Never Surrender (Task Force Eagle) (15 page)

Juliana turned her back and hugged herself. “I’m
sorry. It’s not you. When you said Finny’d been beaten, I wasn’t certain who I’d
see in that hospital bed. I’d have told you—soon.”

“
Soon
.” He scraped fingers through his hair. “Not
good enough.” A lump of pain congealed in his gut. He’d been right in the first
place. He never should have allowed his hormones to confuse his judgment about
a woman with family ties to the drug trade.

“I know, but it’s all I have.” She faced him again. “What
will you do now? Send the Coast Guard out to arrest him?”

He barked a bitter laugh. “Why should I tell you
anything? You don’t trust me. And obviously
I
can’t trust
you
.”

*****

Juliana turned the spare key she’d kept and slipped
inside Vinson Enterprises. As she’d expected for a Saturday, the offices
remained dark and empty. He must be somewhere setting up an alibi, in case
Olívas implicated him when the DEA pounced. Maybe he didn’t suspect the DEA was
on to him.

The wall clock’s hands were straight up. Noon.
Sea Worthy
was due in. Rick and other DEA agents could be surrounding El Águila’s gang.
And putting the cuffs on Jordan. Her pulse jittered, but she breathed deeply
for calm.
I can do nothing about that.

Rick
.

At the thought, his image floated before her. The way
she wanted to remember him, no bitter look of disappointment on his face. He
wasn’t the worthless charmer she’d imagined. He was honorable and dedicated and
she’d lost any chance with him. He’d begun to trust her and she’d ruined it.
Ruined everything.

A pain sharp as a needle pierced her heart. She
pressed a clammy palm to her mouth and banished thoughts of him. She’d messed
things up and this was her only chance to make repairs, however slight, however
late.

Leaving the lights off, she tiptoed through the office
to her desk. She booted up the computer. Vinson might have the safe combination
stored somewhere in the files. Then she could get in—as long as he hadn’t
changed the password.

A few minutes later, she found a file listing only a
series of numbers. Maybe.

Her nerves were jumping like spring peepers at dusk.
Safe
cracking. Not the best strategy for a future accountant, but here goes.
She
left the computer running in case she had to search again. Knees wobbling, she
crept to the boss’s office door.

She tried not to think of worst-case scenarios but her
brain wouldn’t stop conjuring them. Vinson could show up. The
Sea Worth
y’s
captain could pop in with his receipts. The key she’d snitched from the key
cabinet might not work. Maybe it wasn’t for this office at all. Her heart
drummed so hard she clutched her chest.

Get going. Get it over with.

She fumbled the key, but finally the lock clicked. The
office door opened. She shut her eyes briefly.

With the blinds closed, a twilight-like gloom
blanketed Vinson’s office. The big wooden desk with its phalanx of greenery,
the conference table, chairs, and cabinets looked normal. The musty smell of
potting soil and the oiliness of stale coffee permeated the space.

She hurried across the carpeted floor to the cabinet
behind the desk.

On her knees, she opened the door concealing the safe.
Too dark to see the dial. Dammit, she should have brought a flashlight. She’d
never replaced the one Rick broke when he jumped her at her brother’s
apartment.

She slid the desk lamp over to the near corner. A
punch of the button in its base, and a spotlight glared on her guilty face. And
on the safe. Surely not enough light to be seen outside.

Before touching the dial, she listened to the office.
The computer’s hum, the furnace’s low rumble, a cricket’s chirp. Nothing else.
Her fingers closed on the cold steel.

Firming her resolve, she spun the dial and twisted to
the first number. The second. The third. Her ears and fingers weren’t sensitive
enough to know if the combination worked. Hand trembling, she reached for the
handle and pulled down.

The handle clicked. The steel safe door swung toward
her.

A shadowy movement behind her brought her head around.

The world crashed down on the side of her head.

White-hot pain exploded. Colors bloomed behind her
eyelids, then stygian black.

Chapter 14

Rick shivered in the raw morning as he watched the
Sea
Worthy
chug toward the fish pier. He zipped his raid jacket up to the neck.
Weather forecasters predicted clearing skies for Saturday, but in true Maine
style, the April weather remained overcast in a slate gray that matched the
Casco Bay waters.

Constant activity around the several piers made it
easy for the DEA to plant agents dressed as fishermen and dock workers in
strategic spots. Neither Jordan nor Olívas’s men would escape capture this
time.

As soon as the
Sea Worthy
’s crew tied up,
agents swarmed aboard. Jake Wescott escorted the captain from the dragger. “No
sign of Jordan Paris. Or his gear.”

“Not on board?” Rick roared at the captain.

“Got off last port.” A weathered man of indeterminate
age, he took a long drag on a cigarette.

It was all Rick could do not to beg a butt from him.
Instead, he surreptitiously inhaled the smoke in hopes of easing his hyper
nerves.

“You were harboring a suspected criminal. Unless you
want your boat searched from stem to stern and turned inside out, you’d better
tell me where Paris went.” Rick paused for effect. “We might have to search
anyway if we find any hint you’re hauling anything but fish.”

The captain’s seamed face crumpled. He tossed down his
smoke and stomped on it. “I don’t know what you think this guy did, this Paris
or Finny or whatever his name is. My boat’s clean. I got nothin’ to hide. We
docked in Portsmouth yesterday to take on fuel. A message was waitin’ for him.
Said he had to leave, some emergency at home. That’s all I know.”

Questioning wrung no more from the captain or crew. No
one saw Jordan Paris leave the docks or knew who might’ve picked him up—Juliana
or the Mexicans.
She wouldn’t, not after . . .
Too painful to
contemplate.

“More bad news.” Agent Harriman’s dour countenance
greeted him.

“Don’t tell me.” The knot in Rick’s gut warned him
about Jordan’s fate. “No Olívas.”

“Right in one.” The Portland agent waved a beefy arm
toward the Exchange’s fenced parking area and the street beyond. “We’ll hang
out awhile longer in case they’re late.”

Rick doubted the necessity. Somehow the Mexicans had
finessed Jordan right into their trap. The only silver lining was the
connection to Wes Vinson. How else could they have known where to find the
Sea
Worthy
? A narrow silver lining glimmered in his mind. If the Mexicans had
Jordan, it meant Julian wasn’t complicit.

But how could he face her with the news? He dug his
knuckles into his temples to fight off the headache that threatened. His phone
buzzed inside his jacket. The Boston office.

“I have a strange message for you,” the receptionist
said. “From a Venice Aaron.”

His heart skipped a beat. “Shoot.”

“She says Juliana Paris could be in danger. The caller
said Ms. Paris rushed out this morning saying something about wanting to help,
to make up for not telling you about Jordan. Something about evidence. The
Aaron woman says her friend doesn’t answer her phone. Calls go to voice mail.
Does this make sense to you?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” He thanked her and disconnected.
Acid burned in his veins. He hissed in a breath.

Juliana might have found more evidence than she could
handle.

*****

Awareness chewed into Juliana’s brain with burning
bites. Her eyelids fluttered open to a swarm of black spots. When she tried to
sit up, her arms wouldn’t work. Her stomach lurched, and her heart thumped
wildly.

“Take it easy, Jules. You all right?”

Oh, God, Jordan. Yes!

Unable to speak, she flopped back down like a landed
cod. Deep breaths fought back nauseating dizziness. Throbbing pain radiated
from her neck and shoulder and bounced around in her head like a spiked ball.

A louvered vent admitted scant light. She lay on a
cement floor in a windowless metal room the size of a walk-in closet. A shed
maybe. Metal and cement refrigerated this space to nearly freezing. In a corner
was a stack of boxes and her backpack.

Her hands were bound behind her, the reason for the
numbness. And her feet were tied. Not a landed cod. More of a trussed turkey.
She was cold and sore. And aware that the two of them had landed in deep shit.

“You okay?” Jordan crawled and rolled closer, his face
contorted with the effort.

Her joy at seeing Jordan alive battled with her
distress at their predicament.

Someone, probably Wes Vinson, the crooked bum, had hit
her over the head as she opened the safe. She was so intent on the combination
she missed hearing him enter the office. Her last-second flinch at his movement
spared her a concussion. Instead of her skull, his knockout blow had connected
mostly with her neck.

“I’ve been better,” she said. “How did you get here?”

With a grimace, Jordan pushed back to prop himself
against the wall. His lip was cut, and he looked as gray as the cement, but in
better shape than Finny. Grease and blood stained his hooded sweatshirt and
jeans. His boots were scraped and scarred. His legs weren’t hobbled like hers,
but moving around made his pain worse. What had they done to him?

“I’m sorry you got caught up in this, Jules. Last
thing I expected. I guess it means you know about Sudsy and the drug hauls.”

She started to nod, but swirling pain changed her
mind. “I also know about Vinson and the Mexicans. Now tell me how they captured
you.”

“I got a note from Finny that I should leave the boat
in Portsmouth. They’d be waiting for me in Portland. It was a fake. They grabbed
me on the dock. We’re in a boat shed at Vinson’s marina.”

She lay still and closed her eyes. “Drugs. Dammit,
Jordan. How did it happen? Why?”

He shook his head, his grimy blond hair hanging in
wormy strands around his dirt-smeared face. “I needed the work, so I wouldn’t
have to keep sponging off you. It seemed like a straight gig at first. But then
things got dicey and I couldn’t quit.”

He related a tale of deliveries to markets,
restaurants, and back alleys, of his gradual tumbling to the real nature of the
deliveries. When he tried to quit, Sudsy Pettit threatened him. Finally he got
up the nerve to tell the man to shove it.

He happened on a meeting at the diner beside Vinson’s—Sudsy,
Wes Vinson, and a Mexican who might have been Carlos Olívas. “They saw me,
Jules. I had to run. That’s when I phoned you.”

“Not because you had any evidence against them, just
because you saw them together.” Was that all he had on them?

“That Mexican guy chased me. I yelled to him that I
had a cell-phone picture of the three of them together. Said I’d give it to the
cops. He slowed down at that. Enough for me to get away in the crowd on
Commercial Street.”

A snapshot.
For that they’d searched his
apartment and hers.

“You always were fast on your feet.” With bittersweet
warmth, she recalled the times he used to race with her when he was in high
school.

“Runs in the family.”

When she frowned at their banter, a vise tightened at
the base of her skull. “Unless we get out of this, we may never run again. We
have to do something.”

“Shh, he’s coming.” Face pinched with pain and fear,
he turned toward the steel door.

A key clanked on a padlock, and then the door swung
open.

Dapper in his crisp jeans and topsiders, Vinson
entered. A small silver pistol rode at his belt. “Awake, are we?”

“No thanks to you.” She made an attempt at a snarl,
but her pain-contorted expression probably looked more like a cramp.

“Too bad you got so nosy, Juliana. We could have had a
good time together.”

“Don’t give me that,” she spat. “You hired me, hit on
me to find out about Jordan.”

He knelt to check her wrists. “I should’ve known
better.”

The thought of them together repelled her to the point
of nausea. She wanted to spit in his face, but that would that get her zip.
Rather than attack him from her vulnerable position, she had to try to reach
him. “Why, Wes? Did you get hooked yourself? You can get help.”

“Me? Drugs?” He sneered at the idea. “I’m not dumb.”
He stared almost wistfully out the door toward the bay. “The short answer is
money.”

Inspiration struck with one of the drumbeats pounding
inside her head. “Let us go before you get in deeper. I e-mailed the DEA office
about what I found in the safe.”

With an ugly laugh, he sat on his heels. “Nice try,
but you’d barely opened the door when I found you.”

She schooled her voice. “You have it backwards. I was
putting things back, ready to close the safe. The cops and the DEA should be
here any minute.” As long as he didn’t quiz her about the safe contents, it was
a good bluff.

Doubt creased his freckled forehead. He still looked
boyishly handsome.

He checked Jordan’s wrists, then stood and leered down
at her. “Bitch. They won’t find anything. Most of all they won’t find you. Or
your stupid brother. The Mexicans will help me load you on board my yacht, and
then the three of us will take a little cruise.”

Satisfied their bonds were tight, he left them to stew
about their fate.

*****

As soon as Rick saw Juliana’s car at Debby’s Diner, he
knew she’d been caught. Vinson’s SUV sat in the marina parking lot beside the
familiar type of nondescript rental car favored by Olívas. Claws raked his gut,
and he spat out a string of Spanish and English curses. He signaled the other
flak-vested and raid-jacketed teams.