Night Fires

by Sandra Marton

  ‘I—I haven’t been sleeping well,’ she said finally. ‘I…’

  I can’t think, James. Not with your hand against my cheek, not when I can remember the taste of your skin. What would you do if I moved my head and pressed my lips to your palm?

  A tremor went through her and she pulled free of his hand. ‘I asked a question,’ she said, moving away from him to the window. ‘Why did you bring me here? And how did you get into the compound? The dogs—the alarm system…’

  James shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t take any credit for putting either the dogs or the alarm out of commission. Federal agents did that. They took the Rottweilers out with drugs, the alarm with some kind of sophisticated technology.’

  ‘But Vitale and his men were still in the house. They could have heard you. You could have been…’

  ‘But I wasn’t.’ A quick smile twisted across his mouth. ‘I counted on Vitale and his people sleeping like babies. Why wouldn’t they, with a pack of guard dogs and a million-dollar electronic system to protect them?’

  ‘I don’t understand all this.’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘By now, your lover is in jail. They busted him five minutes after I got you out of there.’ he said, watching her closely. ‘They’ve been after him for months and I—they finally caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.’

  Arrested. Vitale had been arrested. A feeling of hope energized her, but it was gone as swiftly as it had come. No jail would hold Big Tony for long. He had the best legal advice money could buy, and no bail would be too high for him to meet.

  And when he got out, he’d go looking for James— unless she could stop him.

  Fear turned her blood cold. ‘Where is he?’ she said, brushing past him as she hurried towards the door. ‘I have to go to him.’

  James reached out as she moved past him and caught her by the sleeve. ‘Damn you!’ His voice was ragged. ‘Can’t you stay away from him for one night?

  Gabrielle looked at him. ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Please, James.’

  His hands closed on her shoulders, his fingers imprinting themselves on her flesh even through the thickness of the sable coat.

  ‘I was right about you all along,’ he said, his eyes locked with hers. ‘It wasn’t that you didn’t know the truth about Vitale—it was that you didn’t care.’

  ‘No. That’s not ’

  ‘He had money, that was all that mattered to you,’ James said, shaking her like a sack of laundry. ‘God, what panic you must have felt, Gabrielle. All those years of fancy living, anything your little heart wanted—gone in a blink of an eye. You went to sleep a princess and woke up a commoner.’

  She shook her head. ‘It isn’t true.’

  His face twisted. ‘Of course it’s true,’ he snarled. ‘You and your old man had a good thing going. You had Big Tony wound around your little finger, and then Townsend and I came along and destroyed it.’ He bent towards her. ‘Choose, we said. Give up Vitale and protect your father, or hang on to Vitale and hand your old man over to us.’

  ‘No. You’re wrong. James, I beg you…’

  He laughed. ‘Hell, we did you a favour. I mean, we gave you the chance to use what passes for your heart for once in your life. You chose your father, even though protecting him meant kicking in the soft life with Vitale.’

  Tears rose in Gabrielle’s eyes. What had she expected him to think? Vitale had commanded a performance from her and she—she had done an award-winning job. The papers saw her as Vitale’s woman; why wouldn’t James? She had fled his arms and his love, she had flaunted everything they’d meant to each other.

  James’s lips curled as he watched the play of emotion on her face. ‘I almost felt sorry for Vitale when he told me what happened that night he tried to have you killed.’ He laughed. ‘Not that he admitted that, of course. ’

  Gabrielle’s eyes widened. ‘You mean—you talked with him?’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ James smiled wolfishly. ‘Hell, I thought he would. I figured the two of you would get a laugh out of it.’ His grin vanished. ‘Yeah, I talked to him. I pushed my way into his office one morning; I told him I wanted to see you, face to face, to have you tell me yourself that you’d gone back to him willingly.’

  James had done that? He’d faced down Tony Vitale for her?

  ‘He—he never said anything,’ she said slowly. ‘He never ’

  His hands tightened on her. ‘He told me how you phoned him while I was at the police station, how you begged to come back to him.’

  She shook her head wildly. ‘He lied!’

  ‘And he decided to take you back. Hell, he’s not stupid. He must have realised it was safer and cheaper to buy your silence than to have you killed.’ His voice dropped to a chill whisper. ‘Besides, why would he want you in a coffin when he could have you in his bed?’

  Gabrielle drew a shuddering breath. ‘James,’ she whispered, ‘please, you must listen to me. I—it wasn’t like that. Vitale wasn’t… I never…’

  James looked at her as her words trailed away. ‘Go on,’ he said coldly, ‘I’m listening. What lies are you going to tell me now?’

  Her eyes met his. What could she say to him? Could she tell him the truth? Could she say, ‘I love you, James’? No. She could never tell him that. If he knew what she’d done, the sacrifice she’d made, he would go after Vitale. That he’d sought him out once already in the past months was proof enough.

  And then Vitale would kill him. That was the truth, the only one that mattered.

  Gabrielle swallowed drily. ‘No lies,’ she whispered, her eyes meeting his. ‘It—it was all the way you said it was. I—I called Vitale after you left that night. I told him—I told him I knew he’d never meant to hurt me, that—that things had gotten out of hand…’

  James’s hands slid from her shoulders, moving slowly to her throat. They spread beneath the open neckline of the sable coat, his fingers warm and solid against the rapid flutter of her pulse.

  ‘You sold yourself to him, didn’t you?’ His voice caught, then broke. ‘Your body and your vow of silence for his money.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered, and then she took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes meeting his.

  His fingers slid beneath the ruby necklace. ‘Your warm mouth traded for these cold stones,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers. Suddenly, his hand curled around the necklace and he ripped it from her throat. It fell to the floor, the rubies sparkling like drops of blood against the wood.

  Gabrielle blinked back her tears. ‘Is—is that why you brought me here?’ she whispered. ‘So you could humiliate me?’

  He laughed, and the sound tore at her heart. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘You knew they were going to raid the house and arrest Tony. You knew that would give you time to—to confront me. I don’t—I don’t blame you. But…’

  James’s mouth twisted. ‘But?’

  ‘But I…’ Her voice broke. ‘I wish you’d finish this, James. I can’t—I can’t…’

  Tears began to roll down her cheeks. She couldn’t stand much more of this. In a moment, she’d fling her arms around him and kiss away the angry furrows beside his mouth, brush away the deep grooves between his brows, she would tell him how much she loved him, and that would be as good as signing his death sentence.

  ‘No, you don’t want me to finish this.’ His voice was grating. ‘You don’t, Gabrielle. You…’

  His hands closed on the sable coat and he ripped it from her shoulders. The dark fur puddled at her feet like a chrysalis. James stared at her, his eyes moving slowly over the high-necked silk nightgown she wore, lingering at the thrust of her breasts and the curve of her belly. She felt her flesh bloom beneath the heat of his gaze.

  ‘James,’ she whispered.

  Her arms lifted slowly to him. No, she thought, you mustn’t. But she was moving towards him, her eyes on his face. He wanted to make love to her, she could see it in the masked tension that
transformed his features. But it wasn’t love, not any more. If he took her, it would be in anger, it would be an act of cold possession. He would take her for the same reasons he’d kissed her at the opera house—lust would mix with the need to stamp his brand on her as he thought Vitale had.

  It would be an act of revenge, not love.

  But she wanted him so badly; she wanted to feel the warmth of his mouth and the hardness of his body one last time, and then—and then she would flee into the night, she’d find Vitale and do whatever she had to do to win James’s life, she’d plead and beg, she’d even seduce him if that was what it took.

  ‘James,’ she sighed, her mouth inches from his.

  He made a desperate choked sound, grasped her shoulders, and flung her from him. Then he snatched up her coat and wrapped it around her.‘Get out! ‘Take a taxi back to the compound and pack whatever you can. Your furs, your jewels—if you know where Vitale keeps his cash, take that, too. Whatever you lay your hands on is going to have to last you a lifetime.’

  What was he saying? Did he think he could order her away from New York?

  ‘I hate to disappoint you, love, but you’re not going to be able to rely on Tony anymore.

  Gabrielle stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  James walked across the room and poured himself another dollop of brandy. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘why not? You might as well hear it all.’ He tilted the glass to his lips and tossed down the fiery liquid. ‘Hell, I’ve already made a fool of myself—why shouldn’t you have the last laugh?’

  He slammed the glass down on a table; the fragile stem snapped, then broke, and a drop of amber liquid spilled on to the wood. He turned to her, his eyes burning with dark night fires.

  ‘I quit the prosecutor’s office. Did you know that?’

  She nodded. ‘Vitale told me.’

  ‘Hell, when I took that job I was so damned self-righteous. I told my father I was going to be the kind of lawyer he wasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What does your father have to do with this?’

  ‘My father practices corporate law. He asked me to come into his firm with him, but I was such a smug bastard, accusing him of believing in nothing but dollar signs. I was going to save the world.’ He walked to the window and put his palms against it, staring out into the night and the lights winking across the river in the borough of Queens. ‘After a few years, I got my first big case. The authorities had been after Tony Vitale for years, and they finally had something on him.’

  ‘The killing of Riley,’ Gabrielle said softly.

  James nodded. ‘Yes. But we needed your testimony to make murder charges stick.’ He paused; she saw his shoulders rise as he drew a deep breath. ‘I was determined to find a way to force you to co-operate.’ He leaned his forehead against the glass. ‘And I did. But along the way—along the way, I learned some ugly truths. I learned that I don’t have a lock on morality, that life isn’t as black and white as I wanted it to be.’ He drew in his breath again, then turned towards her. ‘And I learned I could fall in love with a woman who represented everything I claimed to despise.’

  Gabrielle’s heart filled with love. If only she could go to him. If only she could tell him…

  ‘By the time your father died, I hated myself for what I’d done to you. I knew your life was in danger—I wanted to protect you..’

  ‘So you followed me to New Orleans.’

  James nodded. ‘Yes. I told myself it was only to safeguard you as a future witness. But it was more than that…’ He fell silent. When he spoke again, his voice was low. ‘When I came back to the carriage house that night and found you’d gone, I almost went crazy. I drove the streets of the Quarter, I searched the city—I demanded the cops send out an all-points bulletin. But then, the next day, your picture was everywhere. You and Vitale…’

  Gabrielle closed her eyes. She and Vitale, the photo of her in his arms….

  ‘I wanted to kill you both. I dreamed about it; hell, I even…’ He paused and drew a breath. ‘In the end, I decided there had to be a better way.’ His head lifted and he looked at her. ‘I decided to put Tony Vitale away. Forever.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she said brokenly. ‘No one can.’ .

  James gave her a bitter smile. ‘I hate to disappoint you, baby. I took a logic course in college once—I’ve forgotten most of it, but one thing impressed the hell out of me. There aren’t any insoluble problems, just poor solutions. So I stopped concentrating on the Riley murder and I took a good, hard look at all the other slime Vitale’s involved in.’

  She stared at him, afraid to ask the question. Finally, she cleared her throat.

  ‘And did you—did you find something?’

  ‘Not at first. But I kept at it. And I turned up a lead. Townsend wouldn’t touch it; there wasn’t enough to go on. So I quit my job and I went out on my own, listening to anybody who’d talk, buying whatever information I could—and then, last week, it all came together.’

  She stared at him, her heart beginning to trip erratically,

  afraid to let herself believe.

  ‘I don’t suppose…’ Her voice faded and she inhaled shakily. ‘I don’t suppose you found what you’d been looking for, though.’ She hesitated. ‘A way to—to put him away forever.’

  ‘I did, indeed. Vitale’s hands are so dirty, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison and never get them clean.’

  Gabrielle began to tremble. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what tonight’s arrest was all about.’ His mouth twisted with pain. ‘I struck a deal with Townsend—I convinced him to let me get you out first, although why in hell I did it…’ He turned away from her and looked out of the window. ‘Come on,’ he said with a terrible weariness in his voice, ‘I’ll get you a taxi.’

  She was dizzy with excitement. Was it true? Had James’s rage worked in a way he’d never intended? Had it set her free? It seemed too much to believe, and yet…

  She took a hesitant step towards him. ‘ Are you certain? Vitale will—he’ll never get out of prison?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not in this lifetime, he won’t.’ Suddenly, he spun towards her. ‘What’s the matter, Gabrielle? Are you afraid you won’t be able to… ?’ The angry tumble of words stopped when he saw her face. ‘What are you smiling at?’ he demanded.

  Her smiled faded. He was looking at her with such cold fury—would he believe her story? Would he even listen while she told it?

  ‘James.’ Her voice was a tremulous whisper. She held her hand out to him, as if to implore his understanding. ‘I—I have something to tell you.’

  He watched her through narrowed eyes. ‘And I’ll just bet it’s fascinating.’ His words fell between them like bits of ice.

  ‘I—I didn’t go back to Vitale willingly..’

  She waited, her breath stilled. Something gleamed in his eyes, then was snuffed out. ‘As I said, fascinating.’ He turned away. ‘Let’s go. It’s getting late.’

  Some new emotion swept through her. Pain. Yes. Desperation, of course.

  But suddenly—suddenly anger rose inside her.

  ‘Dammit, James Forrester…’ Gabrielle took a step forward. ‘Can you get down from that high horse long enough to listen?’

  James folded his arms. ‘I’m listening,’ he said coldly. ‘Why wouldn’t I? You’re one hell of an actress. I wouldn’t want to miss this performance.’

  ‘That night—Vitale telephoned me after you left. He said if I didn’t come back to him, he’d—he’d kill you.’

  ‘What the hell kind of fool do you take me for?’ he demanded. ‘The cop on duty at your front door told me how you’d called him inside to check on a noise, how

  you’d sneaked out while he was upstairs…’

  ‘The cop lied. Vitale arranged it. He arranged for my plane ticket, for the cab that picked me up ’

  James’s mouth curled in disgust. ‘Stop it !It’s over. You’ve lost, don’t you see that? Just be gratef
ul you still have the things he gave you, the furs and the jewels.’

  That was what he believed, that Vitale had bought her. She thought back, remembering his bitter words when they first met, the questions about how she’d gotten the carriage house in New Orleans, the suggestions that it had been hard to turn away from the man who’d given her presents back in New York.

  Nothing that had happened since would have convinced him that he’d been wrong. There’d been pictures of her everywhere, stories about the fortune in jewels and furs Vitale had lavished on her. Even now, as she pleaded with James to believe her, she was draped in Big Tony’s booty, wearing his silks and furs and gems.

  Her glance fell to the ruby necklace lying on the floor, and a sudden hope was kindled in her heart.

  She bent and picked it up, moved past him to the window and looked out. Far below, the river gleamed like black oil beneath the lights of New York City.

  ‘Do these windows open?’.

  ‘Yeah. They open. What’s that got to do with—’

  Gabrielle opened one of the windows. The necklace fell through the night, twinkling like hundreds of tiny suns as it rushed toward the water.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Gabrielle smiled. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never loved anyone but you.’

  James stared at her in disbelief, and she laughed a little.

  ‘Tiffany’s,’ she said. ‘Five hundred thousand dollars. Can you imagine that?’ Her eyes held his as she slipped a ruby and sapphire bracelet from her wrist. ‘Bulgari. Twenty thousand, I think.’ She laughed again, this time at the look on his face. ‘Well, maybe just a little bit more.’ Her arm drew back, her hand flexed, and the bracelet soared out of the window, winked against the inky darkness, and vanished from sight.

  James took a step towards her. ‘Gabrielle. What are you doing?’

  ‘And then, of course, there’s this.’ She pulled the diamond ring from her finger and held it before her. ‘I hated this most,’ she said with a shudder. ‘God, how I hated it!’ A quick toss, and the ring sailed after the bracelet, winking like a shooting star as it tumbled through the sky.