Saint (25 page)

“Unless Hocksteder and Juarez end up
killing each other, Maria doesn’t have much of a chance, evidence or no
evidence. Too many other people have a finger in the pie.”

Gabe puckered to spit, but changed
direction to the garbage pail near the desk when Joan narrowed his beady black
eyes in warning. “What difference does it make how they go down? The way she
wants to do it is a waste of time and the taxpayers’ money. Why let her walk
into that courtroom full of hope only to come away disillusioned when he goes
free? He’ll kill her either way. She’s in a lose-lose situation. The only hope
she has of staying alive is if we gas the bastard.”

“Juarez won’t have time to worry over her,
he’s going to be too busy covering his ass with Hocksteder and the nervous
politicians he has in his pocket. If he doesn’t make them happy, they’ll see to
it he gets plenty of gas.”

“One of us can take him out, easy.”

Seth leaned back in his chair, regarding
each in turn. With his approval, they wouldn’t hesitate for one second to
exterminate Juarez. He decided to throw a curve ball and watch to see who dove
for it. “That the way you feel too, Joan? Gabe?”

“Damn straight.”

Joan grunted his preference.

“Okay. Looks like I’m outvoted. Decide
among yourselves which one of you is going to play hitman, then go upstairs and
tell Maria.”

“What?”

“Tell her?”

“No offense, Colonel, but that’s entirely
out of the question.”

“Those are my terms, gentlemen,” he replied
benignly. “You knew when you signed on I wasn’t in it for the blood. Maria
believes in the system and she’s spent the last seven months on the run for a
chance to prove it. Which one of you is going to rip the rug from beneath her
before it’s absolutely necessary? Keeping in mind, of course, she thinks every
one of us in this room fought a war so people like her could continue to live
in a country where such a system exists.”

“Must be something in the water,” Francis
murmured. “Gabe, you do it, she pretty much already hates your guts, anyway. I
would but my leg’s still making a fuss.”

“Me?”

“Well, you’re the one going to L.A.”

“I’m not going to waste good explosives on
the scum if we’re going to whack him. Let Joan do it, he’s the one doing a jig
to crumple the candyman’s wrapper.”

“I made her jump over that rock ledge. What
were the two of you doing?”

“Oh pardon me, Joan. But I believe I was
covering your black ass at the time, while Francis was busy playing footsie
with her. Whether she likes me or not is irrelevant. At least I made her learn
the knife, that’s more than the two of you can say. What’s she gonna do when
Juarez comes after her, Francis, climb a fucking tree? You’re the sniper, so
snipe.” Gabe threw Joan a disgusted look and spat another stream of tobacco
juice into the wastebasket. “Pansyass,” he muttered. “Why don’t you just give
Juarez a piece of gum and let him chew himself to death.”

Francis eyed the archangel dubiously. “Whose
boot’s stuck up your ass?”

“I have a company to run, unlike some
people, and I’d rather not end up a syndicated expose. I can see it now—‘Elliott
Galen, businessman of the year, hitman extraordinaire.’ No thank you.”

“I run a boys’ club,” Joan said. “I can’t
have that kind of negative publicity. Even if she don’t mention my name, people
around here would know who she’s talkin’ about.”

“Who says she’s gonna write about it?”

“Who says she won’t? She hung Juarez’s ass
out to dry quick enough, didn’t she? You piss her off. The worst she can do to
you is make you famous. ‘Homeless biker king goes one on one with notorious drug
lord.’”

“You know whose fault this is,” Francis
charged staunchly, rubbing his thigh for good measure. “That dickhead card
cheat, Skaggs. Any other time he’d have hidden an ace in the crack of his ass
and squeezed so tight you couldn’t get a crowbar up it. He picks now to leave
Maria flapping in the wind. I never liked him.”

Joan frowned. “Will didn’t leave anything
we could use?”

Seth shrugged impassively. “Nothing he
wanted found.”

“If I had a pretty good idea Juarez or
Hocksteder were going to blow me off, you bet your
cojones
I’d have hidden a firecracker
somewhere.”

“That, or you’d give the firecracker to
someone who knew how to use it.”

They exchanged glances, revelation dawning
in unison. Shit Seth thought. The answer had been sitting in front of him the
whole time.

* * * * *

Harris slammed through the door, eyes
glowing dangerously. “Where is it?”

Maria paused in the act of vigorously
toweling dry her thick curls and peered up from beneath the cotton edge. Though
she’d showered and washed her hair on the plane, she still didn’t feel clean.
One shower to nine days’ worth of nature’s finest dirt and grime wasn’t a ratio
she was comfortable with.

“Where’s what?”

“The evidence Will didn’t turn over to the
DEA. Where is it? And don’t bother denying it exists, because I know Will
Skaggs. Someone knows where it’s stashed and that someone is you.” Harris
closed the door and strode toward her purposely, his face a mask of hard lines,
blue eyes piercingly electric.

She continued to work the towel through her
hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He yanked the towel from her hands and
tossed it aside, jerking her to her knees on the bed. “Where is it?” His
bruising grip on her arm tightened.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both. It’s the only thing that’s going to
keep me alive until the trial.”

“What’s going to keep you alive afterward?”
He slung her away and she fell back on the bed. “That’s the reason Will didn’t
leave a trail. You have something Hocksteder doesn’t.”

“Hocksteder doesn’t even know about it.
Neither did Will, exactly. I’m a journalist, not an idiot. I kept copies of
everything I handed over.”

“I’m not interested in what you gave over.
What do you have that’s sending Juarez into a tailspin?”

Maria righted herself and swung her legs
over the edge of the bed. She reached for her brush, absently turning it in her
hand as she weighed the consequences of telling Harris the truth.

“You want to do this your way, you’d better
start talking,” he warned ominously. “I need leverage. All I can get before
going after Hocksteder.”

“So you’ll have a reason to kill him?”

“So I can make him turn on Juarez. If
Juarez does manage to track you here, there’s going to be one hell of a mess to
clean up. Either you tell me what you have, or I’ll pull the plug. Now do you
want your justice or do you want to deal?”

“How is it you can kill off an entire group
of commandos, steal cars, find out who’s doing whom and no one blinks an eye?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

“You want me to trust you with the one
thing Hocksteder can’t possibly get his hands on before the trial, the one
thing that will bring them all down, but I’m not supposed to know what you
intend to do with it or who the hell you really are. College professor, my ass.”
She pulled the brush roughly through the tangled ends of her damp hair. “Seth
Harris probably isn’t even your real name, just like Father Francis and Archangel
Gabriel and—”

“I’m not going to stand here and argue with
you,” he said flatly. “Either you give me what I want or I’ll do it my way.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what it is
you want.” God, how she hated his indifferent attitude toward everything and
everyone. But if she was honest with herself, it was his indifference toward
her that irritated her the most.

He moved like lightning, hauling her
against his chest, his eyes cold and raging at the same time. “Don’t fuck with
me, Maria. Will died because of your little ploy.”

She balanced on tiptoes, refusing to cower
at the accusation. “It was Will’s idea. That way no one could fault him for
keeping evidence out of the case file. I would’ve told him what it was, but he
didn’t want to know.”

He stuck his face into hers. “I want to
know,” he grated out, the muscle along his jaw jumping wildly.

Those few sheets of paper and tapes were
all she had. All that would override tainted evidence and bought-off jurors,
the only thing to keep Juarez and his cronies from slipping through the net.
Even if she didn’t survive to testify in court, the evidence would make its way
into the Attorney General’s hands.

Maria closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “Do
whatever it is you think you have to do. I won’t give up the only security I
have.”

He pushed her back on the bed, coming down
over her to pin her against the mattress. Gripping the sides of her skull
through the maze of tangled hair, he stared down at her intensely. “I am not
going to put my men’s lives at risk for nothing, do you understand me?”

She flinched at his whiplash tone. It was
as though he was looking right through her, talking to someone else. She wasn’t
even sure he saw her except as a target for his anger.

“Seth—”

“Forget it. Killing him would be easier
than trying to make you see there’s only one way this can end.” He rolled off
her and shoved to his feet. “I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing you
here. All I did was put Joan in a compromising situation that could ruin the
rest of his life. Gabe’s looking at facing his worst nightmare head-on and
Francis has gotten too damned attached to you to think rationally.”

She only heard the first two sentences. “No!”
She jackknifed into a sitting position. “You can’t kill him!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, honey. I can.
It beats putting myself through that hell all over again. And it’s much cleaner
than waiting around for you to make the fatal mistake of testifying. You want
to know why Will didn’t press the issue with you? Because in the long run it
doesn’t make any difference. If Juarez doesn’t get you, one of his partners
will.” He turned toward the door without another word.

Maria leapt from the bed and caught his
arm. “Seth, no! Please, just listen to me for a minute. It’s big enough to take
all of them down. Getting rid of Juarez won’t collapse the pyramid they’ve set
up. They’ll just replace him with someone else or send him into hiding until
things cool down.”

He disengaged him arm from her grasp and
continued to the door, but she planted herself in front of him. “I can ruin
them financially. Take away the power and the money on top of public scrutiny
and what will they have left?”

“The same thing you have.” He looked down
at her flatly. “Motive for revenge.”

“Go back to your mountain then!” she
hissed. “Send the others home and I’ll take care of myself ’til the trial. I
don’t need your kind of help.”

“Too late.”

“It’s not too late!” Why couldn’t she make
him see? It was like he’d crossed over some invisible line and it was no longer
a matter of getting her safely to trial but something more.

“If I don’t take Juarez down, one of my men
will. With or without my blessing.”

“All right,” she sighed in defeat, letting her
head fall back against the door. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise me you
won’t kill Juarez.”

“That depends on how good your information
is.”

She dragged in a deep breath. If Hocksteder
or any of Juarez’s other partners found out about the list, it would all blow
up in her face.

He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m
waiting.”

“There’s a list…a roster of names and Swiss
bank account numbers…dates of deposit and amounts. All bribes to various
government officials. Some local, some state and federal. Juarez must know by
now I didn’t give it to Will.”

“Is Hocksteder on the list?”

“No.”

“You’re the only one who knows where this
list is?”

“If I don’t make it to court the roster
will be delivered into the Attorney General’s hands, as well as several major newspapers
and news stations.”

“Then you’re not the only one who knows.”

“I am unless I don’t make it to trial. I
made five copies of the roster and put them in safe deposit boxes in five
different cities—New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, L.A. and Washington.”

“Is this person actually in possession of
the roster?”

“No. I wouldn’t put her in danger like
that. She has the key to my safety deposit box. In it are the names of certain
editors and reporters and the keys to the other boxes. She sends the keys to
the media people on the list and they’ll take it from there. Reporters are
notoriously competitive. Just for good measure, I included a copy of the media
list with each roster. And yes, before you ask, my friend has security
clearance to open my box. She has no connection to Juarez whatsoever, so he has
no reason to go looking for her.”

“She has a connection to you, that’s all he
needs to shake her down. Are you as passionate in bed as you are about your
civic duty?”