My Hero (31 page)

He raised his wrist to check his watch. “The fireworks are going to start in about ninety minutes.”

She moaned into her pillow melodramatically. “Oh, God. More fireworks?”

Cal smiled, wondering what could be better than loving a smart woman who held back nothing in bed, a beautiful woman who was as greedy for his body as she was generous with her own. They had set off their own fireworks, no doubt about that. Sparklers and Roman candles and climaxes that were almost blinding in their intensity. They'd nearly scorched the roses on the wall.

He wished she could have known him when he was at his best. He wished he could
be
at his best again. Then he realized he was thinking too much—his new curse!—because the butterflies made their presence known in his gut.

It was time to get his body out of bed and his head in a place where he was ready to focus on work. Agents Reed and McGovern would be arriving soon to meet him about half a mile east of town. After that, if all went well, he and his Holly ought to be back here, neck deep in roses, before the Fourth of July turned into the Fifth.

Chapter Twenty

B
y eight-thirty that evening the grandstand at Honeycomb High School was so crowded that people sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Holly wouldn't have minded so much if it had been Cal's muscular shoulder and lean hip on her right, but it was Ellie's soft shoulder and ample denim-covered hip. On Holly's left was the far slimmer Ruth Reese in a pretty summer dress, who looked happier and more at ease tonight than Holly had ever seen her.

Gazing around her through the lens of her camcorder, she almost had to laugh because the crowd looked more like one gathered for a rodeo than for Independence Day fireworks. There were more Stetsons and plaid western cut shirts and string ties than she'd seen in any one place in the past decade. There was enough hair spray on the women to shellac every building in town. Funny thing was though, that instead of being repelled by the Texas couture and coiffures as she had been a month ago, Holly found it all almost comforting now in its predictability and reassuring somehow in its down-to-earth casualness.

It amazed her, too, how many faces she recognized as she panned the crowd. There was Coral sitting next to a good-looking guy in a white shirt and bolo tie, probably Mr. Coral. Not far away, there was Bobby from the bank. Holly smiled, wondering if the fireworks would reflect off his bald head. There was Ramon, who must've left Rick in charge at the bar. There was Nita Mendes, and Cal's classmates Jen and Carol whom she'd met at Ellie's. Good grief. There was gun-toting Kin Presley and his run-around wife, smooching in the top row of the stands.

It suddenly occurred to Holly that she knew more people in Honeycomb after a few days than she did in New York after three years. There, outside of work, she hardly knew anyone. She didn't even know who lived across the hall from her in 12-B.

She never thought she'd use the words Texas and happy in the same sentence, but that was exactly what she was thinking right now. She was happy being back in Texas. Who knew? Maybe she'd have been happy in Sandy Springs all those years ago if she hadn't spent all her time trying to get out of it.

Her piece for Hero Week, she sensed, was going to be kinder and gentler than originally planned now that Texas no longer felt like a giant pool of quicksand.

She wanted to tell Cal, but not long after they'd all sat down, he had disappeared, claiming he needed to move his car so that no errant fireworks made the convertible top catch fire.

Still, even in his absence, Holly was having a grand time. A good ol' time. For a brief moment, she and Ruth and Ellie had huddled like the witches in Macbeth, raking Diana over a bed of hot coals. The impromptu roasting of Cal's ex surprised Holly, especially considering the company—the mature and rather matronly Ellie, and the heretofore cool-natured Ruth. But the three of them had sat cackling and hooting and rubbing their hands with glee until Dooley, sitting beside Ruth, had finally leaned over and shushed them with a stern, “All right, ladies. That's enough.”

“How's your restaurant planning coming along?” Holly asked Ruth. “Are you still trying to sell the ranch?”

Cal's sister looked surprised. In truth, Holly had been prepared for a scathing reprimand over the titanium incident, but Ruth's voice was quite pleasant when she asked, “Didn't Cal tell you?”

“Uh, no.” Holly thought it prudent not to tell her that she and Cal had mostly confined their recent conversations—their intercourse, actually!—to
Yes, Yes, Oh God, More
and quite a few
Mmms
and
Ahs.
And then there was Cal's “half in love” confession which Holly had laughed off because it was just too scary to even think about at the time.

“We're not selling the place,” Ruth said. “We're going in with some of our neighbors and starting up a hunting preserve. A pretty fancy one, actually. It was Cal's idea.”

“Really.”

“Yep. Next week we're meeting with an architect about building a first-rate lodge where we can accommodate about two dozen guests at a time.”

Dooley leaned into the conversation, grinning beneath his droopy mustache. “Where Ruthie can cook up a first-rate storm for about two dozen guests at a time.”

“That's terrific,” Holly said. “It all worked out perfectly for you, didn't it?”

“Sure did,” Dooley said, draping an arm around his wife and pulling her against him.

“I guess it did at that,” Ruth said, turning to smile at her husband.

Holly sighed. Well, at least one of the little dramas she'd been following in Honeycomb had come to a happy ending. That was nice. As a journalist, Holly liked closure. It remained to be seen how her own little drama would conclude.

She turned off her camcorder and returned it to its case. It was getting too dark to film now, anyway. The fireworks ought to be starting soon. Where in the world was Cal?

Agents Reed and McGovern were late, so late that Cal looked again at the little spiral notebook in which he'd written their names and the time and location of their meeting. The fact that he was parked east of town in the right place at the proper time wasn't much consolation. Where the hell were the agents from Houston? The fireworks would be starting at the high school in a matter of minutes, and all that noise and hoopla was supposed to serve as the distraction when they—Griffin, Reed, and McGovern—broke into the print shop.

He pulled his cell phone from the glove box and punched in the number of the office in Houston only to get a recording that informed him that no one was currently in the office and that if this was an emergency, he ought to call his local 911 number.

Oh, sure. Now there was a good idea. That would put him through to Deputy Jimmy Lee Terrell, who was currently prowling around town in his big cruiser, looking to bust kids with firecrackers and cherry bombs.

The only good thing at the moment, Cal decided, was that the butterflies in his stomach had packed up their fluttery little wings and flown elsewhere. He held out his hand, just to reassure himself of the steadiness there. Good deal. Steady as a rock. Cool as the proverbial cucumber. Special Agent Calvin Griffin was back…

…and wondered what the hell he ought to do. This hit on Hec Garcia's shop had to take place tonight at the designated time when all the other sites in the Southwest were being hit, or else the opportunity for a clean sweep by the Secret Service would be lost. No way was Cal going to be responsible for that, especially when his current status with the service was questionable at best, if not downright shaky.

At the moment, without further word from Houston, he didn't see that he had much choice but to proceed with the operation as planned.

He got out of the T-bird, opened the trunk, and put on the Kevlar vest he hadn't worn in nearly a year. He slipped his pistol into the waistband of his jeans. Then he slid back behind the wheel and headed toward town, where the first of the fireworks—a patriotic red, white, and blue dazzler—was lighting up the sky.

Holly sat
oohing
and
aahing
right along with the rest of Honeycomb's population when the sky overhead burst into an amazing display of red, white, and blue. But even as she oohed and aahed, she kept wondering why Cal wasn't back. How far away did he think he had to move his car to keep it safe from sparks, for heaven's sake? The next county?

She reached down to give a reassuring pat to poor old Bee, who'd been slinking around the grandstand all evening and then had finally worked his way under Ellie's long denim skirt, as if he'd been through this before, knew just what was coming, and wanted to be somewhere dark and safe when the heavens above exploded. The old dog gave a quiet little
woof
when Holly touched his head, as if to say he was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances and thanks for your concern.

The sky had barely cleared of the red, white, and blue when another firework shot up and flared out in a pulsing shower of brilliant white. Holly almost laughed because the burst of intense light suddenly reminded her of an orgasm. A fairly recent one, in fact. God. She must really have it bad, she thought, if she was seeing orgasms exploding in the sky over Honeycomb, Texas.

That train of thought led directly back to Cal for obvious reasons, and Holly looked to her left, past Ruth and Dooley, toward town, to see if she could see him anywhere. Hard as she tried, she couldn't discern his now oh-so-familiar form. But over on Main Street something caught her attention. She was certain that she saw the reflection of blinking lights on a police car or a fire engine or some sort of emergency vehicle.

Everybody else was looking skyward, so she was apparently the only one to notice that something was going on in town.

Holly reached for her camera.

“I'll be right back,” she told her companions.

It had been a piece of cake getting into the print shop. One of the major benefits to a small town like Honeycomb was that nobody felt obliged to use dead bolts, so Cal had simply slipped the lock with a credit card. Once inside, though, he realized his first mistake, hoping it would be his only one. He didn't have a flashlight. Not only did that make it impossible to find Hec's stash of threaded paper in the cluttered shop, but it dramatically increased the odds that he'd stumble over something in the dark and break his fucking neck.

He felt along the wall adjacent to the front door, and touched a plastic wall plate with four switches. Bypassing the first, which he figured would be the main switch to light the entire shop, he flipped the third switch, which brought on the fluorescent bulb above the copy machine. That was good. There was just enough illumination to do a thorough search while hopefully not arousing too much suspicion.

He started with the locked cabinet behind Hec's cash register, silently congratulating himself for keeping a universal pick on his keyring all these months, thinking maybe his skills weren't quite as rusty as he'd feared. Hell, if he didn't pass the physical for the Service, he could always make a living by breaking and entering.

He had just squatted down and started opening boxes and riffling through the papers inside when Deputy Jimmy Lee Terrell clicked on his fucking bullhorn.

“You there in the print shop. This is the police. Come out with your hands over your head. Now.”

Cal stayed where he was, low, behind the counter on the theory that Jimmy Lee would be only too happy to shoot first and ask questions later.

“It's Cal Griffin, Jimmy Lee,” he called. “I'm in here on federal business.”

“Cal? What do you mean? Federal business? Nobody told me. Does Hec Garcia know about this?” the deputy's voice boomed.

Jesus. Cal groaned and rolled his eyes. He probably knows about it now. “No,” he said, and then added, “You want to turn that amplifier down, Jimmy Lee? I can hear you fine.”

“You got a warrant, Cal?”

“There's one on the way from Houston.”

“You need a warrant.”

“It's coming, Jimmy Lee.”

“I don't know about this.”

Holly was cutting through the dark vacant lot adjacent to the bank, heading in the direction of the police cruiser with its deck of flashing lights, when she heard the deputy's voice blasting over the bullhorn. He was talking to Cal! Hard as she tried, though, she couldn't hear Cal's replies. What was he doing in the print shop at this time of night? What was Jimmy Lee saying? Something about a warrant?

What the hell was going on? Her ambulance-chasing instincts kicked into high gear and her nose for news began to twitch like crazy when she suddenly remembered that Cal had inquired about a fifty-dollar bill she'd gotten from Hec Garcia.

Glad that she hadn't left her camera behind in the stands, Holly paused just long enough to pull it from the case.

“I'm afraid I can't allow you to proceed, Cal. No warrant. No search. Now that's the law.”

Okay. So maybe his other mistake had been not bringing Jimmy Lee into the bust, Cal grudgingly admitted to himself. But maybe there was still a way to bring Deputy Dawg into the operation.

“I could use your help, Deputy,” Cal called out to him. “Turn out those damned lights and come in here so I can give you the deets. All right?”

“Not without a warrant, I'm not. You come out and we'll wait for the proper paperwork. Do you hear me, Cal?”

Christ. They probably heard him in Houston. “Okay. Give me a couple minutes, will you?” He started whipping off the tops on boxes under the counter, examining the papers they contained.

“Cal?”

“What?”

“Are you armed? Because if you are, I need to ask you to hand over your weapon.”

Continuing to scrutinize ream after ream of paper, Cal called back, “I'm a federal agent, Jimmy Lee.”

“I know that,” he squawked. “But it's my jurisdiction, dammit, Cal. Now come on.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Give me just a minute.”

Holly hovered in the shadows of the bank door, still trying to figure out what was going on. A block to the south, the fireworks seemed to be building to some sort of deafening crescendo. Each successive boom nearly had Holly jumping out of her skin. She was debating edging forward toward the squad car and questioning the deputy about this weird standoff, when all of a sudden she spied Hec Garcia approaching the print shop from the north.