Eaton had walked between Chance and the table, inadvertently exposing his considerable backside to attack. Chance drew back the elastic band until it refused to go any further, and zeroed in on the broad expanse of gray.
Quisto suddenly tapped the table in an odd rhythm. Chance glanced up to see his partner’s gaze fastened on Lieutenant Morgan, who was looking at Chance pointedly. With a sheepish grin, Chance eased off the tension on the tiny weapon, and with exaggerated conspicuousness dropped it to the floor. Only then did he catch Eaton’s last words.
“—expect an improved attitude from your detectives, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sure we can handle this investigation in a spirit of mutual cooperation.”
Lieutenant Morgan rose, closing the file folder. Seeing the signal they’d been waiting for, both Chance and Quisto got rapidly to their feet and headed for the door.
“Detective Buckner.” The lieutenant’s words forced Chance to turn back. “My office.”
Chance smothered a sigh, then nodded. He heard an odd sound, and turned to see Eaton’s face wearing a satisfied smirk. He throttled the urge to deck the man with a well-placed fist, and with an elaborate bow, held the door open.
“So what did he say?” Quisto asked.
“I’m fired.”
“Gimme a break, Buckner. The jerk had it coming. What did he want you for?”
“A startling revelation. Eaton doesn’t like me.”
“Well, that’s understandable.”
“Thanks a lot.” Chance took a swipe at his partner, who dodged agilely away. Quisto grinned.
“Hey, if I looked like him, instead of my classic macho, Latin self, I wouldn’t like you, either.”
“If his ego was as secure as yours, he wouldn’t care,” Chance said dryly.
“And who else but someone with a secure ego could work with you? I mean, it gets kind of old, my man, watching all those ladies throwing themselves at you all the time.”
“They don’t throw themselves at me,” Chance muttered, although he supposed there was something in what the young Cuban said. He would never understand what there was in the arrangement of his features, in the aligning of the parts that made up Chance Buckner, that made women look twice. He only knew that, to his embarrassment, they did. And often came back for a third look.
“It’s those piercing blue eyes,” Quisto said dramatically, “and all that sun-bleached California hair.”
“My hair’s from Iowa, just like the rest of me.”
His answer was automatic. They’d been through this teasing routine many times. So was the gesture of his hand as he ran it through the tangled mass of the gold-streaked brown hair. He would be grateful for that if nothing else when he left this assignment to narcotics, he thought. He hadn’t had his hair off the back of his neck in four years.
“Besides what are you complaining about? I send ’em all to you anyway.”
“Ah, yes, and I teach them that every wonderful thing they’ve always heard about Latin lovers is true. But you, my friend, don’t you think you’re carrying this solitude bit a little far?”
“You worried about my social life, Quisto?”
“I’m worried,” the younger man said frankly, abandoning the formal tones, “about your libido. You haven’t even had a date since Sarah died, let alone anything more…strenuous.”
Chance’s face closed up in silent warning, but the wiry young man kept on.
“You walk around looking like the poster boy for the wrong side of the tracks, women drool on themselves trying to get to you, and you ignore them all.”
“Quisto.” His tone was the equivalent of the look that had shuttered his face.
“And you’re going to volunteer for all the night shifts on the stakeout, aren’t you? Just like last time. Damn it, Chance, when are you going to—”
“Not now.”
Chance had stopped dead, turning to fix his partner with a steady, forbidding gaze. Quisto shrugged and gave it up.
“Okay, amigo. I was just worried about you.” He grinned suddenly, a brilliant flash of white teeth against perfect olive skin. “Hey, maybe that’s the secret. Ignore ’em, and they flock to you. I’ll have to try it.”
“You, ignore women?” Chance accepted the unspoken apology easily. “That’ll be the day.”
Chance thought of Quisto’s words again that evening as he sat in the surveillance van outside the building Mendez had leased. He had been wary of the effusive young Cuban at first, especially after the quiet, laid-back man who had been his partner for his first three years in the division.
But Marty Thompson was gone now, the unruffled exterior having hidden the ravages of burnout that had surfaced abruptly and finally one day beneath the brilliant California sun. That funeral had frightened him as no other, filling him with the eerie sensation that he was looking at himself, and he wondered if someday, somewhere down the hard, sometimes dirty road, he too would walk out onto the golden sand of this paradise and blow his brains out. It was a question he’d always been able to say no to, until Marty. And Sarah.
“All set, Chance?”
He glanced at Jeff Webster, the detective who was monitoring the equipment. The redhead nodded, and Chance looked up at the man who had turned around in the driver’s seat of the van.
“Yeah, Todd. Go ahead.”
With a nod, the other man turned, slid out of the van and shut the door, locking it from the outside. He would, Chance knew, walk casually toward an expensive shopping area two blocks down, linger there long enough to be sure he hadn’t been followed, then pick up the car that was parked in the lot and return to the station. In about four hours he would be back to do it all in reverse, while a few miles away, the driver of a nondescript panel truck that was parked near Mendez’s house would be doing the same. The two vehicles would trade places, and then it would begin again.
The system would work until someone realized that the same vehicles always showed up in the area, and perhaps even after, if the drivers could pass themselves off as locals with legitimate business in the area. And when the federal vehicle arrived, that would give them one more to play with, he thought, leaning forward to adjust the recording level on one of the machines.
That was one good thing about working with the feds, he thought wryly. They had a lot more leeway when it came to permits for wiretapping and any other kind of surveillance. And the bugs that Quisto, doing his near-perfect migrant-worker imitation, had planted, were working beautifully.
“You stand out too much,” Quisto explained with a superior air. “Me, I just blend, like a chameleon.”
“Okay, Mr. Lizard, get on with it,” Chance had said, smothering a laugh.
Yes, Quisto had gradually worn down that wall of wariness, mostly, Chance admitted, through sheer persistence and a stubborn refusal to be ignored. He had—
The sharp rapping on the back doors of the van cut through his thoughts. Damn, what the hell? He glanced at Jeff, who shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment. The rapping came again, louder, and Chance scrambled to the back of the van and peered through the mirrored, one-way glass.
“That stupid son of a bitch!”
Jeff jumped, both at the sudden exclamation and at the suppressed fury in Chance’s voice. “What…?”
“Eaton,” Chance spat out as the pounding came again.