In the Line of Fire: Hot Desert Heroes, Book 1 (22 page)

That surprised a laugh out of her. “You’re not wrong,” she said. She sat on the bed and sighed. Her mind bounced to something else that was bothering her, something sort of related to Beck, yet sort of not. “Quincy asked me out.”

“What?” Colbie bugged out her eyes.

Delaney nodded. “Earlier, before they went out to get Dujardin.” She spread her hands. “He said if Beck was truly done with me…” here she had to fight back a variety of emotions—anger, hurt, disappointment—and when she went on her throat was thick from the effort, “…if we were done with each other, he’d like to go out with me.”

“Quincy’s the big one, right? The blond guy from South Carolina?”

“That’s the one.” She shook her head. “I’m not interested at all because, well, I love Beck. But besides that, the men are so much like brothers; if things stay bad between me and Beck, I won’t be around to see either of them even occasionally. And I told Quincy that.” She sighed. “In the scheme of things Beck and I haven’t been seeing each other all that long, but I know I could spend the rest of my life with him if he’d just give me what I need. And I already know he feels the same way. All I have to do is give him what he needs, which is to not ask him to give anything beyond what he’s willing to give. Which isn’t enough.” She sighed again and rubbed the bridge of her nose where a headache had begun to form. “So, you see, it’s all just one big, vicious circle. I need what he won’t give, and he needs what I can’t give.”

“No, he needs what you
won’t
give,” Colbie corrected. “So, yeah, it might be a big, vicious circle, but it’s one you can break.”

Delaney stared down at her clasped hands. Was her friend right? Was this really all about her being stubborn and refusing to give Beck what he needed because it didn’t fit in with her idea of what love should look like? Would having half of him really be so bad?

Or would she be shortchanging herself if she didn’t demand all of him?

“I don’t think you should give up on him,” Colbie said softly. “You can’t see yourself when you’re with him, but you light up a room. I noticed it, but when I really noticed it was when it was gone.”

Delaney swallowed hard.

“And he’s so… I’m not even sure I can describe how he is when he’s with you. He looks at you like you’re a miracle.”

God! She had to stop.

“I’m not asking him for the impossible,” Delaney whispered. “Just to share the demons he carries. And I know he has them because he keeps important things about himself locked away. And if it’s fear that’s holding him back from telling me, well, then all I can conclude is he doesn’t love me enough to trust me with the truth. He doesn’t trust all that is us enough to give me the truth.”

It went without saying that she would always love him. Always. Until the day she took her last breath, even if she managed to find another good man and build a life with him, she would always love Beck Townsend. She knew herself. She wouldn’t be satisfied for long with part of him. She wanted all of him, every last little bit.

Chapter Nineteen

In the office of the Tucson Airport Authority Chief of Police, Beck accepted his phone from Chief Fausto Vega and handed it to Supervisory Deputy United States Marshal Kai “Call me Mac” MacMillan. The lean man with salt-and-pepper hair bent his head to study the sketch of Germano Dujardin.

“I pulled his file when your man Falco called us. This is not the picture we had.” MacMillan glanced at Beck. “I need to forward this to my team.”

“Do it.”

MacMillan sent the scanned sketch off to his colleagues and handed the phone back to Beck.

“What’s this guy’s story?” Vega asked.

“Black-market medical supplies and arms dealer. My squad came across him in Afghanistan. Though he’d been active pretty much all across the Middle East, he was doing most of his business where US forces were—Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.” Beck leaned forward and rested his elbows on his spread knees. “The first we knew of him was when he and his associates took down an army medical-supply convoy, killing the entire platoon. They stripped the troops of their weapons and left them to rot in the sun.” The memory of coming upon that gruesome scene made his chest tighten. It wasn’t a sight he’d ever forget.

“And you captured him?”

Beck nodded. “It took months, but we were finally able to corner him in Kabul, in a small house he’d taken over. He was holding the family hostage. It was a cousin of the husband who notified us there was something wrong. We went in.” He paused, shaking his head. “He murdered the family before we could stop him.” There was more to it, more that Beck refused to think about, more that he would have to live with for the rest of his life. It was something he never wanted Delaney to know about.

“Then you turned him over to Afghani law enforcement.” Though MacMillan phrased the words in the form of a statement, it really came out more as a question.

“Yeah. They were entitled since he’d murdered Afghani citizens. But not before I beat the shit out of him.” He met the marshal’s gaze. “If you’d seen the carnage he left behind—”

“Don’t need to see it to know it was bad,” came the response from MacMillan. “I was in the army three years when the vehicle I was in hit an IED. Two of the guys were killed outright; another one lost a leg. I was lucky. Took some shrapnel in my back; that meant a medical discharge, a few surgeries, and some rehab, but for the most part I’m whole. And fit for duty.”

Which was obvious, since the man was employed by the US Marshals Service. But Beck knew MacMillan downplayed his injury. A few surgeries and some rehab likely covered at least a year, if not longer.

One of Beck’s skills was to accurately size up the people around him, get a read on them, and his read on MacMillan was that the guy was a straight arrow, as straight as they came. “This bastard tried to kill my girlfriend,” Beck said, laying it out. “You get this is personal for me?”

“I get it.” And didn’t seem to be concerned about it.

The police chief apparently was. “Now, wait just a minute,” he said as he stood and put his hands flat on the desk. “You’re not going to act like a bunch of yahoos in my airport. I have a duty to protect the public.”

“We all do,” MacMillan stated with a sharp glance at Vega.

Beck stared at the police chief. Vega was a short man but fit, and fit to be tied over the fact that, like it or not, he wasn’t in charge here.

“We’re gonna do everything we can to keep passengers safe,” Beck responded evenly. “Which is why I have one of my guys, who Dujardin has never seen before, at the passenger drop-off area outside.” He glanced at his watch. It had taken him half an hour to get from REG to the airport police office, where he’d already been for twenty minutes, most of that time taken up by Vega posturing, making sure that both Beck and the deputy US marshal understood who was in charge.

Beck was done letting the man think he was calling the shots. “I don’t think Dujardin will show up as early as we did, but he’s a slippery bastard. He could arrive an hour ahead of the flight or anytime now.” He looked at Vega. “Let your officers know about my guys. We need to get into place.”

Vega seemed barely appeased by Beck’s assertion of keeping harm away from the public, but he at least seemed to understand the urgency of the situation because he got on his smartphone right away. Using the Push-to-Talk function, he notified his people that two of Beck’s men would be loitering, and told them where the men would be, and that they were to be left alone. He gave their names and ended the call.

“Let’s be clear here,” MacMillan said in a low voice. “This is an international fugitive we’re after, and that means this operation falls under the jurisdiction of the US Marshals Service. I want TAA officers focused on keeping the public out of harm’s way, and your men,” he said to Beck, “will be helpful in identifying the bastard, but once that’s done, you will all stand down. Agreed?”

Beck had no problem with any of that. He nodded then called Ty and told him to have Quincy and Alex make contact with security. Ty acknowledged and ended the call. Beck looked at MacMillan and said, “Let’s go.”

“You need to stay out of sight,” MacMillan told him with a frown. “We don’t want Dujardin catching a glimpse of you and turning rabbit.”

Fuck. The marshal was right. Beck dipped his chin in acknowledgment. While he ached to be the one who took Dujardin down, the harder the better, he more than anyone wanted the bastard back behind bars. “I’ll watch the security feeds from in here. If that’s all right with Chief Vega,” he added with politic sincerity.

Vega puffed up. “Yes, yes, of course. That would be acceptable.”

MacMillan pulled a wired earbud attached to a microphone, and a receiver that could be clipped to his belt, from the pocket of his suit coat. “Always carry an extra one,” he said and handed it to Beck. “You tell me what you see on the feeds.”

Beck took the device and situated it. They did a test run and he gave a thumbs-up in affirmation that it worked. “This what you and your team are usin’?” At MacMillan’s nod, Beck muttered, “Dujardin gets one look at this curly wire disappearing into one of your team’s collars, and he’ll be in the wind.”

“All the deputy marshals outfitted with these will be out of sight. Only two of my deputy marshals will be out on the concourse or at curbside. One’s already in a janitorial uniform and the other looks young enough to be a college student. Both of them have tactical communication devices that look like everyday iPod earbuds. It’ll look like they’re listening to music. And if I know them, they’ll be doing some dancing and singing out loud to sell the illusion.” He slapped Beck on the shoulder a couple of times and turned toward the door. “They’re good. Dujardin won’t make ’em.”

“He’d better not.” Beck didn’t care that he was, in essence, threatening a federal law enforcement officer. This was too important to him, to Delaney, for it to fail.

Vega asked to be given an earbud as well. MacMillan assured him that he’d send one of the deputy marshals in with one and left the room while Beck pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and once again dialed Ty. As soon as his friend answered, Beck told him, “I’m kitted with a device that’ll keep me in communication with the feds. How’s it goin’?”

“We’ve verified the earbud you gave Alex works, so we’re good. I’ve given your go bag to Quincy, who’s already put on one of your dress shirts over his tee. It’s a little snug, by the way. You might get it back missing a couple of buttons. Either you need to work out more or he needs to work out less.”

Beck gave a snort.

Ty went on. “He went to the gift shop and bought a University of Arizona ball cap and T-shirt. He also got a pair of nerd-style sunglasses, of which he proceeded to pop out the lenses. Now he’s in the security line with a white dress shirt that’s untucked, a baseball cap, and fuckin’ Buddy Holly glasses on.”

Beck shook his head. He wasn’t sure if the big lug would fit in with the crowd or stand out even more.

“For what it’s worth, nobody’s givin’ him a second glance,” Ty muttered. “He’ll go through the full-body scanner, get pulled aside to be wanded, where he’ll keep an eye on the other people goin’ through the line, wait for that crowd of folks to move through, then he’ll do it all over again. No sign yet of Dujardin.”

“Then we wait.” Beck blew out a breath. With a glance at his watch he said, “We still have at least a couple of hours, probably, before he shows. I don’t want to run down the battery on my phone. You keep in touch with the others; I’ll be in communication with the marshals. As soon as it looks like it’s go time, I’ll call you.”

“Got it. This is the hard part, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

* * * * *

Two hours later Beck watched yet another taxi pull up to the curb for Delta departures. When he saw an athletic shoe followed by a jeans-clad leg come out, he sat back, figuring it was just another American traveler. But then he got a better look at the man climbing out of the taxi and sat up straight. He dialed Ty, clicked the earbud to open the line to MacMillan, and when Ty answered, he told both of them, “Dujardin is just now getting out of a taxi. He’s curbside at the Delta departure section, getting a duffle out of the trunk.”

“My deputies are on the move,” MacMillan said.

“Quincy and Alex are close,” Ty told Beck. “Alex saw him the second the taxi pulled up.”

Sure enough, on the surveillance screen he saw Alex approaching from the sidewalk to the rear of the cab and Quincy coming out of the terminal. A young woman, walking down the sidewalk and clicking her fingers to the beat of music coming from earbuds or, at least, appearing to, was heading toward the front of the cab. From another door came a man in a janitor’s uniform. As Dujardin took his duffle and stepped up onto the curb, she stopped pretending to listen to music, ducked around the front of the taxi, and approached him from behind.

As soon as Beck saw her and the other deputy marshal bring the bastard down, Alex and Quincy with weapons drawn, he was out of his chair, out of the room, and pounding toward the exit, barely aware of Vega behind him. He burst through the doors just as MacMillan hauled Dujardin to his feet.

“Germano Dujardin,” the supervisory deputy US marshal intoned, “you are under arrest—”

Even with his hands cuffed behind his back, Dujardin was able to twist out of his captor’s hold. His movement brought him closer to a uniformed police officer. Before any of them could react, he somehow managed to grab the officer’s service weapon and brought it around, hands still behind his back, gun pointed sideways, pulling the trigger as he turned.

Beck felt a bloom of fire in his shoulder just before he heard the crack of the shots and the explosion of glass. Around him people were screaming. Officers, both federal and local, shouted at Dujardin to drop the gun. Airport police, federal marshals, and Beck’s men all had their weapons trained on him.

He looked at Beck with hatred in his eyes.
“Bâtard!”
he spat. “She was an innocent, just like your Delaney. She did not deserve to die.”

Beck couldn’t respond. He stood there holding a hand to his shoulder, feeling blood seep around his fingers, and stared at the man who had turned from a general enemy of his country to a personal enemy of Beck’s. And it was Beck’s fault.

Because he’d killed Dujardin’s woman.

When he’d walked out to see Delaney holding that bomb and she told him it was from Germano Dujardin, the parallel had not been lost on him.

“What’ve you been smokin’, man?” Ty had his pistol trained on Dujardin’s head. “I was there. She pulled a gun on Beck. She was gonna shoot him. It was self-defense.”

“Drop the weapon, Dujardin,” MacMillan said, his tone terse.

The Frenchman ignored him. “Look at your associate and tell me if you think that’s what he believes,” he said to Ty. His lips curled in a sneer and he glared at Beck. “I would have killed for her. I would die for her.”

Beck felt a few eyes turn to him, but he kept his own gaze on Dujardin. “I had no choice,” he said hoarsely.

“Nor. Do. I.”

The Frenchman twisted his bound hands, trying to bring the gun back up to fire at Beck. He had to have known he never stood a chance.

When Beck’s ears stopped ringing, he saw Dujardin’s body sprawled on the concrete, lifeless eyes staring up into the bright-blue sky. He felt a hand come down on his good shoulder and heard MacMillan say quietly, “He wasn’t going to let us take him alive, you know. This isn’t your fault.” His fingers squeezed. “And neither was she.” He moved away, talking into his phone.

Vaguely Beck heard Vega barking orders at his officers. Beck couldn’t take his eyes off Dujardin. Juxtaposed on the scene was the body of Dujardin’s woman and the Afghani family the Frenchman murdered.

It had never set right with Beck, killing a woman. And even though it had been in self-defense, as Ty said, Beck couldn’t get rid of the guilt he felt. He also couldn’t get past the guilt for not being able to save that family. A bullet in the shoulder was the least of what he deserved.

Ty took him by his good arm and steered him over to a chair someone had brought outside and placed in the shade provided by the portico. “Sit down before you fall down,” Ty said. He pushed Beck’s hand away from his shoulder. “Let’s get this off and take a look.”

Beck helped as much as he could, gritting his teeth as Ty worked his suit coat off. Ty pulled a switchblade out of his boot and gently slashed through the collar of Beck’s T-shirt, then let out a whistle through his teeth as he ripped the shirt to expose the wound.

“Well, it’s not as bad as it could’ve been,” his friend said as he put the material back over the wound and put pressure on it. Beck hissed with pain. “Pansy,” Ty muttered. “It’s your left shoulder, and since you’re right-handed, that leaves your dominant side uninjured. But, man, a few inches lower and that’d be you on the pavement with your toes cocked up.”

An ambulance arrived and the paramedics rushed over. Ty moved out of the way as they got to work. Five minutes later Beck was loaded onto a gurney, the paramedics lifted the gurney into the back of the ambulance, and the vehicle was on its way to the hospital.