02 Avalanche Pass (44 page)

Odd that he should grieve so deeply for Tina Bowden, he thought. After all, there’d been just that one night between them. He had liked her, and enjoyed her company. But it went no further than that. During the siege, they had met less than half a dozen times, exchanging hurried words as they kept one fearful eye on the door to the kitchen, speaking in whispers, trying to make sense of the whole crazy situation. And yet he felt a deep sense of loss—and had done so since the moment when the marine light colonel had told him that she had been killed at the end. She’d died protecting one
of the hostages, standing over him and facing a mercenary armed with a machine pistol. He didn’t care about the other casualties. They were just names and there was no face to any of them—no connection to him. But Tina Bowden he had known, even if it had been for such a short time.

He’d spoken about it with Colby. The FBI agent had a psychology degree, after all, and he suggested that the pressure of the situation in which they had met had accelerated their relationship, making them interdependent and creating a bond similar to that formed between soldiers in combat. Jesse thought maybe he was right.

Whatever the reason, he wanted to say his own good-byes to her before heading back to Colorado and this had seemed the right place to do it. The hotel was still crowded with people and the gym where she had died was scorched by the flames of the Stinger’s exhaust and scarred with bullet holes. Technicians and forensic crews crowded one another, sifting evidence, looking for some clue as to the reasons behind the whole affair.

Here there was silence and the solitude he wanted. He rode the chairlift to the top as he had done before, then skied up to the crest, passing the spot where Pallisani and his men had finally been cornered by the squad of marines. The snow had covered all traces of that battle as well, he noticed.

Now here he was, above The Wall, staring down at the perfect snow below, smiling wryly to himself as he remembered how it had become a symbol for him—a crystallization of his efforts to regain his former self. Looking at it now, it was just a ski run, he thought. Steep. Sheer, almost. But skiable. And well within his capabilities. Behind him, Drifter curved away into the trees, emerging several hundred feet lower down, where it joined back into Broadway for the run home to the hotel. In front of him was The Wall. Double Black, experts only. A mental as well as a physical barrier to him. He reached into his side pocket and took out a single red rose.

He turned it in his fingers, letting the sun play on the lustrous red petals, then tossed it underhand, out onto the snow.

It landed ten feet down and rolled, bouncing lightly until it came to rest twenty-five feet below him, in the bright sunlight that speared
through a gap in the trees. It looked to him like a single drop of dark red blood on the perfect white of the snow, and he thought that was fitting.

“
Semper fi
, Tina Bowden,” he said softly.

Then he kick-turned one-eighty degrees and skied off down the gentle, even slope that was Drifter. He didn’t want to disturb the rose in the snow and he had nothing to prove to himself anymore.

TWO MONTHS LATER

L
inus Benjamin rose from behind his desk to greet his visitor, reaching forward to shake hands. The woman had a surprizingly strong grip, he thought. He gestured to the visitor’s chair.

“Sheriff Torrens, please take a seat. Would you like coffee? Water?”

Lee shook her head, smiling briefly. “No thank you, Mr. Director.”

Benjamin smiled in turn at the title. “Not for much longer, I’m afraid. My replacement takes over in two weeks.”

“So I’d heard. That’s why I wanted to see you.”

She was a very attractive woman, he thought. Tall, long-legged and with an excellent figure. Her hair was shoulder-length blond, she had high cheekbones and her gray eyes were slightly uptilted. He placed her age as late thirties, possibly early forties. He revised his first judgment. More than attractive, he thought, quite beautiful in a natural, outdoors way.

“I’ve never had the chance to thank you for your help with the Snow Eagles affair,” he said and she shrugged, dismissing her part as unimportant.

“I was just a communication link,” she said. “It was Jesse who did all the hard work.”

Benjamin inclined his head a little. “He did at that. So why did you ask to see me?” He sensed she was a person who would prefer to get right to the point. “Is it to do with your deputy?”

She hesitated, then replied. “It is,” she said. “But I don’t want him knowing about it. I wanted to ask you about Estevez.”

“The man we believe was behind all this?” he said and she nodded.

“Way I heard it, he’s a vengeful kind of character,” she said, and he agreed with her.

“That’s Emery’s theory. This whole thing was about revenge. Back when he was a presidential assistant, Senator Carling authorized a raid that cost Estevez a lot of money—and set his operation back by at least six months. He wanted Carling dead because of that. In fact,” he continued, “we now believe that this wasn’t the first time he’s tried to have him killed. Emery’s been squirreling around on this and he’s unearthed some interesting facts. There was a bungled shooting some years ago, when Carling was meeting with a Senator Atherton. At the time, everyone assumed Atherton was the target. Now, we’re not so sure. We’ve also noticed that the men who betrayed Estevez in the first place all seemed to have dropped off the radar over a period of years. Now we’ve had another attack on Carling at Snow Eagles. So yes, I think your description of him as a vengeful man is accurate.”

“And he hasn’t achieved his principal aim. Carling is still alive,” Lee said, and again Benjamin nodded agreement.

“That had occurred to us,” he said.

“And Jesse is the one who threw a spanner in the works,” Lee continued, and now the FBI director started to see what was behind her request for a meeting.

“Ye-es,” he said thoughtfully. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“It’s occurred to me,” Lee told him. “And it’s occurred plenty to the press. Jesse’s name and face have been splashed all over the papers and the TV from one end of this country to the other.”

“Your point being?”

Lee took a long breath. “Mr. Director, I was raised on a ranch. On a ranch, if you’ve got a predator that kills your stock, you don’t wait for it to come back and do it again. You go out and hunt it down. I’ve been a hunter since I was fourteen years old. It’s kind of why I do what I do now, as a matter of fact.”

“And why are you telling me this, Sheriff Torrens?” Benjamin regarded her carefully. Lee met his gaze squarely.

“I figure with all the facilities you government agencies have, and with the threat to Senator Carling still very much alive, you might
have been looking to get a line on where this Estevez person goes to ground,” she said.

Benjamin leaned his chair back and looked out the window, waiting to see if she’d say more. It was usually an effective technique. Most people eventually felt obliged to fill the awkward silence and would expand on what they’d already said. But the tall, blond woman didn’t fall into the trap. She watched him impassively through those uptilted eyes. There might be Native American ancestry there, he thought. Eventually he had to break his own silence.

“And if we did?” he said, and she shrugged her shoulders.

“I’d be interested to know where he could be found. As I said, I’m a hunter and I don’t wait for trouble to come to me.”

“What about your deputy?” he asked, and she shook her head immediately.

“Jesse doesn’t know I’m here. He doesn’t need to know about any of this. He’d figure he could take care of himself.”

“And you figure he can’t?” he asked, but she shook her head again.

“No. I figure he probably could. But probably isn’t good enough. And I don’t want to spend the next five years or so waiting for Estevez to drop the other shoe.”

The director leaned forward and steepled his fingers, resting his chin on them, then replied.

“As a matter of fact we do have a line on Estevez. Several, in fact. He has a fondness for vintage planes and cars and boats, and that’s helped us track him down. Seems that someone who sounds very much like him has residences in Panama, Thailand and in Marseilles.”

“He does get around. I’d appreciate knowing where he might be at any particular time.”

“Thailand would be best. More secluded than Marseilles and easier to go unnoticed there than in Panama,” Benjamin mused. “And if you planned to, say—visit Thailand, I’m sure we could help with any special needs you might have. Mind you, I’ll be leaving this office in a week or two. But I’ll speak to my successor. I’m sure he’ll be only too willing to continue the arrangement.”

She rose from the chair, a graceful feline movement, and extended her hand across the desk.

“I’m glad we understand each other, Mr. Director,” she said. Benjamin took the hand, remarking once more on the strength of her grip.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Sheriff,” he said.

“Paolo! There’s someone on the beach. Get rid of them!”

A tall figure, silhouetted by the late afternoon sun, was moving down the beach from the headland. Estevez watched as Paolo emerged from the villa, glanced up the beach and hurried down the three steps on to the sand, trotting toward the interloper.

Estevez turned back to the lounge chair he’d been reclining on. Then he paused and looked at the two figures, now growing closer together. He reached to the table beside the lounge and picked up the ten-by-fifty Nikons that he kept there. He raised the glasses and focused them. Then he smiled.

Tall, shapely and blond. She stopped as Paolo called to her. She carried a beach towel over her left shoulder and a large raffia beach bag in her right hand. She was wearing cut off denim shorts that revealed the lower curve of her buttocks and displayed her fine legs to full advantage. Other than that, she wore only a brief bikini top. He zoomed the binoculars onto the full, firm breasts, barely contained by two small triangles of yellow and red fabric. He fancied he could see the slight bulge of the nipples there. She wasn’t a girl, he thought. She was a woman. And she was at that age where a beautiful woman realizes her own sexuality and the power of her own body. She stood waiting for Paolo, her hips thrust slightly forward in an unconsciously provocative pose. He ran the glasses over the smooth, rounded belly above the shorts. Unconsciously, his tongue passed across his lips, moistening them. He saw Paolo gesturing for the beach bag and nodded agreement. Even a beautiful woman like this could have a nasty surprise in a harmless looking bag like that. Still,
once Paolo had checked her out, there was no need to get rid of her. Maybe he should ask her up to the villa for a drink. Then dinner. Then who knew what? He set down the Nikons, slipped the Walther P5 that he always kept nearby into the rear pocket of his linen slacks and walked briskly across the patio to the beach.

L
et me see the bag,” Paolo demanded, holding out his hand. Lee took half a step backward.

“Why?” she asked. Paolo snapped his fingers impatiently. “I told you. This is a private beach. You’re trespassing.”

“Then I’ll leave. So there’s no need for you to see my bag,” she said in a slightly annoyed tone.

“You’ll leave all right. But I’ll see the bag first,” Paolo told her. “I want to be sure you’re not planning on coming back later.”

She snorted derisively. “Bet your ass I’m not. And I’m damned if you’re putting your paws all over my bag.”

“One way or another, I will see it,” Paolo told her. He flicked up the tail of his beach shirt on the left-hand side to reveal the grip of the large automatic in his waistband. Lee allowed her eyes to widen a little.

“Hey! Hold on a minute, feller! There’s no need for that! Take the bag!” She passed the bag to him. He took it and rifled through it. There was very little in it. A pink T-shirt, sun lotion, Nokia cell phone, a plastic bottle of water, now lukewarm, Bolle sunglasses and a worn leather billfold. His eyes kept darting down to the bag as he examined it, then back up to the blond woman.

“This your boss?” she asked, looking over his left shoulder. But Paolo’s gaze wasn’t diverted. He heard the soft whisper of footsteps in the sand. It could only be
El Jefe
, he reasoned.

“Good afternoon,” she said and, from a few yards away, Estevez replied, his voice friendly.

“
Buenas dias.
Paolo, is the young lady carrying anything we should be concerned about?”

Now Paolo glanced quickly behind him and, as he did, Lee’s right hand moved smoothly to the heavy towel draped over her left
shoulder. The night before, she’d turned up the bottom six inches and sewed it into a pocket. Her hand went into it and closed over the checkered butt of the Ruger .22 automatic concealed there.

“Everything is in order,
Jefe
,” Paolo said. Then he saw the look of alarm in Estevez’s eyes and he swung back, dropping the beach bag, reaching across his body for the Browning Hi-Power.

Crack-crack!

The two shots were so fast they almost blended into one sound as she put two of the hollow point Long Rifle .22 slugs into his wrist, smashing into the junction point of bones, nerves and tendons. The Browning, half-drawn, fell from his suddenly limp fingers. His wrist felt as if someone slammed it with a hammer, the painful buzz of injured nerves ringing up his arm.

He made a choking noise of pain and doubled over, his left hand clutched to the destroyed right wrist.

“Hold it!” Lee called as Estevez started to turn away. He froze in place, looking into the barrel of the Ruger. It wasn’t a big gun—a .22 or a .25 at most—but it was only a few yards away and the woman had already proven she would hit what she aimed at. Right now, she seemed to be aiming at his left eye, and the barrel of the gun was steady and unwavering. A headshot from a .22 would be lethal at this range.