric suggested, maybe he would.

“Okay,” Jules said. “Get the door. I’m going to leave a message up here, for Yashi.”