Yeager's Law Read online

  “Oh, so melt-your-bones hot then.”

  “Hah! Yeah, I guess, now that you mention it. But I wasn’t thinking about his heat factor right then. More about getting out of there without getting shot.”

  “Charlie”—Nita pulled her cup from the dispenser and added creamer and Sweet’N Low—“how long have we been friends now? Seven years? Eight?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, drawing it out. “About that.”

  “You’re telling me you saw a superhot guy take out three baddies like Jason Statham, you save his ass from getting shot, and you didn’t notice his super hotness?”

  “Well, I noticed, but I, uh, had other things—”

  “Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that.” Nita sipped her coffee, leaving a red lipstick stain on the cup. “Was he married?”

  “I…” Charlie looked at her monitor and hoped her neck wasn’t turning red. “I don’t really know.”

  “Fail! Jeez, woman, how do you ever expect to hook up again?”

  “I guess I’m out of practice.” Charlie leaned back in her chair and rubbed her scalp with both hands, mussing her hair. The heat from a flush was definitely working its way up her neck. “Well, you’ll get a chance to meet him. He’s bringing the skids from St. Louis.”

  “Oops, skids.” Nita straightened and snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. I guess I better get the forklift fixed.”

  “It’s broken? Again? How am I supposed to get the pallets off the truck?”

  “The guy’s supposed to come Saturday morning. If you can get the trucker to bring them on Saturday, I’ll come in and unload.”

  Charlie sighed. “You don’t have to do that. I live upstairs, you know? Easier for me to do it.”

  “No, no, I don’t mind at all. And don’t you have that thing?”

  Charlie winced. “The Chamber luncheon. I forgot.”

  Nita smirked. “Hey, look on the bright side. Ask Superman to spend the night. You might get lucky.”

  “Fat chance.”

  Nita laughed and closed the door on her way out.

  As if conjured by magic, Charlie’s cell phone rang, and Abel Yeager’s name showed on the display. She thumbed it on. “Well, hey, stranger. How’d you know we were talking about you?”

  “You were?” A roar in the background muffled his rich baritone. He sounded as though he was calling from the space shuttle.

  “Just telling my manager you were bringing me some books. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I got your order, but listen. I need to tell you something.” He cleared his throat. “That guy at the rest stop, the one with the white hair. You know? With the gun? His name is Humberto Cruz, and he’s a pretty bad guy.”

  “Really?” Charlie’s insides chilled, and she sat up straight. “How bad?”

  “Not sure, but I think he’s got some kind of bone to pick with us. His guys showed up in Chicago and made another run at me. Not the truck, but at me, you know?” He gave her a rundown of his second altercation. “I don’t think you’re in any danger, but I thought you ought to know.”

  Not in any danger? “How can you be sure? I mean, do you think he knows who I am?”

  “No, I been thinkin’ about that, and I can’t see any way. Unless he shows up at the Arkansas State Police headquarters and requests a copy of the police report. I called the detective, and he promised to let me know if that happens.”

  “Oh.” She listened to the background roar for a few seconds then remembered what Nita had said. Charlie told him about the dead forklift and the estimated repair time. Something compelled her to add, “Hey, look, do you have any place to stay in town?”

  “No,” he drawled. She could almost picture his frown. “I generally sleep in the cab if I have to overnight somewhere. Last night was an exception.”

  “I’d hate for you to be put out on my account.” Charlie had no idea where the words were coming from; her mouth seemingly had a mind of its own. “Stay here with me and David. There’s plenty of room.”

  “But Cruz—”

  “Better yet, if this guy Cruz shows up, there’ll be two of us to deal with him. We made a good team last time, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Charlie counted the seconds while she waited for him to continue.

  At the count of eleven, he said, “Let’s talk about it when I get there, okay? Maybe you’ll have your lift fixed by then, and the point will be mute, right?”

  Moot, she almost said but bit her tongue in time. “Works for me. See you when you get here.”

  Abel said goodbye, and she keyed off the phone. The Cruz thing was a concern, but deep down she wondered how the guy could be a threat to her. He didn’t know who she was or where she lived. Besides, Abel had beat up the hijackers not once, but twice. Cruz surely knew he should cut his losses and move on.

  Now, how do I tell Nita I invited a strange man to spend the night? She’ll have kittens.

  Charlie realized she was wearing a silly grin.

  CHAPTER 9

  NewGen Biotech

  Austin, Texas

  At times, Dr. Steve Buchanan found the emptiness of the NewGen Biotech building depressing. A two-story cube of red granite and tinted glass, NewGen hid behind a screen of trees, about as far out on Mopac Expressway as one could go and still be in Austin.

  The rare visitors entered via an access control door operated by the receptionist, Loren Gaffney, stationed in a lobby of chrome, leather, and glass. If the visitor was somebody Steven wanted to see, Loren would call him on the intercom. She would then escort the person through another access control door, down a short hall, past framed prints of scientists from Madame Curie to Jonas Salk, to his corner office.

  Every other door in the facility not only had access control readers, they also featured neon-red warning signs. The signs informed people of terrible biohazards beyond the portal, and unauthorized entry could result in criminal action.

  For the last three years, the only thing behind those doors had been an empty shell, nothing but metal studs and sheetrock walls. Steve had sold all the equipment, fixtures, and furniture, from the electron microscope and autoclaves to the restroom faucets and towel racks. The only working toilet left was the one between Loren’s desk and Steve’s office. Everything else in the building was a sham.

  With Loren at lunch, Steven had the place to himself, a small pea in a very large pod. He clunked a bottle of Laphroaig 18 on his desk, took a tumbler from the same drawer the bottle had come from, and filled the glass with a four-finger measure. Both feet on his desk, hands resting on his stomach, cradling a glass of single malt, Steve reflected on his bad luck.

  The walls surrounding him were a testament to his past. At first, the world had rocked along for Steven Buchanan exactly the right way. Medical degree from Texas Tech University. Residency at Johns Hopkins. Next to the fancy-looking medical sheepskins hung the press release for Aminoxicil, his company’s first biotech NOX inhibitor released nine years ago. The one that worked. Photos of him playing golf with a former President and pictures of him sailing a single-mast schooner off the Gulf coast hung on his office wall. He kept one photo of him and Charlie, taken right after their wedding, and a baby picture of David on his desk.

  Two years had passed since the divorce. A great time. The best. Too bad I got caught.

  Steve considered himself a man of passionate tastes, and he’d found the more he sampled, the more he wanted, until the urge to try new and different things became insatiable. He searched for the finest-tasting food, the best whiskey, the fastest car… and the hottest women.

  A conservative man—a less driven person who was content with the status quo—would have cashed out when Aminoxicil hit it big and his personal bank account hit ten million. On top of the money, he was married to a hot-looking woman and had a beautiful son, along with their three-thousand-square-foot apartment over a bookstore in downtown Austin.

  The first affair—one of three that Charlie
didn’t know about—happened six months after they were married. She was a college intern from the University of Texas, working in the research lab, nineteen years old, tits like cantaloupes, and tanned, muscular legs. Tawny. Steve snorted and topped off his scotch. No shit, for a fact, Tawny Lyons.

  After Tawny, there were four or five more, two of which Charlie did find out about. And that was that for marriage and fatherhood. Which I was never cut out for anyway. After that, things always seemed to go wrong. The stock market crash. Stupid lab assistants. Bad temperature control. Idiots for partners.

  Upshot of it all, he couldn’t duplicate the success of Aminoxicil. He just couldn’t make another damn drug that worked. He lost half his cash in the divorce and poured the rest down a stinking money pit, chasing another NOX inhibitor. Then, instead of cashing out, he conned people into investing in biotech research he knew wouldn’t work. He even tried to con his old buddy John Stone, which turned into the most dangerous game he’d ever played.

  So he was sitting in his mostly empty building, sipping scotch, and waiting for the Feds to come knocking at the door with warrants and guns and handcuffs. Somehow, he didn’t think they would wait for Loren to buzz them through.

  Steven sat up and pulled a thumb drive from his shirt pocket. He plugged it into his laptop and logged on. Clicking and keying his way through his bank accounts, one after the other, he updated the spreadsheet on his thumb drive with the latest balances and stared at the total.

  $12,235,382.96

  Was it time to fold? Was twelve mil enough? Gas up the boat, run up the sail, and head for Costa Rica or Argentina? With the last deal, he should at least double his money, giving him about twenty-five million.

  If he left, he’d miss… not much at all. He had never warmed up to David, and Charlie was a lost cause. So he didn’t know why he was sticking around. It was time to pack up and head out of Dodge.

  “Why the fuck not?” Steve keyed some transactions, moving money here and there, cleaning up a few loose ends.

  He closed all his windows and ran his disk-shredding program, killing all traces of his activity. Moving quickly, he printed out a letter to Loren, giving her a month’s severance and a brief thanks, and left the single page on his desk.

  It took him ten minutes to destroy all his paper documents and another ten to gather the few bits and pieces he wanted to take with him, which did not include his picture of David. Nor the one of Charlie. With one last look around, Steve switched off the lights and closed his office door.

  Three minutes later, he was in the Infiniti, burning a path out of the parking lot. He didn’t look back.

  Interstate 35

  Sixty miles north of Austin, Texas

  Yeager found himself humming along with a song on the radio. What in the hell had gotten into him? A little dust-up with a couple of punks, a smile from a pretty woman, and all of a sudden a few rays of sunshine had pierced his gloomy cloud.

  That, and maybe his luck had finally turned around.

  On the way out of Chicago, he stopped by a freight terminal and fell into a full truckload headed to Dallas. And after he dropped that load, he picked up another partial load bound for Austin. All of which meant that he actually stood to make a profit for the trip.

  “Now if I can only find something in Austin headed for McAllen, I might could pay a bill or two.” Speaking his thoughts aloud was a habit he’d fallen into when he first started driving long distance. When he got sleepy, he’d not only talk but sing as well, which was why he never picked up a dog to ride along with him. Why subject an animal to such cruelty?

  “After I drop this load, I can stop off at Charlie Buchanan’s bookstore. She’ll be so happy to see me, she’ll leap into my arms and pledge her undying love. Yep, I can see it now. Why else would she ask me to spend the night?” He chuckled. “Get real. She lives with a guy named David. Probably a stockbroker or a lawyer. Definitely not a screw-up like me.”

  By the time he reached Charlie’s store, the sun had dropped below the rooftops, and darkness was bleeding into the alley. A single sodium light on a wooden pole near the street hummed and flickered to life.

  Charlie opened the small delivery door moments after he pushed the buzzer.

  “Oh, Abel,” she said, twisting her hands together. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  Somehow he had forgotten how damned good-looking she was. Her thick red hair fell around her shoulders, framing her fashion-model face. She wore a simple pair of jeans and a cotton button-down blouse in lemon yellow. His heart did a double-thump in reaction.

  “Flying monkeys couldn’t keep me away.”

  She bit her lip. “The forklift’s still broken. My store manager tried to get it fixed, but the guy hasn’t come yet.”

  She looked so worried, Yeager felt an overpowering urge to make everything better, like maybe heave the pallets off by brute force if necessary.

  “I am so sorry,” she added. “The guy is supposed to be here by tomorrow to fix it, but I couldn’t get him out tonight, no matter how much I begged him.”

  “No problem,” he said. “It’s late anyway. I can come back in the morning, if that’s okay. Is there a fast-food place close by?”

  “Oh no, absolutely not!”

  “Huh?”

  “No way you’re eating in a fast-food joint because of my faulty forklift.” Charlie transformed from hand-wringing to decisive in a heartbeat. She had that look of determination women got when they felt guilty but wanted to cover it up by doing something positive.

  “Say that three times real fast,” Yeager said. “Faulty forklift, faulty forkift, flaltly florkfiftht.”

  She laughed.

  “But really,” Yeager said, “it’s not a problem. I do it all the time.”

  “No, Mr. Yeager, I insist. You’re staying to supper. David and I can never finish all of Maria’s cooking. Have you eaten yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “No? Good, then it’s all settled. Lock your truck and come on. I’d love for you to meet David.”

  Oh goody, Yeager thought. Let’s go meet the boyfriend.

  Interstate 35

  Eleven miles north of Austin

  Humberto Cruz answered his phone as he sat, stalled in traffic on Interstate 35, entering the outskirts of Austin. “Where is he?”

  The sun was an orange ball touching the horizon, shooting laser beams into his eyes. He pushed the passenger-side visor over, but it didn’t help.

  “Stopped at the back of a bookstore. At the dock,” Hector reported, his voice blurred by wind and traffic noises. He gave Humberto the address. “And you won’t believe this, boss. That woman, you know, the one at the rest stop with the gun?”

  “Sí.”

  “He is with her,” Hector said. “She opened the warehouse door, and he went inside. They have not come out, and the truck is still there. I think there’s an apartment over the store.”

  Humberto strangled the steering wheel with one hand and his phone with the other. His jaw tightened. Maybe Yeager had known the woman, or maybe they became friends after she pulled a gun at the rest stop. No matter. They were both in it together, and both would suffer the same fate.

  “How many men have you gathered?” Humberto asked.

  “Four, plus me.”

  “Guns?”

  “Sí. Rudy brought them.”

  “Bueno.” Humberto smiled for the first time in days. “We will hit them tonight. We will take the truck and anything in it, then we will pay a visit to the driver and his lady friend with the pistola grande, hey?”

  “I would like that very much, boss,” Hector said.

  “Just watch them. Nothing else. This is my time. Do you understand?”

  “Sí, jefe.”

  Humberto thumbed off his phone. Finally, after waiting so long, he would end it. Tonight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Book Finders

  Austin, Texas

  “There’s been a store
of some kind on the main floor for over fifty years.” Charlie heard herself babbling but was unable to stop, on a verbal canoe without a paddle. Why was she getting so rattled? “The upper two floors were offices, but when I bought the building, I converted them to a living space. The top floor is where David and I live, and the second floor has guest rooms, where Maria lives. Also, we have some storage space and a game room down there.”

  The freight elevator clunked to a stop at the top floor, and Charlie punched the button to raise the two sets of doors. They split horizontally and retracted, half into the ceiling and half into the floor. Charlie had managed to chatter nonstop the entire time. Get a hold on yourself, woman! It’s not like you’ve never had a man in your house.

  But as she thought about it, she realized there hadn’t been a man in the house—aside from Tomas—for a very, very long time. And there won’t be now if I don’t get a grip on my tongue. I sound like a pompous twit, talking about buying the building. Sheesh.

  Charlie opened the apartment door and waved Abel ahead of her. The living room was decorated in what she called JCPenney chic: comfortable, traditional, and livable. She had chosen a tan sofa with matching chairs, along with mahogany veneer end tables and a coffee table. All of the furniture was arranged around a faux fireplace because trying to retrofit an old office building with a real fireplace had proven to be the mother of all architectural battles. Lamps and track lighting provided the illumination. In the corner, to the left of the fireplace, a tall cabinet concealed the entertainment center.

  “Maria! David!” Charlie called. “We have company!” She turned to Abel. “Wait ’til you meet Maria. She’s such a gem. I think she believes David’s really hers, and I’m only around to pay the bills and bring home the groceries.”

  When the short, plump housekeeper bustled into the room, she was wiping her hands on an apron and looking flushed from working in the kitchen. She beamed at Charlie then did a double-take when she saw Abel.