Cindy Gerard - Killing Time

“This dipstick giving you a hard time, Eva?”

Mike groaned when Taggart and Cooper ambled over to the ambulance. “And to think I missed them.”

Cooper hiked a booted foot up on the ambulance bumper. “Just goes to show. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

Mike looked into the faces of the two men he had thought he would never see again. They were covered in grime and the satisfaction of a job well done. The same faces that had been full of accusation and hatred the last time he’d seen them eight years ago.

He felt a wave of emotion so strong, so massive, he didn’t know if he could contain it. Then he looked at Eva and knew he couldn’t. She wasn’t going to let him.

“Yeah. About that.” He lowered his head, groped for the words he needed to say. “Thanks.” He met Cooper’s eyes, then Taggart’s, and saw the same emotions welling up there. “Thanks for showing. Means a lot.”

Hell. It meant everything.

Taggart looked at his boot tips.

Cooper found a spot in the distance that suddenly demanded all of his attention before getting himself back together. “Yeah, well… Someone’s going to pay us, right?… Because we didn’t do this for old time’s sake.”

Mike burst out laughing, then regretted it when fire bit into his ribs. “There was some mention of money, now that I think about it. Right, Eva?”

She shook her head, disbelieving. “You three are the most stubborn individuals I’ve ever met when it comes to expressing your feelings.”

Then Gabe walked over and joined them.

“How you doing?” He studied Mike critically.

“Fit and fine.” Mike hitched his chin toward the DEA agent. “You settle him down?”

Gabe lifted a shoulder. “Once he found out his name would be leaked to the media in conjunction with taking down six of La Linea’s top-tier management, and in shutting down a major illegal gunrunning op, he decided the paperwork wasn’t such a hardship after all.”

“Something I don’t get.” Taggart crossed his arms over his chest. “I figure when we didn’t check in, you put it together that things had gone south. But how’d you know to bring the birds and the mini and all the alphabet guys?”

“We’ve got a connection at NSA. A friend picked up some cyber-chatter about a gun shipment out of Canada. On a hunch we relayed the info to border control, of which there are two in Idaho. Since Porthill carries the most passenger traffic and East-port carries the most trucks, it wasn’t difficult to pin down which route they were going to take.”

A line formed between Eva’s brows. “You mean there were more trucks on the way?”

Gabe nodded. “One truck, and the driver couldn’t talk fast enough—despite the fact that La Linea threatened to kill him. La Linea, guns, UWD? It only made sense there was a big deal going down, and that you were caught here in the middle of it.”

“The guns were in a refrigerated meat trailer, weren’t they?” Cooper looked smug.

Gabe regarded him with new interest. “And you know this how?”

Taggart glanced at Mike, who nodded. “You might want to look about half a mile north of the shooting range. They hid them in an abandoned mine shaft. Well, it used to be a shaft. Good luck finding a piece of anything bigger than a cinder.”

A slow smile built on Gabe’s face. “Nice work.”

“It was,” Taggart agreed wholeheartedly. “It really, really was.”

“So where’d you come up with the Black Hawks?” Mike asked. “There aren’t any military bases within five, six hundred miles of here.”

Gabe said nothing.

And just that quick, Mike knew.

“Sonofabitch,” he said with a grin. “Uncle’s got a little top-secret Spec Ops training facility out here in the mountains, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Gabe had his poker face on, a sure sign that Mike had hit the nail dead center. “I don’t mean to change the subject, but—”

“The hell you don’t,” Mike said on a laugh.

“But,” Gabe pressed on and shifted his attention to Eva, “I haven’t had a chance to tell you before now. We found your Deep Throat.”

The D.C. lunch crowd was long gone at two in the afternoon, when Eva and Mike stepped inside the little corner café. They’d returned from Idaho and what the press referred to as “the assault on Squaw Valley” two days ago. CNN had run an hour-long special on the operation last night, and the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the FBI had received all the credit for the takedown. That was fine with Eva. Let them rack up the win in their column. She wanted her name kept out of it—so did Mike, Taggart, and Cooper. The fact that Gabe had managed to make that happen and keep the Black Ops, Inc. team off the radar as well, told her just how covert he and his teammates ran.

It was also Gabe who had set up the meeting with Deep Throat. She touched a hand to her hair, nervous, as she scanned the few occupied tables. A young couple, clearly in love and oblivious to anything but each other, laughed and made moon eyes over a shared chocolate sundae. A middle-aged man sat in a wheelchair sipping coffee as a younger woman with a kind face spoke softly to him. A pretty blond mommy fed her young son ice cream and laughed when he smeared it in his hair.

All of them were oblivious to everyone around them and the drama that was about to unfold. Eva was hyperaware of the wild beat of her heart and peripherally aware of Gabe, who occupied the only other spot in the restaurant. He’d insisted on being here, just in case. He didn’t acknowledge them, just sat at the coffee bar, his back to the room, his focus alternating between a cup of black coffee and the wall mirror that gave him visual access to the dining area and everyone in it.

An older gentleman with a round belly, wild bushy brows, and a twinkling smile approached them, menus in his hand. “Miss Salinas? Mr. Brown?”

Eva nodded and gave him credit for not staring at Mike—beat up and bruised, his eye still swollen shut.

“Your table is ready. Follow me, please.”

Mike’s strong presence beside her was both unsettling and reassuring—as was his hand on the small of her back as they crossed the room and settled in at a secluded corner table.

“We’ll just have coffee,” Mike said, and their host smiled amiably and left them alone.

“You good with this?” he asked, scowling as only he could scowl when he was worried for her.

“I’m fine. I’m eager to talk with him.”

“I’d like to do more than talk to him,” Mike grumbled.

He didn’t exactly feel gratitude toward the man they were about to meet. Mike considered him a coward who had placed her life in danger. Nothing settled the score in his book, not even her reminders that if not for the mystery man, Mike would still be estranged from Taggart and Cooper, and Lawson and Brewster would still be running their nasty business.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t show. That’s his MO, right? He’s a coward who hides in the background.”

“I’m sure he had his reasons.”

She’d been so intent on keeping Mike calm, she hadn’t realized the man in the wheelchair had rolled up to the table.

When he stopped and met her eyes, she smiled automatically. He wasn’t as old as she’d thought he was. Instead, it was apparent that whatever accident or illness had put him in the chair had aged him. “Can I help you?”

“You can if you’re Eva Salinas.”

Eva glanced at Mike, then back to—“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

“I’m Peter Davis.”

She searched her memory banks. Nothing. Other than the wheelchair, there was little that was remarkable about him. His close-cropped hair was peppered with gray. His eyes were brown. Nothing about him was familiar.