Force of Nature (22 page)

And he’d only leave then, if Jules agreed to set aside some time to sit down and talk with him. Just talk, Robin had stressed. They could meet anywhere—even in public, in a restaurant or a bar. It was Jules’s call.

He would use the opportunity to try to convince Robin to leave earlier, not that he had much hope of doing that.

“He said Annie could stay in his hotel suite, attend the festival with him,” Jules told Ric. “It’s not my first choice, but with the festival’s security, which is extremely tight, they’ll be safe enough.”

Ric wasn’t happy, but he nodded.

Yashi reappeared. “Annie’s getting ready to go in,” he reported as he headed up the stairs that led to the spectators’ gallery. “She’s doubling up with Deb.”

“You want to watch?” Jules asked Ric.

“I’m not sure.” But Ric took the stairs two at a time, following Yashi.

“She did extremely well on the firing range.” Jules followed them, too.

“Yeah, she was excellent.”

But this was an entirely different skill set—not only did these targets move, but they fired back. Of course, there were no bullets being used. It was all done with lasers and computers.

Jules took a place with Ric at the window, looking down at the bombed-out buildings and rubble-filled roads of the course. Out of the many targets that popped up, some would be innocent bystanders, and points would be lost for each of those that were “killed.”

“Traditionally,” Yashi said, “when doubling up, a newbie’ll take out his or her more experienced companion within the first five seconds. Most are dead themselves within ten-point-five seconds after that.”

As they watched, Annie came onto the course with FBI agent Deb Erlanger behind her. Deb, athletic and trim with lank brown hair that she’d tucked up into a baseball cap, was talking, and Annie was listening and nodding.

Deb was probably telling her to wait for a moment, let her eyes get used to the lower levels of light. Only when she was ready should she give the signal to go.

“So what’d you have to do to get this place completely to ourselves?” Ric asked, his eyes on Annie, who was laughing at something Deb had told her.

“Just one quick phone call,” Jules said. “To my boss. You’ve met him, by the way—Max Bhagat.”

Ric looked at him. “Your boss is the head of the FBI’s top counterterrorist division?”

“That’s him.” He could see Ric putting two and two together. If Max was Jules’s immediate superior, then Jules wasn’t just some boots-on-the-ground, low-level grunt who was going to screw things up and get Annie killed. It was interesting, really. Ric didn’t appear to care at all about himself. His single-minded concern was Annie. Jules went on: “Apparently you handled the police investigation when Max’s girlfriend’s motel room was broken into a few years back. It was out on Siesta Key.”

“They stole her prescription meds and underwear,” Ric remembered. “Gina. Her last name was something Italian. She was, um…”

“She’s a pretty good friend of mine,” Jules interrupted. “So you might want to hold the descriptive adjective if it’s not flattering.”

Ric laughed. “No, I wasn’t going to…Beautiful. She was crazy beautiful, with a little just plain crazy thrown in, too. Like most women I know.”

“FYI, Max started a file on you.”

Ric looked at Jules now in disbelief. “Because I hit on his girlfriend?”

Had he really? That must’ve been interesting. “Gina’s his wife now,” Jules informed him. “But no. It’s not that kind of file.”

Down on the course, Annie gave the signal and…

She and Deb moved together, ducking for cover, and leapfrogging their way to the side of the first mock building.

Seconds ticked by and…

Holy shit.

“Beginner’s luck,” Yashi proclaimed. “Got to be.”

Annie’s stance was beyond ridiculous, but with twenty seconds down and still counting, she’d managed to keep from getting hit. She’d even tagged her share of tangos, leaving alive the crying toddler pop-up that Ric had accidentally taken out earlier, when he’d done the course.

“
Here’s
where Deb buys it,” Yashi announced, but the two women cleared the first building without getting hit.

They moved slowly, carefully, which was going to lose them a few points in their final score. But the truth was that they’d win far more for surviving until the buzzer rang. As Jules watched, they headed toward the second building, stopping to eliminate half a dozen targets along the way.

Again, Yashi gave his dire prediction: “Here’s where they go down,” and again he was proven wrong. Annie was well aware of Deb’s position at all times. Whatever crash course Deb had given her before they went in, she’d obviously been paying close attention.

“Holy shit,” Jules said again. “Are you sure Annie doesn’t have a military background?”

Ric shook his head in wonder as Jules answered the question himself.

“Of course she doesn’t, her stance is fugly.” She looked like an animated crab with a firearm for a claw. Her aim with the moving targets, however, was astonishing. And Deb—a kick-ass field agent—was paying attention, too. She realized it, revising their strategy right there in the middle of the course. Instead of Annie covering her back, she now covered Annie’s—giving her the freedom she needed to take out the targets willy-nilly.

And willy-nilly, take them out she did.

“Look at her,” Jules said, as if Ric and Yashi weren’t both paying attention raptly. “She’s actually listening to Deb’s instructions—she’s able to multitask while under fire—which is more than I can say about you, Yash.”

“Yep, I suck at that,” Yashi agreed. His strengths shone when he sat at a computer, inside of a surveillance van. “Firefights freak me out.”

“She’s always been really good at video games,” Ric volunteered. “She used to play with me and Bruce—her brother—all the time.”

As they watched, after Annie and Deb cleared the third and then the fourth building, the bell rang and the lights came up. The two women high-fived, and Yashi dashed down the stairs, leaving Ric to ask, “About that file you said Max started. The one with my name on the tab. If it’s not…”

“It’s the kind of file that the recruitment department creates, under the recommendation of someone important, like Max.”

Ric laughed his surprise. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Because of Max’s recommendation, you’re in the process of being seriously considered for recruitment,” Jules told him. “It’s been years, I know, since he met you, but apparently—despite the hitting-on-the-girlfriend thing?—you made a strong impression. I’ve seen the file. He’s followed your career, and when he found out you left the force, he got the ball rolling regarding clearances and various other standard procedures. I thought you should know that. Just…so you know that you don’t have to try to impress
me.
”

“I can’t shoot for shit,” Ric said. “Not like you. Not like…my freaking untrained receptionist can.”

“You’re not bad,” Jules said, leading the way down the stairs. “You’ve just got to practice. How often do you practice?”

“These days? Never.”

“Well, there you go.”

“How often does Annie practice?” Ric countered.

“Some people are naturals,” Jules said. “For years I had a partner—agency partner—and she was this world-class sharpshooter. She was amazing. And I was like,
Wow, you must’ve been practicing since you were three years old
, and she was like,
Nope.
First time she picked up a rifle was after she joined the Navy. It was part of the officers’ program, you know, learning to shoot, and she was like,
Hey, look what I can do.
I’m not saying she didn’t have to practice a lot—she did. She was extremely disciplined, and practice was the difference between being great and phenomenal. But she started at great. Kind of like Annie.”

And there she was. Loaded with adrenaline. Laughing and talking with Deb and Yashi. Sparkling with enthusiasm and glowing with pride.

Jules looked back at Ric, who’d turned, and was making a beeline for the men’s locker room.

“Good job,” Ric called to Annie before he disappeared.

It was as if he’d taken a bucket of cold water and thrown it into her face. She tried to hide her disappointment, but her smile lost about half of its wattage.

“That was really impressive,” Jules told her, told Deb, too.

“It was fun,” Annie said. “I bet it’s much scarier with real bullets, though.”

Deb handed Jules the printout that detailed their score. “She outshot me, almost two to one.”

“She outscored everyone but Jules,” Yashi observed.

“Because Deb was telling me what to do,” Annie pointed out, glancing over at the door through which Ric had vanished. “If I’d been in there alone, I wouldn’t have scored so high.”

She’d said that—she scored high—as if it were a bad thing. “So what else are you good at?” Jules asked her.

Annie crossed her arms. “You mean like Ping-Pong?” she asked. “Tennis, too, although I don’t really like playing. Golf’s fun…softball, pinball, darts, shuffleboard, pool”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“ultimate Frisbee, volleyball, basketball, skimboarding, waterskiing. I’ve never actually tried regular surfing, but windsurfing rocked, although I only did it once. I think it was supposed to humble me, but I used to fly kites on the beach when I was a kid, so I really had a feel for working with the wind instead of against it. I had a blast, but my boyfriend got a concussion when he capsized and the board hit him in the head. Two days later he dumped me.”

And suddenly it made sense. Annie actually thought Ric had gone off to pout because she’d done so well. Jules wasn’t quite sure what to say, since
his
interpretation of the motive behind Ric’s vanishing act was far different.

Yashi filled in the silence. “Your boyfriend was an idiot,” he said. “Personally, I love women who can kick me to the curb.”

“Speaking of the curb, we should hit the road,” Deb announced.

“We do need to get going,” Jules agreed. They had to be ready to leave for the party at Burns Point in just a few hours, and there was still a lot to do in preparation. “Let’s meet in the lobby in fifteen.”

Still, he caught Annie’s arm, stopping her before she followed Deb toward the women’s locker room. “Yo, Annie Oakley.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think Ric’s problem has anything to do with your skill level.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she obviously lied. “It’s not important, either way.”

“You should maybe talk to him,” Jules said. “I don’t think either of you are being honest about—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “What matters is that you’re going to keep him as safe as possible.”

“I will,” Jules promised.

“Good,” she said. “So what am I wearing tonight? Pasties and a G-string?”

Jules laughed. “This time I gave you a choice.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

J
ules brought backup to their meeting, in the form of his colleague Ric Alvarado.

“How’s your father?” Robin asked to cover his disappointment as he closed his hotel-suite door behind them.

“He’s doing all right,” Ric said. “He’s had to cancel some performances, and he’s not happy about that, but he knows it could’ve been a lot worse.”

Robin was as aware as hell of Jules, who’d traded in his suit and tie for a pair of jeans and a snugly fitting T-shirt that said
LIFE IS GOOD.
It was hard not to think about the last time Jules was up here in his suite, when they’d stood
right
over there…

Yeah.

Part of what Ric was saying broke through his distraction. “Performances?” Robin repeated.

“My father’s a jazz pianist,” Ric said.

“Teo Alvarado,” Jules told him.

“No way.” Robin couldn’t believe it. “I was just talking to my sister on the phone, and she told me to try to find him—you know, to hear him play—while I’m here in Sarasota. She adores his stuff. She went on and on about him.”

Actually, what Jane had really gone on and on about was
Riptide.
She’d finally gone to see a sneak preview of the movie, and she’d loved it. Robin’s performance as a Navy SEAL nicknamed Crash was her new favorite of all of his roles—including the ones he’d had in the films she herself had written and produced.

It made sense that Jane had liked the character, because Robin had been subtly channeling his brother-in-law as he’d played this part. Like Janey’s husband, Cosmo, Crash had a quiet stillness to him, a deep and faithful belief in truth and justice that merged tightly with both honor and integrity. After years of hanging with Cos, Robin had it down pretty accurately.

No doubt about it, this was his new personal favorite role, too. Playing Crash had made him feel strong and clean. Heroic.

A lot like he imagined Jules felt, just living his exemplary life.

Jane hadn’t said anything about the fight they’d had before Robin had left to make the rounds of festivals, so he hadn’t brought it up, either. Little Billy was doing fine, Cosmo was still overseas with his SEAL team, but he was in a place where he could e-mail her daily, so she was a little less anxious.

She
did
question him about Dolphina—apparently all the tabloids were running photos of the two of them together.

“She’s just a friend,” Robin had told his sister. “Really. She, um, knows.”

That had surprised Jane. That, and the bomb he’d oh-so-casually dropped right after that—telling her that Jules Cassidy was here in town.

Her response had surprised him in return. “Are you self-destructing?” Jane had asked. “Because right now, here in Hollywood? I wasn’t going to say anything, because I was afraid it might jinx you, but the buzz—about you, dumb-ass—is incredible. Maybe you should come home, because you need to experience it to really understand what’s happening.”

“I’m not self-destructing,” Robin protested. “I’m being careful.” And yeah, okay, maybe that was a lie. But he was going to start being more careful—at least for a little while longer.

“Robbie, people are comparing your acting to Marlon Brando and James Dean,” Jane told him. “If you start something with Jules, something that you can’t finish because you still want that recognition, that kind of a career…” She sighed. “You’re going to hurt him more than you already have. And then, when you’re finally ready to be honest about what you really want, he’s going to be gone. You’ll never get him back.”

“Yeah, whoops, someone’s at the door—I gotta go,” Robin had lied, because he’d been too much of a coward to admit that he finally
did
know what he really wanted.

He wanted it all.

And Robin didn’t want to tell his sister that. He didn’t want to hear a myriad of reasons why he could never make it work, that it was impossible, that no one could ever, really, have everything they wanted. He didn’t want to hear that there had to be sacrifice to appease the gods, there had to be sorrow and loss to truly appreciate true joy and happiness…

Bullshit, Janey.

He
could
have it all.

Right now Ric was talking about his father’s prognosis and progress as he scanned the room with some kind of electronic device. If that was meant to freak Robin out, well, mission accomplished, bro. Jesus, did they really think someone had bugged his room? And, if someone had, they’d gotten an earful this morning when Robin had taken Janey’s call.

Jules wandered over to the sliding-glass windows that lined one entire wall of the suite. The last time he was up here, the drapes had been closed. As Jules gazed past the railing of the balcony and out at the breathtaking view of the harbor, hands jammed into the front pockets of his jeans, Robin took it in, too. The water and sky were shades of heavenly brilliance. The green of the palm trees and the white of the sand were equally crisp and clear. It was perfection—as if life here were in high-def. Funny how, with all the hours he’d spent in this suite, he hadn’t noticed that before.

Of course, maybe the fact that Jules was part of the picture today had something to do with it.

“The good news is, he’s going to be okay,” Ric said, shutting off the device. “Room’s clear.” He looked at Robin and explained: “No listening devices.”

“I figured that’s what you were doing. It never occurred to me that—”

“I know.” Jules turned to face him. His outfit may have been casual, but the expression on his face was all business. “Which is why we need to talk about Gordon Burns and exactly what we’re doing here. You better sit down, this could take a while.”

Martell knew that Robin Chadwick was part of tonight’s big charade. It was, after all, Chadwick who’d gotten Jules, Ric, and Annie the invite out to Burns Point.

But it wasn’t until the limo pulled up out front and the movie star walked into Ric’s office that the craziness of the situation smacked Martell in the face.

He’d hung with Annie nearly all afternoon, which hadn’t been all that much fun since, after a brief and closemouthed trip to the CVS, she’d gone up to her room with her dog-thing and shut the door. Martell had actually finished the Waverly brief on his laptop in Ric’s office, despite the fact that sheer boredom made his eyes roll back in his head. He’d fallen asleep at least three times, midsentence, but it was finally done.

But things started heating when Mr. Famous strutted in. He was talking as he entered, Ric right behind him.

“I’m an actor,” Hollywood was saying. “You don’t have to tell me how to do it.”

“Yeah, I do,” Ric said. “I don’t want you to fuck with her.” He looked at Martell. “Where is she?”

She being Annie…“She’s upstairs.”

“You mean, literally?” Robin asked, clearly messing with Ric’s head. “Because that would be dramatic. Getting caught in flagrante in some closet, during the party? I like it.”

“I mean at all,” Ric told him, heavy on the grim.

“Seriously,” Cassidy, the little FBI dude, interjected as he closed the door behind them. “It’s important that we don’t do anything that might offend Gordon Burns. We’re going to be guests in his house. Plus there’s no guarantee that I’ll find what I’m looking for, which means I’ll probably have to go back.”

“I find that kind of funny—the idea that
we’ve
got to be careful not to offend someone who’s smuggling terrorists into the country,” Robin mused. “Like
that’s
not offensive. I mean, Jesus.” He held out his hand to Martell. “Hi, I’m Robin. I assume you’re supposed to be here.”

“Martell’s a friend,” Ric told the movie star. “Former police. He’ll be dropping by your hotel suite to check on Annie, frequently, until you leave on Sunday.”

Apparently Ric and Jules hadn’t managed to convince Mr. Big Stuff to wiedersehen the filmfest any earlier. No wonder Ric was pissed.

But Hollywood’s handshake was firm, and his eyes were the same startling blue as his shirt. Martell had always assumed his eye color was digitally enhanced on screen, or at least the result of special contact lenses.

Apparently not.

“Nice to meet you,” Chadwick said, and damn if he didn’t really mean it, too. The man was the best kind of player—or worst, depending upon one’s point of view. His sincerity wasn’t just an act. He meant what he said at the moment that he said it.

Martell knew because, as the saying went, game recognized game.

And Ric was putting Annie not just in his care but in his freaking hotel suite for three days and two nights…?

The fool in question ran upstairs to change, stopping briefly to knock on Annie’s door. “We’re leaving in ten,” Martell heard Ric call to her before he went into his room and closed the door with a bang.

“I’ll be out in a sec.” FBI exited the room, too, taking the garment bag he’d left in the closet earlier, heading into the office bathroom.

Which left Joe Famous wandering around the room, stopping to look at Ric’s framed diplomas and various awards, as Martell packed up his computer. “Wow, Ric went to Dartmouth.”

“May I, uh, offer you some advice?” Martell asked.

Robin turned toward him. “If it’s to tell me to return to California after the party tonight—”

“It’s not.”

“Then yeah,” Robin said. “Offer away.”

Okay, so how to say this tactfully? “You’re going to be spending a lot of time with Annie,” Martell said, “over the next few days.”

“That’s the plan.”

“You may not think so now,” Martell told him, “but you’re going to find yourself attracted to her. She’s, um…special, you know? But she’s Ric’s. She may not know it, and Ric may not even know it, but she is. So, you keep that in mind, aight? And you keep your hands off.”

“I will,” Robin promised, a picture of somber integrity. Of course, he wasn’t just a player, he was also an actor—a professional liar—which made his promises mean absolutely nothing.

“I’m serious,” Martell said as Ric came back downstairs, tying his tie. Apparently only potential Oscar nominees could attend a party at Burns Point without a jacket and tie, because FBI came out of the men’s suited up, too. But what a suit. It was Armani, clearly from the A-list side of the man’s closet. Dude looked
sharp.

“Serious about what?” Ric asked, but then immediately forgot what he’d been asking about. He apparently even forgot he had a mouth, because he left it dangling open as Annie came downstairs, her dog-thing in her arms.

She looked amazing. She’d gone with the black dress—Martell’s recommendation. It was classy, yet the skirt was short enough to show off her shapely legs, its neckline low enough to give just a hint of cleavage.

But it was her hair and makeup that was making Ric look as if he were going to faint from the shock. Apparently that was what she’d been doing all that time, locked away in her room.

Her golden-brown curls were piled on top of her head, the style simple yet, again, pure class.

And the makeup didn’t necessarily make her look prettier—she was pretty enough to start with. But with her eyes shadowed, her lashes dark with mascara, her lips outlined, and her cheeks accented with whatever shit that was that women wore on their faces, she’d made herself look sophisticated. Elegant.

Like the kind of woman even a movie star might try extra hard to get with.

“You look great.” Robin, naturally, was the first to find his voice as she crouched to put Pierre onto the floor. The dog had caught a whiff of Jules and needed to rush over to greet him.

“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” Annie told Robin, glancing at Ric, who, fool that he was, had turned away.

As if he were afraid that if he stared at her for too long, he might go blind.

As the silence stretched on, it became clear that none of the geniuses in the room knew quite how to respond to
I didn’t want to embarrass you.

Jules was kneeling next to the dog-thing, looking up at Robin as if it were his call. But Robin couldn’t seem to look away from Jules and Pierre.

So Martell told Annie what they all were thinking. “Damn, beeyotch. You hot dot-com to start with, fo’ shizzle. But tonight? You’s onion booty, ya know what I’m saying?”

Annie laughed—mission accomplished—as she looked at him. “Actually, no.”

“Goodness gracious, madam,” he translated in his best Colin Firth. “You are, for certain, always quite attractive. But tonight, your lovely radiance could make a grown man weep.”

She sparkled as she laughed. “Well, thank you,” she told him, then looked over at Ric again. This time the fool actually met her gaze, managing to manufacture a smile while he was at it. Go, team.

“You don’t get to come again,” she added, and it took Martell a second to realize she was talking to him. “To the party?” she clarified.

“Oh,” he said as Jules gave Pierre one last pat and began pulling what looked like architectural drawings from a cardboard tube. “Yeah, no. Gordon Burns makes me throw up in my mouth, so it’s just as good. I’m on backup tonight—you run into any trouble, you give me a call, I’ll come save the day.” In the meantime, he was heading to the hospital, to visit Teo and figure out who they could sue to get the most media coverage.

Still, he moved closer to get a look at what was definitely the floor plan of Gordon Burns’s estate.

“I want everyone to see this,” Jules said. “But it’s really just for Ric and me.” He looked at Ric. “If for some reason I’m unable to slip away—”

Ric nodded. “It’ll be up to me. Not Annie. Or Robin. Your job is to distract Burns,” he reminded them.

“The party’s going to be held here.” FBI pointed to the drawing. “There’s a courtyard—an outdoor patio, surrounded on three sides by the main living area. The entire area overlooks the harbor—which makes surveillance tricky but not impossible. We’ve been watching the setup, and from the number of tables, we’re estimating there’ll be around fifty guests.”

That was a good thing. The bigger the crowd, the easier to slip away and not be missed.

“There’s a local myth,” Jules told them, “that Burns has his entire place wired with cameras and mics, so he can listen in on everyone who comes to Burns Point. That’s not true, which is a shame, because if he did, we would’ve been able to tap into his system. We’ll need to be discreet while we’re there, but any threat of being overheard or watched will come from the old-fashioned way—Burns’s security guards.”