A Forever Kind of Hero Read online

  He grew quiet for a moment, trying to sort through a barrage of feelings, most of which defied sorting. Garrett looked at her profile—and thought of last night. Any way you cut it, she was a beautiful woman. Why hadn’t someone snapped her up by now? “Is that why you’re not married?”

  The question, coming out of nowhere, stunned Megan for a second. But it wasn’t one she hadn’t fielded before, usually from well-meaning acquaintances who couldn’t understand her life-style. She gave him the answer she gave everyone, and didn’t let herself wonder why he was asking.

  “I’m not married because an FBI-special-agent-turned-private-investigator isn’t at the top of most men’s shopping list when it comes to a prospective lifelong mate.”

  “So it’s your career choice that’s kept you from finding someone to share your life with?”

  She heard the skepticism in his voice. What was he after? “Yes,” she bit off.

  “Not your less than easygoing personality.” It wasn’t a question. He said the words slowly, as if digesting their meaning and impact.

  He’d pushed her buttons again, she thought. How did he manage to keep finding them so easily? She glared at him before looking back at the road.

  “You want ‘less than easygoing’? I haven’t begun to be less than easygoing, Wichita. Keep pushing my buttons,” she warned, “and see what you get.”

  He’d rattled her. They were even. Garrett sat back. “Tempting as that offer is, I think I’ll postpone it until after we wrap the case up.”

  Traffic was at a crawl. The rental clerk hadn’t been kidding about that convention, she thought, annoyed. Riding the brake, she slanted a look at Garrett’s smug face. He made it sound as if there was no definite end in sight.

  “There is no ‘after,’ Wichita,” she reminded him. “Once I locate Kathy and get her out of Velasquez’s den of iniquity, that’s it. I’m gone.”

  They both knew it was true, Garrett thought. Once she secured Kathy, she would be permanently out of his life. He had no idea why hearing it spoken out loud should irritate him as much as it did.

  Maybe because she irritated him, he thought. Relentlessly.

  Feeling as if there was a cramp forming in his left thigh, he tried to shift position and discovered that he couldn’t—not without kicking a hole in the side of the car. Who were these cars made for, anyway?

  “You’re not getting Kathy out until after this goes down,” he reminded her tersely. No matter what, there was no way he would allow her to mess up the operation. Not after all this time.

  “We’ve been through this already—”

  “I can have you restrained.”

  Megan bit her lower lip as she tried to contain her exasperation. Experience had taught her that there were a great many things Wichita could do that fell into the recesses, the gray areas of the law. Things she instinctively knew he wouldn’t hesitate to do if she got in his way She was expendable. This crusade he’d undertaken was not

  The taste in her mouth was more bitter than it should have been. And that annoyed her. More than that, it worried her.

  Her only recourse was bravado. Never wavering, she lobbed a shot over to his side. “And I can have things done to you that you can’t even imagine.”

  Her tone was steely and ominous. For a moment, Garrett didn’t know whether to believe her or not. He didn’t know if she believed she was serious. “Are you threatening me?”

  Her eyes were cold and unfathomable as she looked at him. “Only if you’re threatening me.”

  He weighed his options and decided he didn’t want to go to darker areas. Not yet. Annoyed at her, and at himself for being soft, he stared straight ahead at the dark sports car in front of them. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Good,” she pronounced. “Then let’s get on with it.”

  Traffic broke up a little about a mile later. Megan took it as a good omen. She drove up to the hotel, bypassing the dark-blue-jacketed valets and going to the self-parking structure.

  Getting out, she rounded the hood and then stood waiting at Garrett’s side, amused. She bent over and peered in. She’d seen suspects being grilled who looked more comfortable. “Need help getting out?”

  “They should have supplied a can opener with it.”

  As she watched him unfold his body, she tried very hard not to remember how that same body had felt against her last night. “Not everyone can reach up and touch the sky.”

  “I’m six-three, not nine foot eight.”

  Megan looked indifferent to his protest. Pocketing the keys, she fell into step beside him as he walked to the hotel entrance. “All right, we’re here. Now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “Wait?” The very sound of the word made her feel restless.

  He walked ahead of her into the lobby, then slowed down until she was beside him.

  “Until they make their move.” Which was, unless things had changed, to be tomorrow night. He motioned her toward the rear of the lobby, where banks of elevators stood. “The department has a suite just below theirs in the tower.”

  He’d lengthened his stride again, and she hurried to keep up. “The tower,” she echoed. “It sounds like something out of medieval history.”

  “Some of it probably is,” he said vaguely.

  The next moment, one of the elevators arrived, its doors opening. Several people got in with them. The conversation was tabled until they got off on their floor. Megan could feel the tension rising with each passing floor.

  There were two other DEA agents inside the suite below Velasquez’s. They greeted Garrett and looked at Megan with blatant interest. Garrett introduced them as Harris and Langtree. Both were balding and in their late thirties or early forties. Neither was stocky or complacent. Megan thought they looked almost interchangeable.

  She gathered by their expressions that they had already been filled in on her part in this, and seemed to be at ease with it.

  Unlike Wichita.

  His back toward her, he behaved as if he was completely oblivious to her presence. “Anything?” He looked from Harris to Langtree.

  Harris, the shorter of the two, shook his head. He pointed with a set of chopsticks to emphasize his statement. There were containers of Chinese food littering one of the tables. “Nothing to distinguish them from any other gamblers making a long weekend out of it.”

  “Except that they’re carting around an underage girl,” Megan interjected. Both men turned to look at her. She took Kathy’s photograph from her purse. “Did either of you see her?”

  Langtree, who was closest to her, took the photograph and looked at it with interest, then passed it on to Harris. “Not me. You, Harris?”

  Returning the photograph to her, Harris got back to his cold dinner. “They’ve got a few women with them upstairs, but nobody who looks like her.”

  Megan refused to give in to the panicky feeling that was attempting to take hold. Refused to believe that Kathy might have been abandoned somewhere along the way.

  “Maybe I should take a look myself.”

  Garrett immediately turned on her. “Not possible.”

  “Calm down. I didn’t mean go up there.” She looked at the other two agents. “Don’t you have any of those James-Bond-type gadgets planted in the suite? The ones that tell you how high a guy’s blood pressure is if he’s standing three feet away from the device?”

  “Can’t afford to plant anything in the suite,” Garrett told her, his voice masking his frustration. If they could have planted bugs at least, then they would be ahead of the game, instead of waiting for Velasquez to make the first move. “If they detect something’s wrong, it’s all over.”

  “Great. All right, work with the basics,” she implored Harris and Langtree. “Short, blond, thin...” She peered at one face, then the other for any signs of recognition.

  “All of them are blond,” Langtree told her. “He likes to surround himself with blondes.”

  Another idiosyncrasy
, she thought. The man was enough to make a battery of psychiatrists rub their hands together in glee.

  “How about short?” Garrett questioned. Megan shot him a surprised look. She would have expected him to be completely consumed by his own operation.

  Harris paused to think, exchanging a glance with Langtree for confirmation before nodding. “One of them’s shorter than the others, though she really looks older than your girl.” The chopsticks pointed toward the photograph.

  “Makeup,” Megan answered, masking her nervousness with a silent prayer. Please, let it be makeup.

  Trying to pull her thoughts together, she slid the photograph back into her purse and turned away from the men. In the background, she heard Garrett lower his voice as he talked to the other agents.

  What if Kathy wasn’t there? The thought, planted by Harris’s doubts, nagged at her.

  There was only one thing to do. She had to get in there—into the suite—to look around.

  She already knew that Wichita wasn’t going to like it. But she wasn’t here to please Wichita. She was here to rescue Kathy and bring her home. Alive.

  Taking care not to call attention to herself, Megan began to slip out of the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  She froze at the sound of Garrett’s voice, but didn’t turn around.

  “The bathroom—if it’s all right with you.” Her voice was doused in sarcasm, and she heard one of the other men stifle a laugh.

  “Whatever,” Garrett muttered.

  She’d flustered him, she thought with triumph. But a small part of her felt guilty for what she was about to do. She was going to embarrass him in front of his colleagues. And no man took that lightly.

  It couldn’t be helped, she told herself.

  Once in the bathroom, she gave herself until the count of ten, then opened the door again as silently as she could. There was just the hint of Garrett’s shoulder visible from the other room. The murmur of voices carried, not clearly, but clearly enough for her to glean that they were exchanging information.

  Closing the bathroom door again to make it appear as if she were still inside, Megan slipped out of the hotel suite.

  Once in the hall, she lost no time running to the stairwell. Instead of going up, she went down a flight, hoping to buy herself a little time, in case Wichita went looking for her too soon.

  Somewhere, she thought, on one of these floors, there had to be a cleaning cart. And a maid who could use a little extra money.

  The hotel had twenty floors. Megan went through almost half of them before she finally found what she was looking for. Ten minutes later, Megan—a kerchief tied around her head to hide her hair and wearing a uniform more than a size too large for her—got off on the floor above the DEA suite.

  It didn’t matter that she was a former FBI special agent, or that she was trained to keep a cool, clear head in these situations. She was human, and the pads on her fingertips were damp.

  She focused on Kathy—and nothing else.

  “Housekeeping!” Megan called out in a singsong voice as she inserted the card into the tower suite’s lock and pulled it out again.

  She would have preferred entering far more quietly, but without the benefit of a camera in the suite, she didn’t know if there was anyone near the door. To enter without announcing herself would have been too suspicious. At least this way, she had a chance of seeing Kathy.

  If the girl was here.

  Megan pushed the cart in front of her, wishing it was a little taller, or that, for once in her life, she was a little shorter

  She barely got three feet into the suite. A hulking, angry-looking man quickly confronted her, blocking her way. It would have been easier blasting her way through a brick wall.

  “Nobody sent for you.”

  She looked at him blankly, as if the words had no meaning to her. “My job,” she said to him in halting English. “I do my job. I clean, make beds, yes?”

  With a quick movement, she circumvented him and managed to get the cart as far as the center of the front room. Just beyond, she saw an open door. The layout was identical to that of the floor below, making that a bedroom. She caught a glimpse of several women inside—young girls, by the sound of their voices. Shifting the cart, Megan tried to reach the room to get a better look.

  “No.”

  The man grabbed her arm roughly, pulling her back. His fingers dug into her flesh. Her immediate instincts summoned moves that her training had made second nature. She struggled to keep them at bay—housekeeping maids were not trained in tae kwan do.

  “Nobody wants the rooms cleaned now—understand?” he barked into her face.

  Just then, one of the girls came to the doorway, drawn by the commotion. Her eyes were fearful as they darted from the man to the woman he was holding.

  Recognition was instant, despite the sophisticated dress and makeup.

  Kathy.

  “What’s going on?” the girl stammered.

  “Nothing, get back inside,” the man ordered Kathy and the two other girls who were standing behind her.

  Another man came from the recesses of yet another bedroom. Dressed in a white shirt and white slacks, Jorge Velasquez’s face momentarily appeared to be darker than it was. There were sharp creases about his nose and mouth, pressed in by the sun. The smile on his lips had an edgy, dangerous feel to it. Megan watched him look her over.

  “What’s going on?”

  The hulk jerked one thumb at her, still holding her wrist with the other hand. “She came in. Says she wants to clean.” He fairly snarled the explanation.

  Velasquez came closer, as other men entered the front room. Megan saw eight in all.

  “Don’t be so hard on her. She’s only doing her job.” Velasquez imitated her singsong voice as he said the word. Then his smile widened to show perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. “Right, honey?”

  Maintaining the blank look in her eyes, Megan smiled innocently at him. She bobbed her head up and down. “Yes, job.”

  Velasquez laughed, entertained. Taking out a thick wad of money, he peeled off a bill from the top, as careless with the hundred as another man might be with a quarter. He stuffed the bill into her pocket.

  “Here, come back later. There’s nothing to clean now.” He turned to the man who still held her wrist. “See her out and treat her with respect,” he cautioned. “My mother was a cleaning lady.”

  Behind her, she heard one of the girls moan. Two of the men in the background were herding the girls back into the bedroom.

  Megan’s heart quickened as she was forcibly escorted out. She looked over her shoulder, fighting the urge to push the cart into the bodyguard and run back to grab Kathy. But she knew she wouldn’t get more than two feet before she was brought down.

  “Someone sick?” Eyes wide, she looked at the man beside her.

  “Not your concern,” the bodyguard snapped, and pushed her out. The door slammed shut behind her.

  Kathy was alive! That was all that mattered right now. Kathy was alive, and she was going to get her out of there.

  Adrenaline pumped through her, doing double-time. It continued even after the elevator arrived and she stepped inside. Megan held her breath until the doors finally closed.

  But they opened again one floor below. And before his image fully registered, Garrett was reaching in for her. Grabbing her wrist, he yanked her out of the elevator. Megan just barely managed to pull the cart out with her.

  There was unbridled fury in his eyes.

  “What the hell are you trying to do—get yourself killed?” It was all he could do to keep from shouting in her face. Holding firmly onto her arm, he dragged her over to the suite. Garret jammed the card into the lock, then pulled it out and pushed open the door. He shoved Megan into the room ahead of him, struggling to keep from shaking her apart. He figured she should be counting herself lucky that he wasn’t strangling her there and then. He certainly wanted to.

  Megan pulled her
arm free, giving no indication that his hard grip had hurt her. She’d braved the enemy camp and survived. She could face him down, too.

  “It’s called surveillance work,” she retorted.

  “It’s called stupidity. Harris and Langtree already did the surveillance—”

  “They couldn’t tell me if Kathy was there,” she snapped back, cutting him short. “I wanted to see for myself. I needed to know she was alive.”

  Alive? he thought. Did she have any idea how close she came to not being alive herself?

  “If they’d made you, you wouldn’t be rescuing anybody. You’d be coming home in so many pieces they’d be too small to qualify as a jigsaw puzzle.” He’d seen what Velasquez did with law enforcement officers, and it was the stuff nightmares were made of. “My God, woman, do you realize who those people are? You cross them, there is no forwarding address for your mail. Ever. Do I make myself clear?”

  Megan swallowed, fighting not to be intimidated by Wichita’s anger. She didn’t deceive herself into believing that it had anything to do with her safety. He cared only about the safety of the operation.

  She dragged the kerchief off her head, and tossed her hair. “How did you know where I was? I thought you said that you can’t risk bugging Velasquez’s suite.”

  “We can’t. But we’ve got cameras planted on the floor by both elevator banks. After I discovered that you pulled a disappearing act, I saw you on the camera, getting out of the elevator.”

  She glanced at the monitor. All that was evident now was the empty hallway. Megan looked down at the kerchief in her hand. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I knew.” He didn’t add that he would have recognized her anywhere. That when he realized she’d slipped out of the bathroom and was probably in the process of doing something like this, his heart had all but stopped. That would be giving her too much of an advantage over him. “Now are you going to stay put, or do I have to tie you up?”

  “I can’t stay put,” she protested. “There’s a maid on the tenth floor waiting for me to return her cart and her uniform”