Catch Her If You Can Read online

  “It’s been a while since lunch.”

  “Hey, you ate at Papa Leone’s. I grabbed a Coke and peanut butter crackers from the vending machines. Before you killed them,” I added nastily.

  He ignored the snide reminder. “Then you need a good dinner. How does Mexican sound?”

  “Are you treating?”

  “You know I’m short on funds.” He actually managed to look hurt. “And I still have to get my truck out of hock tomorrow.”

  “I hope to God it’s ready tomorrow! Did you call to check the status?” I groaned at his sheepish expression. “Charlieeeee.”

  “Sorry, babe. All that excitement at your office . . . I forgot to call.”

  “Try now. Maybe the service department stays open past seven.”

  It didn’t. Resigned, I steered through the early evening traffic. The spectacular view of the Franklin Mountains bathed in shades of pink and orange usually lifted my spirits. Not tonight. All I could think of were the regulations and reports I would have to slog through tomorrow.

  “There’s a good Mexican restaurant close to my place. It’s border cuisine,” I warned. “Might be spicier than you’re used to.”

  Actually, Dos Lobos offered patrons a choice between green and red sauce. One was supposed to be milder than the other depending on that year’s chili crop, but both broke me out in a sweat.

  “No problem,” Charlie boasted. “I can handle anything they throw at me.”

  After that bit of braggadocio I could hardly wait for his reaction when he scooped a tortilla chip into the salsa. It wasn’t long in coming. One crunch had his eyes bugging almost out of his head.

  “Omigod!”

  Frantically fanning his mouth, he snatched up his glass. When he chugged all of his water and half of mine, I smiled for the first time that day.

  “I thought you could handle it, tough guy?”

  Sweat beaded on his forehead. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “I thought I could, too,” he croaked.

  For reasons I’ve yet to understand, Charlie’s acute agony erased much of the animosity I’d felt for him since his sudden reappearance in my life. I was almost sorry for the guy as he slumped against the back of the booth.

  “Jesus, Sam. You eat here often?”

  “Often enough. Mitch likes their sour cream enchiladas.”

  He scrubbed his eyes with his napkin and gave me a watery look over the bunched paper. “So what’s the story with you and Mitch? You two serious?”

  “We haven’t stopped to analyze things,” I replied with a shrug. “I like him. He likes me. That’s enough for both of us right now.”

  And the sex was really, really good. I nibbled on a chip, hoping the referee thing went well so Mitch could jump on a plane soon. First, though, I had to get rid of Charlie.

  I was thinking metaphorically at that moment. Honestly!

  I had no idea a shadowy figure was going to lunge out of the darkness when we got back to my apartment and almost do the job for me.

  Charlie saw him first. Startled, he stumbled back. “What the . . . ?”

  He didn’t stumble far or fast enough. Something long and straight swung in a vicious arc and slammed into his gut. He doubled over, grunting in pain, and dropped to his knees.

  The unexpected assault had shocked me into immobility for several critical seconds. Just long enough for Charlie’s attacker to swing in my direction. Hefting what I now saw was a length of pipe, he snarled at me.

  “Get in the car!”

  Mitch’s advice for any woman caught in this kind of nightmare slashed through my stunned surprise. Scream your head off, and for God’s sake, don’t get into an attacker’s vehicle if you can help it. So I screamed my head off.

  “Help! Somebody! Anybody!”

  Still bellowing, I dodged around the Sebring’s rear end. The pipe-wielding bastard followed. His weapon sliced through the air. He missed me by inches and crunched the Sebring’s fender instead. The taillights shattered on his next swing.

  For God’s sake! Where were all the pool paddlers and beer guzzlers when you needed them? I looked around frantically for something to use as a weapon or a shield to blunt the force of that lethal pipe. I’d just about given up hope when the front door of the apartment across from mine flew open.

  “Samantha? That you?”

  Almost sobbing with relief, I spied my neighbor. Tony’s day job was as an instructor at the Patriot missile school on post. Nights he moonlighted as a bouncer at a local strip joint.

  “Tony! Help!”

  He charged down the sidewalk. My attacker swung around, got a good look at the muscled-up new threat, and dropped the pipe. It was still clanging against the asphalt when the bastard leaped into a car parked two slots away.

  He’d keyed the ignition and had shoved his vehicle into reverse before I could scoop up his weapon. I managed to get in one good lick, though. I slammed the pipe into the driver’s side door and heard the satisfying crunch of metal on metal before he tore off, tires squealing.

  “My car keys are in the house!” Tony shouted as he sprinted into the parking lot. “Toss me yours and I’ll follow this joker.”

  I’d dropped the key ring in my purse. By the time I rooted through the jumble and fished it out, our attacker was long gone, so I tossed him my cell phone instead.

  “Call nine-one-one.”

  While Tony stabbed at the buttons, I knelt beside my ex. Charlie was on all fours, clutching his middle and wheezing like an asthmatic moose.

  “Are you okay?”

  His lips curled back in a snarl. “Do I . . . look . . . okay?”

  “Don’t move. You might have a cracked rib.”

  “Feels more . . . like three.”

  Oh, no! The horrific vision of my former spouse with his midsection taped and camped out for the foreseeable future on my sofa leaped into my head. It leaped out again when we heard another squeal of tires. All three of us froze as headlights speared through the parking area.

  For a terrifying moment I thought our attacker had returned. With the headlights blinding me, I couldn’t see the interior of the vehicle that screeched to a halt just yards away. But I saw Tony scoop up the pipe and race toward the car to give as good as Charlie had gotten. My heart in my throat, I watched him yank open the driver’s door. Then a shrill and very feminine shriek split the night air.

  “Don’t hurt me! We’ll pay it back! I swear!”

  Charlie jerked upright. Relief and delight poured out of him in palpable waves. “Brenda?”

  A head topped by piles of bottle-blond hair poked out of the car. A disgustingly svelte size six followed.

  “Snoogs?”

  I sank back on my heels. Could this day get any more bizarre?

  “Oh, Snoogs!” Elbowing me aside, my former neighbor and one-time best friend dropped to her knees and cradled Charlie in her arms. “What did Richie’s goon do to you?”

  “Was . . . that who . . . it was?”

  She nodded, her eyes swimming with tears and a half a pound of mascara. “Richie came to the Four Queens.”

  Guess I should mention here that Brenda also works in a casino. She’s a blackjack dealer. No short skirts or ruffled panties for her. Just black slacks and a neat white blouse with garters on the sleeves. But all the woman had to do was lean over the table to totally distract the players. The male players, anyway. I couldn’t help wondering what casino management thought of her newly redefined silhouette as she sobbed to Charlie.

  “I wasn’t at work when he asked about you. Harry told him you’d driven over to El Paso. The idiot let drop that your ex had hit it big.”

  Yeah, I thought sardonically. And what idiot told Harry?

  “He said you were going to borrow the fifteen grand from Sam,” Brenda got out through her watery sniffles. “I guess . . . I guess Richie figured he’d better make sure you didn’t take off without paying.”

  She lifted her tear- and mascara-streaked face and glared a
t me.

  “This is all your fault, Sam.”

  “Mine?”

  “I wouldn’t have had surgery if Charlie hadn’t joked about how I made, like, three of you.”

  My ex/her current tried desperately to extricate himself from the quagmire. “I’ve told you a hundred times! I meant that as compliment, Bren.”

  Clearly unconvinced, she sniffed. I sniffed, too. I can’t claim anything close to Brenda’s former proportions, but I’m not totally deficient in the cup-size department.

  I could have saved my breath. My huff got lost amid Charlie’s grunts of pain as he staggered to his feet.

  “Sam doesn’t . . . have the money, Bren.”

  “But the news reports? They all said she could claim the reward.”

  “She hasn’t . . . squared that away . . . yet.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I threw everything I could in the car.” Brenda hunched a shoulder under Charlie’s armpit. “We’d better go hang out at Aunt Em’s for a while.”

  “Wait a sec!” I protested. “You can’t just disappear into the night. Tony’s called the police. We have to report this assault.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Yes, we do! I need a police report to put in a claim for the damage to my car.”

  I tried not to think of the hike in insurance rate I would get after a second claim in less than six months.

  “You need medical attention, Charlie. And what about your truck?”

  Teeth clenched against the pain, he eased into the passenger seat of Brenda’s car. “Get the truck for me, will you, Sam? I’ll . . .” He stopped, grunted, and started again. “I’ll call the service department and let ’em know you’ll pick it up.”

  “Oh, sure. Stick me for the repair bill, why don’t you?”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Uh-huh. Like you paid this Richie guy back?”

  Since both he and Brenda had slammed their doors, the question was pretty much rhetorical. I stood there, thoroughly disgusted, while they drove off.

  A black-and-white appeared about three minutes later. I provided what details I could. A medium-build guy I’d never seen before sprang out of the dark, went after my now-departed ex and me with a length of pipe, jumped in his car, and disappeared. Tony added that he was driving a light blue or gray, late-model Malibu with California plates.

  When asked for the motive for the attack, I hesitated. Charlie was already in enough trouble. I hated to shovel more on him but saw no way out of sharing Brenda’s frantic disclosures.

  AFTER the drama of the day and evening, I had to force myself to sit down at my laptop and draft an email to my boss. I knew the fire incident would appear in DARPA’s morning report. My only hope of salvation was to zing off a preliminary notification tonight, before he read the morning report.

  I was stuck at “Hi, Dr. J” when my phone rang. Grabbing at the chance of even a temporary reprieve, I checked caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number so I let it go to voice mail.

  “Lieutenant Spade, this is DeWayne Wilson, Channel Nine News.”

  Oh, crap! I had a feeling I knew what was coming. Junior Reporter confirmed it with his next breathless disclosure.

  “My producer just called. He picked up a report on the police scanner that an EPPD patrol officer responded to a nine-one-one call involving you tonight. He thought because of our, uh, past association you might fill me in on the details. Call me as soon as you can and . . .”

  Sighing, I hit talk. “No comment.”

  “Lieutenant Spade? Is that you?”

  “No.”

  I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing five seconds of silence.

  “It sounds like you,” he said hesitantly.

  I took pity on the guy. “All right. You caught me, DeWayne. But I can’t comment on the incident tonight.”

  “Why not? Are you saying it’s related to the Victor Duarte shooting?”

  I started to dismiss the suggestion out of hand. Brenda had been so emphatic the attacker was after Charlie. When he’d ordered me to get in his car, I’d just assumed he’d mistaken me for Brenda and Richie the Mob Guy intended to force Charlie to pay up by kidnapping his wife.

  Junior Reporter had now opened other, far more sinister, possibilities. Maybe someone had heard the story about the reward. Maybe they thought I’d already collected and decided to take a cut. What better way than to force me into a car and hold me for ransom? Or keep me incommunicado until the banks opened tomorrow morning and I could withdraw some cold, hard cash.

  Or maybe, I thought as my stomach did a slow roll, whoever had hired Duarte was out for revenge.

  “Gotta go,” I mumbled.

  I disconnected, feeling shell-shocked. How the heck had my life become so complicated? Longing for the days before severed heads and ex-husbands on the lam from the Mob, I decided Dr. J would have to wait. Right now I needed Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge. And lots of it!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TWO heaping bowls of vanilla caramel fudge did the trick. Reenergized, I drafted a brief and shamelessly exculpatory email about the fire to Dr. J, fine-tuned it a couple of times, and zinged it off.

  I hoped Mitch would call before I hit the sack, but I didn’t hear from him. I was happy he and Jenny had these few precious days together but I was anxious to talk to him and bring him up to speed on the Charlie situation. I also wanted his take on Junior Reporter’s suggestion there might be a connection between Pipe Guy and the Duarte shooting.

  I figured that scary possibility would keep me tossing and turning all night, but I zonked right out. It did, however, make me exercise a bit more caution when I left for work the next morning.

  My thumb hovered above the alarm button on my keypad and I surveyed the parked cars carefully before I approached my own. In the bright light of day, the vicious dents and shattered taillights looked a whole lot nastier than they had last night. Sighing, I added three items to my already extensive mental checklist.

  Take car in for estimate.

  Get copy of police report.

  Call insurance company.

  Thank heavens I’m insured with USAA. The giant corporation is run by former military personnel and caters exclusively to active duty troops, retirees, honorably discharged veterans, and their dependents. Their fees are also graduated to fit military pay scales. As you might surmise, second lieutenants rank darn close to the bottom of the scale.

  If I timed everything just right, I could drop my car off at the Chrysler dealership, hitch a ride to the Ford dealership, get Charlie’s truck out of hock, and drive it until my car was repaired.

  Or not.

  If that was one of Richie Boy’s goons last night and he had mistaken me for Brenda, it might not be too smart to tool around town in Charlie’s pickup. For all Pipe Guy knew, his primary target was still in El Paso.

  I decided to hold off on switching vehicles until I’d talked to my insurance company. So of course my defunct taillights got me stopped twice on my way to work. Once by an EPPD traffic cop and once by a Fort Bliss gate guard. Luckily, both bought my explanation of the recent nature of the damage and my promise to have it repaired as soon as possible.

  I parked across the street again, but let myself in through the side door this time. Once inside, I recorded two immediate impressions. One, electrical power had been restored to our end of the hallway. The lights were on and the air-conditioning hummed quietly.

  Two, my quivering nostrils picked up a powerful scent. Not the odor of damp or mold, although I fully expected both to set in after yesterday’s fiasco. That was coffee I smelled, dark and rich and fresh.

  I dumped my hat and purse on my desk and followed my nose to the break room. Before she’d left last night Pen had lined her tea canisters up like a row of Prussian soldiers. But one of the other team members had beat her in this morning, thank God, and brought a coffeemaker, microwave, and emergency supplies with him.

  I had a good idea wh
o. The industrial-size carton of PowerBars sitting beside the microwave pretty well IDed Noel. I filled a mug, snitched a peanut butter caramel crisp bar, and strolled down to his work area.

  Here’s the thing about noncoms. The good ones operate an intelligence network that makes the CIA look like an amateur enterprise. They’re also world-class foragers. Especially Special Ops types like Noel. They get dropped behind enemy lines and can live off tree roots and grubs for months. In more civilized settings, nothing is safe around them unless it’s nailed, soldered, or sutured. Even then I wouldn’t turn my back on it.

  Noel was on the phone. He waved a hand in greeting and finished his call while I polished off the PowerBar.

  “Right. I’ll be here. Thanks, Chief.” He hung up with a satisfied grunt. “That was Sergeant Major Callahan at the Supply Depot. He’s sending over temporary replacements for our computers. Should be here in a half hour.”

  “Great.” I held up my mug. “Who donated the coffeemaker and microwave?”

  “Sergeant Hawkins over at A Company. One of his artillery batteries just shipped out for a six-month rotation to Iraq. He let me, ah, borrow a few items.”

  Uh-oh. I’d met some of A Company’s artillerymen. They didn’t hear very well—the big guns do that to you—but you don’t want to be on the receiving end of their multiple rocket launchers.

  “We’re not going to have those guys come looking for their stuff, are we?”

  “Not to worry, Lieutenant. I’ll make sure everything’s back where it should be before they return.”

  “Who furnished the PowerBars?”

  “Buddy Thompson at the gym. He ordered a dozen case lots for the Military Marathon a few months back. Some doofus in central purchasing screwed up and bought two dozen by mistake. Bud’s been trying to get rid of ’em ever since.”

  His chair squeaking, Noel leaned back and looked around me.

  “Charlie didn’t come in with you? I told him I would take him to get his truck.”

  “You’ll have to take me, instead. Charlie made an emergency exit last night.”