Play Nice (13 page)

“My fiancée and I kind of lost each other in the terminal, and now she’s not answering her cell. We’re both supposed to be on this flight. I was just wondering if you could tell me if she’s checked in yet or not?”

She paused, about, he could tell, to recite some company policy to him.

But before she could, he jumped in with, “Please, Diana? If she’s held up somewhere in the terminal, I don’t want to get on the plane and end up in Chicago without her, you know?”

Diana paused.

Dade shot her a smile. “You’d really be saving me here.”

“Well, I guess I can at least tell you if she’s checked in,” she finally relented. “Can you tell me which seat she was in?”

He passed his ticket across the desk to her. “Right next to mine.”

She nodded, checked the flight info, then clicked a few more buttons. She nodded. “Yep, she checked in forty minutes ago, but she hasn’t boarded yet.”

Which meant she was still in the airport somewhere.

“Would you like me to page her?” Diana asked.

“No, that’s okay,” he said, quickly taking his ticket back from her. “I’ll just wait for her here. She’s a little nervous about flying, so she’s probably just holed up in the ladies’ room or something. I’m sure she’ll be along.”

He shot Diana another grin, then went back to his spot at the column where he had a clear view of the now packed waiting area.

An announcement came over the speakers saying that general boarding was now in progress. People began walking through the gate, one small boarding group at a time. A few stragglers joined the waiting line, dragging their carry-ons behind them at breakneck speeds. The gate next to theirs, sixty-four, started filling up, passengers waiting for the flight to Tampa mingling unhelpfully with his Chicago crowd.

He scanned each face, wishing people would just sit still and quit jockeying for a better spot in line. People were crossing in front of him, moving to the other side of the gate, jostling their luggage, and making it hard to keep track of who he’d seen already and who was new.

So much so, that he almost didn’t see the slim woman in jeans and a heavy, shapeless hooded sweatshirt walk out of the ladies’ room. The sweatshirt disguised her body type, adding a boxy shape and at least ten pounds to her frame. She wore a backpack over one shoulder, looking to all the world like any other college student flying home for a summer visit. Her hair was a jet black, cropped short in a choppy cut that he could only guess had been done moments before in the ladies’ restroom. Because as she turned her face toward him, he recognized her instantly, despite the absence of the long red hair she’d worn that afternoon.

Shelli.

CHAPTER 8

Dade took a step forward, making an effort not to move too quickly and scare her off. He watched as she got in line behind the other passengers waiting to board the plane, shifting her backpack to the other shoulder, keeping her head down.

She hadn’t spotted him.

She had the hood of her sweatshirt bunched around her neck to obscure her profile. Her shoulders were slumped forward, her body language saying she was doing everything she knew to seem small and inconspicuous.

He slowly made his way forward, walking the long way around the crowd now spilling into the walkway to avoid her eyeline. He had to grab her before she boarded. A confrontation in the airport would be bad enough. He wasn’t taking this on a crowded, enclosed plane. He moved along the line of waiting travelers, sliding between the Asian businessmen, past the older couple. He was two people behind Shelli, almost close enough to reach out and grab the backpack off her shoulder, when he passed by the woman with the lap dog. The animal must have smelled Anya’s dog on him, because it immediately went into a frenzy in its little cage, barking like it was the end of the world.

Several passengers spun around to see the noise.

Including Shelli.

Her eyes immediately locked onto Dade’s, surprise registering before she could hide it. Unfortunately, her initial reaction was followed quickly by trained instincts.

She jumped out of line, shoving the rolling suitcase of the man behind her in Dade’s path before taking off at a dead run in the opposite direction of the gate.

Dade swore under his breath, navigating around the woman with the damned noisy dog, and took off after her.

The airport was crowded at this time of day, with vacationers as well as long-distance commuters, people rolling luggage behind them, texting as they walked, creating a sea of human obstacles blocking his pursuit. A family of four with a blond toddler got between them, and Dade nearly tripped over the kid, trying to avoid a head-on collision. He lost Shelli for a moment, frantically scanning the walkway in front of him, eyes darting from the back of one head to the next. A blond woman in a turtleneck, an older lady in a hat, a teenager wearing braids. Finally he caught sight of the navy sweatshirt, the hood now pulled up over her head. She was a few feet ahead of him, ducking behind a magazine rack displaying the latest issues of
People
and
Us Weekly
.

Dade surged forward, eyes glued to the spot at the front of a shop. He got within a couple feet before Shelli jumped out from behind the magazines, shoving the stand as hard as she could, sending it careening forward, right toward Dade.

Instinctively he put his hands up, catching the metal shelving before it brained him on the head. By the time he’d thrown it to the ground, Shelli was gone again, dashing toward the baggage claim area.

Where his height and longer legs might usually have been an asset, here Shelli’s smaller size had her slipping between travelers with an ease he couldn’t emulate. He knocked into shoulders, bounced off irate passengers, each one slowing him down. Dade could hear them protesting but didn’t register it, his entire person focused on Shelli, sprinting at a full run now through the terminal.

As she raced past the security checkpoint—going the opposite direction from the scanners—a portly security guard in an ill-fitting uniform shouted at her to slow down. Which, of course, she completely ignored. The guard grabbed a walkie-talkie from his belt shouting a series of numbers into it. Dade consciously slowed his pace, still keeping one eye on the hooded figure ahead as he slipped past the checkpoint.

Shelli hit the escalator to the lower-level baggage area, knocking a guy in a backwards baseball cap off the last three steps. Dade followed, gaining ground as she rounded the first baggage carousel.

And she knew it, too. She glanced over her shoulder, running into an overweight woman with a cart full of bags. The bags toppled over, and Dade quickly leapt over them, narrowly avoiding the woman himself as he ran after Shelli.

The passengers were thick here, standing two and three deep as an alarm blared over the next carousel, signaling that bags were about to be loaded in. The belt started moving, people crowding forward, barring Shelli’s progress.

Unfortunately, they also barred Dade’s. He pushed between two guys in suits, keeping one eye on the back of Shelli’s head as he pressed forward. He was close, and she was out of places to run. He positioned himself between her and the wall of glass doors to the outside where taxis and hotel shuttles sat waiting at the curb. If she was going to leave, she had to go through him.

Her eyes darted left and right, realizing she was trapped. She paused a moment, contemplating options. Then she pulled herself up onto the carousel, stepping out onto the conveyer belt.

Several passengers yelled in protest as she ran in a large circle with the belt’s momentum. A security guard appeared from nowhere, tracking her progress, yelling, “Hey! Get down!”

She did, leaping from the belt as it came around at the point nearest the glass doors. She landed with a tumble, quickly popping up to her feet and taking off for the doors.

Dade swore, pushing toward her, knowing he was too far away to make it before she bolted into the sunshine.

“Stop! You can’t do that!” the guard shouted at Shelli again, chasing after her. He called ahead to another guard positioned by the doors. The second guard planted his feet square, facing Shelli, and reached for something on his belt. Probably a Taser, though Dade never got to find out for sure since, instead of stopping as suggested, Shelli ducked her head down and rammed forward, shoving her backpack right at the guard. He caught it in the chest, stumbling backward. Shelli plowed forward, past him, and out the glass doors toward the busy pickup curb.

Dade shoved through the crowd of onlookers, who were now more riveted on Shelli than on their circling bags, hitting the glass doors just in time to see Shelli’s navy sweatshirt dive into a yellow cab.

He sprinted toward it, and might have had a fighting chance of at least getting the license plate number of the car, if a dark-haired woman in a white T-shirt hadn’t come barreling out of the baggage claim area at exactly that moment, knocking squarely into him.

“Jesus, watch where you’re going,” he shouted, disappointment sinking in as he watched the cab pull away from the curb, melting into traffic with the fifty other cabs circling the airport.

The woman took an immediate step back as Dade transferred his attention to her. And, getting a good look at her face, he realized why.

It was Anya.

Her eyes registered the same shocked recognition, going round and wide. She turned to run back inside, but he was faster, his hand shooting out to catch her before she had the chance.

“Imagine my luck,” he said.

“Let go of me,” Anya shouted in response.

A pair of passengers getting into a Hilton shuttle turned to stare. One glanced to the glass doors, the security guard who’d caught Shelli’s backpack standing directly on the other side.

Dade pulled Anya in close, wishing he had his weapon on him. “I swear to God,” he whispered, “if you call that security guard over here, I’ll snap your neck before he can waddle to your aid.”

She paused a moment, as if trying to decide how serious he was.

Honestly? It was at least an option.

“Let go of me,” she said, this time her voice low enough that the group heading for the hotel dismissed them.

“Not a chance,” he murmured back.

“Shelli’s getting away.”

Dade looked down the circular roadway. “Honey, she’s long gone.”

“I’m not your honey,” she snapped back, trying to wriggle from his grasp.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re the pain in my ass. What are you doing here?” he asked, steering her down the sidewalk, away from the security guards and other passengers.

“Clearly the same thing you were. Looking for Shelli.”

This surprised him. He’d expected Anya to run as far and as fast as she could. To get the hell out of town in a hurry. Out of the country, even. But instead, she’d run right toward the very person who was after her.

It was a ballsy move. But, if he stopped to think about it, probably exactly the same one he would have made in her position. You could only run so long before someone caught up to you. Confrontation might be a lot messier but it was also a lot more final.

“Well she’s not here now,” he said, stating the obvious.

Anya took one last look down the concourse, eyes scanning the sea of yellow cabs before the slump of her shoulders conceded defeat. “Let’s go,” she said, spinning around.

“Go?” he asked.

“To Shelli’s place. She left in a hurry. Maybe she left something behind. Some clue to where she’d go now.”

He paused. As much as he wanted answers about who was after his target and why, he wasn’t willing to lose Anya again. He’d underestimated her at the pier, and that wasn’t a mistake he was going to make twice.

Anya must have sensed his hesitation as she added, “Someone hired Shelli to watch me and hired those men to kill me this morning. And I damned well want to know who.”

He looked down at her eyes, flashing a deep blue with determination. Finally he nodded. “Okay. We’ll grab a cab to Shelli’s place.”

“No need. Your car’s in short-term parking.”

“Fine.” But instead of moving toward the structure, he paused on the sidewalk, pulling Anya in close to him. “But first thing’s first.” He put both hands at her waist, skimming the sides of her body upward toward her breasts.

“What the hell are you doing?” she ground out, jerking away from him.

But he pulled her back tightly. “Checking for any more perfume.”

She paused, her eyes meeting his. Then she slowly put her arms out to the side, submitting as she let him pat her down.

He did, making a thorough job of it, skimming his hands along her sides, down over her hips, feeling at her pockets both back and front. He had to admit, it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant job.

“Satisfied?” she asked when he finally stepped back.

He nodded. “Where’s my car?”

“Level three, in the back.”

He grabbed her by the arm, steering her across the pedestrian walkway to the domestic terminal’s short-term garage. Forgoing the elevator, he pushed her ahead of himself, up the three flights of stairs, letting her lead him to a slot near the rear. It wasn’t until he was standing outside the driver’s door, keys in hand, that he noticed his missing window.