One Last Chance

Lieutenant Morgan handed out a sheet of paper to Eaton, whose crimson face did not fade a bit as he read the report.

When he had finished, he cleared his throat and spoke reluctantly. “Well, er, yes. Good information.”

“Thank Detective Buckner. He had it within twenty-four hours of Mendez’s arrival, despite the fact that he is using the name Paul de Cortez.”

Eaton’s expression told everyone in the room exactly what he thought of the idea of thanking Chance Buckner for anything, short of dropping dead. Quisto smothered a snigger, and got a third glare.

“This is obviously going to be his cover for his drug activities.” Eaton slapped the report down on the table. “We will begin the surveillance immediately, of course. We already have the necessary court orders.”

“You mean we will,” Chance muttered, knowing all too well that it was unlikely that the federal agents would be the ones doing most of the tedious stakeout work.

“You have a problem, Detective Buckner?”

“Yeah. Something’s making me sick.” The look Eaton gave him made his glance at Quisto seem like a loving gaze. Chance waited just long enough to make it obvious what—or who— his problem was, then said easily, “Must have been that burrito at lunch. It was too…heavy.”

Eaton’s color deepened, but Chance’s innocent expression never wavered, and Eaton had to let it pass.

“Why don’t you tell us what you have in mind for the stakeout?” Jim Morgan threw Chance another warning glance as he spoke to Eaton. Chance shrugged and, pulling a chair from the table and placing it against the wall, sat down.

The agent’s voice hadn’t improved since he’d begun. It still had the annoying, buzzing timbre of the fly trapped in the upper corner of the office window. The hum of the insect seemed infinitely more interesting as the man elaborated on procedures any first-year cop would know. And it had been a long time since Chance Buckner had been a first-year cop.

He glanced at Quisto, who rolled his eyes. Restraining a grin, Chance sat back in the chair, fiddling with the rubber band he’d found on the floor. He wound it around his fingers, snapped it a couple of times, and was just wondering how close he could get to that fly when another, much more tempting target presented itself.

Eaton had walked between Chance and the table, inadvertently exposing his considerable backside to attack. Chance drew back the elastic band until it refused to go any further, and zeroed in on the broad expanse of gray.

Quisto suddenly tapped the table in an odd rhythm. Chance glanced up to see his partner’s gaze fastened on Lieutenant Morgan, who was looking at Chance pointedly. With a sheepish grin, Chance eased off the tension on the tiny weapon, and with exaggerated conspicuousness dropped it to the floor. Only then did he catch Eaton’s last words.

“—expect an improved attitude from your detectives, Lieutenant.”

“I’m sure we can handle this investigation in a spirit of mutual cooperation.”

Lieutenant Morgan rose, closing the file folder. Seeing the signal they’d been waiting for, both Chance and Quisto got rapidly to their feet and headed for the door.

“Detective Buckner.” The lieutenant’s words forced Chance to turn back. “My office.”

Chance smothered a sigh, then nodded. He heard an odd sound, and turned to see Eaton’s face wearing a satisfied smirk. He throttled the urge to deck the man with a well-placed fist, and with an elaborate bow, held the door open.

“So what did he say?” Quisto asked.

“I’m fired.”

“Gimme a break, Buckner. The jerk had it coming. What did he want you for?”

“A startling revelation. Eaton doesn’t like me.”

“Well, that’s understandable.”

“Thanks a lot.” Chance took a swipe at his partner, who dodged agilely away. Quisto grinned.

“Hey, if I looked like him, instead of my classic macho, Latin self, I wouldn’t like you, either.”

“If his ego was as secure as yours, he wouldn’t care,” Chance said dryly.

“And who else but someone with a secure ego could work with you? I mean, it gets kind of old, my man, watching all those ladies throwing themselves at you all the time.”

“They don’t throw themselves at me,” Chance muttered, although he supposed there was something in what the young Cuban said. He would never understand what there was in the arrangement of his features, in the aligning of the parts that made up Chance Buckner, that made women look twice. He only knew that, to his embarrassment, they did. And often came back for a third look.

“It’s those piercing blue eyes,” Quisto said dramatically, “and all that sun-bleached California hair.”

“My hair’s from Iowa, just like the rest of me.”

His answer was automatic. They’d been through this teasing routine many times. So was the gesture of his hand as he ran it through the tangled mass of the gold-streaked brown hair. He would be grateful for that if nothing else when he left this assignment to narcotics, he thought. He hadn’t had his hair off the back of his neck in four years.

“Besides what are you complaining about? I send ’em all to you anyway.”

“Ah, yes, and I teach them that every wonderful thing they’ve always heard about Latin lovers is true. But you, my friend, don’t you think you’re carrying this solitude bit a little far?”

“You worried about my social life, Quisto?”

“I’m worried,” the younger man said frankly, abandoning the formal tones, “about your libido. You haven’t even had a date since Sarah died, let alone anything more…strenuous.”

Chance’s face closed up in silent warning, but the wiry young man kept on.

“You walk around looking like the poster boy for the wrong side of the tracks, women drool on themselves trying to get to you, and you ignore them all.”

“Quisto.” His tone was the equivalent of the look that had shuttered his face.

“And you’re going to volunteer for all the night shifts on the stakeout, aren’t you? Just like last time. Damn it, Chance, when are you going to—”

“Not now.”

Chance had stopped dead, turning to fix his partner with a steady, forbidding gaze. Quisto shrugged and gave it up.

“Okay, amigo. I was just worried about you.” He grinned suddenly, a brilliant flash of white teeth against perfect olive skin. “Hey, maybe that’s the secret. Ignore ’em, and they flock to you. I’ll have to try it.”

“You, ignore women?” Chance accepted the unspoken apology easily. “That’ll be the day.”

Chance thought of Quisto’s words again that evening as he sat in the surveillance van outside the building Mendez had leased. He had been wary of the effusive young Cuban at first, especially after the quiet, laid-back man who had been his partner for his first three years in the division.

But Marty Thompson was gone now, the unruffled exterior having hidden the ravages of burnout that had surfaced abruptly and finally one day beneath the brilliant California sun. That funeral had frightened him as no other, filling him with the eerie sensation that he was looking at himself, and he wondered if someday, somewhere down the hard, sometimes dirty road, he too would walk out onto the golden sand of this paradise and blow his brains out. It was a question he’d always been able to say no to, until Marty. And Sarah.

“All set, Chance?”

He glanced at Jeff Webster, the detective who was monitoring the equipment. The redhead nodded, and Chance looked up at the man who had turned around in the driver’s seat of the van.

“Yeah, Todd. Go ahead.”

With a nod, the other man turned, slid out of the van and shut the door, locking it from the outside. He would, Chance knew, walk casually toward an expensive shopping area two blocks down, linger there long enough to be sure he hadn’t been followed, then pick up the car that was parked in the lot and return to the station. In about four hours he would be back to do it all in reverse, while a few miles away, the driver of a nondescript panel truck that was parked near Mendez’s house would be doing the same. The two vehicles would trade places, and then it would begin again.