One Last Chance

“Thank you.”

He nodded, wondering what had gone wrong with his coordination that made every move he made seem awkward. He decided the answer was not to move at all, and he didn’t as she replaced the thick volume in the crook of her arm.

“You…like poetry?”

“You get an ‘A’ for deductive reasoning,” she said. Chance suddenly felt as if he’d blushed more in the past five minutes than he had in his entire thirty years. Yet there hadn’t been any real sarcasm in the husky voice, merely the sound of an amusement, matching that in her eyes.

Quisto wouldn’t believe this, he thought ruefully. He’d figure the real reason I ignore all those woman is because if I try to talk, I’ll make a fool out of myself. Hell, maybe he’d be right. “He always is,” he muttered.

“What?” She was looking at him quizzically.

He grimaced. “Just trying to remember back to when I could carry on a conversation.”

“Maybe you knocked something loose here.”

Again there was no sarcasm in her voice, just a touch of the amusement that had been there since he’d first met her eyes. I wish it was only that, he thought, suddenly afraid something had shriveled and died inside him for good.

“Probably permanently,” he said wryly.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

She glanced at the elegant gold watch that banded her slim wrist, her eyes widening when she saw what time it said. He read her look and moved out of her way. She took a step in the direction she’d been going when he had careened into her, then looked back at him.

“About tomorrow…whoever he is, he’s not worth it.”

He let out a breath, then chuckled as he nodded. “Go ahead and read the paper tomorrow.”

The smile came again, even wider this time. He stared after her as she walked away, appreciating the subtle feminine motion of her hips in the short white skirt. He watched her until he realized people were watching him, then he turned around to head toward the other building.

He’d gone only a few steps when he realized he’d never asked her name. It seemed suddenly important, very important, and he turned back to see if he could catch up with her. She was nowhere in sight.

His eyes flicked over every person on the sidewalk in disbelief. She couldn’t have disappeared so fast, she had to be there. But she wasn’t. Damn, Buckner, maybe you hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe she didn’t exist at all.

By the time he gave up and headed once more for the office building that they had scouted out earlier, he was half convinced he had dreamed her. He must have, he thought. No real woman had affected him like that in years. Forget it, he told himself. Get moving.

Chance slipped in the side door of the office building. He passed the elevator and headed for the stairway. He took the four flights at a run, thinking that with working on this case, neither he nor Quisto would have the time for the cutthroat games of racquetball that kept them both in shape.

He was breathing deeply but not, he noted with satisfaction, puffing when he pulled the door open at the top of the stairwell and stepped on to the flat roof of the building. He found a spot quickly and crouched down behind the low parapet.

The first thing he realized was that this vantage point wasn’t going to be useful to them for much longer; he could see a stack of window blinds sitting on a table just inside the now bare window. But more important, he could see, sitting at the desk, Pedro Escobar, Mendez’s lieutenant. Or I guess I should say Pete, he thought wryly. Paul de Cortez seemed to have made some sweeping changes in the names of his employees, as well as his own. I wonder if the Mendezes back in Colombia mind.

The man appeared cool and calm as he worked on something at the desk. Chance’s mind was racing. If he’d made them, he would have already had time to call Mendez, but it was unlikely he’d be sitting there so calmly. From what he knew of the man, Escobar had a tendency to go off half-cocked. Maybe, just maybe they might have lucked out.

No thanks to Eaton, he thought as he kept an eye on the figure at the desk. His report hadn’t even mentioned Escobar; Chance had called a friend in the Miami office for what information he had. Eaton was a prime example of incompetence rising to the top, he thought, wondering cynically how many good men he’d gotten killed along the way.

Eaton. The whoever that had sent him crashing into that vision in red and white. Unless, of course, she really had been a phantom. He ran a hand through his hair, thinking that it was entirely possible. His mind had been doing some funny things lately. Quisto kept telling him he needed a vacation. Actually, what Quisto kept telling him was he needed a vacation and a woman, and not in that order. Maybe he was right.

He knew, of course, that that was the last thing he needed. Or wanted, anyway. Although for a pair of smoky gray eyes, he might think about it….

“Damn,” he muttered, a little stunned at himself. Had she really had that strong an impact on him, to make him think of things he’d sworn off for so long? Had she—

Escobar had moved, and Chance jerked his wandering mind back to the matter at hand. The man had risen from the desk and started to walk toward the door. Before he got there it swung open, and a man in a bright red hard hat stood there. About the red of her sweater—

Knock it off, Buckner, he ordered sharply. The man was smiling, and so was Escobar, nodding and shaking the man’s hand.

As Mendez’s right-hand man turned to walk back to the desk, Chance ducked quickly out of sight. They were safe. They had to be. Escobar didn’t have it in him to remain so calm if he knew they were here.

So, I won’t kill Eaton. At least not yet. Not in time for tomorrow’s paper, anyway, he thought, smothering a grin. Then he settled down to wait until the coast was clear for him to leave.

“Nothing,” Quisto said in disgust. “Absolutely nothing.”

Chance shrugged. “He wouldn’t have all these people after him if he was stupid.”

“I’m the one who’s starting to feel stupid. He hasn’t dealt with anything that even looks like china white, let alone the real stuff. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the guy was opening a legitimate business.”

“Maybe he is.”

“Sure, and politics is a clean business.”

Chance shrugged.

“Damn it,” Quisto said, “all he’s done for a week and a half is talk to decorators, food suppliers, and interview chefs.”

“Hey, now there’s a thought. You could sneak in as a chef. We could close him down in a night.”

Quisto scowled. “One little mistake at a home barbecue and they never let you forget it.”

“It’s your mother who can’t forget it.”

“It was only one fire engine, I don’t see—”

Chance cut off the words with a quick gesture as a silver Mercedes coupe pulled into the driveway behind them. He watched it in the rearview mirror until it pulled into a marked parking stall and Pedro Escobar got out.

“Alone,” he said, and settled back down in the driver’s seat of the black BMW he and Quisto were sitting in.

The car had been, along with a luxurious motor yacht that was moored down at the marina, the spoils of the biggest bust ever made by the Marina del Mar police, two years ago. Under the Federal Forfeiture Statute, they got a large chunk of the hapless drug dealer’s cash in addition to the boat and the car. Chance had been instrumental in that case, and it gave him no small pleasure to know that the man’s resources were being used to bring down others like him.

“Speaking of my mother,” Quisto said as the vigil began again, “she wants to know when you’re coming for dinner.”

“Sometime. When there’s less than twenty of you around,” Chance said dryly. He liked Quisto’s family, especially his energetic, vivacious mother, but sometimes they were daunting just in sheer number. For an only child who’d been a loner most of his life, the chaos of seven brothers and sisters, plus assorted spouses and children was a little overwhelming.

“She worries about you, you know.”

“She worries about everyone.”

“Yes, but when she worries about you, I’m the one who constantly hears about it.”

“Tell her I’m fine.”