LITMIR.BIZ

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Emerald Coast SWAT team, Lena held a position of authority and power, too. Two cells of topflight officers worked under her command.

      Moaning with disgust over the dream and at herself for having it, Lena sat up and put her feet on the floor. A front had blown in last night and the stained concrete was cold and hard, the icy feeling instantly traveling up her legs. The scene outside the uncovered windows added to the chill, a gray and stormy Floridian sea churning on the beach only a hundred yards away. Above the waves, the October sky looked just as forbidding. Dark, heavy clouds hovered over the horizon, their swirling depths promising rain later.

      One of the panes of glass rattled loudly, and propelled by the sound, Lena turned to go to the kitchen. The pipes sang, the shingles leaked, and half the time the heater refused to work. She didn’t care. She had memories of her mother here, and of good summers, laughing and chasing her brothers over the dunes. Her father had tried to buy her a condo last summer in the new high-rise going up off Inlet Beach. The units were “only” three hundred thousand, he’d said. A bargain at preconstruction rates. She’d turned him down, and he’d gotten angry, not understanding.

      In the kitchen, she flipped on the television set, reaching for the door of the refrigerator at the same time. Bleary-eyed, she grabbed the last diet cola and a boiled egg left over from a few days before. The breakfast of champions. Her planned stop at the grocery store yesterday had been put on hold, as a lot of her plans were, when the team had gotten a late-afternoon call-out. The situation had dragged on forever, and they hadn’t cleaned up the mess until after two that morning. But that’s what SWAT team work was like. You stayed until the end, no matter how long it took to come.

      No one had been hurt, though. That was always her goal: everyone gets out alive.

      She popped open the cold drink, then took a long swallow before beginning to peel the egg, dropping the bits of shell into the sink. “Everyone gets out alive,” she repeated out loud. “Hostages, victims…even jilted brides.”

      The ringing phone startled her and Lena fumbled with the egg. She caught it right before it slid into the disposal, then grabbed the receiver. “McKinney here.”

      Sarah Greenberg’s soft voice sounded, and Lena relaxed the muscles she’d tightened automatically on hearing the phone. Sarah was the SWAT team’s information officer, and her calls didn’t usually signify an emergency. “Sarah! You’re calling awfully early. What’s up? Everything okay?”

      “We’re fine,” the young woman answered.

      Lena sipped her cola. “Did Beck tell you about last night?” A former negotiator, Beck Winters had left the SWAT team a while back but Lena had promised him a desk job and he’d returned.

      Before Sarah could answer, Lena launched into an explanation. “Panama City Beach had a warrant they were trying to serve. It went downhill fast, but—” She realized suddenly that Sarah had gone silent. Usually the young cop had plenty to contribute but for some reason, she hadn’t said a word. Lena frowned. “Sarah?”

      A pause—this one lasting long enough to make Lena really nervous—then Sarah spoke. “We got a fax this morning ordering a special dignitary detail for next week. I thought you might want to know about it right away so you could…um…prepare for it.”

      “I’ll be in the office in an hour,” Lena said slowly. “It couldn’t wait until then?”

      “I thought you might want to know about this one before you got here…so you wouldn’t be surprised.”

      Lena waited a minute, but Sarah said nothing more and finally Lena spoke again, this time somewhat impatiently. “Well, are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?”

      “It’s for the guy from Justice in Miami.” Sarah sounded almost shaky. “You know, the one they’re sending to open the new office? There’ve been death threats called in. They think an attempt might be made on his life.”

      She should have known, Lena told herself later. She should have seen it coming. But it was only after Sarah said “Miami” that Lena’s mind kicked into gear. “No…oh, no…Shit…”

      “I’m sorry, Lena. But it’s Andres Casimiro. He’s coming to Destin and he needs protection.”

      “IS THIS THE FULL REPORT?” Andres raised his gaze to Carmen San Vicente, his assistant. They were in the director’s private jet, fifteen thousand feet above the Florida Panhandle. Andres hadn’t taken the time to look out the window and see the turquoise waters beneath him, but he’d buzzed the captain a moment before and asked for the ETA. The man had said ten minutes and Andres had felt his gut respond accordingly. Now he was glaring at Carmen and she had no idea she wasn’t responsible for his expression. He was thinking of the same thing he’d been thinking of for the past week—every day, every hour, every minute—since he’d known he was coming back to Destin.

      Lena.

      Carmen answered, but Andres’s mind had already gone elsewhere. He hadn’t spoken to Lena since the night he’d returned to Destin following Mateo’s death. The meeting had been disastrous, of course. He’d told her what he could—that a special mission had come up, that he’d had no choice but to miss their wedding.

      She’d stared him in the eye and said just what he’d expected, her voice calm and controlled. “I’m a cop, Andres. I would have understood if you’d told me.”

      With his heart cracking in two, he’d met her accusing stare. It had held equal shares of pain and anger, and he’d felt both just as deeply. “I couldn’t tell you, Lena. Not this time.”

      She’d looked as if she wanted to believe him, but a moment later she’d closed her expression. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.” Pulling off the diamond he’d given her, she’d handed him the ring and turned away. “Please leave.”

      He’d done what she asked because he hadn’t had another choice. And he still didn’t. To begin with, she would never believe him, and if she did accept his suspicions—by some miracle—it would almost be worse. The news would completely destroy her.

      Lena’s father had arranged Mateo Aznar’s death. He’d wanted to kill Andres, as well.

      Andres had had his suspicions before the wedding, but for Lena’s sake, he’d kept them to himself. He’d waited and watched, collected the tiny scraps of evidence he could, the main one being a local drug dealer named Pablo Escada, who had kept Phillip McKinney’s law office on retainer. The Panamanian immigrant was in the Union Correctional Institution for the moment, but he hadn’t shut down his business. Andres couldn’t prove the connection but he knew—he knew—Escada was hooked up with the Red Tide. He had to be. The organization funneled all the drugs that came through the area.

      And Phillip was connected to Escada.

      For months after the murder, Andres had devoted every minute of his time trying to document Phillip’s involvement, but he’d ended up with nothing. He’d been unable to find a shred of data, an iota of validation, to link the wily old attorney with the terrorists.

      After a while, Andres had to let it go and accept what appeared to be the truth: things had gone terribly wrong that night and the Red Tide had acted on their own. Mateo had been wrong about the money coming from Phillip’s office.

      “I brought everything that was in the folder.” Carmen’s voice held an anxious flutter. “Are you missing something?”

      Andres finally heard her apologetic tone. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark at you. I’m a little preoccupied—”

      “It’s okay,” she answered in an accommodating way. “I understand. Really, I do. It’s impossible to get anything done when you have to travel all the time.” She reached up and tucked a strand of dark hair behind one ear then her eyes warmed hopefully as Andres’s gaze met hers. “Would you like to work this evening? I could come to your hotel room after dinner tonight and we could finish this then.”

      “No,”

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