Читать книгу Get Blondie - Carla Cassidy - Страница 8

The tough punk was known as Snake on the streets of Kansas City, but in reality his name was Sammy Watson and he had a long string of outstanding warrants. As he warily faced Officer Cassandra Newton beneath the dirty glare of the overhead street lamp, he appeared more like his street name than his birth name, hissing and coiling in preparation for a fight.

Cassie threw a glance toward the patrol car parked nearby. Her partner, Asia Malone, leaned against the driver door, eating a candy bar that looked minuscule in his massive hand.

A roar from Sammy yanked her attention back where it belonged just as the young man charged her like an enraged bull. With graceful agility she sidestepped the attack, then turned to face him as he stopped and turned back toward her, his breaths coming in short, quick gasps.

“Come on, Sammy. It’s been a long day. We can make this easy, or we can make it hard,” she said as the two circled each other.

“I ain’t making nothing easy on you. No bitch cop is going to take me in.”

“Don’t get her riled, Sammy boy,” Asia called out. “I know what she’s capable of and it isn’t pretty.”

“Shut up, you big, black pile of crap,” Sammy screamed. With a surprisingly quick movement he pulled a knife from his pocket. “Come on, Blondie, let’s tango.”

Cassie sighed wearily. It had been a long day of minor irritations and this kid pulling a knife on her was the last straw. Sometimes young, ignorant creeps just needed to get their butts kicked.

She drew a deep breath and centered herself. Her first kick, sharp and crisp, sent the knife flying out of Sammy’s hand. The second one, delivered to the side of his head, sent him crashing to the ground on his hands and knees.

She put her boot in the center of his back and with a minimum of pressure flattened him to the ground. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, Sammy…” She slapped cuffs on him and yanked him to his feet. “…I hate to tango.”

She shoved the cuffed prisoner toward her partner. “Thanks for the help,” she said dryly to Asia as he popped the last of the candy bar into his mouth.

He grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the dark of the night. “Poetry in motion,” he said. “You know how much I love to watch you work.”

“Yeah, well you get to do the paperwork when we get back to the station.”

They loaded Sammy into the back seat of their car and within minutes they were on their way back to the Kansas City, Missouri East Patrol Station House.

“I’m going to kill you,” Sammy yelled from the back seat. “You’re dead. You are one dead cop.” He kicked the seat for emphasis.

“Give it a rest, Sammy,” Cassie said. “You’ve got enough warrants against you that you’ll be on Medicare when you finally see freedom again.”

Sammy fell silent, apparently contemplating his future behind bars.

“Ah, Cassie, for years I hoped to be partnered with a person who was bigger than me,” Asia said.

She eyed him with a wry grin. It would have been next to impossible to find a man bigger than Asia. At six foot six inches tall and almost three hundred pounds, Asia had once told her he’d gotten his name because his mother had sworn she was birthing a continent when he’d come into the world.

“I never managed to find a partner bigger than me, but I definitely hit easy street when they put you with me.” He laughed, a deep, robust sound that filled the car. “Hell, I love it that I got a partner who can kick ass better than me any day of the week.”

Cassie loved having a partner whom she trusted and respected. Asia, along with his wife Serena and their four children were so wonderfully normal. And in her thirty-years on earth, Cassie had had very little normal in her life.

“Hey, Serena’s making that rice dish you like so much on Sunday. She asked me to ask you if you want to come over around two and eat with us.”

“I thought you hated that rice dish,” Cassie said as they pulled into the underground parking area.

“I do. I’m planning on sneaking a couple of steaks on the grill.” He grimaced as Sammy began yelling and kicking in the back seat. He looked back at Cassie. “You go on, get out of here. It’s past time for us to be off. I’ll process this schmuck and you can head home.”

“Thanks, Asia.” She bounded out of the patrol car and headed inside to get her personal belongings. It had been a long day and she was exhausted.

The station was relatively quiet. Wednesday nights were usually easy ones. The cops called it the midweek recovery day…the perps of the city were either resting from the past weekend or preparing for the next.

As she made her way to the desk she shared with Asia and four other patrolmen, her fellow cops greeted her.

“Hey, Cassie, we heard another one bit the dust.” Officer Gomez held up two thumbs.

She grinned at the attractive Hispanic man. “We got lucky, spotted him strolling down the sidewalk like he didn’t know he had eight warrants against him,” she replied. Gomez laughed and shook his head.

“Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer,” Jim Johnson, a vice cop said as he finger-combed his scraggly beard.

“What do you mean?”

He pointed toward her desk at the back of the room. “It was delivered just a few minutes ago by some overnight delivery service.”

A long-stemmed white rose stood in a slender gold bud vase. A blood-red ribbon was tied to one end of the rose and the other end to a cell phone.

The sight turned Cassie’s blood cold. No way, she thought as she moved on leaden feet to the desk. No way in hell were they going to sucker her into coming back. She didn’t care what was happening. She didn’t care what was at stake.

She leaned a slender hip against the desk and untied the rose from the compact phone. She knew the phone was impossible to trace and the favorite mode of communication for three groups of people…terrorists, drug dealers and the agency. This one hadn’t come from any drug dealer or terrorist.

She stared at the number pad. All she had to do was hit the redial button and she’d be connected to somebody who would tell her what they wanted her to know.

She didn’t want to know anything. The phone would only be active for a little while, then the activation would be stopped and she’d toss it in the trash.

Irritated by the mere sight of it, she grabbed the vase and the phone and threw the entire mess into the garbage can next to her desk.

“Ah, somebody is really in the doghouse when pretty flowers and a free cell phone don’t even work,” one of the officers teased.

She only wished it were something as simple as a boyfriend in her doghouse. She unlocked the desk drawer and retrieved her car keys from the jumble of items inside. Forget it, she told herself as she walked to her car parked behind the station house.

She had a relatively uncomplicated life now. She wasn’t about to risk it all to go back to work for the agency. She’d left that life five years ago and had never looked back. When they didn’t immediately get a phone call from her they would know she was out of the game permanently.

The agency had a name…SPACE…acronyms that stood for Special Personnel Against Criminal Elements. It was a secret, covert group run by John Etheridge, head of Homeland Security for the United States.

Cassie had been recruited by the agency when she was at the Police Academy in Los Angeles. She’d given SPACE four years of her life, working dangerous assignments all over the world. But she’d left the agency five years ago and vowed she’d never go back.

As she got into her car she drew a deep breath of the early summer night air. After so many years on the West Coast, Cassie had grown to love the Midwest’s four seasons.

Early summer scents brought with them a curious blend of pleasure and bittersweet pain. Kansas City was the city of her early childhood, a childhood that had ended abruptly and inexplicably on the streets of Los Angeles when she’d been eleven.

She consciously shoved thoughts of her past aside as she started her car. She tossed her hat into the back seat of the car, then began the thirty-minute drive from the station house to her ranch in the northern suburbs.

She yawned and checked the clock on the dash. Almost one o’clock. If she and Asia hadn’t spotted Sammy the Snake on the street, she would have already been snuggled into bed and fast asleep.

When she finally pulled into her driveway, she cut the engine and tapped her short nails against the steering wheel. A restless energy had begun to build inside her as the vision of that darned white rose played and replayed in her mind.

If it were earlier she’d have gone to the gym and worked it out. She could always throw some jabs on the punching bag in her spare room, but it was too late and she’d promised Max she’d meet him for breakfast early in the morning.

White Rose. It had been her code name. Another life, she thought. That life had nothing to do with the one she’d carved out for herself over the last five years.

She got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to her front door. She couldn’t help but feel a burst of pride. Her sidewalk…her front porch…her home and nobody could ever take it away from her.

She would never again sleep on the street or in the shelter of a cardboard box or beneath the thick concrete of a highway overpass. She would never again go to sleep and be afraid of what the night might bring…of what the next day would bring.

Security. It’s what she’d finally attained in the last five years and nobody and nothing would make her risk it. She unlocked the front door, stepped inside and disarmed the security system.

When she closed the door behind her, she knew she wasn’t alone. She didn’t hear a sound, smelled only the scent of lemon oil and glass cleaner from her cleaning frenzy earlier in the day, but she knew in her gut someone had either been inside recently or was still here.

The living room was dark except for a thin stream of illumination that seeped through a crack in the front curtains from a nearby street lamp.

Moving slowly, stealthily, she reached with her right hand into her pocket and pulled out the knife she’d had since she’d been thirteen years old.

The intricately carved handle fit perfectly into her palm and when she tapped the button on the side the switchblade shot out with a faint sound. Not exactly police issue, but she never left home without it.

She shifted it from her right hand to her left, grabbing the sharp point as adrenaline pumped through her. She could hit a target faster, more accurately with the knife than she could with her gun. The knife had kept her alive for many years on the streets.

Her living room was sparsely furnished, as was the rest of the house. There was just enough light to see that there was nobody in the living room. Everything appeared to be just as she had left it when she’d gone to work at three that afternoon.

But the hair stood up on the back of her neck as she quietly advanced from the living room into the kitchen. It was darker and more difficult to discern what lie waiting in the shadows.

She stood in the doorway, willing her breathing to still, the sound of her own heartbeat to silence. Beneath the hum of the refrigerator motor she heard nothing to indicate there was another living, breathing person in the room.

Maybe she was mistaken, still charged with residual energy from the scuffle with Sammy the Snake and from receiving the unexpected communication from the agency. Maybe she was just imagining the nebulous presence of another invading her personal space.

But it had been innate instinct, intense imagination and an almost paranoid level of caution that had kept her alive until now. She’d learned through the years that when any of those three emotions went into action, it was best not to ignore them. And at the moment all three were screaming inside her.

Slowly, not making a sound, she made her way down the hall. The door to the bathroom was closed, as were the doors to the two spare bedrooms. But the door to the master bedroom at the very end of the hall stood open. She never left the doors opened.

The minute she stepped into the doorway of the bedroom she saw him…a tall dark figure standing near the window. An intruder who didn’t belong in the sanctity of her home. The instinct of survival kicked in and she raised the knife to throw…at the last minute a flash of recognition altered her aim.

The knife shot through the air and hit the wall with a sharp thud. Cassie flipped on the light switch to see the handsome dark-haired man standing against the wall, the knife embedded in the Sheetrock an inch from the left of his head.

“Losing your touch?”

“Not likely. If I hadn’t recognized you at the last minute your ear would be pinned against the wall. What are you doing here, Kane?”

She didn’t bother to ask him how he’d entered her house. There wasn’t a locked door or a security system invented that could keep Kane McNabb out if he wanted in.

He moved with a languid grace away from the window and sat on the edge of her bed. “You didn’t call.”

“You’re right, I didn’t.” She walked over to her knife and pulled it out, satisfied to see that a little putty and touch-up paint would easily heal the wall wound.

“Aren’t you intrigued?” Kane asked.

She turned back to face the man who had once been her partner and lover for two years. He hadn’t changed much in the past five years. Like a chameleon, he had the ability to look like a debonair man of means, a disreputable drug lord or a high-ranking foreign government official. He could be whatever the agency wanted him to be. The last time she’d seen him he’d been pale, lifeless and unconscious in a hospital room bed.

Now his eyes were dark and brooding and a remembered flutter of heat ignited in the pit of her stomach. She tried to ignore it. “No, I’m not intrigued. I’m tired.” She bent over and untied the laces of her black boots, then kicked them off.

“You should hear the details before you make any decision.”

“I don’t need to hear the details,” she replied coolly. “I’m not interested…and get off my bed. In fact, get out of my house.” Now that she was closer to him she could smell the scent of his familiar cologne.

To her irritation he didn’t move a muscle. “We need you, Cassie. This is big…really big.”

“I don’t care. I told you I’m not interested. Now, get out.” It was bad enough the agency wanted her back, it was sheer manipulation by them that they’d sent Kane all the way from the L.A. office to recruit her back. It made her more adamant about staying out of all of it.

He stood and moved toward the bedroom door. “So I guess it doesn’t matter to you that within two months’ time tens of thousands of men, women and children will probably be dead and you may be the only person on earth to stop the carnage.” He shrugged. “Pleasant dreams, Cassie.” He left the bedroom and she slammed the door shut behind him.

“Good riddance,” she muttered as she removed her flashlight and billy club from her belt, then took off her service revolver. As she placed the knife and gun in the drawer next to her bed, she tried not to think about what he’d said.

Tens of thousands of men, women and children, and she was the only person on earth to stop the carnage. She was sure Kane had added on that last part in an effort to appeal to her ego, but it hadn’t worked. The agency had hundreds of agents, including other females as effective as she was.

She sat on the edge of the bed and worked the tie out of her hair, allowing the long blond strands to spill free around her shoulders. Damn them. And damn him for intruding back into her life.

Her fingers moved to the top of her light blue uniform shirt, but instead of unbuttoning the buttons, her hands fell back into her lap. Tens of thousands of men, women and children. What could possibly be brewing in the underworld? Was it a terrorist plot of some sort? Certainly the world was ripe for such potential.

Damn them, she thought once again as she rose from the bed and yanked open the bedroom door. The scent of brewing coffee had just begun to make its way down the hall.

With a new rise of irritation welling up inside her, she followed the scent to the kitchen and turned on the light. Kane sat at the table, two cups in front of him awaiting the brew…and obviously her.

She wasn’t sure what she hated more, the fact that he’d found her special stash of vanilla-flavored coffee or that he knew her so well he’d anticipated her inability to remain completely uninvolved on all levels.

She threw herself into the chair opposite his, unsure if she was angry with him or angry with herself for playing right into his hands.

“I’m not promising anything, but I’ll admit, you’ve piqued my interest.”

He nodded and stood to grab the coffee carafe. “Ever hear of Adam Mercer?” he asked as he filled their cups with the fresh brew.

“Adam Mercer?” She frowned. “Isn’t he some sort of rich philanthropist?” She watched as he returned the coffee carafe to the machine. Kane moved with an almost feline grace that belied the strength and power she knew him capable of.

He returned to the chair opposite hers and wrapped a hand around his coffee mug. “Adam Mercer…fifty-four years old, wealthy as Midas and the behind the scenes leader of a grass roots coalition called MAD.”

“MAD…as in Men Against Drugs?” Kane nodded and she racked her brain to think of everything she knew about that particular organization. It was easier to focus on the matter at hand than to sort out her emotions about seeing Kane again. “All I really know about the organization is that they run several shelters around town.”

“They run a hell of a lot more than a few shelters,” Kane replied. He paused a moment to take a drink of his coffee, then continued. “At the moment MAD runs dozens of shelters in cities all across the nation. They also maintain several rehabilitation centers specifically geared toward substance abuse.”

“What does this all have to do with the death of thousands of men, women and children?” she asked impatiently. Kane McNabb had always liked the sound of his own voice.

“Adam Mercer and his organization has lobbied for law changes, provided drug education and paid for antidrug advertising. The agency began to monitor the group when it realized that MAD was gaining not only huge political support, but also amassing a cultlike following with the movers and shakers of the country.”

“Just get to the point, please.”

“Patience was never one of your strong suits.” His dark eyes gave nothing of himself away. “Bottom line…three years ago Adam lost his only daughter to a drug overdose. He lost his daughter, then months after that his wife left him and we think he’s gone off the deep end. The man has lost his mind to hatred and an obsessive need to wipe out all drug use.”

He paused to take another sip of his coffee. “Several months ago a new kind of marijuana and cocaine hit the streets. It was called Blue…Blue grass or Blue snow…because it has a faint blue tinge to it. It’s better, purer and stronger than anything that’s hit the streets in years.”

“I heard a couple of vice cops talking about it,” she said and sat up straighter in her chair. “They said it was the most potent stuff they’d ever seen, but if I remember right, nobody ever figured out where it came from.”

“A month ago it dried up. You can’t find any Blue on the streets anywhere in any city right now. The demand is huge, but the supply is gone.”

“So what does this have to do with Adam Mercer?”

“He supplied the original Blue, then he pulled it off the market to create an enormous demand.”

Cassie stared at Kane in disbelief. “That doesn’t make sense. You just told me the man is over-the-top antidrug and now you’re telling me he’s become a drug czar providing the best dope in America? That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, but there’s a method behind the madness,” Kane replied. He shoved his coffee mug to the side and leaned across the table toward her. “He’s managed to create a huge supply of Blue and our sources tell us in the next couple of months he intends to flood the market with more Blue…except this time the drugs will be highly lethal. He’ll kill the users, put the dealers out of business and rid the world of the scourge of drugs.”

Cassie leaned back in her chair, stunned by the ramifications of what he’d just told her. “But that’s insane,” she said softly. “It’s not only insane, it won’t work. The minute people started dying, we’d be able to get an alert to the public about the tainted drugs.”

“You know that and I know that, but apparently Mercer has lost touch with reality.” Kane’s dark gaze held hers. “He’s crazy all right, but also highly intelligent.”

“So what are you doing here talking to me?”

“We need somebody to get inside the organization…get up close and personal to Adam Mercer.”

“And what makes you think I can get up close and personal with him?”

His gaze slowly slid the length of her. “Because Adam Mercer has a weakness for sexy, long-legged blondes.”

The heat that had flickered to life in her stomach moments before intensified beneath his gaze. “So how would somebody go about meeting Adam Mercer?”

“Mercer frequents a nightclub called Night Life. It’s an upscale kind of place and his last two relationships have been with waitresses that work there. We’ve got a contact there and whomever we send in will have a job as a cocktail waitress.”

There was no way she was going to get roped into this, she told herself. “There are plenty of other women in the agency that can do this. I’m not interested.”

She stood and carried her cup to the sink, where she emptied out the coffee, shut off the coffeemaker and turned back to him. “Get somebody else. I have a nice, uncomplicated, complete life here. I don’t intend to screw it up.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I just thought maybe you’d be personally interested in this particular job.”

She eyed him warily. “What do you mean…personally interested?”

He finished the last of the coffee in his cup and also stood. “Adam Mercer and his team have worked with drug addicts in this city and others for years. Sources tell us he maintains a data base with the names of all the people he’s helped in the cities where MAD works. It’s possible at one time or another he ran into your mother. It’s possible he might have some information about both your mother and your brother.”

“Get out.” She was grateful her voice contained nothing more than the cold command, grateful that there was no indication of the emotions his words had stirred.

“Cassie…”

“I mean it, Kane. Get out of here now.”

He placed a piece of paper on the table, then moved to the back door and grabbed the handle. “Twenty-four hours, Cassie. You have twenty-four hours to make up your mind. That’s the address where you can find us.” With these final words he slipped through the door.

She reset her alarm system, then stalked out of the kitchen and into the spare bedroom that held nothing but her punching bag.

She pulled on the lightweight red gloves, then the padded foot protectors. She drew several deep, cleansing breaths in an attempt to gain control of the emotions that threatened to surface.

Thoughts of her mother always brought with them a strange combination of bittersweet longing and anger. Mingling with those two emotions was a tinge of reluctant excitement as she thought of going back to work for the agency.

However, the most threatening, confusing emotions she felt at the moment concerned Kane McNabb. She’d thought she’d forgotten him. She’d worked so hard to forget everything about him. But seeing him again had forced memories back into her head…the memory of lying in his arms, of feeling his body against her own, of seeing him almost die.

She delivered a roundhouse kick to the bag, then followed it up with a flurry of punches that left her half-breathless. Damn them.

Damn them for contacting her again and for manipulating her with her past by making Kane the contact. As if it wasn’t bad enough seeing him again, he’d given her the one compelling reason she’d find it difficult to say no.