heard behind her and Malik’s backs. The woman fought Malik like a wildcat as she knew what had occurred. Stix had finished Stone off.
These were not the rules. Of this she was certain. Stix was murdering him. If what she knew to be truth truly was, there would hell to pay for this act of treason. Capri’s thoughts were jumbled, coming faster and faster with more and more clarity.
“Now he’s chosen. He’s chosen to die. Let’s leave,” Stix suggested, then quickly moved past them in the doorway.
She refused to turn around. She didn’t want to see what Stix had done to Stone. She didn’t want to face how badly this had all turned out.
The authorities would be coming soon and their failed mission did not need to be compounded by being caught.
Everyone knew that.
Still, she felt remorse. It hit her like a brick, and instantly she changed her mind, clawing at Malik’s face, causing him to release her. She then ran back to where Stone lay with two extra bullets in his chest. “No, we won’t leave you. No!” she insisted, sweat coming to her forehead as she alone attempted to lift the now unconscious man, his weight surely doubling hers.
Stix stepped toward Capri and, without warning, raised his gun to backhand her with it. Malik could hear the crack of what sounded like her skull. It caused him to jump slightly. She fell across Stone’s legs.
Stix paused for a moment and then shook his head. “Damn you, Stone,” he growled before hoisting the beautiful woman over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
With Malik leading the way, the three of them charged up the stairs that led to the roof of the hotel. There they awaited the drop of a ladder from the aircraft that hovered overhead. Tripoli was supposed to be on that ladder, but they had nothing to show for their day except disastrous results.
In the distance, a fire alarm could be heard from inside the hotel. The three of them looked at each other before ascending the ladder. They knew Stone, with all he had left, had started the fire, as this was his signature.
“Nothing remains in the ashes except the Phoenix,” he would say.
Chapter 1
Gold studs down the length of her black leather pants protected her long legs from the wind while she rode. She couldn’t help but enjoy the cool air as it whipped up under the helmet. Three inch–heeled leather boots made her clearly over six feet tall, and a custom-designed leather jacket hid the holster that housed her service revolver in a covert pocket she’d had made especially for this purpose. She pulled into The Spot and parked.
Stepping from her black Ducati motorcycle, Romia pulled the bright red helmet from her head, releasing her long raven tresses that bounced lightly around her shoulder blades. Turning the helmet slightly, she ran her hand over the emblem of the golden phoenix that covered the back of the headpiece and matched the one she had painted onto the side of the bike’s monocoque frame. She then attached the helmet to the handlebar with a custom-made, short-locking bungee cord.
The symbolic bird—which she’d found intricately woven into a large tapestry in her mother’s attic, while watching the two women her mother trusted most cleaning it out after she died—meant everything to her. One of the women seemed instinctively to know that she wanted to keep that tapestry. Cutting a small square from the larger piece of fabric, she handed it to Romia instead of shoving it deep into the bag she and the other woman were filling with her mother’s belongings. Romia was only six, but even then felt deep inside that the bird meant she’d reunite with mother again someway, somehow, someday. It spoke to her when she was afraid and comforted her when she was worried, it replaced her mother’s loving arms—it was the connection she had with the past, the past she wasn’t clearly sure she actually had.
Around her neck she wore a chain. On the end of the chain a small pebble was attached. It was yet another strange but precious belonging of her mother’s. She’d taken it from the jewelry box that sat on her mother’s dresser. She’d taken it before the women cleaning out the house could take it. She remembered seeing her mother fondle it often, to the point of making it shine like a precious stone instead of a mere rock. It was one of the first things she took when the packing started. It was another thing she held dear.
So few things, so few memories, but they were all Romia had. Her life seemed recreated from dreams and glimpses instead of full memories of her mother.
Entering the bar Romia and her colleagues frequented, she noticed tonight it was nearly empty. Two other officers, Hank and Aston, were sitting at the front table.
“You’re late, Romee!” Out of nowhere, her former partner, Keliegh Jack, appeared. He’d attended a wedding earlier that day, but had discarded his suit jacket and slacks for jeans and his common T-shirt. She’d missed seeing him all dressed up and inwardly regretted it. What a treat that would have been. But still, he looked good in the casual clothes he wore, but she would never tell him that.
Moving to where she was, his body language was possessive as he quickly blocked her from view of the other men who might want to take a look at her.
Romia recognized his moves. He was always less than discreet with how he felt about her. It had been she who held off what could have happened between them. It just wouldn’t be right…not with a partner, she had reasoned in her mind. They had never actually had the “what if” conversation, but she knew their body language said it all.
They’d been reassigned for a year now and sometimes Romia thought about those “could have happened” times. She wondered about them happening now, but so far nothing was growing between them beyond what was already there—so maybe she’d been wrong all this time about how he felt.
She and Keliegh Jack had been partners before he became a detective. He was now working with another female partner, Tamika Turner. Tamika, aka Tommy. Tommy, as most people called her, was of mixed racial descent. Romia had heard rumors that she only recently discovered that her father was a black man, a former judge who didn’t claim her until he was forced to. The judge had been tied up in a murder trial, at the wrong end of it, but was freed. Perhaps the close shave with reality had given him a bite he could no longer ignore, as he soon after claimed Tommy as his daughter. Romia could relate to living her life without a father and was happy for Tommy’s discovery, albeit under the not so great circumstances.
Each day, Romia looked in the mirror knowing the features on her face yelled loudly to racial ambiguity. She wondered who her father might be. It wasn’t as if before her mother died she had time to answer any of those important questions Romia might need to know in life. It was many years later before Romia would realize that she and her mother were only about nineteen or twenty years apart. As young as she was, Romia often wondered if even her mother had known the answers to Romia’s paternal questions.
Romia was fair. One could say she had an olive complexion in the summertime, but come winter, like now, she looked nearly white. Her dark hair was loosely curled and hung long and thick down her back, which she felt was typical of a person of mixed race. Romia’s mother was fair skinned; a blonde with bright blue eyes. She would never forget her mother’s eyes. Her own eyes were green.
There were no answers in the foster home she was raised in. Life wasn’t bad in the foster home, just lacking in the information department. There was one good side, however: her foster parents had put her in martial arts to keep her busy.
Romia became a black belt by the age of ten and continued to seriously train, earning true marks as a master by the time she was in her late teens. For the others in the foster home it was just fun, but for Romia it was more than just something to do, it was life changing. Each move was perfection or she wouldn’t stop practicing until it was. She fought hard and with a desperation that gave the impression that her life depended on it. By the age of twenty-five she was a fifth-level black belt, and had since climbed the ranks with determination. She was now twenty-eight years old and approaching the ninth level in the standard karate training. Yet her sensei had taught her many secret moves. He’d taught her moves he’d brought with him from his homeland.