Shadow's Lady (A Pajaro Bay Cozy Mystery + Sweet Romance) (17 page)

"Juliet," she said.

"Yeah. Juliet. She wasn't going to college. Just came along and stayed with me. We had a little apartment. She had been in some trouble with drugs in high school, but I thought she was clean. She told me she was clean." He closed his eyes, and then spit out some short sentences as if he wanted to get through this part of story quickly: "I was busy. I didn't notice how unhappy she was. She wasn't speaking to her parents. She didn't know anybody. I was busy with school and a work-study job I had. She started staying away from the apartment. Longer and longer times would pass. She wouldn't tell me where she was going."

He sat up straight again, and reached down to rub his sore leg.

"One day she didn't come back. It took me some time, but I finally tracked her down. In the Tenderloin."

"The Tenderloin?"

"A part of San Francisco where someone would go if they were looking for drugs. For trouble." He sighed. "A place someone would go if they were on their way downhill and didn't know how to get back up again."

"But you found her."

He stopped rubbing his leg. His hands went to his lap and he clenched them into fists. "Eventually. She was dead when I found her. In a drug house. The other people there hadn't even noticed she had died. They were lost in their own personal nightmares. She had died all alone in that room full of people—" His voice broke then. He looked down at his hands.

Lori moved closer to him on the couch. She put her hand over his clenched fists. "It wasn't your fault."

He opened his hands, staring at the palms as if he would find an answer there. She moved back from him a bit. Watched as he got the emotion under control and a mask came down over his face. When he finally looked up at her he appeared completely impassive.

He continued, in a controlled voice that betrayed no emotion. "I was questioned by the police for a long time. This one cop—I thought he was a cop—he kept bringing me in to talk. I thought he blamed me. I thought he was looking for a way to pin her death on me."

She got up and went to look out the lotus door. Shadowfax as always got up to follow her. She saw only her own pale reflection in the glass, as if the world outside didn't even exist. Even the black dog seemed as shadowy as a ghost in the glass. Nothing seemed real but that crisp, impassive voice behind her. "So what happened next?" she asked, sensing he was leading somewhere with this, that this was more than just a story from the past that he felt he needed to share with her.

"I'd prefer you stayed away from the window."

"Because someone might be out there reading my lips?" She said it as a joke, but when she turned back to face him she saw the look on his face. "You're serious."

"Actually, they can decode the vibrations the glass makes when you speak."

She almost said, 'you've gotta be kidding,' but he clearly wasn't.

"Please," he said, holding out a hand.

She came back and sat down in her former place at the far end of the couch, and Shadowfax took up his post again at her feet.

"The man I thought was a cop came to me a few months later. He told me there was a gang of bikers who were flooding college campuses all along the coast with a particularly high-grade form of methamphetamine. Kids were dying. He asked me if I wanted to do something about it."

All the pieces fell into place. Her instincts telling her this man was good, and kind, and somehow not what he was supposed to be. "You're an undercover cop." She said it in a whisper, suddenly aware of his obsession with secrecy and fears of being overheard.

But he shook his head. "Not a police officer."

"What then? FBI, CIA, NSA? Something like that?"

He smiled. "Something like that. You wouldn't have heard of us. That's sort-of the point."

She grinned at him, relieved that everything her gut had been telling her was true, and that she wasn't nuts to find herself wanting to trust him, despite all the evidence telling her he was evil. "You're a good guy."

He laughed at that. "Well, if you divide the world into good guys and bad guys, I guess you could say I'm a good guy."

She moved over to sit right next to him, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him.

Reluctantly, Matt pulled away from her. "You won't want to do that once you hear the rest."

She sat back. "What else is there? You are
not
evil like everyone says. You just pretend to be to stop the bad guys. Isn't that the truth?"

"That's close enough," he muttered, his eyes watching her mouth, though he had been the one to pull away from the kiss.

"We're both interested in each other—or am I wrong about that?"

He reached up his hand and brushed one finger across her lips. "No. You're not wrong." Then he frowned. "But there's more. My job is dangerous. And anyone who spends time with me will have to deal with the complications of that."

She moved back to curl up on the far side of the sofa again, hugging her knees up to her chest, walling herself off from the danger. "Your big, messy, unsafe life," she muttered.

"I wouldn't have described it quite like that, but yeah." He sighed. "It's complicated." He looked down at the device on the coffee table. "I'm running out of battery power, so I have to explain the rest quickly. Then, if you're still speaking to me, I'll take you down to the wharf and make you pizza for dinner." He looked over at her, as if he expected her to say no.

"If you're asking me out, the answer is yes. Unless you're about to tell me you're not a drug dealer but you secretly torture kittens or something."

"Nope. But...." He hesitated again. "Let me just explain a bit of what's going on. Obviously nothing I say here can leave this room."

She nodded. "Obviously."

"So let's say there's this off-books agency. We'll call it the Project."

"I've never heard of it."

He smiled. "That would be the point of an off-books black ops agency."

"Okay. Got it. So I can't google them and learn about their missions or anything like that."

"Exactly. They don't exist. They're funded out of shell corporations and they have no official budget and no one actually works for them."

"What do you mean, no one works for them?"

"I technically work for an import-export business based in L.A. My partner works for a tourist company based in Hawaii. No one in the government has ever heard of us. Officially."

"But why is all this necessary? I mean—" she nodded to the device on the table. "This cloak and dagger stuff? Aren't you just trying to catch drug dealers?"

"We don't catch drug dealers. Not the ones you're thinking of—not some sad character with a drug habit who sells a little on the side to make ends meet." He sighed. "We go after the big fish. The billion-dollar money launderers, the international corporations with offshore bank accounts who buy politicians and run the prison gangs and are the real ones controlling the small-time criminals you see arrested on the evening news."

"White collar crime," she said.

"Not unless you consider murdering hundreds of people white collar crime. Let me give you an example. Let's say there's this really vicious, murderous guy who runs an international drug cartel. We'll call him
el hombre con las manos sucias
."

She thought back to her basic Spanish class. "The Man with—"

"—the Dirty Hands."

"So he doesn't bathe regularly."

"Actually he wears designer suits and is college educated and fluent in several languages. He got his nickname because he strangles his enemies with his bare hands. It's his signature. It's a very effective leadership style," he said dryly. "He has tremendously loyal employees, because they know if they quit they'll go out in a body bag."

Lori sat and listened, trying to accept that this world he was talking about really existed. That there were really people who did things like this.

"Are you okay?" Matt asked. "I'm sorry this is upsetting you."

"No," she said firmly. "I'm fine. But why don't they just arrest this dirty hands guy for murder?"

"He's not in the U.S. He left when he was placed on the most wanted list. In his home country, he bribes police and government officials so they won't arrest him. Even though he has killed American citizens, and has committed crimes in the United States, our government can't touch him. Now our government
could
send a team of soldiers into that other country and kill him, but that would cause an international incident. So he can sit in his mansion, collecting his billions of dollars in blood money, and nothing can be done to stop him."

"Except something off the record, off the books?"

He nodded. "That's where we come in. The Project's job is to find a way to make him do something stupid, like, say, set foot onto U.S. soil so he can be arrested. That's the only way to stop the killing, the torture."

"If he's so smart, how do you make him do that?"

"By convincing him that if he comes here he can exact revenge on his number one enemy at no risk to himself."

"Who's his number one enemy?"

He smiled. "That would be me. I got inside his organization and then betrayed him. Very publicly. In a very embarrassing way that made him lose face. He can't let that stand, or he'll look weak. He has to stop me. And he wants to do it himself, to prove his invincibility."

"Let me get this straight: you are going to get this dangerous guy—"

"Sergio Moreno."

"Sergio Moreno, to come to Pajaro Bay to kill you?"

"To the lighthouse, actually, which is why your great-aunt's last-minute plan to invite you there messed up our plan. It wouldn't have bothered Moreno if he found out about you. He'd just have you killed." He paused. "But we really didn't want him to do that."

"Gee, I appreciate that. That's why you came to the island?"

"Except I got shot."

"Who shot you?"

"Good question."

"But you are going to go back out there and let this guy strangle you?"

Matt nodded. He seemed to be pretty casual about the whole thing. "Midnight tonight."

"How melodramatic."

"He's a melodramatic kind of guy. I don't have to let him strangle me. I just have to catch him on U.S. soil."

"That's nice. So you don't have to actually
die
to catch him."

"I'd rather not, if it isn't necessary."

"That's good. You'll just arrest him as soon as you see him."

"Not exactly. There's another problem."

"Which is?"

He glanced down at the device again. "We're about out of time here, so I'll say it quickly. There's someone with knowledge of our organization that's been feeding info to Moreno. We have to find that person. That's the real purpose of our mission. We need to make that person show himself."

She felt a chill run over her, though the room was warm enough. "You're not just telling me this for no reason, are you? This all has something to do with me." He held out his hand to her, and this time she took it, scooting over close to him and resting her head on his shoulder. "Please tell me this guy isn't after me."

"I'd love to tell you that. I can't."

She sat up. "Why? Why me?"

"The mole, the enemy agent if you will, told Moreno your name. It's possible they plan to use you in some way to get to me."

"Oh, great."

"It's also possible that the message with your name is just a way of getting me rattled, distracting me. The message wasn't sent in code, so we were able to intercept it. Now that's either a stupid mistake on their part, or they did it deliberately to confuse us."

"But you don't know which?"

"No. So you need to be protected. And I've arranged for that."

"Are you sure the person protecting me isn't the mole?"

"You are good at this. Yes. I'm sure. The person is Joe Serrano."

"Deputy Joe?"

"You've met him?"

She nodded.

"Good. I know he's not the mole. I've known him all my life and he's one of the few people I really trust in this town. So he will watch this house all night while we are running around playing cops and robbers. As long as you stay here you'll be safe."

She shuddered. "What if I'd gone to the opera with Aunt Zee?"

"Then we would have had an agent follow you. But since you're here, we've got Joe."

The lights on the machine flashed a red warning. "And now we have to stop talking about it," he said. "Joe gets off duty at 9 p.m. In the meantime, we'll go have dinner, and I'll keep you in my sights until he can take over."

He reached to switch off the device and she said, "Wait! I wanted to ask you about Shadowfax—where he comes from, his training, all that."

"We need this working for that story." He nodded to the machine. "I'll get fresh batteries at the restaurant and tell you the rest."

When he parked at the base of the wharf, Lori got out of his crazy-looking sports car and grabbed Shadowfax's leash. "Come on, boy." The poor dog had been jammed on the floorboards while she sat in the bucket seat. Not the most practical car, but she figured it fit the evil "Shadow" she was hanging out with. The dog managed to scramble out of the car.

Matt got his cane and they walked all the way to the end of the wharf where the restaurant sat. He wasn't limping too badly, but she wondered how much the wound might be hurting him.

But when she asked him he just shrugged it off. "Would you prefer ocean or marina view?" he asked.

She hadn't seen the restaurant on a clear night before. The view was incredible. One side of the restaurant faced out toward the open sea and the lighthouse island, and the other side looked back at the lights of Pajaro Bay and the boats in the marina.

"Wow," was all she could think of to say.

"Yeah," he said. "There are companies that would kill for this spot, but we've got the lease for another 40 years. As long as we pay the bills, it's ours."

"Have you ever thought of just coming back here and working in the family business?"

"Not until recently," he said, looking at her with an expression she couldn't pin down—longing, maybe?

He opened the door for her.

"What about the dog?" she asked.

"We'll eat out on the deck," he answered.

Inside the place was pretty quiet, with a couple of women (one elegant and sleek, one red-haired and extremely pregnant) laughing together over pizza at one table, and an attractive, dark-haired couple holding hands at a table for two in front of one of the ocean-facing windows. The candles on the tables flickered and the place smelled wonderfully of pizza, making her mouth water.

Matt stiffened. She noticed he was looking at the nice couple holding hands.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

The man at the table looked up. He quickly looked away from Matt as if he were embarrassed.

Matt took her hand and led them quickly to a side door and outside. "Who is that?" she whispered.

"Kyle Madrigal," he said.

"Aren't you friends?"

"We were."

She looked back in the windows and saw that the man was watching Matt with something that looked like pity. She looked away, feeling embarrassed for Kyle, for Matt, for all of them.

The empty outside dining area had high glass walls that protected it from the wind. They were alone out there, with a view of the marina below them. Matt turned on the outside lights, then lit a gas heater that created a circle of warmth around one of the tables. He motioned for her to sit.

She did, and signaled Shadowfax to lie down next to her. He did, then put his head on his paws and watched the proceedings.

Matt gathered some of the unlit candles from the other empty tables and brought them to their table.

She saw that the candles were battery operated. He opened them and took the batteries, exchanging them with the ones in the little device he'd used before.

Once the green lights were on, he said: "After tonight, things will change. I went to work in Moreno's organization about five years ago. That was the beginning of this case. Tonight is the end. One way or another."

"Meaning one of you might end up dead."

"Or both of us," he said with a shrug.

"When will you know? If your plan worked, I mean?"

He smiled. "Let's just say you should stay away from the wharf around midnight. So what do you want on your pizza?"

She shook her head.

"I know," he said. "Quick change of subject. But we've got to get you back to the house by nine, when Joe will be there to guard you."

"I don't like the idea of being guarded."

"It's better than the alternative. Now don't go getting all isolationist again, Lori."

"Yeah, I know. No man is an island."

He laughed. "I didn't think I'd made an impression."

"You and Aunt Zee have both given me the lecture."

"Good. I think your Aunt Zee may be a lot more astute than I realized back when I was a kid. Now, about—"

"The pizza? Mushrooms, olives," she paused. "Can't think of anything else. Cheese, of course."

"No meats? We make our own
linguiça calabresa
."

"Which is?"

"A kind of sausage."

She grimaced.

"Okay, mushrooms, olives and cheese."

"What about you?" she asked.

"I like Hawaiian. So how about half veggie and half Hawaiian?"

"Sounds good."

He showed her the signal for leaving Shadowfax in a down and stay, and then they took a side door into the kitchen.

He was like a different person there, joking with his sister, CeCe, who was in charge of the kitchen that evening. He kept up a running commentary with her while expertly rolling out dough and "docking and saucing it" with their own homemade marinara, topping the pizza with quick, agile movements and then sliding it into the pizza oven with a flick of the pizza board.

He wiped his hands on a towel and then grinned at Lori, who was sitting on a stool in the corner where she wouldn't get in the way.

"You doing okay?" he asked her.

She smiled. "You ask that a lot."

"Is that a problem?"

"I guess not." She thought about the independence she was fighting so hard to achieve. But sitting there in the kitchen, with Matt's sisters running around chattering with each other, it seemed like a nice place to be. One where family were there for each other and even the silences felt warm and comfortable.

She looked up and saw that Matt wasn't looking at her anymore. He had his back to her, and he stood stiffly, with clenched fists.

She got up and went over to stand next to him.

CeCe was sneaking a kiss with a man just outside the back door. It was Owen Nunes.

"What's the matter?" she said softly to Matt. "It's just Owen. He's a nice guy."

"A convenient guy," Matt said.

"What does that mean?"

He shook his head.

Owen looked up and saw Matt staring. He quickly said something to CeCe and left. She came back inside, glared pointedly at Matt, and then went out into the dining room.

Matt got the pizza out of the oven, sliced it, set it on a serving plate, handed Lori a pair of red-rimmed stoneware plates and shakers of parmesan and red pepper flakes, and they went back out to the patio.

"So what was that all about?" Lori asked.

Matt turned the machine back on and then said, "it's awfully convenient for Owen to show up at the lighthouse after I was shot, and then turn out to be dating my sister without me knowing about it."

"Does she usually tell you who she goes out with?"

He shrugged. "But still, it's an interesting coincidence."

"It's a small town, Matt. Isn't it pretty normal to see the same people all over the place?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. But if he's the one who shot me in the kayak it would explain a lot."

Lori felt a jolt in her stomach. "Kayak," she whispered.

"What?"

"Zane has a kayak."

"Owen's son? So? Lots of people do."

"Maybe," she said. She glanced down at the dog, who was still in his down-stay position, but was staring at her, waiting for the slightest signal that he could get up and have some pizza. "How does the dog ride in the kayak with you?"

"He has his own seat. It's a two-seater."

"Yellow," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Zane has a two-seater yellow kayak?" Matt said quietly.

"Yeah. And he was a little defensive about it, now that I think about it. And I didn't see it the first time I was on their boat. Then when I went there to call the coast guard, there was this big—"

"—two-seater yellow kayak."

"Right there on the boat. And Zane kind of stammered when he was telling me about it. I didn't really think anything of it at the time."

"Your pizza's getting cold," he said.

"How can you think about pizza when someone you've known all your life might be a killer?"

"You get used to it. Have something to eat before you starve. And release Shadowfax from the stay so I can give him a slice of mine."

She shook her head, then did as told. "I wouldn't be so calm."

"That's why I get the big bucks," he said.

"Do you?"

"Of course not. I'm really just a government employee, even if it's unofficially." He looked at his watch, which she noticed was big, gold, and had more than a few diamonds on it.

He saw her looking and said, "Yeah. Part of the image. Like the car. Could be worse. Wait'll you get a load of how my partner is dressed." She must have still looked worried, because he said, "think of me as an actor, just playing a part."

"The critics don't usually carry guns," she said, and he laughed.

•••

When they'd finished, he answered her questions about Shadowfax.

"So he's over ten years old then," she said, feeling a pang at the thought that just when she was getting to know him, he was coming to the end of his life.

"He's been through a lot. But he seems happier with you than he ever was with me. I think you're good for him. And he deserves it after all he's been through."

"So where did he originally come from?"

"He was trained as a cadaver dog—yes, it's what you think. He's trained to alert on the smells of death."

She shuddered.

"He was retired after he was shot at a crime scene. The wound was superficial, but after that he was spooked by guns and couldn't do his job. So he was adopted by one of my fellow agents, Gloria Montes. But...." He trailed off, then looked out at the marina.

"What? Something awful happened, didn't it?"

He shook his head. "It was no one's fault. Shadowfax, they called him Sacha then, really belonged to Gloria's son. He was dying of cancer, and when he died, Gloria came in the room and saw Sacha alerting—"

"—Oh, no."

"It wasn't the dog's fault. He was remembering his old training. He couldn't know how upsetting that would be for the parents."

"So they got rid of him."

Matt shook his head. "She wouldn't turn the dog out. That's not the kind of person she is. But it was hard for her, and so I said I'd take him and give him a fresh start."

"With a new name and a new owner."

"And now he's yours."

"So how does the alerting work? Does he still do it?"

"You don't have to worry. It's not like you're going to be around any dead bodies."

"I'm not thinking that. Scientists think dogs can detect a certain odor on a person before they have a seizure. And I'm wondering if maybe he can be taught, since he already knows to recognize one odor...."

"Maybe he can be taught to alert on another. It's very possible. I mean, he's alerted on me when I've been around a dead body, so he hasn't forgotten how to do it."

"I'm not even going to ask what you were doing with a dead body," she said. "Just tell me what to look for."

He laughed. "Yeah. You don't wanna know. Okay, he was taught to make a silent alert. He doesn't bark or run around, he just sits."

"Sits? Like he's doing now?" At the moment he was sitting, looking a bit vacant, and scratching his belly with a back foot. Then he burped, and they both laughed.

"No. Definitely not like that. It's hard to describe, but once you see it, you'll recognize it. He sits up straight, with his front paws together—"

"—And staring at you like he's trying to tell you something!"

"You mean you've seen it?"

"Yeah. He's already alerting on my seizures, I think." She paused. "You don't suppose Gloria's son had seizures? Some kinds of cancer can cause them."

"He had brain cancer, so I suppose that might have caused seizures. It's a hard subject for her to talk about, but I'll try to ask her."

She gave Shadowfax a big hug. "You smart dog, you!"

"Maybe that's why he glommed onto you as soon as he met you. Maybe you seemed familiar to him." Matt grinned. "So I guess I shouldn't take it so personally that he dumped me as soon as you showed up. He fell in love with you the first time he saw you." He turned his head away, but she thought she heard him mutter, "he's not the only one."

She sat there with the dog, watching Matt, wondering how to say "Don't go out there tonight and risk your life. I don't care if Moreno gets away. I don't care what he does. Don't go out there and die."

But how could she say that to him? How could she tell him to give up his life's work for her?

So she said nothing, just kept her arms around Shadowfax and let him kiss her face.

But suddenly the quiet was broken by shouting inside the restaurant. Matt jumped up as CeCe came running out onto the deck. "Camilla's in labor! We can't get a signal to call the doctor!"

Matt quickly turned off the signal jammer and stuck it in his coat pocket. He ran inside the restaurant.

Lori put Shadowfax in a down/stay and followed Matt inside in time to hear Kyle shout at him, "don't touch her!"

Matt stood back, a hurt look on his face, as Kyle bent over the pregnant redhead and helped her stand.

The woman who had been with Camilla was on the phone, talking frantically. "Dr. Lil? Thank God I finally got through. She's in labor. What do we do?" She turned to Kyle and his wife, who were helping Camilla to the exit. "Put her in my car!"

The woman followed them out, still talking on the phone.

Lori went back out and got Shadowfax, then came back and saw that Matt was still standing in the same spot. She took his hand and they went out onto the wharf.

Two cars were heading off up the hill to the medical clinic, and the wharf was quiet, except for a strangely dressed man Lori had seen at the clinic with Matt.

Matt smiled and went over to the man. He motioned for Lori to join him.

"Lori, this is George Asher."

The man was wearing a striped shirt and green pants. He saw her staring and said, "I know, you're impressed. It's not just anyone who can pull off this look."

She smiled, trying to keep up with the sudden shifts in mood she felt following in Matt's wake. Life, death, love, hate. Aunt Zee had been right: if she wanted a messy and unsafe life she was hanging out with the right guy.