The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy
Page 14
“I can’t believe I actually went to a place called Buns n’ Roses,” Dani said, watching Kelly fall back on the bed, a reminiscent smile still curling the edges of her lip-stick smudged mouth.
Dani had exchanged the red dress for something less conspicuous, but the red dress’s ambiance had lingered, carrying her into the male strip club with her chin defiantly high. A pity the smoky atmosphere, sensual pounding beat of the music, and assorted men didn’t get a certain cute Marshal out of her head, despite the fact she was still pissed at him.
“Frankly, I can’t believe you went either.” Kelly rubbed her face, then looked at her hand as if wondering where it came from. “You were never this fun before people wanted to kill you.”
Dani grinned, half guiltily. “It has kind of altered my perspective—though I’m not sure it was for the better. I should have spent the evening preparing to meet my Maker, not watching naked men swiveling their hips for tips.” She sank down on the edge of the other bed and, out of habit, grabbed Kelly’s heel-shod foot and began undoing the strap. “Though it was almost a religious experience when that guy stripped to Abba.”
“Yeah.” Kelly’s smile widened. “Made me want to kneel and give thanks.”
“You did kneel and give him a tip,” Dani pointed out.
“Oh yeah.” Her face blurred, her eyes losing focus as she settled deeper into the soft bed. “Gave thanks, too.”
“I believe you.” Dani pulled off her shoe and tossed it in the corner, then started on the other foot. “I just hope your seven a.m. interview doesn’t hear about our foray to the fleshy side of town. We already get too much bad press.”
“Honey, I figure if he wants to talk about sex, why fight it? Besides, that was research.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell your dentist?”
Kelly’s smile went past lascivious. “My dentist. You should see him in his scrubs.”
“Slut.” Dani pushed her bare foot away and tossed the other shoe over with its mate, then bent to detach her own shoes. For feet that had only had to tap and curl all evening, they sure were complaining. Course, they hadn’t had the view her eyes had.
“Compliments will not sway me from my purpose.” Kelly lolled her head in Dani’s direction and yawned widely. She blinked a couple of times. “What was my purpose?”
“To go to sleep.”
“Oh. Right. Night.” She rolled over muttering something Dani preferred not to parse.
Dani pulled a blanket over the supine figure, tucking the edges securely around her. Kelly muttered something. “You’re welcome.”
Dani sank back down on the other bed, then fell back, staring at the ceiling for a long moment, her mind turning with a kaleidoscope of faces. Dark Lord, dead Cloris, the hot brown eyes of her personal Fed, all of them circled by bare rotating butts. It didn’t make for a pretty picture. “How many more days of this do I have to get through?”
In the middle of subtracting and adding she slid into sleep and her nightmare without passing “Go” or collecting what she was owed. Everything was happening faster now. The replay of Richard killing. The moment when he realized she’d seen him. Dark Lord’s arrival, his cold, pale eyes lusting for her death. He laughed wildly as a circle of fire flared around him in an unholy nimbus.
“I am Death, Willow,” he told her, and she saw he held a knife. It dripped blood that smoked when it hit the ground. The knife sliced toward her in a deadly arc.
The frightened flinch of her body did what her mind couldn’t, freeing her from the dream. She stared at the lace draped canopy over head, briefly baffled by its presence, then Kelly give a gentle snore in the dark to her right and yesterday came flooding back, in all its good, bad, and embarrassing detail.
Had she really gone to a strip joint? Yes, she had to admit, she had gone. At least she hadn’t tipped anyone, though it had been a near thing during that Abba routine. She lifted her arm and peered at her watch. The illuminated numbers inevitably showed five zero zero.
“Great.” Dani sagged back with a groan. When would the horror end? Maybe she should be hunting Dark Lord so he could put her out of her misery. With another groan, she rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom, after a quick detour past the refrigerator for the Diet Dr. Pepper that the highly efficient Niles had found for her. The man was a positive treasure. How much did a butler cost, she wondered as she popped the top and poured that first, reviving stream down her throat. If she lived, she wanted one just like Niles. A short time later she emerged from the bathroom carrying a glass of water and two Alka-Seltzer. She sank down by Kelly and gave her a nudge.
“Come on, girl. It’s plop, plop, fizz, fizz time. Your jerk awaits. Oh,” she nudged the limp body again, “can I borrow your lap top?”
* * * *
Matt rarely dreamt, so at first he didn’t realize he was dreaming, despite a smoky haze hanging in the air outside Boomer’s office, not to mention an elongated perspective that made Riggs taller than him.
“You putting down roots, cowboy, or just coming in real slow?” he heard her say. Dani. He turned and found her, biker babe with soft, sad eyes. “You make a better wall than a door.”
“I know who you are,” he said, blinking the smoke from his eyes as he strained to see through the haze.
“Do you?” She laughed, but it was a man’s laugh, deep and evil as she turned into Hayes, his knife slicing the air on a collision course with Matt’s chest. He came awake with a jerk that sent pain shooting down his back. Briefly panicked, he put his hand on his chest, then realized it was his back protesting the fast change in position. He rubbed his eyes and looked around, wondering why he was in the living room of his apartment and not in his bed. It all looked oddly unfamiliar, as if he were still dreaming. Or hadn’t been home for three days.
He straightened his back, more slowly this time, so the pain could crawl down his spine instead of shooting like a rocket. He shouldn’t have sat down “for a minute” when he got home—he looked at his watch—only three hours ago? Five thirty was his usual time to get up, but it had never looked or felt so bad.
He stood up, intent on finding coffee as quickly as humanly possible, followed by a shower. His cell phone gave his heart a faster jump start than the strongest coffee or coldest shower. He grabbed the phone. “Kirby.”
“She’s online,” Sebastian said in his ear. Didn’t the guy ever sleep? Matt wondered.
“She passing her chapters to the agent?” Matt rubbed his neck.
“No. It seems she just snail mailed those.”
She used the post office? “Great. So why is she on?”
He could hear Sebastian grin’s in his voice when he said, “She wants to talk to you. You get the laptop set up like I told you?”
“Yeah.” Matt crossed to his desk and opened the top. “You tracing her?”
“Of course. But she knows her stuff. You sure she’s just a romance writer? So far I’ve been to Toronto, then headed across the Atlantic for a tour of Switzerland. It’s probably going to take me longer than she’s going to give you, so you’d better hurry and say what you want to say while you still can.”
Matt shook his head to clear it as the program logged him on line. “How did she get access to a computer? We know she didn’t buy one.”
“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.” Sebastian sounded laconic. “You about here? She’s getting impatient.”
“Pretend you’re me.”
“Tried that, but I made the mistake of using a smiley. She seems to know you’re not the type. Sure you two haven’t met before?”
Matt could hear the grin in Sebastian’s voice as his computer took him to the chat lines where Dani waited. With something that was almost awe, he watched words scroll down his screen. Will the real Marshal Kirby please come chat? This year? This last sentence was right after Sebastian’s ill advised smiley. Matt ignored Sebastian’s question and rubbed his eyes again. “So I just start typing?”
“And hit ent
er when you’re done.”
“Keep me updated on the trace.” Matt tucked the telephone between his ear and shoulder, flexed his hands, settled them on the keys and typed: You wanted to talk to me?
Grandma was slow, but she was eighty, Deputy. We’re almost out of chat time.
It’s a little early for both of us, don’t you think? Matt typed, recalling from her file that she had had trouble sleeping and was definitely not a morning person. It didn’t take much in the way of sleep deprivation to quickly impair judgment, but he didn’t tell her that, even without Alice there to coach him. There were some lessons he didn’t have to learn twice.
I had to rouse my friend. She’s got an appointment to talk sex with a jerk.
Matt glared at the screen. “What do I say to that?” In lieu of an answer, Sebastian choked. “Thanks a bunch. Are we even getting close to finding her?” he snapped as he typed: Oh?
“Not even on the same continent yet,” Sebastian said.
“Sweden?” Matt said aloud.
Sebastian chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m not getting distracted. Looks like we’re heading for Iceland, that’s an interesting choice.”
If they were, Iceland has cooled their jets, Matt told her, hitting the keys with more sureness as his brain came to alert status. The chase was happening out of sight on a world connected by fiber optic phone lines, but that didn’t lessen the pulse pounding tension of matching wits with the surprisingly clever romance writer. He added, did you have something in particular you wanted to say, or did you arrange this little chat so we could take a modified world tour?
A writer strives to make every scene do double duty, Deputy, popped quickly up on his screen. Since you brought it up, which one of you told Hayes about Willow?
“What the?”
“She can’t hear you, Matt,” Sebastian reminded him, then added, “We’re stateside again. Passing through Florida with our sights on Texas.”
We didn’t tell Hayes anything! Matt told her, finding the exclamation point not nearly emphatic enough. No wonder onliners invented those stupid emoticon things. Before he sent this to her he added, I give you my word it wasn’t us. We did warn you he was getting your email, didn’t we? Maybe he found it the same way we did?
The cursor blinked her lack of response. “She still on?”
“Yeah. We’re getting closer…I think,” Sebastian told him, “We’re in Utah now.”
Maybe.
Matt sighed his relief when the cursor moved to make room for the single word. She didn’t add emoticons, but he felt how grudgingly she had typed that word, felt her lack of trust as clearly as if she was sitting across from him.
How do you know Hayes knows about Willow? Matt asked her. He frowned while he waited for her answer. “There been any activity on her Willow email address, Sebastian?”
“Just chat from her friends. Whoa, we’re in the outskirts of our fair city now. Might just have her.”
Why didn’t she answer? Had she already cut off the connection? Matt quickly asked, Why did you take off? Hayes found you once, he can find you again. He’ll have to try again. I know this guy and you don’t..
Are you always this negative or are you just not a morning person? I figure two misses are an out for him, don’t you?
Matt bit back an impatient exclamation and typed: they’ve already hired someone else. Someone every bit as nasty as Hayes.
“We got her!”
“An address! I need an address!” Matt half stood up, then hesitated when her words bumped aside his cursor again.
You’re just full of good news this morning, aren’t you? And I have to go. I can practically feel you breathing down my neck. The answer to these and other questions later. In Australia, maybe? I hear the beer packs a wallop—uh, duck!
Duck? What did that mean? “I want that address, Sebastian!”
“No you don’t,” Sebastian said in his ear, excitement replaced by reluctant admiration. “She smoked me, Matt. Sorry.”
“Smoked you? How? Where did you trace the call to?”
Sebastian gave a laugh that was wry and frustrated. “To me. I don’t know how she did it, but our trace came back on me like spit. I’ve seen some fancy footwork out there, but nothing like this. Either she’s an inspired amateur or she’s been tutored by an evil genius.”
Like an echo, one last line of text scrolled across his screen. Did you duck?
It was, Matt realized, possible to be pissed to the eyeballs, amused and admiring at the same time. It was possible. It was also uncomfortable. A verbal response started low in his gut, rose toward his throat in swell. Even he didn’t know what was going to come out, a yell or a laugh. He felt Sebastian bracing at the other end of the line. Braced himself, too.
When it erupted, strained and slightly grim, but still recognizable as laughter, he was as relieved as Sebastian, who quickly joined him.
“Sebastian?”
“Yeah?” he managed to gasp out.
“If we ever get a case involving a romance writer, we run as fast and far away as we can?”
“No argument here.”
“I’m getting too old for this. Let’s see,” he ordered his thoughts, a strangely easier process in the aftermath of a good bout of laughing, “can we print out what was said and have Alice look at it? Maybe she’ll notice something we clueless males can’t.”
“Righto.”
“Thanks.” Matt broke the connection and sagged back in the chair. He knew so much about Dani from the files, had heard her voice from tapes of her pre-trial depositions, seen her thoughts from the online posts, read one of her books—
He had to admit she had made him feel things he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Surprise. Admiration. A longing to wring her neck until she begged for mercy. A desire to be in the same room with her.
Was she a flesh and blood woman with a bit of biker babe and romance writer? Where did grieved and grieving, a wicked sense of humor and a stubborn heart fit in? If he did come face to face with her, what then?
He thought he had felt all the regret he could when he had stood in the safe house and thought she was dead. This was worse. He had told her she could trust him and she could—to save her life. To stop Hayes. She couldn’t trust him with anything else. Betrayal had dogged her from the beginning and now he got to be a tacit conspirator in administering the coup de grace when Sheridan let Richard Hastings off the hook so he could go after Orsini. Sometimes justice wasn’t just blind. Sometimes it was stupid. And so wrong.
Richard Hastings would lose a lot in the process. He wouldn’t lose enough. There wasn’t a thing Matt could do about it. If he warned her, it wouldn’t change anything. Hayes wouldn’t go easily or quietly into the night. Even if Bates managed to get him snuffed, there was Dent waiting for his chance to take her out. It was like having the best seat in the house for a gigantic train wreck. All he could do was sit here and wait for it to happen.
It took away all desire to laugh and recoiled the tension into a knot around his head. He rubbed his face and wished he could go back to sleep. Instead he had to head in to the office. First that shower and shave he would promised himself. He stood up and his back protested again. Okay, first aspirin, then the shower.
* * * *
Dani pushed Kelly’s laptop away, feeling a guilty exhilaration at smoking Matt’s experts in cyberspace. It had been close, a real squeaker, according to the status window in the corner of the screen tracking the trace, made closer by that last jab. Not a wise move, but a satisfying one. It was a known fact that alpha males needed to be thwarted occasionally, for their own good.
“The interview,” Kelly called from the bathroom, “won’t take me long. What say we do the tourist thing?”
Dani looked up. “I’ve already been to the zoo.”
“I don’t even wan
t to know.” Kelly propped a shoulder on the door jamb and briskly rolled one leg of her pantyhose. “We could go see those mountainous, rock-like things looming over the smog. I’ve always wondered if the late, great John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High was from mountains or mountain grown.”
Dani grinned. “Too high for this girl.”
“Oh yeah. I keep forgetting you have that height phobia thing going.” She balanced on one foot and inserted the other into her panty hose. “Actually, I might have one, too. I’ve never really done anything seriously up, other than flying. And that doesn’t really count, does it?”
“With a little Valium prior to flying, it doesn’t.” Dani hesitated, reluctant to take the first step away from Kelly, but knowing it needed to be done. The death that stalked her had a way of grinding up those around her.
“With a little Valium, little does matter,” Kelly said dryly. She gave that final wriggle that was so critical to wearing hose with a semblance of comfort, then grabbed her silk tee and pulled it on. When her face popped through the neck, she added, “Quit stalling, Dani. I’ve known you for longer than I’m old. What’s cooking in your far too devious noodle? If it’s a new book, you know I don’t allow you to get ideas in my presence.”
She sat down beside Dani, a smile on her red mouth that didn’t erase the worry in her blue eyes.
Dani shook her head. “Nothing bookish going on there right now.”
“So what is?”
“You been reading the paper?” Dani handed it to her. “The trial is going forward very briskly.”
Kelly took it, read the first few paragraphs about the trial, then looked up. “Looks like it’s about over.”
Dani nodded. “I’m guessing sometime tomorrow, they’ll call me to the stand maybe even today.”
“And then?”
Dani gave a half laugh. “I don’t know. I never thought past the trial. Just focused on getting to it.” She shrugged. “Maybe they’ll let me go home?”