Cold Spite (Cold Justice: Most Wanted #5)

Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

D elilah woke to a knock on the door and sat bolt upright as all the events from last night bombarded her with startling reality. A glance at the clock told her she’d slept in. It was almost eight.

She and David should have been downtown listening in on Clarence Carpenter’s meeting with the mayor by now. Immediately, she wanted to update someone on the case, but being supposedly dead made that difficult.

Her throat closed.

David…

Had someone found him yet?

Her stomach churned at the idea they hadn’t, that he was still lying in his own blood in his backyard.

The knock on the door came again.

Damn.

She grabbed her Glock off the bedside table and stood behind the bathroom wall. If it was Scanlon, he’d probably shoot her through the door. If it was her colleagues come to lead her away in handcuffs, she didn’t want them to see her armed. She wouldn’t risk a firefight .

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Room service.”

The deep timbre of the voice caught her by surprise and sent a shiver of recognition along every nerve fiber of her being like a fuse had been lit.

Suddenly, she felt sick. Nervous. Panicked. Talking to him on the phone was one thing. She should have known he wouldn’t keep his word. She should have known he’d turn up like a bad penny, mistakenly believing he was her White Knight.

In her fairytale, he was the villain.

She walked to the door and checked the peephole.

There he stood all tousled blue-black hair that still had a curl he could never quite tame. Casta Demarco. Teller of Lies. Destroyer of Hearts.

She quickly opened the door, not wanting to draw attention or notice, no matter how much she’d rather avoid this man for eternity.

He slipped inside and she caught the scent of him, leather and rain, things that reminded her of the East Coast rather than him. When she’d known him he’d been sunshine and clean male sweat, heat and the musky essence of danger. He lowered his heavy-looking bag carefully to the floor. She closed the door softly and flicked the security latch back into place. Steeled herself against the effect he’d always had on her.

“What are you doing here?”

A smile curled those full lips. “Not glad to see me, Delilah?” He wore all black and looked like the rugged operator he was rather than the daredevil undercover agent he’d once been. He crossed his arms, clearly uncomfortable to be in the same room as she was.

Ditto.

She felt woefully unprepared for this reckoning in only an oversized T-shirt and panties. Her clothes from yesterday were hanging in the shower after she’d walked in there fully dressed last night. The tinge of smoke still clung to her nostrils, but maybe it was her imagination, her senses unable to fully let go of the horror of last night.

“Want some coffee?” Determined to pretend he didn’t affect her, she went over to the hotel’s machine and put in a pod.

“Sure.” He yawned widely.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one pretending.

“Did you get any sleep last night?”

He jogged one shoulder in a tense shrug. She tried to ignore the way his muscles bunched in his arms. He’d aged sickeningly well.

“A few hours on the flight. You?”

“A surprising amount in the end.” Once sleep had claimed her, it had been reluctant to let go. Dreams were so much better than reality. “How d’you get here so fast?”

She handed him the mug, careful not to touch him. She had no intention of doing anything that might make him think she still had feelings for him. She would rather take a bullet than go through that nightmare again.

“Military flight.”

“You here to arrest me?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Not yet.”

She turned and made her own coffee, desperate for a hit of caffeine to kickstart her brain. The presence of two queen-size beds made her remember the other times they’d been together in this iconic hotel. They’d once spent two whole days completely naked, never once leaving the room.

Bitterness seared her tongue. “I told you I didn’t want your help.”

“Why don’t we discuss this when you’re dressed?”

Her brows hiked and fury rolled through her. His tone suggested she might be trying to deliberately seduce him or something—like he was unable to control himself around her and like that might be her fault .

How very male .

“You woke me, Demarco. When you arrive uninvited, this is what you get. I wasn’t expecting company.” She let her anger and outrage show even though she kept the volume low. She looked down at her bare feet and resisted the desire to tug the T-shirt lower.

His eyes glittered like amber. “I only thought you’d be more comfortable if you had some pants on?—”

“Save it for someone who still believes your bullshit.” She put her hands on her hips. “Rest assured, I am not trying to tempt you with my irresistible body. Trust me when I say I wouldn’t hook up with you again if you were the last man on the planet, with the exception perhaps of Joseph Scanlon. So don’t worry about your reputation or your honor on my account. Your body is safe from me.”

She strode over to her bag which she’d placed on the armchair in the corner and picked it up. She grabbed her coffee mug with the other hand and headed into the bathroom, closing the heavy door behind her with her heel.

She dressed quickly and brushed her teeth. Washed her face. She wished she had a little makeup, lipstick or mascara, but she hadn’t considered it enough of a necessity to put in her go-bag. It would have been useful armor against this man, her former lover, a person who’d seduced her, gutted her, and left her to drown in grief—not that he knew the details.

She needed every weapon she could gather against this man.

Tears filled her eyes because it had been Valerie who’d helped her through the terrible nightmare that had happened after Cas had dumped her. The loss of her friend hit her anew and she wanted to break down and weep. For David too. Two good people murdered for no good reason.

She forced the tears back past the lump in her throat. She’d cry when they arrested their killer.

She stared in the mirror and wondered how her world had been so easily tipped on its head. This time yesterday, she’d been blissfully unaware of what was to come. She thrust the thoughts and self-pity aside. Valerie and David were dead and knowing Scanlon, he wasn’t finished yet.

No rest for the wicked. There was work to do.

She got dressed in dark navy jeans and a navy shirt with white buttons. She pulled on old leather boots, feeling a little more like herself.

She stuffed all her things into the bag, using a plastic garbage liner for her wet clothes. She slipped her weapon into a pancake holster at the small of her back, brushed the tangles out of her hair and went back outside. Cas was pacing the room, drinking his coffee. She watched his eyes flicker down her length before he looked away.

Was that attraction she saw in his yellow eyes?

Fury bubbled.

He had no damned right.

“What’s the plan?” she bit out. “I assume you have one?”

“There’s a military plane headed back to Naval Base Norfolk at nineteen-thirty tonight. We’re both going to be on it.”

She bristled. Really .

“Killion’s idea, not mine.” He correctly read her response. “We’ll set up a center of operations somewhere in Virginia. Killion is making calls. He wants to set up a task force.”

She stiffened.

“On the down low, but if Scanlon is involved, we have to prove it, and to prove it we need to know where the sonofabitch is, where he’s been, where he’s going and who he’s communicating with. We can’t do that with just you and me.”

“I told you,” she gritted out, “I don’t want your help.”

“Hey, I’m a target too. We may as well work together, but I can’t simply go AWOL from work.”

Of course not. Nothing got between Cas Demarco and his job.

She placed the bitterness next to the grief and pushed it aside. For now.

“SAC Ridgeway said Scanlon was planning to head back to Louisiana after his release, so I figured he’d presumably have to meet with a parole officer there at regular intervals.”

“You spoke to Ridgeway?” Surprise hiked his brows.

“Yesterday. Before everything went down. I got a phone call from a San Diego Police Department detective friend of mine telling me Scanlon was released from Miramar as of three weeks ago.”

“What did Ridgeway say?”

“He knew already. Said Scanlon was a reformed man and had found God.”

“Well, he certainly embraced the Hellfire.”

She rubbed her arms. “I’d had a feeling of being watched at times recently. When I was in La Jolla and a couple of times when I was out and about on the job.”

“Presumably, that’s where he realized you had a partner?”

“Presumably.” She bit her lip to keep from crying. “David Gonzales. He was going to go far in the Bureau.” Intelligent. Handsome. Kind. “I ignored the feeling when I should have listened to my instincts. Wrote it off to my routine being thrown by Valerie staying with me. I should have paid attention. I should have moved Valerie to a hotel or…”

Demarco said nothing as she trailed off.

She crossed her arms. “Anyway, I found out his parole officer is a guy named Jim Jenkins in Thibodaux. It’s a thirty-minute drive from Scanlon’s father’s home, where his dad and twin brother still live.”

She’d done some research yesterday, checking up on the guy.

“I remember them from the trial.”

They exchanged a quick look at that.

Scanlon’s people were from the bayous of Louisiana. Joseph Scanlon had grown up creeping around that swamp with the same ease as the alligators who inhabited the place. They needed to avoid confronting him on home ground if at all possible.

“So even if we can’t find the guy before then, we should be able to discover when he has an appointment and track him after that.”

He’d be unarmed too. Only a man eager to go back to prison visited a parole officer while armed.

Demarco stared at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. She wished he’d say something. She turned away. “Ideally, we need to collect enough evidence to have him arrested at that next appointment.”

“Which we can amass in Virginia.” Demarco was dogged in his determination to get her out of California.

She narrowed her eyes. “What exactly did Killion say to you?”

“That if you want to stay dead, he can get you a gig at the Agency.”

“Great.” She didn’t want to work for the CIA. She loved her job as a Special Agent. “What else did he say?”

“That you can’t do this alone and hope to stay in the FBI.”

She tapped her foot. She hated that he was probably right. “ So now what? We have nine hours to kill before we catch the flight out of here.”

His eyes flickered to the bed.

She sneered. “Yeah. Not happening.”

“I’m not a fool, Delilah.” He looked affronted.

God. That hurt.

He crossed his arms. “Look, I have a friend from my old SEAL team who’s now a BUD/S instructor. I figured I’d use the opportunity to go talk to him. See if there are any rumors running around the teams regarding Scanlon. See if I can determine who his friends are.”

“How do you know you can trust this friend of yours?”

Gold eyes flashed to hers. “We did three tours together.”

Whatever the two of them had had together apparently held no comparison to the SEAL brotherhood, no matter how dangerous their undercover work had felt at times. She hated him all over again. “And what about the men from Scanlon’s platoon? They served together too. ”

Cas nodded. “During the trial, they were split regarding their opinion on Scanlon.”

“You mean half of his platoon believed him and the other half believed the Bureau.”

“The evidence against him was overwhelming, especially with the video. That’s why Naval Command stripped him of his trident.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Do you think any of his SEAL buddies would help him get revenge for what happened?”

“Honestly? No. But that’s one of the things I’m hoping Senior Chief Tommy Whalen will help me ascertain.”

She held her hand out to the balcony and blue pool beyond. “And I get to sit around here all day?”

He stared at her with that flat-eyed stare that had enabled him to hold his own with some of the deadliest killers in the world. “If you promise to come with me to Virginia tonight without any trouble, I’ll buy you some sunglasses and a hat. You can sit in the vehicle and guard the gear while I ask Tommy some questions. We’ll come back here for something to eat afterwards and head to the base airfield around six.”

She chewed her lip. Leaving San Diego felt like running away. Like she was abandoning Val and David. “Why do we have to run the task force out of Virginia? The murders happened in California.”

“Well, for one, your official FBI photo will be on every news station around here for the foreseeable future and, secondly, because I have to be back in Virginia tomorrow for a personal commitment.”

Her lip curled. “So I have to fly across the country because you have a dental appointment?”

“It’s a memorial service for a fellow HRT operative.”

Remorse stabbed at her. “Damn. Sorry.” She rubbed her brow. Then she asked the question she’d been avoiding. “Do you know if they informed my parents yet?”

“Probably. ”

Delilah looked away. She wasn’t sure what the best decision would be regarding her parents. With her dad’s illness and delicate mental state, it might be better not to tell him anything. He might forget that someone had told him she’d died—the way he sometimes forgot that her brother was dead.

Her throat closed as she thought of Christian. He’d been in college and had died from an accidental opioid overdose eight years ago.

And her father had been overprotective of her ever since and had been furious when she joined the Bureau—not that he’d stopped her, for which she was grateful. He’d had the power.

When Demarco was still pretending to be in love with her, he’d claimed he’d wanted to meet her parents.

She was grateful she hadn’t introduced them. Once they’d got to know one another, her father would have loved this guy, and he’d have been devastated when Demarco dumped her. Stephen Quinn was petty enough to have taken it out on Demarco’s FBI career, and Delilah would not have wanted to be responsible for that. It was obvious he was a dedicated agent.

Demarco went over to his heavy kitbag and pulled out a burner cell. “Here.” He tossed it to her.

She caught it.

“Call your mom. Maybe your dad has enough friends to pull a few strings in DC.” Demarco had always been slightly cynical about her powerful connections.

But nowadays he didn’t get to judge her.

She stuffed the cell into her pocket, dug into her bag and pulled out the blonde wig. “I’ll call from the vehicle when you’re talking to this Tommy guy.” She wound her own hair into a pony, pinned it tight to her nape. She slid the wig carefully into place and added a couple of clips to secure it.

Demarco’s expression went carefully blank as she faced him. Pretending he didn’t remember that they’d once fucked frantically against a wall in this very hotel with her wearing only this wig and nothing else .

Something in her chest tightened, as if there suddenly wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. She couldn’t stand to be confined to this space with this man for a second longer. She pulled oversized dark glasses from the go-bag and slid them on.

“Let’s go.”