Xtreme (13 page)

At seven o'clock, when he was nursing a pleasant buzz, he headed back to the trailer to shower, shave, and pull on his own lucky shirt.

He unlocked the door to the trailer and pulled it shut behind him, well acquainted with the old rust-bucket's quirky lock. He was already stripping off his shirt on his way to the bathroom when he spotted the man sitting in his recliner and nearly pissed himself.

“Hello, Ray,” the man said.

“Ack!” Hightower struggled back into his shirt, his arms getting stuck in the armholes so that he flailed ineffectually and knocked against the coffee table before managing to get his head through the neck. “Who the fuck are you?”

His hand was already on the blade he kept tucked into his waistband, but he was starting to relax because the man hadn't made any move for a weapon or to stand up.
Something crinkled underfoot, and he looked down, puzzled to see a shiny blue blanket spread out on the floor.

“Are you here for Hector?” he guessed. Hector had loaned him a fairly large amount of money last time he was in town after his luck ran out at an ill-considered casino binge. Peter Hightower really had considered repaying it, but in the end it was easier to simply disappear again. “Look, tonight for sure, my old lady just got paid.”

Which might or might not be true—the woman he was going to see worked at a chicken processing plant—but all he really needed to do was get this guy off his back long enough to get some cash out of his safe. Just the cost of doing business.

Except…the man had called him Ray. That was different, to say the least. “Hey, how'd you—”

The man lifted his hand slightly, as though he were offering a friendly wave. There was a tiny whooshing sound and a pinprick in Peter Hightower's arm. He looked down to see a tiny plastic-vaned dart embedded in his bicep. “What the…” he muttered, as he tried to pull the thing free. Weirdly, his arm felt like it weighed a ton, and he had the hardest time moving his fingers.

In the next second, he felt his legs give way and he fell in a heap onto the blanket which, he realized, was not a blanket at all but a plastic tarp.

He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling and trying to talk. But talking didn't happen. His tongue wouldn't move. Neither would anything else.

“That needle was coated with etorphine,” the man said in a friendly tone, his voice betraying a faint accent. “It will completely immobilize you for several hours. You won't be able to move, but you'll still be able to feel.”

He crouched down next to the tarp. Peter Hightower rolled his eyes, trying to protest, as the man took his finger and thumb and flicked his cheek, not hard enough to hurt.

“See?” the man said. Then he dug into the backpack lying next to the sofa, pulling out a cloth case containing a variety of metal instruments.

And Peter Hightower, whose real name was Ray Huber, who had once lived in a shabby bungalow in a poor Los Angeles neighborhood with the widow of Marcus Ryder, the acclaimed artist, and her pretty little girl…he did see. He saw entirely too well. And if he had been able to speak, he would have started screaming.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two days after Stone Everson was admitted to the hospital in Las Vegas, he was declared sufficiently stabilized to be transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where his recovery would be overseen by one of the top trauma departments in the country. His condition was still touch and go, according to the surgical team that had performed a nine-hour operation to address the damage to several of his major organs, but he had survived the worst of it.

Marco Vega shared this news with Chelsea in the hotel room that had come to feel like a prison. After the first day he had spent with her, a junior agent named Memphis Sunderland had taken over babysitting her during the day while her nights were still spent with Tabby. Tabby had come in early so that she could be there when Marco broke the good news.

“So he's really going to be all right?” Chelsea asked, barely daring to breathe.

“He's getting the best treatment there is,” Marco said. “And he's a tough son of a gun.”

“Can I see him?”

Marco grinned. “He's allowed visitors tonight after dinner, as a matter of fact. We thought you and Tabby might like to go.”

Chelsea cheered, high-fiving Tabby. But Marco looked serious. “There's just one more thing,” he said gravely. “It's also good news, but you might want to prepare yourself. It's…difficult to see.”

He took a photo out of an envelope and laid it on the table. It showed a man lying on a blue plastic tarp, his mouth covered with electrical tape, his eyes staring blindly at nothing. The photograph only showed his shoulders and the top of his torso, which was naked and covered with crisscrossed, angry red welts.

The man was Roy Huber.

Chelsea touched the edge of the photograph, revulsion and hatred roiling within her. Even after so many years had passed, his hair turned to silver and his face etched with the wrinkles of age, she could never forget the cold blue eyes, the hard planes of Huber's face. He'd stared at her over the lens of his camera, keeping up a constant stream of instruction, making her twist her body this way and that, striking poses that she didn't even understand but that made her feel scoured out from within. His words had been oily, poisoned, worse than weapons. When he had spoken her name, it felt like a curse.

“Is he dead?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“How?”

The two agents looked at each other. Marco took back the photograph and slid it back into its envelope. “Blood loss,” he finally said. Chelsea understood that she would not benefit from knowing more.

Chelsea didn't ask who had killed him. She didn't need to. She already knew.

Her message had worked. She had taken a gamble that Ricardo would be watching Donny's apartment, knowing that the Russians were waiting for an opportunity
to snatch her. And it had worked perfectly. When Vega sent an agent to check on Donny, he must have also shared the news that Huber had escaped.

Chelsea had no idea how Ricardo had tracked Huber down after that. She supposed she never would. But all that mattered was that he had done the thing that the FBI could not, the act that would finally make her feel safe from Roy Huber.

“The rest doesn't matter,” she said, mostly to herself.

“What do you mean?” Marco said.

“It's just—with Roy dead, everything is different.” She didn't know how to explain it—the sense that she was free to move through her life unencumbered by the past. That joy and hope were now possible. That she could finally let go of the nightmare she had lived through.

“Well, there's something more you should know. We received an email this morning. No way to trace the source—it was sent from a bogus IP address and highly encrypted. But it contained information about several major child pornography traffickers who have been distributing your photos, along with hundreds of other underage kids. This is going to keep the Internet Crimes guys busy for months and with any luck, it's going to shut a lot of these jokers down and send them to jail.”

Ricardo. It had to have been Ricardo. “He forced Roy to tell him,” she said.

“We have no knowledge of the source of the information,” Marco said. Of course he couldn't say more—but something in his tone let Chelsea know that he believed the same thing she did: Ricardo had tortured the information out of Roy. The marks on Roy's body hadn't ended up there for Ricardo's enjoyment—they'd been made with a purpose. And Chelsea guessed that when that purpose had been served—when Ricardo had all the information he needed—he'd dealt the killing blow to the evil man who had ruined her childhood.

#

On the way to the hospital, Chelsea told Tabby that she didn't want to go back to the hotel. Tabby didn't seem surprised.

“You're not very good at relaxing, are you?” she said. “You're pretty much the worst detainee I've ever had to guard. No offense.”

“Gee, how could I be offended,” Chelsea asked drily.

“The thing is, if we let you out on your own, you're right back in the crosshairs. The Russians haven't been able to get to Ricardo yet. You're the ticket they're dying to get their hands on.”

“Then why don't you just arrest the Russians?”

Tabby rolled her eyes. “It's not that simple.”

“If I don't get back to my gallery soon, the place is going to be in shambles. My assistant doesn't know how to do the invoicing, and I have half a dozen events I was in the process of setting up.”

“None of which you'll be able to do if you're dead,” Tabby said. “Look, cool your jets for just a couple more days. Something big's going down soon. With any luck, you won't need us afterward.”

“What do you mean? What's going on?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. Just keep being your difficult, ungrateful self for a little while longer, and hopefully, you'll be able to hear it on the news along with everyone else.”

Tabby spoke with a smile on her face, but underneath her words was a tension that let Chelsea know that she wasn't kidding: something really was coming to a head with the Russians.

All of that was temporarily forgotten as she followed Tabby up to the critical care unit of the hospital where Stone was being cared for. Outside his door, two police officers stood guard. They waved the pair in when Tabby showed her badge.

The room was dim, the only light seeping in through the curtains and flashing on the monitors surrounding the bed where Stone was lying in a nest of blankets and pillows. His chest was swaddled with bandages and an IV hung from his arm. His eyes were closed, but as they entered he said, “Please tell me you've brought me a ribeye steak.”

“Sorry, boss,” Tabby said, her voice husky. As for Chelsea, she couldn't manage to say anything at all, speechless with relief to see Stone well enough to talk.

His eyes flew open and his face split into a broad grin. “Well, I'll be damned. I thought it was that cruel nurse again, the one who keeps coming in here to bother me every time I manage to nod off. How are my best girls?”

“You know you aren't supposed to call us ‘girls,' boss,” Tabby scolded with a smile on her face. “HR will have a fit.”

“Sorry, force of habit—my wife and daughters have been with me around the clock since I got here. The doctor finally told them to go home and get some rest.” He looked at Chelsea, his expression softening. “I heard about Huber. I'm just sorry I wasn't able to get the job done for you myself.”

Tears filled Chelsea's eyes, and she reached for Stone's hand. He squeezed back.

“I don't know what I would have done if…I mean, you've been there for me from the start.”

“Listen, Tab, would you mind going to the cafeteria and bringing me a root beer?” Stone asked, not taking his eyes off Chelsea. “All they let me have up here is broth and Jell-O. Apparently all I get is liquids for another twenty-four hours.”

“Sure thing,” Tabby said.

Stone waited until she was gone to speak. “Truth is, I just wanted to speak to you alone for a minute. How are you? Really?”

“I'm…” Chelsea was at a loss for words. She'd experienced so many emotions in the last few days, from fear to longing to ecstasy to anger to…love. “Bored,” she finally settled on. “I don't know how Tabby can stand it. We've been staring at the same four walls ever since you picked me up.”

“Listen, I know it must have been hard. Turning de Santos in like that. I know you had…feelings for him.”

“It's fine,” Chelsea said rigidly because to admit to the truth would open the floodgates to all the rest. “It never would have worked, anyway.”

“You sure about that?”

Her gaze shot up to meet Stone's. He was looking at her steadily, his expression concealing some unspoken thought.

“I've only known him a couple of months,” she protested. “And a lot of that time, he was flying around the world apparently being a criminal mastermind. I don't even have his phone number and he doesn't seem to have a home, at least not like normal people. And ever since he came along, I haven't even been able to go to work without fear that someone's going to kidnap me or kill me or—or—”

Or kill him
, she didn't say. Because that was the worst of it: never knowing if he was going to make it back, wherever he went when he wasn't with her. These last few days she had realized that her worst fear about Ricardo wasn't what he did for a living—but whether he would survive it.

“He is a man of convictions,” Stone said cryptically.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Listen…it's not going in the official report, and no one will ever be able to prove it, but I think we both know who took Huber out.”

Chelsea said nothing even when Stone squeezed her hand again. “It's okay, Chelsea, I'm on leave until they declare me fit again, so nothing I'm saying to you is in an official capacity. Do you understand?”

She nodded, not daring to speak. Being with Ricardo had taught her to assume she was being overheard, that every room was bugged.

As if reading her mind, Stone laughed, then grimaced from the pain. “Gotta learn not to do that. Listen, you don't have to worry. They don't allow any of our toys in here, it would probably interfere with all those machines I'm hooked up to—and you can bet my team's swept it for any mischief anyone else might have gotten up to.”

“It's just…I don't know what you're trying to tell me.”

“Well, it's like this. Agent Vega came to see me this morning. Filled me in on a few things unrelated to my big fiasco in the desert.”

“Oh…?”

“Yeah, asshole came all the way here just to talk shop. Seems a lot's been happening down in Art Crimes. Personally, I think he was just taking the opportunity to show off, since I'm kind of stuck here.”