Hotshot (2 page)

CLEVELAND, OHIO: TWO DAYS LATER

“Suicide hotline. This is Shay.” Shay Bassett wheeled her office chair closer to her desk. Tucking the phone under her chin, she shoved aside the steaming cup of java she craved more than air.

“I need help,” a husky voice whispered.

Shay snagged a pencil and began jotting notes about the person in crisis on the other end of the line:

Male.
Teen?

“I’m here to listen. Could you give me a name to call you by?” Something, anything to thread a personal connection through the phone line.

“John, I’m John, and I hurt so much. If I don’t get relief soon, I’ll kill myself.”

His words clamped a corpse-cold fist around her heart. She understood the pain of these callers, too much so, until sometimes she struggled for objectivity.

Shay zoned out everything but the voice and her notes.

Voice stronger, deeper.
Older teen.
Background noise, soft music.
Bedroom or dorm?

She scribbled furiously, her elbow anchoring the community center notepad so the window fan wouldn’t ruffle the pages. “John, have you done anything to harm yourself?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m really glad to hear that.” Still, she didn’t relax back into the creaky old chair in spite of killer exhaustion from pulling a ten-hour shift at the community center’s small health clinic on top of volunteering to man the hotline this evening. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

His breathing grew heavier, faster. “The line for one nine hundred do-me-now is busy, and if I don’t get some phone sex soon, I’m gonna explode.” Laughter echoed in the background, no doubt a bunch of wasted frat boys listening in on speakerphone. “How about you give me some more of those husky tones, baby, so I can—”

“Good-bye, John.” She thumbed the Off button.

What an ass. Not to mention a waste of her precious time and resources. She pitched her pencil onto a stack of HIV awareness brochures.

The small community center in downtown Cleveland was already understaffed and underfunded, at the mercy of fickle government grants and the sporadic largesse of benefactors. Different from bigger free clinics, they targeted their services toward teens. Doctors volunteered when they could, but the place operated primarily on the back of her skills as a nurse, along with social worker Angeline and youth activities director Eli.

Bouncing a basketball on the cracked tile, Eli spun his chair to face her, his blond dreadlocks fanning along his back. “Another call for a free pizza?”

“A request for phone sex.” She pulled three sugar packs from her desk drawer.

“Ewww.” Angeline leaned her hip against her desk, working a juggling act with her purse, files, and cane.

Only in her fifties, Angeline already suffered from arthritis aggravated by the bitter winters blowing in off Lake Erie. Of course, that was Cleveland for you, frigid in the winter and a furnace in the summer.

Forecast for today? Furnace season. The fan sucked muggy night air through the window.

“I apologize for my gender.” Eli kept smacking the ball, the thumping as steady as a ticking clock.

“Who said it was a guy?” Shay tapped a sugar pack, then ripped it open.

Angeline jabbed her parrot-head cane toward Shay. “You called the person John.”

“Busted.” She poured the last of the three sugars into the coffee, her supper since she’d missed eating with her dad. No surprise. They canceled more plans than they kept.

Angeline hitched her bag the size of the Grand Canyon onto her shoulder. “Always testing the boundaries, aren’t ya, kiddo?”

Not so much anymore. “Calls like that just piss me off. What if someone in a serious crisis was trying to get through and had to be rerouted? That brief delay, any hint of a rejection, could be enough to push a person over the edge.”

“You’re preaching to the choir here.” Angeline’s cell phone sang with the bluesy tones of “Let’s Get It On.” “Shit. I forgot to call Carl back.”

Eli tied back two dreads to secure the rest of the blond mass. “Apparently we’re in the phone sex business after all.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.” Angeline stuffed another file into her bag that likely now weighed more than the wiry woman.

“Nice talk. Why don’t I walk you to your car?” He slid the neon yellow purse from her shoulder and hooked it on his own.

“You can escort me out, but Carl’ll kick your lily white ass if you hit on me.”

“If I thought I stood a chance with you . . .”

Shaking her head, Angeline glanced back at Shay. “Make sure the guard walks you all the way to your car.”

“Of course. I even have my trusty can of Mace.”

And a handgun.

She wasn’t an idiot. The crime rate in this corner of Cleveland upped daily. Places like L.A. or New York were still considered the primary seats of gang crime. Money and protection followed that paradigm, which sent emergent gangs looking for new—unexpected—feeding grounds. Like Cleveland.

Hopefully, her testimony at the congressional hearing next week would help bring about increased awareness, help, and most of all
funds
.

“Tell Carl I said hello.” With a final wave, Shay turned her attention to the stack of medical charts of teenage girls who’d received HPV vaccines. At least she had all evening to catch up—a plus side to having no social life.

She sipped her now lukewarm coffee.

The phone jangled by her elbow, startling her.

She snagged the cordless receiver. “Suicide hotline. This is Shay.”

“I’m scared.”

Something in that young male voice made her sit up straighter, her fingers playing along the desk for her pencil.

Boy.
Local accent.
Definitely teen.
Frightened as hell.

Too many heartbreaking hours volunteering told her this kid didn’t want phone sex or a pizza.

“I’m sorry you’re afraid, but I’m glad you called.” She waited for a heartbeat; not that long, given her jackhammer pulse rate, but enough for the boy to speak. When he didn’t, she continued, “I want to help. Could you give me a name to call you by?”

“No name. I’m nobody.”

His words echoed with a hollow finality.

“You called this line.” She kept her voice even. “That’s a good and brave thing you did.”

“You’re wrong. I’m not brave at all. I’m going to die, but I don’t want it to hurt. That makes me a total pussy.”

No pain?
No cutting or shooting.

“Have you taken anything?” Alcohol? Drugs? Poison? Last month, a pregnant caller swallowed drain cleaner.

“Just my meds for the day.”

On medication.
Illness?
Physical or psych?

“So you have a regular doctor?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

She knew when to back off in order to keep the person chatting. “What would you like to discuss?”

“Nothing.” His voice grew more agitated, angry even, as it cracked an octave. “This is stupid. I shouldn’t have called.”

She rushed to speak before he could hang up, “Why are you scared?”

Voice changing.
14-15 years old?

“I told you already. I’m scared of the pain. It hurts if I live, and it’s gonna hurt to die. I’m fucked no matter what.”

She tried to keep professional distance during these calls, but sometimes somebody said something that just reached back more than a decade to the old Shay. The new Shay, however, shuttled old Shay to the time-out corner of her brain.

“You called this number, so somewhere inside, you must believe there’s a third option.”

The phone echoed back at her with nothing more than labored breathing and the faint whine of a police siren.

“Who or what makes you hurt?”

Still no answer.

“Hello?”

“Good-bye.”

The line went dead.

“No! No, no, no, damn it.” She thumbed the Off button once. Twice. Three freaking frustrated times before slamming the phone against the battered gunmetal gray desk.

She sucked in humid hot-as-hell air to haul back her professionalism. She had to finish her notes in case the boy called again. Please, God, she hoped that he would call and that he wasn’t already as dead as the phone line.

Shay glanced at her watch. A four-minute conversation. Would that kid be alive to see the next hour?

She scrubbed her hand over her gritty eyes until the folder holding the rough draft of her upcoming congressional report came back into focus. It was a good thing after all that her dinner plans fell through. She was in no shape to exchange trivial chitchat with her father, who she barely knew and who knew even less about her. The report would make for better company anyway.

Each cup of coffee bolstered her to keep plugging away on fine tuning her stats and wording. Maybe she really could find a ray of hope through political channels rather than picking away one shift at a time. She just had to hang on until next week for her congressional testimony at Case Western Reserve University.

The old Shay ditched the time-out corner to remind her that even one day was an eternity when every sixteen minutes someone succeeded in committing suicide. Thinking of how many people that could be by next week . . . The math made her nauseated.

Flipping to the next page, she spun her watch strap around and around over the faded scar on her wrist that still managed to throb with a phantom pain even after seventeen years.

TWO

Across the street from the free clinic, the teenage boy pitched the prepaid cell phone in the industrial trash can chained to a streetlight. The receiver rattled to rest beside soda cans and a used condom.

He ducked back into a shadowy alley beside the crappy corner market run by a snarky old bitch who stroked her Louisville Slugger anytime he walked through the door. He normally wouldn’t come near this store at all anymore, but he could see the community center good from this spot.

He could see
her
. Shay.

The fan in her window swirled the light along the sidewalk. The pieces of her tall shadow were chopped up by the blades and spat outside along with the glow.

Was the skinny chick reckless or just plain stupid? Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to sit like that with the window open? Anybody could climb through and pin her to the floor before she could even shout
rape
. And the center’s old rent-a-cop couldn’t find his ass with both shaking hands, much less handle the nightstick he carried.

Like the billy club would protect anybody against knives or guns anyway. Did she think she was safe just because she wasn’t a big-boobed street corner skank? Most of the guys he hung with got their rocks off from slapping around somebody smaller.

The same kind of guy who’d “asked” him to get close to her. To watch her.

Fingers tracing the damp paint he’d sprayed over a rival gang’s tag on the brick wall, he looked past the blades to Shay. The fan lifted her short brown hair as she hunched over her desk, writing. About him? He’d been watching her taking notes while he talked. She’d seemed upset when he hung up. Like she cared.

She hadn’t even recognized his voice. Yeah, he’d changed it some. But still.

He couldn’t let that matter. The clueless do-gooders around here only made things worse, interfering in a war they could never understand. Shay would have to look out for herself the same way he took care of himself.

Because while his life didn’t matter, there were others’ that did.

When Vince had agreed to hop a plane the minute he got back to the States and meet Don Bassett in Cleveland, he’d expected something along the lines of a discussion over a beer in a bar. He’d even been looking forward to that brewski, a drink he would no doubt need when talking about Shay and whatever trouble she’d landed in now.

Instead, Vince found himself driving with Don to a cut-rate hotel.

“Uh, Don, is Shay in there?” Vince stepped out of the sedan and looked at the older guy over the roof. “If so, I’m not sure what help—”

“She’s at a local community center where she works.” News to Vince, since they never talked about Shay. “Everything will make sense soon enough. Patience.”

What was up with all this covert crap? Had Don Bassett gone off his rocker? Don strode away from the rental car, quick strides eating up the walkway.

Oh-kay. Still no details. He hadn’t been able to pry jack shit from Don on the phone or on the way from the airport to the—he looked up—Lake Erie Inn.

A rusted security light flickered erratically over Don like an off-tempo disco ball. The old guy hadn’t packed on the pounds like many did after leaving the military regimen. Still lanky—sorta like Richard Gere in a brown leather flight jacket and dress slacks—he had a distinguished distance to him that generated unwavering respect if not necessarily warm fuzzies.

And that respect kept Vince following along.

A second-story door swung open, hard-core jamming music swelling as three teenagers stumbled out. College students, he would wager.

“Gee, Don, don’t I get dinner first? I feel so cheap.”

“Good thing I know you’re serious underneath that bullshit, boy.” The older man didn’t so much as crack a smile. Strange for a guy who’d always covered stress with a laugh.

Vince’s neck itched with the funky feeling that had always warned him when something was off. It should have been tough getting leave the second he landed in the U.S. Vacation time was a distant memory to military personnel these days. Yet his request had sailed through faster than a Honda Gold Wing on a patch of oil.

He’d thought himself lucky. Now he wondered.

Itchy feeling in full-out burn mode, Vince kept pace past a soda machine, the red logo sun-faded to Pepto-Bismol pink. “I’m all for patience, but I think it’s time to clue me in.”

“Not much longer.” Don waved him toward a first corner room. “Our contacts are waiting inside. We needed to pick a no-questions kind of place away from official channels. Somewhere we wouldn’t run into an old acquaintance in the hall.”

Not a problem, since there were no halls. Although this was exactly the sort of place he would expect to bump into someone from his old crowd. If they weren’t all in jail.

“I sincerely hope your friends aren’t wearing spiked collars and stilettos,” Vince mumbled.

Don swiped the room card. “Unlikely.”

Cool air gusted through the open door. He nodded to Don. “After you, sir.”

He followed his old mentor into a suite of sorts with a kitchenette to go with the king-size bed. The bed was empty—thank you, patron saints of the road. The table, however, was packed with one man and two women, all wearing suits.

Don pushed the door closed quickly, sealing them inside with the other three people. Two Vince recognized, and one he didn’t.

So . . . Starting with the familiar. Faces he’d seen on the news. A South Dakota congresswoman and a California congressman who definitely weren’t toting leather whips or spiked doggy collars.

Don clapped Vince on the shoulder. “Have a seat, son. This is about to get interesting.”

Do ya think?
Vince pulled a chair from against the wall. “Good evening, everyone.”

A meeting with Congress members in a hotel was usually cause for tabloid news and some racy photos.
This
appeared to be a different kind of gathering altogether.

He studied the second female, a redhead, probably in her early forties, who definitely wasn’t Shay Bassett. He might not know this woman, but she had FBI written all over her dark suit, tight bun, and expressionless face. Well, damn. That oil slick greasing his leave papers traced all the way to FBI headquarters.

Okay, then. Consider him officially hooked. He took in details he’d missed at first glance. A computer hummed beside the Fed. A tangle of cords attached the laptop to a portable projector. A video screen filled a corner.

He normally wouldn’t pass up the coffee and doughnuts laid out on the other counter, but he had the feeling this meeting required his undivided attention.

The Fed extended her hand. “Hello, Major Deluca. My name is Special Agent Paulina Wilson. You may already be familiar with Congresswoman Raintree and Congressman Mooney.”

Vince nodded in greeting, exchanging quick pleasantries with both, more than ready to get down to business.

“Good, good,” Wilson continued, not a hair out of place, her slash of red lipstick the only color breaking up her otherwise pale face. “You’ll have to pardon our, uh, informal setting today, but what we’re about to discuss is of the utmost secrecy. Sometimes the safest place is outside official walls.”

Sure, he understood. Much of what he did in his dark ops job was top secret. He’d just never held the covert meetings in a cheap hotel before.

Special Agent Wilson clicked on the projector. The first PowerPoint slide filled the screen with a photo of a sprawling university campus. “A bipartisan committee from Congress will be holding a hearing at Case Western Reserve University next week. Led by Congressman Mooney and Congresswoman Raintree, the committee will be speaking on antigang legislation under consideration.”

Anybody who watched the news knew that was in the works. How did it play into Shay Bassett being in danger? And why would the FBI be interested in her?

Don leaned forward, fingers steepled on the table. “My daughter is one of the witnesses, presenting information gleaned from her experiences working at the Cleveland Community Center.”

Now
that
was news to him.

Special Agent Wilson adjusted the focus. “As with functions of this nature, we’ve had our surveillance ears open for anything out of the ordinary. I don’t have to tell you what a national uproar it would cause if anyone managed to infiltrate a congressional meeting of any sort, much less one receiving this much attention.”

Vince looked at the two pale Congress members, then back at the agent. “I’m assuming you don’t mean trouble with picket lines or pies in the face.”

Both Congress members chuckled. The Fed, however, could have been one of the unflinching guards outside of Buckingham Palace.

Wilson pivoted on a clunky heel. “You’re correct. This goes beyond expected concerns about protestors. We increased our wiretaps and cell phone monitoring in the area. During the course of one of those conversations, a local gang member’s name was mentioned in connection with a well-known terrorist cell.”

Whoa. Vince straightened in his seat. They’d gone from disruptions during a televised event to talk of terrorism. Joke time was officially over.

“We secured a search warrant for the gangbanger’s apartment—or rather his parents’ apartment. We found CDs for terrorist recruitment and training. We also found manuals for creating bombs packed with ball bearings and instructions for building improvised explosive devices out of remote control toys.” She clicked through a series of photos from inside the apartment, zeroing in on the confiscated items. “We also discovered a map of the planned driving route to Case Western and a floor plan of the building where the hearing will take place.”

A chill settled in his gut, and yet he could see in her eyes the agent wasn’t anywhere near done with her surprises.

“We also found copies of the correspondence sent requesting this information, written on stationery from the Cleveland Community Center and signed by Shay Bassett.”

Shay.

Just her name slammed him back in his seat, much less the possibility that she could be in the middle of some terrorist plot. He’d spent so many years trying not to think of Shay Bassett, and now thoughts of her roared in to fill the void.

Wilson clicked to the next image, a photo of Shay administering shots in an immunization line.

A brunette, lean, earthy beauty.

He could have been in a time warp.

She’d been trouble on smokin’ hot legs from the first time she’d tried to seduce him just to piss off her old man. Trouble or not, then or now, surely she couldn’t be a knowing participant in anything this appalling.

Wilson thumbed the remote, a split screen displaying a photo of a tattooed teen alongside the picture of Shay. “This is the young man we’re investigating. We questioned him but didn’t hold him. We’re going to observe him—and Shay—instead. It’s more critical to learn who’s orchestrating this.”

Vince tore his eyes off Shay. “How do I come into play, Agent Wilson?”

“Don Bassett recommended you.”

And for that matter, what was Don doing here?

Don nudged aside his full cup of coffee. “I work for the agency now.” The CIA. Holy crap. “Anything I do here is unofficial, since this is FBI territory. I also have an obvious conflict of interest because of Shay, but I had been keeping an ear to the ground on the presecurity because of her involvement. When this came up, I immediately thought of your, uh, skill set.”

“My skill set? And what would you mean by that?” All signs indicated they already knew, but old habits died hard. Vince rolled out the pat answer he used with his mama, dates, and curious biker mechanics. “I just work in a military test unit.”

Without identification patches. Developing military equipment no one knew about. Answerable only to the air force chief of staff.

Don smiled. “Exactly how I would have answered the question. As I said, your skill set could be valuable, particularly with the surveillance, to find out how widespread this problem may be. I presented the proposal to Special Agent Wilson, and she agreed. We contacted the air force, and here you are.”

Vince stared at his former mentor with a whole new perspective. Don wasn’t just sitting a desk job and stirring interest in CAP in his free time, as would have been his due right. The old guy had traded up.

Special Agent Wilson continued, “The boy has gone missing, and it’s our belief if he’s been recruited, there could be more. You will stay here in Cleveland under the guise of helping fuel interest in forming a Civil Air Patrol unit. Share your success story of how being recruited into the volunteer group saved you from a life of crime as a teen. Since you and Bassett have a connection from your younger years, showing up here to help out his daughter shouldn’t raise any red flags.”

Don smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve even pulled strings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff so your surveillance will blend into standard testing expenses. Beyond helping us here, you’ll actually be able to write this off as a field test and move a project into the war arena faster. A fine economical blending of government resources, if I do say so myself.”

Special Agent Wilson tapped her thumbnail against the slide changer in her fist. “It’s a lot to absorb, but rest assured, we’re taking care of details. We’re in contact with your squadron commander. In fact, Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon is on standby waiting for your call after this meeting so you can be reassured that we’re on the up-and-up. He seems to have the utmost confidence in your capabilities.”