Zack (In the Company of Snipers Book 3) (5 page)

 She scrubbed her arms harder. It didn’t help. The cold went clean, clear through. At the sound of voices, she turned. Agent Lennox and Agent Tao had just entered the hall. They stood talking to Claire at the open door.

Mei gulped. In a second, they’d see her. Ducking into the nearest room, she waited for them to pass. They’d never know what a coward she was. The sound of their voices grew closer, Agent Lennox’s laced with sarcasm.

“Young lady? You’re being mighty generous with that title, aren’t you? That chick’s got a heart of stone. I’ve never seen an Immigration Agent act like such a—”

“Do you know what Mei Xing means in Chinese, Zack?” Agent Tao interrupted quietly.

“Heck, I don’t know.” Agent Lennox stabbed a button on the elevator pad. “Cruella de Vil? Hagatha? Maybe the Wicked Witch from the West?”

Mei squeezed her eyes tight, but the tears came anyway. Yes. She’d become a witch all right. Four weeks of living hell had changed her. She peeked out the door, hoping Agent Tao wouldn’t condemn her, too.

“It means ‘beautiful star’.” He stood waiting at the elevator, shaking his head at Agent Lennox in gentle reproach. “Someone loved her enough to give her a very special name when she was born. I don’t believe she’s always been the person we saw today.”

Mei stifled a sob at his kindness.
My mother gave me my name. I miss my mom. My dad. My baby.

“Whatever,” Agent Lennox grumbled. “It’s not like we’ll be seeing her again. She couldn’t get away fast enough.”

How could I stay? I lied to you.
She struggled, all of her common sense screaming at her to confess, to run into the hall and tell these guys what was really going on. That she needed their help. That she needed somebody. She didn’t make a move.

“I think you may yet be surprised,” Agent Tao said as they entered the elevator.

The doors swooshed closed. Mei sank against the wall in the empty room and stifled her tears.

“You know what that little gal needs?”

Mei stopped short when the elevator door opened at ground level. Agent Lennox’s question seemed directed at her. Or about her. She’d planned to run straight out the front doors, but now? Was he waiting for her? Her breath hitched at the very real possibility she’d have to face him again so soon. Girding her loins, she leaned forward through the elevator doors, just enough to catch sight of the two men at the coffee kiosk.

Her heart started beating again. He and Agent Tao had stopped for coffee. That’s all. They weren’t waiting to ambush her, but what was it about broad shoulders beneath black leather that grabbed her attention? Other than the preferred view allowed for a quick getaway? She had to admit, Agent Lennox was built, a veritable V-shape that made Agent Tao look ordinary in comparison.

She angled away from them, still having to pass behind them on her way out.

“A big old teddy bear,” Agent Lennox answered himself as he tossed a handful of creamer cups into the trash bin beside the kiosk counter. He still hadn’t seen her, but she could hear him. “I’m coming back with some toys. That poor baby doesn’t even have her own blanket. She needs one.”

“What she needs is a mother and a father.” Agent Tao stirred his coffee, his back to Mei.

Her ears perked up at the unexpected conversation. These guys cared. Her feet faltered on her fast track to cowardice.

Tell them.

No, she argued with herself, picking up the pace. Talk is cheap. He won’t buy Chai Yenn a single thing. You’ll see. He’s like all the rest. They promise a girl everything right before they dump her and run away. Men don’t care.

He might.

She shook the notion out of her head and hurried out the door and across the street to her car. Kindness among men was rare. That much she knew from experience. Her one supreme rule was her safest course of action.
I. Don’t. Need. Men.

Sliding into her seat, she fastened her seat belt and waited. Following them might be smarter than running away. She might salvage something from her disastrous encounter, at least find out where they worked.

They strolled out of the hospital with paper coffee cups in hand and crossed the street to their car. She sunk lower behind her dash when Agent Lennox pointed his remote at–a black Porsche? That’s their company car? Unbelievable. No way was he going to follow through and get anything for Chai. The man was all talk.

They didn’t see her when they pulled away from the curb with her following a couple car lengths behind. Traffic was thick which helped her remain hidden, but she nearly lost them on the George Washington Highway. At last, the Porsche pulled curbside in front of a five story, modern-looking building in Alexandria.

Agent Tao climbed out. He stood talking through the open passenger window before a gust of cold wind blew up the sidewalk, scattering leaves and dust in its wake. With a pat on the door and another word to Agent Lennox, he turned and walked into the building.

The way he’d held poor little Chai Yenn told Mei something about him. He must be married and have kids of his own. He looked like the dependable type, and he was kind in the way he’d put Mei in her place, asking about those other little girls the way he had. He cared.

The poor baby in the morgue came back to haunt her. Even good news for Mei was awful for someone else. She chewed her bottom lip.
I can’t afford to be soft. Not now.

The blinker on the Porsche flashed while Agent Lennox waited to pull into traffic.

She glanced inside the building where Agent Tao stood at waiting at an elevator door. These guys must have some pretty good resources if they assumed they could waltz into the ME’s office and ask to see the report on a dead child. Confidential informants also meant they had an established network on both sides of the law. Her stomach growled, reminding Mei of her limited budget, resources, and nerves.

Her heart pounded as she contemplated the questions of the day. Should she waltz into an unknown office and act like she knew where she was going when she didn’t have a clue? Or should she follow the sports car and see where Agent Lennox went? He might go shopping for a teddy bear.
Yeah, right.

When Agent Lennox pulled into traffic, she shot one last glance at Agent Tao, steeled her resolve, and followed the Porsche. Keeping a low profile in busy traffic was easy. Shadowing a showy vehicle easier still. There was no way he could see she was four cars behind him, not with the tiny windows in his vehicle. A dose of humility slapped her full in the face when he pulled his fast little hotrod into a strip mall with a national toy distributor as the main anchor store. She pulled her car into a parking stall, slunk low in her seat, and watched. It took him fifteen minutes, but when he came out, he had a big white teddy bear and a bag in his arms.

He looked happy. She felt sick.

I was wrong. What’s happening to me? Why am I so hateful? He didn’t steal LiLi. He cares about Chai. Why can’t I cut him any slack?

The feeling got worse when he pulled into a seedy part of Anacostia. She hesitated to follow. These were hard streets, places where a person could get killed in broad daylight. A delivery van pulled in front of her, blocking her view.

“I’m not losing this guy,” she muttered as she made her decision and swung. Big mistake. He’d parked alongside the curb barely ahead of the delivery van. There he was, right in front of her, flirting with some sleazy-looking woman from his open window.

Mei drove past and hoped he hadn’t seen. She pulled a U-turn down the block, intending to park on the opposite side of the street to catch the jerk in the act. No such luck. All parking stalls were taken. She headed in the opposite direction, scrunched low in her seat again. She should’ve known.

Buying a toy for a kid was easy, but this was the real Agent Lennox, too busy chatting up a hooker to notice anyone else. At least that’s what the woman hanging on his passenger window looked like. Her painted on, skintight mini-skirt, itty-bitty turquoise top, and six-inch heels cinched the deal. It didn’t take her long to climb inside and shut the door.

Flustered, Mei spotted a place to pull over and park. It was a driveway, so she couldn’t stay long, but it allowed a few minutes to watch from her side mirror. That woman was a confidential informant? Yeah, right. He might fool Agent Tao with that line, but Mei knew better. Agent Lennox was only after one thing.
The jerk.

Something clenched inside her nervous stomach as she watched the rear of the fast car. She pushed it aside, but it nagged like a little green monster, sticking its long pointed green fingernail at her.
What are those two doing in there?

She reached for her binoculars.

Is he kissing that tramp? It sure looks like it.

Mei adjusted the focus on her binoculars, and—

“Hey, lady!” An angry man in gray coveralls smacked the hood of her car once with his open palm. “You’re blocking my business. Customers can’t get past ya. Move it!”

“Sorry. I’m moving.” Dropping the binoculars to her lap, Mei replied even though the man couldn’t hear her. She was so rattled she forgot to look for oncoming traffic. Horns blared. Brakes screeched. She kept going, hoping for one last glimpse of the black car in her rearview mirror as she pulled away.

The jerk was gone.

“I was kinda hoping you already saw something you liked,” sweet Mabel Magee drawled in that cute, sexy way she had.

“I might take you up on your offer one of these days,” Zack rumbled through a convincing lie. Hooking up with a lady of the street was never going to happen. Still, Mabel was always offering, always helpful, and judging by the way she batted those green contact lens-colored eyeballs, forever hopeful.

“I do like your ride, baby.” She trailed a bright turquoise fingernail across the leather seat. Yeah. Most girls liked his car, especially girls in her profession. It was nearly as fast, hot, and pricey as they thought they were. “Black is my favorite color, you know.”

He allowed a smirk. Usually, he tagged his CIs on the sidewalk in case he couldn’t get them out of said
favorite color ride
once they got in. Zack was no dummy. He was familiar with the lingo of babes on the street, where tricks were cheap and talk was cheaper. The line of hers was only true unless the gentleman she was working happened to drive something red, yellow, or green. The only reason she was sitting inside now was the chilly November weather blowing up her skirt outside.

“You’ll let me know if you hear anything, won’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely.” She had the fullest lips he’d ever seen. How do women do that, make their lips swell like they’ve used a vacuum nozzle or something on them? Mabel’s seemed more pronounced than most. Or maybe it was her odd choice of dark tan lipstick outlined with red. What was she going for, a chocolate cherry mouth?

“Here’s a little something for your trouble.” He stifled his opinion and offered a couple folded twenties, catnip to the prowling feline. She leaned toward him, her full cleavage on display and begging to be ogled.

“Why don’t you stick those bills where no one else can find ’em, sugar?” She licked those full lips again, letting her tongue move extra slow like they weren’t already glossed and dripping. Her chest jiggled beneath the tight knit, revealing the embossed impression of two distinct nipples and the lacy view of purple lingerie that wasn’t concealing as much as revealing. As cold as it was, she should have been wearing a coat, but Zack knew why she didn’t. Mabel used her feminine persuasion in all the best ways. The more that showed–well, the more that showed.

Of course he looked. He wasn’t dead. Besides, guys called ‘em headlights. Hers were on high beam. How could he miss them? Zack leaned in nearly close enough to touch the merchandise and paused right there. Flirting was one thing. She was another. “You keep talking like that and—”

The oriental gong alert sounded on his cell phone.

“Hey, David, what’s up?” he answered hoarsely, the bills between his two fingers, and Mabel still offering a show. He cast one last hungry look down the valley between her breasts and pantomimed a kiss.

She took the money and slowly extricated her long legs from his car, blowing a return kiss over her shoulder.

“I’m at the county morgue. Can you meet me?” Leave it to David to spoil a semi-good time.

“Sure.” Zack’s gaze lowered to the round backside still planted in the passenger bucket seat. She did fill it extremely well and the hem of her skirt was as high as her cleavage was low. Some kind of tattooed artwork kept peeking out between the top of her skirt and the bottom of her sweater, right above some kind of lacy strap that might have been a thong. The view offered too much enticement. Tattoo or underwear? How did a man not look?

“You need to get down here. I’ve found something.”

“On my way.” The tremor of concern in David’s voice caught Zack’s attention even as he kept an eyeball on the shell game going on with Mabel’s derriere. The girl knew how to tease. “What’d you find?” he asked, his attention still wandering.

“You’ve got see this to believe it. Please hurry.”

“Be right there,” he said, but he thought,
‘And you’ve got to see this’.

“Before you take off and leave me.” Mabel waited, half-in and half-out of his car like the working girl she was — working it. “There is an old guy now I think about it. He hangs out around the rescue mission. Might be the one you’re looking for. Name’s Marty.”

“He been talking about a little girl, has he?” Zack lifted his gaze to Mabel’s face.

“Actually, he’s always talking about a little girl. I thought it was his daughter, but I could be wrong. He might be worth checking into.”

“Thanks, Mabel.”

“Why don’t you come back later and thank me in person, Zack baby?” She batted those luxurious lashes. “I’d give you a discount. Might put a smile on your handsome face.”

“If you can find out something about those little Chinese girls, I just might.” He revved the engine, listening to it purr for a few seconds before he engaged the clutch.

She pouted. “And if I don’t? Will I ever see you again?”

Zack smiled. “You never know.”

A blustery wind tossed her bright red hair as she got out of the car, looking forlorn. He pulled away from the curb, glancing in his rearview mirror. She got over her loneliness the minute another car pulled to the curb.

Too soon, he was looking down at a stainless steel tray with the remains of a very small body tagged, ‘Jane Doe’. “Hell. She’s just a baby.”

“Two years old,” David explained.

“Is anyone looking for her?”

“Not that the police are aware of. They’re running a nationwide search.”

Zack turned his face from David to gather his composure. The operation was becoming tougher than he’d expected. The morgue always gave him the creeps, but standing over a deceased child as young as the little girl in the tray created another feeling entirely. He wasn’t so much disgusted as he was angry. How could anyone hurt an innocent baby? What made some people so evil? So twisted and so damned cruel? He didn’t understand. Half of him wanted to punch something, the other half to throw up.