Catherine Coulter - Backfire

He grinned. “I’ll message Eve after I see you’re safe upstairs.” He stuck his head in the door, didn’t see anyone. He walked in, looking beneath each of the three stalls. He saw two feet in sandals with bright red toenails, young feet. He watched one of the feet tap to the sound of music he couldn’t hear. Okay, then. When he came out he said, “I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

As Sherlock stood at the counter washing her hands, a woman came in. Sherlock automatically went on alert until she got a look at her. She was older, quite heavy, a scrub nurse in a loose green top and pants, down to the green booties covering her shoes. A surgical mask hung by its ties around her neck. She wore a name tag. Harry wouldn’t have let her in otherwise, Sherlock thought. A green scrub hat was perched on her thick black hair. She wore black-framed glasses.

“Hey,” the nurse said, looked around, then walked toward a stall.

The nurse was suddenly behind her. Sherlock felt a gun pressing into the back of her neck. A deep voice hissed hot rage in her ear, “How did you find me, bitch?”

This wasn’t Charlene Cartwright; she knew her photo as well as she knew her own. She willed her fear and her pounding heart to the back of the bus. “Xu, I can’t believe you came here. Why? Are you trying to get your manhood back?” She felt her breath clog in her throat. Was this the way to play him? What would he do?

She heard a sneering laugh. “I wondered if I’d ever get the chance to be alone with you, with that big guy outside following you around. But you had to visit the bathroom, didn’t you? The only reason you got me on the ground was because I was hit real bad.”

Good, he was talking to her, trying to justify how she had gotten him down. She sneered back. “Yeah, an arm wound’s all you had, nothing to write home about. And you’re still whining? I thought above all, Xu, that you were a professional, that you were doing only what you had to do to clean up the mess you’d made. But look at you, here, trying to show me up.”

His left hand moved up to grab her throat. He whispered next to her ear, “You and your people destroyed my life by finding me when it shouldn’t have been possible. You’re going to be my prize at the end of this wretched assignment. Tell me now. How did you find me so fast?”

She held his hot eyes. “Turns out you’re not so special, Xu. Our profiler guessed you liked to treat yourself well and thought the Fairmont would be right up your alley. Before she died, Cindy told us about Lampo, Indiana. We found you within two hours of accessing your old Indiana driver’s license.”

His hand was shaking.

Pedal back. “Would you look at you now, Xu, no one would guess who you are. And you’ve succeeded in getting me alone. Who made you the ugliest nurse in the universe?”

Sherlock hadn’t realized her voice had risen. He moved the gun fast, shoved it against her ear. He hissed, “Keep it down. If that bodyguard of yours comes in here, I’ll blow his head off. You want him to die with you?”

She shook her head, whispered, “No, I don’t want him to die. I don’t want to die, either.”

He laughed.

“You want to know who helped me?”

She nodded at the fat bedraggled scrub nurse with coarse black hair and puffed out cheeks and smeared dark mascara looking back at her. He met her eyes in the mirror, used his nose to push aside her hair and whispered against her ear and the Beretta’s gun barrel, “No one looks at ugly people. That’s what she told me.”

“Who?”

“Crazy Charlene. She told me this getup was my best chance of killing you.”

Charlene? For a moment, Sherlock couldn’t get her brain around it. “Charlene was driving the second car out of the motel parking lot?”

He grinned at her, worked the gun barrel a bit deeper into her ear. “She found me, took care of me. She’s crazy as a loon, but the weird thing is, I like her. She’s committed. She’s got exactly two minutes to get to the roof. Then we can get this done.”

The gun in her ear hurt, but it was the fear roiling in her belly that was threatening to bleed panic into her brain. No, you can’t let fear kill you. Time, you need time.

She whispered, “Charlene is here? Did she kill Jerol Idling at the Skyline Motel?”

“Yep. That gunshot brought down the house, and so we had to move out fast. I thought my arm was going to fall off running to the car. That’s when I first thought of killing you, of watching the light go out behind your eyes. I gritted my teeth and knew before I left I’d come for you.” He shoved the Beretta in hard. She couldn’t help it; she made a small yipping sound of pain.

She didn’t look away from his face next to hers in the mirror. He was standing so close she felt his hot breath on her cheek, saw his flat, dark eyes, eyes that had watched dispassionately as he’d killed. She knew she’d see death in them if she looked closely, knew she’d see her own death. She thought of Dillon, of Sean, of a stranger walking through the bathroom door and Xu calmly shooting her. She said, “Why isn’t Charlene here wanting to kill me?”

“Charlene’s got other plans. I promised her I’d provide a nice big distraction soon so we can both take care of business.”

“Charlene won’t get near Judge Hunt.”

“Goes to show what a tiny little imagination you Feds have.” His voice lowered. “You don’t have much time, so I might let you in on it. You won the first round, I’ll admit it, but the game goes to me.”

“Why would Charlene follow you? Take care of you?”

He kept his voice low, whispered, “Charlene apologized to me for not killing you, but I didn’t mind. It meant I’d get to kill you myself. All the others, they were just business, but not you. You’re my bonus.”

Ramsey’s safe; no way can Charlene get to him. “What’s your distraction?”

“A nice big boom, like at the Fairmont, but you won’t hear it, you’ll be dead. You think Charlene’s going for that judge? Even though her brain visits Disneyland a lot of the time, Charlene realizes Judge Hunt is a no-go for now. She’s willing to let the judge lie in bed, suffer for his sins. She’s going to kill another man she blames for her son’s death, and that’s Agent Savich, your husband. Talk about hate, Charlene lives for it. I don’t think she can live without it. She seriously wants him dead.”

Sherlock’s vision blurred, and her heart stuttered. She felt Xu’s hand touch her hair. “A pity this pretty hair will be covered with your blood and your brains soon. Say good-bye to your hubby, if you want. You think Charlene’s telling him right now to say good-bye to you?”

Savich was leaning against the corridor wall, a couple dozen feet from the guards outside Ramsey’s room, speaking on his cell to Jimmy Maitland at the Hoover Building. Maitland put him on hold to connect him to the director, who wanted a status report directly from Savich. Great, Savich thought, and what am I going to say? All I can tell you, sir, is that everyone you’re worried about is still alive and at large, but there are lots of dead people, too, one of them a doctor who never hurt anyone in his life, and one a young kid who loved video games and worked with his mom in a motel.

As he waited, Savich decided that as soon as he finished his attempt at raising Director Mueller’s spirits he would put an extra guard on Emma. They had kept Sean safe from Charlene, and he would make sure she couldn’t turn her attention to Emma. At least right now, she was safe in her father’s hospital room.