Hit and Run (27 page)

~ ~ ~

The detective scribbled in his memo book as Krista looked on listlessly. Sometime in the past half hour all her energy seemed to have drained from her body.

“Uh-oh.” He glanced up from his pad. “She’s about to crash.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yo, can we get a bottle of water over here?” he yelled over the roof of the car.

A young EMT scurried over with a bottle. Earlier he’d been nice enough to clean up the claw marks on Krista’s face.

“You okay, ma’am?”

“Fine, thanks.” She accepted the water and glanced up at the detective. “Are we almost finished?”

“Not even close. We need you to come on down to the station, get your statement on tape.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He flipped his pad shut. “As a heart attack.”

Krista stood up and sighed. She looked down the street, which was quickly becoming a traffic jam. Officers had set up barricades on either end of the block and yellow swags of tape now decorated R.J.’s front stoop. A black Lexus was parked in front of the house and a CSI crouched beside it, photographing damage to the front bumper.

“How’s it coming?”

She turned around to see R.J. approaching. He seemed unfazed by the mayhem.

“Want me to take you home?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Later.” The detective shot her a glare as he tucked his notebook away. “She’s coming with us first.”

He walked off, and R.J. looked her over.

“I’ve got to go down and give a statement,” she said.

He reached up and stroked her cheek where Liz Brown’s fingernails had left claw marks. Krista flinched, and he eased closer.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

“What?”

He pulled her into the shadows beside the driveway. “You know what.” He slid his hand around her waist and gazed down at her. “Are you really okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“I am.”

Those blue eyes searched hers and Krista’s nerves started to flutter. People and chaos swirled around them, but she knew he was going to—

He kissed her, pulling her tight against him. It was possessive and intense and she slid her arms up around his neck and held on. Her blood was rushing again, but it was different than before.

He pulled away and looked down at her. Her heart jumped into her throat as she read the look in his eyes.

“I have to go,” she told him.

“You always say that, too.”

She pulled away.

Krista was out of bed before sunrise the next morning, lacing up the running shoes she’d managed to ignore for weeks. She glanced at her watch and then set a brisk pace as she cut over to First and headed for the beach.

The streets were gray and empty, the stores shuttered. Even the coffee shops were still asleep. Krista enjoyed the quiet and the solitude and the burn in her muscles. She hit the beach and inhaled a deep gulp of briny air.

It felt good to be awake and alert
.
She needed to do this more. She needed to lay off the cheeseburgers and keep her body toned and her reflexes sharp.

She pounded down the boardwalk, passing joggers and cyclists—the serious exercisers who weren’t out to see and be seen. The sky turned from rose to lavender to blue as she plodded along the shore, letting her thoughts ebb and flow like the water. When she reached the pier, she spent a few minutes staring at the surf and listening to the seagulls. She gazed out at the horizon with a deep-rooted longing she hadn’t felt in a while. She was healthy and
alive
and she’d been taking everything good in her life for granted.

Her chest tightened as she doubled back along the sand and her mind drifted over all that had happened.

Scarlet had called last night while she was still at the police station. The skid marks in front of the office were made by Goodyear tires, the size and wheelbase consistent with a Lexus LS 460, which happened to be the car owned by Liz Brown.

Liz lived in Laguna Beach and her brother—who lived in Irvine—happened to own a white Chevy Avalanche. Whether he’d lent it to his sister one day last August was a question for investigators.

Krista gazed out at the water, thinking about love and lust and the passions that drove intelligent people to do astoundingly dumb things.

R.J.’s kiss came back to her. She imagined his lips on hers and the warmth of his hands, and she felt a rush that was better than any runner’s high.

She shouldn’t start something with him. It would be stupid. And reckless. She didn’t trust him and never had. And there was something else bugging her—this nagging feeling that he wanted to pull her away from Moreno & Hart or drive a wedge between her and Scarlet. Maybe she was imagining it.

She hooked a left on Main, where restaurants and coffee shops were now coming to life. Morning commuters were on the move, and she had to stop and wait at intersections. Finally she reached the relative quiet of her street where queen palms buffered the noise and the only activity was the occasional dog-walker.

Krista reached her yard and heard the low growl of a Porsche behind her. Her heart skittered. She turned and watched it round the corner, then glide to a stop in front of her house.

R.J. got out. “Up and at 'em, huh?”

The sarcasm in his voice put her on the defensive. She made an effort to steady her breathing. He wore a black T-shirt and faded jeans and his eyes were hidden behind mirrored shades. Something was different today, and she tried to place it as he sauntered over.

“What’s up?” she asked blandly.

“Oh, you know. Going to work.” He peeled off his sunglasses and gazed down at her. “How was the jog?”

“Fine. You don’t have your gun on.”

“Very observant, Ace.” He smiled. “So, what’re you up to today?”

Her agenda included taking her car to the shop, doing laundry, and dodging neighbors with pet problems.

“Working,” she told him.

“Another day, another dollar.”

Something in his smile made Krista’s heart thud. How did he always manage to do this to her? Thank goodness she reeked, or she might have been tempted to invite him inside.

“How about working with me today?” he asked.

She hesitated. “What’s the job?”

“A skip trace. One of Walker’s top clients is due in court soon, but he seems to have left town.”

She raised an eyebrow. Holland, obviously.

“I’ve got reason to think he may be in Antigua,” R.J. added.

“Antigua.”

“That’s right.” He stepped closer and stared down at her with those blue eyes.

“So, what’s your plan?”

“The plan is to locate him.” He eased closer and Krista’s skin tingled. “Fill him in on recent developments. Persuade him to come back to California so his lawyer can sort out the mess he’s gotten himself into.”

She gazed up at him, trying to think straight while her heart thrummed inside her chest.

“Sounds like you got it covered. What do you need me for?”

“Like I said, I want a partner.”

Partner.
It was a loaded word, and it made her wary because beneath the teasing she sensed he really was inviting her to partner with him in a professional sense. She felt a sharp kick of loyalty to Scarlet.

“Yeah, well. Sounds interesting, but I’ve already got a partner.”

Slowly he traced his hands up her arms. She ignored the shivers.

“Anyway, I’ve got work to do today.”

“Take a break for once.” He stroked his thumb over the bruise on her cheek. “You could use a vacation.”

She gazed up at him. She shouldn’t trust him. Professionally speaking, he’d burned her before. And personally... she’d never given him the chance. She’d never been that careless.

Maybe she should. Maybe the
careless
thing would be to let a man who stirred her emotions as he did slip through her grasp. Maybe he was right the other day when he’d told her she was afraid.

His hand dropped away. “Meet me at the John Wayne Airport in three hours. We’re taking Walker’s plane.”

She gaped at him.

“Pack light,” he added.

“You’re amazingly cocky, you know that?”

“Not cocky.” He slid his shades on and smiled. “Just hopeful.”

# # #

Read an excerpt from
BEYOND LIMITS
, the next book in Laura Griffin’s bestselling Tracers series, coming spring 2015...

Chapter One

Asadabad, Afghanistan

0300 hours

The night was all wrong for an op, but they were going anyway and not a man among them disputed the call.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Derek Vaughn sat wedged between his teammates in the Black Hawk helicopter listening to the thunder of the rotor blades as he pictured the city below. The rugged outpost was hemmed in on either side by mountains. Even by Afghan standards the place was a hellhole, frequented by opium traders, arms smugglers, and Taliban fighters with Al-Qaeda links--including a group that had recently hijacked a caravan of aid workers on their way back from a medical mission in Badakhshan Province.

The hijackers had killed the drivers and taken three hostages, all aid workers. Two were Swedish and one was American, and both governments were scrambling to resolve the crisis while keeping it under wraps. But the situation had dragged on, which wasn’t good. Derek had seen first-hand how TAQ fighters treated their prisoners, and the thought of what those people had likely been through made his blood boil. But he tamped down his anger and focused on his job.

“Five minutes,” the crew chief said over the radio.

Derek closed his eyes. He regulated his breathing. He recalled the map of the compound he and his teammates had memorized during the briefing. Drone photographs had shown two buildings separated by a narrow courtyard. The hostages were thought to be held in the basement of one or both of the houses.

Or so they hoped. Tonight’s entire mission was based on a call that had traced back to a phone believed to belong to one of the kidnappers.

One phone call. That was it.

Typically, deploying an entire platoon of SEALs required slightly more intel. But tonight wasn’t typical, not by a long shot. Sixteen days ago, the kidnappers had demanded five million dollars in ransom from the international relief org, MedAssist. Nine days ago, they’d upped the ante to ten mil. Two days ago, negotiations had broken down and twenty-four hours ago MedAssist had received an e-mail. The attached video clip showed twenty-six-year-old Ana Hansson blindfolded and kneeling before the camera, pleading for her life just seconds before her captors slit her throat.

“Four minutes,” the crew chief said over the headset.

Derek pictured the two remaining hostages. Dr. Peter Lindh of Stockholm was forty-nine and had been in excellent health before his abduction. Hailey Gardner of Boston had just graduated nursing school before taking a job with an international relief org. Her passport photo showed a pretty blond with a wry smile. The photo had immediately reminded Derek of a different woman, a woman he’d been trying to get out of his head for months now. It wasn’t the blond hair or the smile, but the determined gleam in her eyes that made Derek think of Elizabeth LeBlanc.

As if he needed a reason.

“Three minutes.”

Derek snugged his assault gloves on his hands.
Focus.
Thinking about Elizabeth or anything besides the op right now was a good way to get his ass shot off. Or one of his teammates’.

The crew chief slid open the door and the roar from outside cut off all communication. Derek got to his feet and edged closer to the opening, where he could see the valley below bathed in silver. They were infiltrating under a full moon into hostile territory with scant intel to guide their assault. The odds were stacked against them, but Derek knew every last one of his teammates relished this mission. They’d trained together, fought together, lived, breathed, and bled together for six long months of deployment. On this tour alone, they’d racked up more successful tactical operations than anyone cared to count. But this mission was special. It wasn’t every day they got the chance to rescue a civilian from the country they’d sworn their lives to protect and defend.

At the front of the helo Derek’s CO held up two fingers.
Two minutes.

Derek pulled down his night vision goggles, casting everything around him in a greenish hue. He checked his M-4, outfitted with a ten-inch barrel. The weapon was designed for closed-quarters combat and had a suppressor to keep the noise down. He also had his Sig Sauer P226 in his thigh holster, but didn’t expect to use it. Tonight was a straight-up, take-no-prisoners rescue mission. Get in and get out, hopefully before anyone realized they were there.

That was the goal, but everyone knew it wasn’t likely to become reality. And they were good with that. SEALs were trained to think on their feet. To move, shoot, and communicate. To take whatever shit the mission threw at them and find a way to make a victory out of it.

The helo entered a hover and the crew chief kicked out the rope attached to the fuselage. Both buildings had a rooftop balcony. The pilot would drop off one group, then the other on the neighboring roof, and each four-man element would assault down. Meanwhile an armored Humvee would pull up to the compound and unloaded two more elements to clear from below.

Hit ’em from all directions, a classic SEAL tactic.

They stacked by size with Derek first, followed by Mike Dietz, the team corpsman. Next was Cole McDermott, their best sharpshooter, who would man the roof. Luke Jones--another medic--would bring up the rear.

Derek grabbed the rope. Across the helo Sean Harper grinned and shot him the bird.

Go time.

Derek’s palms burned as he slid down and hit concrete. Fifty pounds of gear on his back, but he hardly felt the impact as he sprang to his feet and sprinted for the door. They’d expected locked, but the heavy iron grillwork added a complication. Derek grabbed his kit and crouched down to prep a breaching charge. Having been shot at through doors on more than one occasion he’d learned to do it kneeling.