Baby, I’m Yours
SUSAN ANDERSEN
This one’s for the guys in my life
Dedicated with love
to Steve,
who still rocks my gypsy soul
and
Christopher,
who fills my heart with pride
And in memory of Linda Ann Bell
I think this one might’ve finally knocked
Present Danger off the top of your list
Contents
Prologue
Sam McKade ran down the airport concourse toward the boarding…
1
Catherine MacPherson’s first impulse, when the doorbell rang, was to…
2
“Son of a bitch!” Sam McKade had had it. Would…
3
Only hours old and already this case had disaster written…
4
Kaylee stood in front of the closet in her sister’s…
5
Catherine awoke to find that sometime during the night, she’d …
6
Staring down at her, Sam snarled with obvious frustration, “Lady,…
7
Bobby gently reseated the telephone receiver and went in search…
8
The bus stopped in Pocatello for lunch. Continuing on its…
9
Looking into Sam’s mocking eyes, only centimeters from her own,…
10
Made edgy and uncomfortable by the vast, windswept high-desert country…
11
It was barely eight o’clock in the morning and already…
12
“I’m going crazy in here, Bobby.” Kaylee dropped the motel-room…
13
Catherine pushed back from the table. “I need to use…
14
Before Kaylee heard the rumble of Catherine’s bus starting up,…
15
The bus pulled off the interstate onto a scenic overlook.
16
He settled in against her. “Friend. Gary ’n me were…
17
If Jimmy Chains could have gotten his hands on that…
18
Sam went very still as Catherine pressed soft, pursed lips…
19
From a prone position on the bed, Bobby watched Kaylee…
20
It had not been Sam’s intention to fall asleep again,…
21
“Do you have the vaguest idea where we are?” Dusk…
22
Contrary to Sam’s expectations, it had never occurred to Chains…
23
Bobby had just maneuvered himself into a little slice of…
24
Catherine had dropped her bombshell only moments before, and its…
25
“Please,” Kaylee said gently. “Don’t move. I truly don’t wanna…
26
“You ask me,” Kaylee said as she and Catherine approached…
Epilogue
“Whoa Nellie, I thought I was gonna have a heart…
About the Author
Other Books by Susan Andersen
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
SAM MCKADE RAN down the airport concourse toward the boarding area, arriving just in time to see Flight 437 roll away from the gate. He skidded to a halt.
“Son of a bitch!” Slamming a fist through the air in frustration, he spun around, then brought his hands up to ram all ten fingers through his hair, glaring off into the distance. He was blind to the people giving him a wide berth as they carefully skirted around him.
He wanted to hit something. Man, did he want to hit something! A golden opportunity had just dropped in his lap…and then been snatched away before he could grasp it.
Trying to calm down, he told himself to look on the bright side. Hell, it was strictly by chance that he’d spotted Kaylee MacPherson in the first place. He’d been coming back from a meeting with the North Carolina bankers who were financing the fishing lodge he wanted to buy, and the last person he’d expected to see at the airport was a bondsman’s client. Yet there she’d been, and while he’d stopped dead to watch in amazement, she’d undulated down the concourse with that killer walk of hers, her suitcase bouncing off her shapely calf.
Unable to credit his eyes, he’d failed to react immediately. But it was impossible to mistake her—earlier in the week he’d been in the office picking up a check while the bond bailsman who employed him made arrangements to be at Kaylee’s arraignment to post bail. Sure as heaven made catfish, there weren’t two women in Miami with hair that color or a body like that. And Sam knew damn well that by leaving the area, she was breaking the terms of her bail.
Man oh man, he’d thought, there was a God after all. The bounty on her bond would put him over the top for the last of the financing he needed for the lodge. Then it would be good-bye, dregs of society and humid, gritty streets, and hello, serenity on cool, misty mornings. Talk about easy pickin’s.
Which just went to show what happened when you underestimated the job at hand. It gave unwelcome teeth to that “famous last words” thing—no way in hell he should have assumed nabbing MacPherson was going to be a piece of cake.
She was such a dim bulb, though, that she hadn’t even attempted to tone down or change her appearance, let alone travel under an assumed name. Hell, looking at her, a man could all but hear the sultry bump-and-grind drumbeat set up by those well-rounded, spandex-encased hips. Not to mention the enormous wealth of red hair that blazed so brightly. There might as well have been a row of flashing neon arrows overhead to point out the way. He could keep her in sight merely by following the path of turned male heads.
A fat lot of good it had done him.
He hadn’t anticipated the new hire who had hung him up at the checkpoint, and for that he had only himself to blame. Now he had no choice but to buy a ticket to Seattle and try to pick up a trail that would undoubtedly be stone-cold dead by the time he got there. God, he wanted a cigarette. What a damnfool time to quit smoking.
He called the office to let them know where he was headed, to make arrangements to have the fugitive’s bond undertaking messengered to him, and to get all the information on MacPherson he could garner. Then he went to the ticket counter, where he finally got lucky in a good-news bad-news sorta way. The good news was, he could catch a flight that would land him in Seattle less than an hour after MacPherson. The bad news was, it blew his budget all to hell and gone. But that couldn’t be helped.
Somehow he’d have to find a way to economize on the return trip to Miami. The thought caused Sam to utter a soft, unamused snort of laughter. That ought to provide one mother of a challenge—considering the high-maintenance woman he’d have in tow.
1
CATHERINE MACPHERSON’S FIRST impulse, when the doorbell rang, was to ignore it. She wasn’t feeling particularly sociable.
Self-pity, on the other hand, was such an unattractive trait, and one that filled her with guilt—in spite of the permission she’d given herself to take one full day to wallow in her misfortune. The doorbell pealed again, relentlessly, insistently, and in the end, years of self-discipline won out. She went to answer the summons.
The last person she expected to see on her front steps was her identical twin. “Kaylee,” she said blankly, and simply stood there for an instant, staring dumbfounded at her sister.
“Surprise!” Kaylee exclaimed in the breathy contralto she’d perfected when they were fifteen years old. With the shoulder strap of her purse sliding down her arm, her suitcase ricocheting off the doorjamb, breasts jiggling, she tripped into the foyer. Dropping luggage and handbag, she flung herself at
Catherine, enveloping her in a lush and fragrant embrace.
Catherine’s arms automatically closed around her sister to return the hug, but she couldn’t suppress the little voice in her brain that whispered, Uh-oh. I smell big trouble in River City. Patting Kaylee’s shoulder, she disentangled herself from the embrace and stepped back.
Kaylee’s gaze took in the foyer and she peered into the living room, then looked back at Catherine, one eyebrow sardonically quirked. “Ever the Suzy Spotless, I see,” she commented with lazy amusement. “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
It was like having a bruise poked with a careless finger, and Catherine replied stiffly, “Actually, it’s much neater than usual. I was supposed to leave for Europe last night, but when I arrived at the airport, I discovered my travel agency had gone bankrupt and taken my money with them.”
“Ouch,” Kaylee sympathized.
“I saved forever for that trip, Kaylee.” Catherine’s chin wobbled for an instant but she summoned her resolve, biting down hard on her molars until she had herself under control once more.
“Yeah, that’s tough luck,” Kaylee said. Then she shrugged and added blithely, “But you’ll get it straightened out, Sis. You always do.” Picking up a fragile sculpture from the little table in the foyer, she studied it dispassionately for a moment, then looked over at her sister. “The thing is, Catherine”—she carefully replaced the sculpture—“I’m in really big trouble, myself.”
Oh, hey now, there’s a huge surprise. It just popped into Catherine’s mind, and yes, she knew such sarcasm spoke ill of her own character, but she just couldn’t seem to work up a decent regret. It wasn’t an accident that she lived as far away from her sister as it was possible to get in the contiguous United States.
For as long as Catherine could remember, it had fallen to her to take care of family problems. She could never quite recall how the responsibility had come to be hers, but most likely it boiled down to one basic fact. Before anything could be accomplished, someone first had to be willing to do it—and no one else in her family ever volunteered. Her father had usually been off chasing one of his get-rich-quick schemes, letting the devil—and everyone else—take the hindmost. Mama had been deaf and perennially immersed in her fundamentalist church group, only emerging from it long enough to admonish Catherine and Kaylee about the dangers of displaying their sinful bodies. Warnings of that nature had been issued with numbing regularity, but day-to-day problems had somehow been ignored. It had been left to Catherine to see that the utility bills got paid, that meals got on the table. It had been up to her, too, to bail Kaylee out of the various scrapes her twin got herself into.
Catherine had wished for a lot of things during her adolescent and teenage years, but most often she’d wished that Mama wouldn’t preach so about their sinful bodies. It only made her self-conscious about her own and sent Kaylee overboard to display as much of hers as was legally allowed. Her sister’s motto had seemed to be If They Say No, Do It. And If It Feels Good, Then Do It ’Til You Drop.
It made Catherine weary just thinking about it. Cleaning up after Kaylee’s excesses had once occupied most of her energies, for her sister could rarely be depended upon to think before she acted. Catherine needn’t even close her eyes for an entire montage of incidents to flash with dizzying, strobe-light speed across her mental screens.
Catherine’s patience wasn’t what it once was, but that didn’t negate the fact that, like Pavlov’s dogs, she’d been conditioned to react to a given set of stimuli. In her case it was to begin searching for solutions the instant a dilemma was presented to her. Experiencing that old uneasy mix of love, anger, and frustration, Catherine suppressed a sigh and bent to pick up her sister’s suitcase. “Come on into the kitchen,” she invited wearily, “and tell me all about it.”
“You overheard what?” she demanded incredulously a few moments later. Twisting around, she stared over her shoulder at her sister.
“A murder being arranged.”
“Oh, my God, Kaylee, that’s what I thought you said.” Catherine turned back to the stove to set down the teakettle. Shock rendered her fingers clumsy, and the kettle clattered loudly against the element as she fumbled it onto the burner. The cups she picked up to carry to the table rattled slightly in their saucers, and the sunlight pouring through the miniblinds seemed suddenly garish and inappropriate. “When? Where? Whose?”
Kaylee stared blankly at the dainty floral cup her sister set in front of her, then looked back up at her twin’s pale face. “Tea?” she demanded incredulously. “I tell you I heard a murder being planned, and you give me tea? Jayzus, Cat. Don’tcha have something a tad stronger? Scotch or bourbon maybe—anything?”
Jayzus, Cat. It was their father’s voice Catherine heard, his face she envisioned, with its ready smile and florid complexion. Jayzus, Caty-girl, you gotta learn to lighten up a little. I’m sure you can scrape together somethin’ real fine for dinner. The way you act, you’d think I spent all the grocery money.
She refrained from pointing out it was a bit early for booze; instead, she silently rose and went to the cupboard where she kept the pint of whiskey left over from Christmas. Handing it to her sister, she watched as Kaylee twisted off the cap and added a healthy dollop to her teacup. Then Catherine resumed her seat opposite her twin.
Kaylee took a large sip, swallowed, and coughed delicately. She looked across the table at Catherine. As if seeing her for the first time, her mouth tilted up wryly on one side and she shook her head. “Good God, Cat, you dress just like a nun. Mama would be so proud.”
Catherine looked down at herself. It was true her white blouse was on the boxy side, but that was because having her breasts faithfully delineated drew too much unwelcome attention. Her bicycle shorts, however, were second-skin Lycra. She looked over at her sister, who wore spandex from cleavage to mid-thigh, and three-inch, spike-heeled pumps to Catherine’s Keds, and conceded that compared to Kaylee she probably did look fairly parochial. “You really want to talk about my wardrobe?”
“No, I s’pose not. Where were we, then?” Kaylee immediately waved the question away with a flip of her slender, flame-tipped fingers. “Never mind, I’ll start at the beginning. Three days ago, I was stuck at the club without wheels because of this bitch who…well, that’s another story and small spuds in the long run, compared to the trouble I’m in now.”
The club, Catherine knew, was the Tropicana Lounge, where Kaylee was a showgirl. As far as Catherine could tell, that meant Kaylee stepped synchronously about a stage with other showgirls, wearing costumes that were large on headgear and small on material. Mama always used to refer to Kaylee as a dancer, because she’d seemed to feel it held less-wicked connotations. In her view “showgirl” might as well have been “stripper.” But that was Mama.
“The Trop is really nice,” Kaylee continued. “But the dancers’ dressing room shares a wall with the men’s loo, and I tell ya, Cat, it’s a thin one. There are just some bodily functions I woulda been as happy never hearing.” She shrugged. “Anyhow, I was coolin’ my jets waiting for Maria to finish flirting with this guy out in the lounge and give me a ride home when I heard Hector Sanchez, who owns the place, talking on the other side of the wall. He was jawing with Chains about Alice Mayberry, who everyone knows is carrying on a hot and heavy romance with him. And while I’m standing there sort of enjoying eavesdropping and hopin’ to hear some really juicy gossip, Hector puts out a contract on her.”
“A contract,” her twin echoed in a faint voice.
“A hit, Catherine, an execution. Ordered by my boss…and carried out by Jimmy ‘Chains’ Slovak. He’s the Trop’s head of security. And, um”—she cleared her throat, eyeing her sister cautiously—“my boyfriend Bobby LaBon’s boss.”
Catherine choked on the sip of tea she was taking and hastily set her teacup down. “Your boyfriend? Your boyfriend works for a hit man?”
“Bobby’s a bouncer, Cat. And I sure didn’t know
Chains was a hit man. Hell, he’s not. At least he wasn’t before now, as far as I know.”
Catherine wasn’t listening. She was staring in amazed horror at her sister. “And you came here? Kaylee, are you crazy? You must realize this is the first place those people are bound to look for you.”
“No, they won’t.” Kaylee’s eyes narrowed. “And what exactly do you mean by ‘those people,’ Catherine? You sound just like Mama.”
“I do not. I just tend to get a little tense when you lead contract killers to my door.”
“Jayzus, girl, get a grip. Sanchez and Jimmy Chains don’t have a clue about you.”
“Yeah? Well, what about your boyfriend, Kaylee? You said he works for this Chains person, this—you’ll forgive me for belaboring the point—hit man, and he must know about me.”
“Nope. He doesn’t.”
Catherine felt some of the tension leave her spine. “Oh.” She nodded her comprehension. “A new boyfriend, huh?”
Kaylee blinked her big green eyes. “Oh, no, Cat, he’s a longtime lover. We’ve been seeing each other four whole months.”
Four whole months. Imagine that. In carefully non-combative tones, Catherine said, “And in all that time, you never once felt compelled to mention you have a twin?”
Kaylee shrugged. “Not really. Conversation’s not a real big priority when we get together, if you know what I mean.”
Did she ever—it was the knowledge of Kaylee’s sometimes indiscriminate sexuality that had reined in her own, the few times it threatened to run away with her. What if she let herself go and turned into her sister? The thought scared her to death and had kept her, if not exactly pure, at least cautious.
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