Operation: Midnight Rendezvous Part 11

"Nothing," she said.

Madrid finished with the desk. "Maybe there's a file or storage room."

"How long will that tranquilizer last?" she asked.

"Half an hour tops." His gaze met hers. "You doing okay?"

She gave him a smile, but it felt shaky on her face. "I don't know how criminals do this stuff. It's nerve-racking."

"Different wiring." He reached out, touched her shoulder gently. "Let's look for the file room."

His touch rea.s.sured her the way nothing else could have at that moment. Then he was moving past her and into the hall. She followed closely behind him. Looking ahead, she saw a room labeled Records. "There," she said.

"Bingo."

His hand was resting on the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans as he entered the room and flipped on the light. It was the size of a walk-in closet, but from floor to ceiling the room was filled with some type of paper storage system, from file cabinets to cardboard record storage boxes to steel shelving units.

"I don't think we can get through all this in five minutes," she said.

"We'll go through what we can. Leave the rest." He looked around. "I'll take the file cabinet." He tugged at the first drawer. When it didn't open, he pulled the gun and shot the lock. The drawer rolled open. Madrid pulled out the first file and began to page through it at the pace of a speed-reader.

Jess turned and, uncertain where to start, crossed to the nearest shelf and pulled down a box. The box itself was marked Parking Tickets. She figured if someone was trying to hide something, he'd label the goods with an innocent, ordinary t.i.tle. Quickly she paged through each folder, finding nothing.

Urgency hammered at her as she went to the next box. Seconds ticked into minutes as they worked. Midway through the box, she glanced at her watch and was alarmed to realize they'd been inside for fifteen minutes.

Hurry.

Closing her eyes against a rise of panic, she slid the box onto the shelf and went to the next. This one was labeled Arrest Reports from several years earlier. Someone was behind on their filing. Discouraged and scared, certain she wasn't going to find anything, Jess began paging through the files.

She was no cop, but she realized almost immediately these were not arrest reports. They looked like some type of profile. Psychological. Physical. A dossier of sorts on young, foreign-born women complete with photographs, background information and health reports.

"I think I found something," she said.

Madrid left the file he was frantically digging through and crossed to her. He looked down at the dossier in her hand. "I'll be d.a.m.ned." He went to the next doc.u.ment.

"What is it?"

Madrid made a sound low in his throat. "Looks like some sort of blueprint."

"Blueprint of what?"

"Hard to tell from this." He went to the next page. "Looks like a container. Like some sort of s.h.i.+p modification."

"A container s.h.i.+p?"

He set his finger against the drawing. "There's been a compartment built into the aft side. Looks like some sort of crude living quarters."

Jess stared at the architectural drawing, her heart pounding. The tiny type ill.u.s.trated a small bunk area, a sink and toilet facility.

"My G.o.d," she murmured. "A floating prison."

His eyes were dark with knowledge when they met hers. "I think we just hit pay dirt."

"Let's hope we fare better than these pa.s.sengers."

Her words were punctuated by the sound of the outer door opening.

Chapter Eight.

Madrid heard the door close as if it were a gunshot. Adrenaline stung his gut. Automatically his hand went to the dart gun. Only, he didn't have any more darts. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot a cop-even if there was a good possibility said cop was corrupt. But he pulled the revolver from his waistband anyway.

Human smuggling was a lucrative trade. But it was also a violent, immoral one. He knew whoever was responsible wouldn't leave any witnesses. Not alive, anyway.

In a fraction of a second his mind ran through a dozen scenarios, none of them good. The best he could hope for was to get out alive.

"Go out the window." He strode briskly to the window above a lateral file cabinet, realizing immediately there was no way he could fit through it. But Jess could.

Twisting the lock, he flung it open as wide as it would go. "Run to the car."

"I'm not leaving without you."

He continued as if he hadn't heard her. "If I'm not there in three minutes, I want you to drive like a bat out of h.e.l.l to the coast highway. Don't stop until you're out of the state."

"Madrid-"

"If you get caught, tell them I took you hostage. That I was going to kill you."

"But-"

"There's no time to argue!"

Jess went pale right before his eyes and for an instant he got the uneasy feeling she was going to faint. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n!

Glancing over his shoulder at the door, half expecting to see a cop with a big gun and an itchy trigger finger, he muscled her to the window. "Go, d.a.m.n it. I can take care of myself," he whispered, hoping to get her moving before she had too much time to think about it. The last thing he needed was for her to worry about him.

She took one last look at him, shook her head and went through the open window. Hoping she stuck to the plan, relieved that he didn't have to worry about her, Madrid darted to the door and peered around the doorjamb.

The cop was standing at the sergeant's desk, looking around suspiciously. "Hey, Dex! Where the h.e.l.l are you?" He put his hands on his hips and started toward the hall. "Must be a d.a.m.n full moon. All h.e.l.l's breaking loose out there."

Madrid spun, darted to the storage box and grabbed what doc.u.ments he could, then stuffed them into the waistband of his slacks. Every nerve in his body went taut when he heard a shout in the hall. Undoubtedly the cop had discovered his buddies.

Cursing beneath his breath, knowing he'd run out of time and options, Madrid looked around wildly. But there was no escape.

Footsteps sounded outside the door, followed by the steel click of a hammer being pulled back.

He pulled his fake FBI identification from his slacks. "FBI!" he shouted. "SAC Magill! Don't shoot!"

The burly officer appeared in the doorway. He glared at Madrid. His gaze flashed to the ID Madrid held in his hand, but he didn't lower the gun.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Mike Magill, Special Agent in Charge. FBI." Remembering the fake blood, Madrid looked down at his s.h.i.+rt. "I heard shots. Someone jumped me from behind."

"What are you doing here?"

"I had a meeting with Norm Mummert."

The cop's gun hand relaxed marginally. He looked over his shoulder, toward his fallen comrades. "What happened?"

"Two men, well armed. I ducked into this office." He winced dramatically. "I'm hit."

The cop lowered his gun and reached for his radio. "This is Two Adam Four. I got a-"

Madrid lunged, kicked the gun from the other man's hand. The cop's eyes went wide. He reeled backward, screamed into the radio, "Code eight!"

Madrid knew enough about cop jargon to know that was the code for an officer calling an emergency. He knew that in seconds the place would be crawling with cops out to protect one of their own. The kind of situation that called for deadly force. h.e.l.l.

Madrid spun, kicked the radio from the man's hand. Vaguely he was aware of it clattering to the floor. The cop's eyes flicked to the fallen gun six feet away.

"Don't do it," Madrid growled.

The cop dived for the weapon.

Cursing, Madrid went for the cop, but he wasn't fast enough to keep him from grabbing the gun. They rolled in a tangle of arms and legs and fists. What the officer lacked in the art of self-defense, he made up for in size.

In the struggle Madrid caught a glimpse of the blue steel muzzle, then a white-knuckled fist. The ensuing blast made his ears ring, followed by plaster raining down from the ceiling where the bullet had blown through.

Madrid tried to wrestle the gun away, but the cop was too big. He kneed Madrid, loosening his grip for just a second, and rolled away. In one swift motion the gun came up and the muzzle exploded. The next thing Madrid knew his arm was on fire. It felt as if someone had sneaked up behind him and branded him with a hot poker.

More pain followed in a sickening rush. But it made him mad. Furious, in fact. He used the resulting adrenaline to put the other man on his back.

"You just had to cross that line, didn't you?"

Grabbing the other man's wrist, Madrid slammed it against the floor. Once. Twice. "Drop it!" he shouted.

The cop's hand opened and the gun clattered away. Clamping his hand around the cop's throat, Madrid tugged the handcuffs from his belt with his free hand. He closed one cuff around the man's wrist, the other around the shelving unit brace.

"That ought to hold you for a while." Dizziness a.s.sailed him when he rose. Surprised, he leaned against the file cabinet. He glanced down at his arm, saw blood coming through his jacket and cursed.

The cop yanked at the cuff. "You won't get away, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"I already have," Madrid said, and walked out the door.

JESS HAD NEVER BEEN GOOD at waiting. But if waiting was torture, then sitting in the car, waiting to see if Madrid would make it out of that building alive, was nothing short of h.e.l.l.

She couldn't see the front of the building from where she was parked, but with her window down she'd heard the shots. And the thought of all the things that could be going on inside made her sick.

A glance at the clock on the dash told her six minutes had pa.s.sed, but it felt as if she'd been waiting an eternity. Was Madrid in trouble? Had the cop shot him? Or had the agent with the dark eyes been forced to do the unthinkable and shoot a cop?

"Come on, Madrid." Her voice sounded strained in the silence of the car. She tried drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, but they were shaking too much. She couldn't take her eyes off the stretch of sidewalk leading to the police station....

A strangled yelp escaped her when she heard a tap on the pa.s.senger window. Half expecting to see a cop with a gun, she glanced over to see Madrid standing there, looking inside. Weak with relief, she hit the locks.

"What took you so long?" she hissed as she started the engine.

He slid onto the seat. "Drive."

Jess jammed the car into gear. The tires squealed as she pulled onto the street.

"Easy," Madrid said. "We don't want to draw any attention."

"G.o.d forbid someone might think we just burglarized the police department." Jess figured they would be drawing plenty of attention very soon. The wrong kind. "What happened in there?"

Grimacing, he leaned back in the seat and glanced down. Jess looked over from her driving and followed his stare. "Oh, my G.o.d." Her heart began to pound as she took in the amount of real blood soaking his s.h.i.+rt. "You've been shot."

"That just about sums it up."

"How bad?"

"Bad enough."

The blood oozed black in the semidarkness. She couldn't stop looking at it.

"Watch where you're going."

She glanced back at the road just in time to keep the wheels from going off the pavement.

"You need to calm down," he said. "Slow down. This'll hold for a little while."

They were on the coast highway now. Jess glanced at the speedometer, inched it back down to sixty. The last thing they needed was to be pulled over. "Did you get the papers and photos?" she asked.

He scowled, shook his head. "I grabbed what I could, but I lost most of it when the cop jumped me."

She gaped at him. "A cop jumped you?"

"Long story."

Jess hoped he had enough of the doc.u.ments to figure out what the Lighthouse Point PD was into.

"Where are we going?" she asked.