Linda Howard - Death Angel

He said, “Just a moment,” and picked up his phone and dialed an extension. He said, “Drea Rousseau is sitting in my office,” and replaced the handset.

He sat silently, and so did she. She honestly had no idea if she would be of any use to the FBI, or they to her, but they were the logical place to start. Offering herself as bait would work only if someone was watching the trap, otherwise the bait was just a meal. She might not be able to do anything about Rafael; if she couldn’t, then at least she had tried.

A sandy-haired man opened the door and came in. “Ms. Rousseau,” he said, “I’m Special Agent Brian Hulsey; I’m in charge of the Salinas investigation now. Would you step into my office, please?”

Andie paused, her head cocked a little to the side as she studied him. He hadn’t knocked before entering Agent Cotton’s office, and she had caught the slight emphasis he’d placed on the word “now,” which had been completely unnecessary unless he was making a point to the agent who had been in charge of the investigation before. Office politics, she guessed, with ego and a power display thrown in. Agent Cotton, on the other hand, looked mild and unperturbed. No ego there, and he wasn’t interested in power.

“No,” she said, drawing the word out a little as she reached a decision. “I’ll talk with Special Agent Cotton.”

Special Agent Hulsey said, “You misunderstand. Agent Cotton is no longer in charge of-”

“I didn’t misunderstand anything,” she replied, her tone going cool. “English is my first language, so I know a lot of the words.” English was also her only language, but he didn’t need to know that.

His face turned red. “I apologize. I didn’t intend to imply-”

“That I’m stupid? That’s okay. A lot of men make that mistake.” She smiled at him, a sweet smile that, if he’d been paying close attention, would have made his blood curdle. “Rafael Salinas was one of them.”

“I assure you, Ms. Rousseau-”

“Butts,” she said, putting hard edges on all the consonants. “My real name is Andrea Butts. I thought you knew that.”

“Of course I-”

She hadn’t let him complete a single sentence after he’d introduced himself when he came in, so she saw no reason to start now. “Special Agent Cotton,” she said firmly, “or no one. Your choice.”

There it was, dumped in his lap. He either delegated his role in the investigation to Special Agent Cotton, or he would be the one responsible for losing the contact that could possibly bring down Rafael Salinas once and for all. He would see the first choice as an almost intolerable affront to his authority-he was the type-but the second choice could be a career-killer.

“I’ll get it cleared with the assistant director,” he muttered resentfully, walking out of the office and leaving the door open.

Andie got up and closed the door with a firm thud.

“I didn’t like him,” she confided as she resumed her seat.

Special Agent Cotton allowed himself a little smile, but all he said was, “He’s a good agent.”

“I assumed so, or he wouldn’t be stationed in New York, but I can also assume the same thing about you.” Agents vied to be posted in the larger cities, with D.C. and New York at the top of the heap, where the action was and where everything was high visibility.

“I work with some very sharp people. It’s easy to look good when all the people around you are on their toes.”

What Andie got from that was that he was willing to spread the credit around, while Hulsey wasn’t. She was satisfied with her decision in sticking with Special Agent Cotton.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to call in an agent who worked with me when I was assigned to the Salinas case,” he said, lifting the phone again. “His name is Xavier Jackson, and he’s a genius at what he does. It was his bad luck to be partnered with me, but we still talk sometimes even though we aren’t on that case now.”

She gathered they’d been reassigned because they hadn’t produced any results, though she’d bet the farm that Hulsey hadn’t done any better than they had. No wonder Hulsey had been adamant that she talk with him rather than Cotton; she would have been a big feather in his cap, and maybe just what he needed for the case to reach the tipping point and actually produce some prosecutable evidence against Rafael.

She and Cotton chatted casually while waiting for Genius Jackson. Some fifteen minutes later there was a polite rap on the door, and a wait until Cotton raised his voice and said, “Come in.”

Xavier Jackson was young, maybe her age, and lean and dark and handsome, his features faintly exotic, his skin olive-tinted. He was a more dapper dresser than most of the FBI employees she’d seen in the building; though he wore the de rigueur sober suit and white dress shirt, his tie was a deep, rich red with a tiny design that, when she looked closer, turned out to be highly stylized horses in an even deeper red. Instead of the flat rectangular fold of white handkerchief, his breast pocket sported a few subtle peaks in the same rich red. Altogether he was subtly more flashy, his movements faster, his accent was as undefinable as that of a television news anchor. The expression in his eyes was decidedly sharklike, but unlike Hulsey, his attitude toward Agent Cotton was that of respect.

Neither of them was going to die anytime soon.

She got that, plucked the sudden conviction out of the air as if it were a ripe apple dangling in front of her, but saw no need to tell them. Jackson thought he was bulletproof, and Cotton was looking forward to retirement and having more time to spend with his wife, doing things he enjoyed. No death worries darkened their minds, so she didn’t introduce the subject.

Jackson gave her an incredulous look. “Are you really Drea Rousseau?”

She laughed, and he immediately said, “Oh, yeah, I recognize that laugh.” Curiosity burned in his eyes. “I thought you might be dead. You just disappeared.”

“On purpose,” she assured him. “Running for my life.”

“Salinas wants you dead?”

“He did. After I left town, though, I was in a car accident and the news release mistakenly said I’d died in the accident, which was actually a lifesaver because Rafael called off his hounds.” There had been only one hound, and he’d been the one to report to Rafael that she was dead, which was true, but her glib skirting of the truth was much more believable than what had actually happened.

“So he thinks you’re dead,” said Cotton. “You’re safe. Why come back to the city, back to his territory?”

“Because if I know anything about him that would help you build a case against him, help put him in prison, then it would be wrong for me to play it safe while he goes on bringing drugs into the country every week. Rafael’s smart,” she said. “You might never be able to get enough evidence against him, unless you somehow catch a break. I might be that break. I don’t know that I am, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

“Do you know who his accountant is? The real one, not the one who does the books for the public stuff?”

She shook her head. Knowing the accountant, and his, or her, location, would have been the linchpin to Rafael’s entire operation. “I never heard a name mentioned. He was careless about a few things”-like his bank password-“but not about that. I don’t think any of his men know, either. They talked in front of me, but they never mentioned anything about books, or an accountant.”

“Did he ever disappear, and not take any of his men with him?” That was Jackson chiming in.

“Not that I know of, though he could have left with his usual guard and ditched them somewhere afterward. But like I said, I never heard them talking about anything like that. Rafael’s paranoid about going out by himself. He thinks the streets are knee-deep in rivals waiting to knock him off. He wants to be surrounded by other bodies, at all times.”