A Forever Kind of Hero Read online

  Her eyes had narrowed then to glints of enticing green that had temporarily mesmerized him. “No, you didn’t.”

  If Garrett hadn’t known better, he would have said that he was the one trying to fool her instead of the other way around.

  “Yeah, I did. And I went to—” It had taken him a minute to remember. “P.S. 11.”

  Megan shook her head at the mention of the public elementary school. “We left before I ever got to go to school.”

  She’d contemplated her fingertips then, as if relating the story—even in vague fragments—was hard for her. He imagined that it was her way of reeling him in, but it seemed so genuine that for the space of a few minutes, he found himself believing her.

  “We moved around a bit for a few years, never staying more than a year in one place—usually less. My father could never hold down anything for very long. It was always someone else’s fault why he quit.” And from the look that passed over her face when she said it, Garrett knew that she’d believed her father, and believed in him, with all her young heart. “And then my mother took my brothers and me to live near her mother in Southern California.”

  She’d said it as if it were a throwaway line, and he knew that it wasn’t. And that whatever else had come before, this was the truth. “Parents divorced?”

  “Separated. Legally,” she added after a beat. “My mother didn’t believe in divorce.” Megan shrugged, as if creating a barrier between herself and what she was saying. As if anything else still hurt too much. “She’d said that she never intended to marry anyone else, so there was no need for an official divorce. For the first two years after that, I kept hoping they’d get together...”

  She shrugged again—a little half shrug that was the only evidence of self-consciousness he’d seen from her. She’d looked up at him accusingly.

  “What did you put in that coffee you gave me? I’ve talked more to you than...” Her voice trailed off and she waved away the rest of her statement, leaving him to wonder about it then.

  And now.

  Had there been someone else she’d talked to, someone else she’d opened up her wounds to? Probably. And it shouldn’t have mattered in the slightest to him if there had been. But it still did.

  She’d lapsed into silence after that, and he let it continue, feeling that he already knew more about her than he should have. The more he knew, the more his thoughts could stray, and he wanted no reason for her to be more than a passing thought in his mind.

  It looked as if he didn’t have much say in that, Garrett thought now, frowning. She was there, in every thought, like a clear layer of varnish that coated a fine piece of furniture. You couldn’t really see it, but it made its presence known.

  It didn’t matter, Garrett told himself. He wasn’t going to see her again. Not if things laid themselves out the way he hoped they would.

  An hour later, Garrett had staked out a table at a trendy coffee shop located near one of the four corners of Chapman and Main. From where he sat, he could see clearly the Mexican take-out place and the street in front of it. His informant was supposed to walk by at approximately two-thirty. Having arrived early, Garrett was nursing a cup of coffee that boasted three names. He sipped, but hardly tasted it.

  He turned the pages of the newspaper propped up in front of him just often enough to make it appear that he was reading. Behind his tinted sunglasses, his eyes never wavered from the street scene outside.

  Everyone who drove by was suspect. There was very little foot traffic. He was counting on that.

  Garrett brought the rim of the cup to his lips, and then froze. The cup came down hard against the saucer, sloshing the hot liquid over the sides. His mouth hardened as a feeling of déjà vu came over him.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  Peeling off a five and tossing it on the emerald-green tablecloth, Garrett quickly rose to his feet and strode out of the restaurant.

  Behind him, he heard the waitress calling out. “Is anything wrong with the coffee?” He ignored her. There was no time for niceties. He had the uneasy feeling that everything was going to blow up on him.

  Why couldn’t this woman stay put and keep her nose out of his business?

  With his eyes riveted on his target, Garrett crossed the large intersection, paying only marginal attention to the traffic. He was fighting an overwhelming urge to wrap his hands around her long, lovely neck.

  Megan, wearing a skirt that looked as if it had been painted on with tiny brush strokes, had one arm looped through the arm of the man he’d been waiting for. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said she looked like one of the strolling hostesses of the evening. She’d undoubtedly dressed like this to attract the other man’s attention. But how had she known about him in the first place?

  Megan looked up a moment before Garrett reached them, a complacent smile on her lips. There seemed to be absolutely no sign of recognition in her eyes when she turned them on him.

  “Do you know him?” she whispered to the small man she was with.

  Reed thin, with a face that bore silent testimony to a turbulent life, the dark-haired man looked blankly at Garrett. He shrugged indifferently, intent on turning on charm that he didn’t realize he didn’t have. “I do not think so.”

  His hand closing around Megan’s other arm, Garrett yanked her to his side. “What are you doing here?” he demanded in a low growl against her ear.

  She tried to pull away, but knew she couldn’t without drawing attention to them. So she looked up at his face and smiled, knowing it would infuriate him.

  “Making up for time I lost,” she said glibly. “Someone forgot to wake me up this morning.”

  Clearly bewildered, the man on her other side frowned. “You know him, lady?”

  She touched the tip of her tongue to her teeth, as if debating whether or not to deny any knowledge of Garrett. She never got the chance.

  With a hand on each of their arms, Garrett pulled both the wiry informant and Megan over to the side street. “My car’s over here.” He indicated the sedan.

  The informant looked at the vehicle distastefully. It was clearly not the kind of vehicle he favored. “Don’t pay you much, do they?”

  “It’s a rental,” Garrett snarled, not bothering to look at Megan. He’d already had this conversation with her. “Get in,” he ordered the informant.

  Still staring at the car, the man hesitated. He looked at Garrett dubiously. “You got the money?”

  “If he doesn’t, I do,” Megan interjected.

  Shooting Megan a dark look, he lamented the fact that justifiable homicide carried such a heavy burden of proof with it, but even so, it was beginning to seem worth the effort.

  “I’ve got the money,” he assured the informant. “Now get in the damn car.”

  To his annoyance, the man got in the back seat. And Megan followed suit.

  He’d just about had his fill of her surprises, but something told him she had more in store.

  Chapter 9

  There was an end to his patience, and Garrett felt that he had reached it three minutes ago. Glaring at Megan, he threw open the front passenger door. “Get in the front seat, Megan.”

  She sat just where she was, holding her ground. Her face was maddeningly impassive as she looked at him. “You can’t order me around.”

  “Get in the front seat, Megan,” Garrett growled again, then tacked on “please” when she still made no effort to move.

  “Better,” she murmured with a nod, then got in the front.

  He slammed the door, then rounded the hood to his side. “Don’t push it,” he warned under his breath.

  Getting in, he spared only a cursory glance around before he drove the car in reverse, coming out the opposite end of the side street.

  “How did you get here?” he wanted to know. “I found your blasted transponder.”

  Wary of a second plant that she might have conveniently neglected to mention, Garrett had checked the car over th
oroughly inside and out before continuing on to Palm Springs. There hadn’t been anything. She was a small-time private investigator, tied to a three-man agency. How did she come up with the same information that took a good deal of the DEA workforce to gain?

  The leap from the house in Scottsdale to Palm Springs was a large one. Even larger was the one to locating a man he only knew as Skinny Jake. Was there a leak in the department that hadn’t been plugged yet?

  Megan took her time in answering. Though the situation was dire, she had to admit that she did enjoy pitting her mind against his. If she gave it any thought, Megan couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed a challenge more.

  “I went back to the hillside house,” she said simply. “Got there just before your people did.”

  It had been tricky, getting out again without being noticed. There had been at least twenty DEA agents swarming the area, all easily identifiable by the insignias on the backs of their jackets.

  “The department has nice taste in jackets, by the way,” she added before he had a chance to deny their presence. If he wanted to play games, that was fine with her. As long as she won.

  “That still doesn’t answer my question.”

  Some things in life, she thought, like the man sitting next to her, were complicated beyond understanding. Others were exceedingly simple. This had been simple.

  Megan smiled at Garrett, unable to resist looking smug. “I pressed the redial button on the telephone in the kitchen. It had an LCD screen. I copied down the number.”

  The pleasure she derived from seeing Wichita’s mouth drop open was incredible. Turning in her seat, she glanced at the painfully thin man sitting behind her. “I traced the number through a reverse phone book. It identified the party’s name and led me right to him. After that, I caught a commuter flight.”

  Surprise immediately melted into concern. Garrett smelled a double-cross. Pulling the car sharply into a nursery parking lot, he turned around to look at the informant’s weather-beaten face. Skinny Jake’s expression was nothing short of brazen, but that carried no weight with Garrett. He’d spent most of his life trying to brazen things out.

  Garrett pinned Jake with a warning look that said he wasn’t about to put up with lies. “Why would Velasquez be calling you?”

  The laugh rising out of the shallow lungs was more of a dry cackle.

  “Not Velasquez, man. Jaime, his nephew. The kid’s got the hots for my daughter, Angela. He called her yesterday. Said he was coming back. Told her where he’d be staying and where to meet him.” Crossing arms that looked far too thin to bear the tattoos that covered them, he grinned broadly at Garrett. “There’s nothing like true love, man.”

  Garrett had no idea that the informant even had a family, much less a daughter. The whole story sounded fishy. He had the uneasy feeling that he was being set up.

  “And she told you?”

  Contempt entered the dark brown eyes that told Garrett that if he believed that, then his brain was smaller than a chickpea.

  “No, man, don’t you know anything? I overheard them,” he emphasized as if that put him on the same footing as an international spy. He sank down a little in his seat, suddenly realizing whose car he was in. “Now, maybe you two want to go on hearing yourselves talk, but me, I have to think about my reputation and my health. I ain’t gonna have either if I get caught with you.” He looked leeringly over toward Megan. “No offense, lady.”

  Megan grinned at the odd apology. “None taken.”

  The man’s head bobbed up and down like an old-fashioned toy on the dashboard of a vintage car. “Okay, so you want this information or not?” The question was shot at Garrett.

  Part of Garrett was truly skeptical that what he was paying for would prove to be valid, and he was still wary of a setup. But right now, there were no other leads. Garrett had no choice, and he knew it. He hated not having choices. “I want this information.”

  If Jake was worried, he gave no indication. From the depths of the back seat a smile flashed, made brighter by contrast with his dark skin. “Good. Now about my price—”

  Garrett’s eye met his in the rearview mirror. They always try, he thought wearily. “That’s already been negotiated.”

  Still watching in the mirror, Garrett saw the brown eyes shift toward Megan. He felt something tightening inside his gut that could easily have been mistaken for rage, if he didn’t know better.

  “That was before there was someone else in the game. She wants it, too.” And the name of the game was clearly money. “Which of you is it going to be? I got no pride, I go to the highest bidder.”

  Amused, Megan turned to look at Garrett. For half an instant, she thought she saw murder in the DEA agent’s eyes. It hit her then that he was probably more than capable of it. She wasn’t certain how to fit that realization into the scheme of things.

  Twisting in her seat, she looked over her shoulder at Jake. “That’s okay, give it to him. He knew you ahead of me.”

  Garrett lamented the fact that unlike cars in hightech spy thrillers, his didn’t come with an ejection button.

  It did occur to him that he could sharply turn a corner, and push her out. Tempting though the thought was, he knew he couldn’t do it—not in good conscience at any rate.

  It was a hell of a time to realize he had one.

  Skinny Jake looked disappointed to be reduced to only one customer. He attempted to quibble a little longer, but the threat of being turned in to his own people as an informant quickly terminated all bartering on his part. Jake accepted the initial price he’d agreed to, and, amid obscenities, told them where Velasquez and his entourage were staying.

  It was another pricey address. Garrett had expected as much.

  With the exchange complete, Garrett and Megan parted company with Jake, leaving the informant in another, less-traveled location.

  Megan settled back in her seat, pulling down the edge of her skirt. It kept creeping up on her thigh of its own volition.

  “How does he keep getting these houses?” she asked Garrett.

  His eyes were drawn to her hand as she tugged on her skirt. Drawn to her hand and the area she was attempting to cover. Anyway you looked at it, the woman had great legs, he thought. He wondered if she was doing that to distract him. It annoyed him that she was succeeding so easily.

  “A good real estate agent,” he quiped. “That’s the least of my questions.”

  Megan had caught the look in his eyes and felt oddly flattered, though she told herself that it didn’t matter one way or another.

  “And the most of your questions...?” she teased.

  What Garrett perceived as his weakness gave way to annoyance—at himself as well as at her. “Would be why you keep popping up like a slice of toast.”

  “No one’s ever described me as a slice of bread before,” Megan said, laughing.

  Garrett kept one eye on his rearview mirror, watching for a possible tail. He’d come too far to be complacent now.

  “No, I don’t imagine they have. Pain in the butt would probably be more accurate.” Sparing her a glance as he took a corner, Garrett pressed his lips together. It wasn’t easy keeping his temper under wraps with her, but he couldn’t afford to let it go—for any of their sakes. “You can’t keep doing this.”

  “I’ll stop as soon as I find Kathy.” He glared at her. “Just doing my job, Wichita. Just like you,” she added evenly.

  Stopped at a light, he looked at her. “Mine’s a little larger in scope than yours.”

  Megan didn’t see it that way. “Oh, I don’t know. A human life is pretty large in scope from where I’m sitting.” And she still had a strong feeling that it was the forfeit of a single human life that had initially led him on his crusade. Banking on that was her strongest angle.

  The light changed, and Garrett pressed on the accelerator again. Megan shifted in her seat. “Look, I’m not about to give up, and neither are you. So why don’t we do what I suggested at the hotel?”


  Mention of the hotel brought a whole barrage of thoughts to him—most unwelcome because of the feelings they created.

  “Which was?”

  “That we throw in together.” She anticipated his reaction and tried to head it off before they engaged in verbal combat again. “I’m only interested in finding Kathy as soon as possible. If putting Velasquez behind bars is the best way, then hey, count me in. I’ll do whatever I have to to help you.”

  Thought a lot of herself, didn’t she? Garrett mused. Didn’t she realize yet how dangerous all this was? That she could easily wind up hurt—or dead?

  “What makes you think I want, or even—laughably—need your help?”

  Megan knew he was just trying to aggravate her so that she would back off. Apparently the man had absolutely no clue how stubborn she could be.

  “You haven’t caught him yet, have you?” she reminded him mildly. “Way I figure it, maybe you need a fresh angle. A man can always use a little more help.”

  Her eyes were laughing at him, and Garrett knew it should have really ticked him off. Why the sight warmed him instead was completely beyond his comprehension. Maybe he’d spent too long in the field and was beginning to forget which end was up.

  He trained his eyes on the road. “Ever hear the one about too many cooks spoiling the broth?”

  “I’ll keep out of your kitchen,” she promised complacently, then slanted a look in his direction, “but not out of your operation.”

  At this point, he wouldn’t have believed her even if she’d promised to turn around and go home. “I could have you arrested.”

  Megan knew her rights, not to mention the inner workings of most departments. “Not easily”

  She looked at his profile, determined now to put this one-upmanship on hold. There were more important things at stake.

  “How about it? The alternative is to keep wasting time trying to ditch me. And constantly looking over your shoulder because you know I’m going to ‘pop up,’ as you put it, again.”

  She had a point. Garrett didn’t like it. Didn’t like being backed into a corner. But he knew she was right. And, grudgingly, he had to admit the woman had style and ability. The fact that there was also this undercurrent of electricity running through him, this growing desire to find out just what the lady was made of, and if she felt as soft in an intimate setting as she was tough on the job, tipped the scales in her favor.