Colorado Crime Scene

“Okay,” she said, though her pinched face and hunched shoulders belied the answer. “Did you find him?”

By “him” did she mean her brother or the suspect? “They both had a big head start on me. I found a witness who said they split up at the end of the alley and ran in opposite directions.”

“I’m sure Scott only ran because he was confused and frightened,” she said. “He’s never liked tense situations, but even more so since he’s been diagnosed.”

He nodded. “I’d like to talk to him and find out what he knows about my suspect.”

“I talked to Gary and he said Scott had been working as a dishwasher only three days,” she said.

“Who’s Gary?”

“Oh, he’s the chef. Gary Forneaux. After you left I offered to bring him a drink from the hotel bar and he calmed down quite a bit. He told me they’d needed extra help for the banquet, so they’d agreed to hire Scott on a trial basis.”

“Do you think that’s how he’s been supporting himself—working temporary jobs in whatever town he’s in?”

“Probably. Gary said Scott knew how to run the commercial dishwasher. And he gets along well with most people. He can be very charming when he wants to be. Gary said everyone in the kitchen liked him.”

“I’m glad you found him,” Luke said. Along with everything else that had happened, there was that one bit of good news for her. “At least you know he’s all right.”

“But it feels like I’ve lost him all over again,” she said. “No one at the hotel knew where he was staying. Though he did use his real name. Tomorrow I’m going to start calling around to hotels and apartments, trying to find him.”

“I hope you do,” he said. Not just for his investigation, but because he knew how much being reunited with her lost sibling would mean to her. He would have given almost anything to see Mark again.

“What about the other guy?” he asked. “Did you find out anything about him?”

“His name is Danny. He was a day laborer from a temp agency. He was brought in just for tonight. Gary couldn’t even remember his last name and didn’t know anything about him.”

“Thanks. We’ll follow up on it.” Though he didn’t have high hopes that anyone at the temp agency would have more information. So far this guy had been very good at covering his tracks.

He glanced toward the hotel, at the bright lights and rumbling growl of the generators powering the portable satellite dishes for the news vans. “I guess I’d better get back there.”

“Luke.” Her hand on his arm drew his attention to her once more. The streetlight overhead cast a golden glow over her, glinting off her hair and shadowing her eyes against her pale skin. “I really don’t think Scott knew the man who shot at you. I mean, I don’t think they were friends or anything. He was just opening the door for him, not trying to help him escape.”

He wrapped his hand around hers and held it to his chest. “I know you want to believe that, but you can’t know it. We have to check out the connection, though I hope we don’t find one.”

“Will you tell me if you do?”

This was hard. He didn’t like the thought of keeping anything from her. He knew how much any scrap of information about Mark would mean to him. But he had a job to do. And sometimes that job required making hard decisions. “I can’t tell you anything I find,” he said. “But I will tell you if we’re able to clear your brother.”

“So in this case, no news is bad news.”

She almost smiled, and the burden of guilt he felt at having to keep things from her lifted a little. He marveled at her ability to maintain a sense of humor under the circumstances. She was stronger than she looked. “You’ve had a rough night,” he said. “You should go back to your hotel and get some sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve still got work to do.” He doubted he’d see his bed before morning.

“The first stage of the race starts tomorrow morning, in Aspen,” she said. “I have to be up early to Skype into a press conference.”

“They’re going through with it?”

She nodded. “The UCI made the announcement about an hour ago. The vice president, Pierre Marceau, said it was what Monsieur Demetrie would have wanted.”

“So if someone was trying to stop the race by poisoning President Demetrie, he didn’t succeed,” Luke said.

“Are they sure it was poison?” she asked. “The kitchen was swarming with police after you left. They took leftovers from every dish as evidence. Gary was very upset.”

“We’ll know by morning, anyway.”

“Do you think this is even connected to the bombings?” she asked. “Poisoning seems so personal.”

“That’s something we’ll have to find out.” They could very well be looking into two unrelated crimes. He stood, and pulled her up with him. He hated to leave the oasis of this little bench, away from the crowds and all the unanswered questions, but his duty had to come before his personal feelings. “Will you be all right walking to your hotel alone? I can find someone to go with you, but I can’t leave the investigation. I’ve stayed away too long as it is.”

“I’ll be fine. You’ve done so much already. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” If anything, he’d made things worse for her, placing her brother at the center of an investigation into international terrorism.

“Thank you for listening to me. For believing me—or at least pretending to. And for sharing as much information as you have with me.”

“So you aren’t afraid of me anymore?” He continued to hold her hand, reluctant to let go.

“No.” She put her hand on his chest, the warmth seeping through his shirtfront. “I’m glad we met, in spite of the strange circumstances.”

“Yeah. I’m glad, too.” Maybe from the moment he’d first seen her in that video, he’d known he’d seek her out. Something in her called to him.

She tilted her head up and rose on her toes to bring her face closer to his in silent invitation—an invitation he wouldn’t refuse. He’d been wanting to kiss her, hesitant only because of the tenuousness of their relationship. Her lips warmed beneath his, as soft and sensuous as he’d imagined they would be. He wrapped his arms around her to pull her closer and she slid one hand around to cup the back of his head, her fingers tangled in his hair. He stroked his tongue along the seam of her mouth and she opened for him with a soft sigh more passionate than any words would have been. Every nerve in his body was attuned to her, to the soft floral aroma of her perfume, to the taste of wine that lingered on her lips, to the curve of her breasts against his chest and the strong line of her spine beneath his hand. He deepened the kiss, lost in the sensation of her.

A flash of light to his left distracted him, and reluctantly he lifted his head to look around, a sleeper emerging from a wonderful, compelling dream. He saw nothing but the array of news vans and reporters across the street, though he couldn’t shake the sense that something had happened that he should have paid attention to.

“I’d better go. Good night.”

She slipped from his arms and he curled his fingers into his palms to keep from pulling her back. She gave him a shy smile, then turned and walked away, hips swaying in the blue silk as she walked briskly down the sidewalk. He watched until she’d disappeared in a crowd at the corner, then turned toward the hotel to face a long night of unanswered questions.

* * *

THE MEMBERS OF Search Team Seven assembled the next morning in a conference room in the hotel that had hosted the banquet the night before. Luke slid into the seat next to Travis and nodded a silent greeting to the other team members. They all looked as weary and frustrated as he felt. Across from Luke, Gus Mathers stared at his phone, his eyes half-closed behind his black-framed hipster glasses. Next to him, Jack Prescott’s burly frame looked too big for the spindly folding chair. Farther down the table, the youngest members of the team, Wade Harris and Cameron Hsung, cupped hands around the takeout coffee they’d brought in. Even in their regulation suits, they managed to look like the college students they had been until only a few months before.

The door opened and Ted Blessing strode in. He’d flown in on a red-eye and wore the look of a man who wasn’t happy about having his sleep disturbed. In his midforties, with mud-brown skin and closely cropped hair that showed no sign of gray, he favored tailored suits and had the ramrod-straight spine of the military officer he’d been before joining the Bureau. He laid a tablet computer on the conference table in front of him and studied his team, all of whom were now sitting up straight and at attention.

“How is it that this man keeps getting away, when there are six of you and only one of him?” Blessing asked.

The others cast furtive glances at one another. It wasn’t a question that had a good answer—or any answer. As usual, Jack was the first to speak. “He’s got to have accomplices, helping him get away,” he said. “Someone with a car waiting for him, and a safe place for him to hole up.”

“We’re circulating his picture to all local law enforcement,” Wade said. “They’ll be on the lookout for him.”

“He’ll dye his hair or put on glasses and they won’t recognize him if they trip over him,” Cameron said. Such disguises rarely fooled the recognizers on the team—they memorized facial composition, mannerisms and other details that couldn’t be hidden so easily.

“I don’t want some local cop to nail him,” Gus said. “I want to nail him.”