Stars of Mithra Box Set: Captive StarHidden StarSecret Star

by Nora Roberts

  Chapter 5

  It had been a messy job, Jack thought. If it had been pros, they hadn’t bothered to be quick or neat. But then, there’d been no reason for either. Ralph was still tied to the chair.

  Or what was left of him was.

  “You can wait in the back,” Jack told her.

  “I don’t think so.” She wasn’t a stranger to violence. A girl didn’t grow up in a bar and not see blood spilled from time to time.

  But she’d never seen anything like this. As realistic as she considered herself, she hadn’t really believed it was possible for one human being to inflict this kind of horror on another.

  She kept her eyes on the wall, but stepped in beside him. “What do you think they were after?”

  “The same thing I am. Anything that leads back to whoever used Ralph to set us up. Stupid son of a bitch.” His voice softened all at once, with what could only have been termed regret. “Why didn’t he run?”

  “Maybe he didn’t have the chance.” Her stomach was settling, but she continued to take small, shallow breaths. “We have to call the police.”

  “Sure, we’ll call 911, then we’ll wait and explain ourselves. From the inside of a cell.” Crouching down, he began shuffling through papers. “Jack, for God’s sake, the man’s been murdered.”

  “He won’t be any less dead if we call the cops, will he? Never could figure out Ralph’s filing system.”

  “Haven’t you got any feelings at all? You knew him.”

  “I haven’t got time for feelings.” And since they were trying to surface, his voice was rough as sand. “Think about it, sugar. Whoever did this to him would love to play the same game with you. Take a good look, and ask yourself if that’s how you want to end up.”

  He waited a moment, then accepted her silence as understanding. “Now you can go in the back room and save your sensibilities, or you can help me sort through this mess.”

  When she turned, he assumed she’d walk away. That she might keep on walking, no matter the neighborhood. But she stopped at a file cabinet, grabbed a handful of papers. “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything.”

  “That narrows it down. And why should there be anything left? They’ve already been here.”

  “He’d keep a backup somewhere.” Jack hissed at the snowfall of papers. “Why the hell didn’t he use a computer like a normal person?”

  Rising, he went to the desk, wrenched out a drawer. He searched it, turning it over, checking the underside, the back, then tossing it aside and yanking out another. On the third try, he found a false back.

  His quick grunt of approval had M.J. turning, watching him take out a penknife and pry at wood. Giving up her own search, she walked to him. By tacit agreement with him, she gripped the loosened edge and tugged while he worked the knife around. Wood splintered from wood.

  “It’s practically cemented on,” Jack muttered. “And recently.”

  “How do you know it’s recent?”

  “It’s clean. No dust, no grime. Watch your fingers. Here, you take the knife. Let me…” They switched jobs. He skinned his knuckles, swore, and continued to peel the wood back. All at once it popped free.

  Jack took the knife again, cut through the tape affixing a key to the back of the drawer. “Storage locker,” he muttered. “I wonder what Ralph has tucked away.”

  “Bus station? Train station? Airport?” M.J. leaned closer to study the key. “It doesn’t have a name, just a number.”

  “I’d go with one of the first two. Ralph didn’t like to fly, and the airport’s a trek from here.”

  “That still leaves a lot of locks on a lot of boxes,” she reminded him.

  “We’ll track it down.”

  “Do you know how many storage lockers there must be in the metropolitan area?”

  He turned the key between his fingers and smiled thinly. “We only need one.” He took her hand, and before she realized his intent, he’d cuffed them together again.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jack.”

  “Just covering my bases. Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

  At the first bus station, he’d grudgingly removed the cuffs before dragging M.J. into a phone booth, and making an anonymous call to the police to report the murder. Then he carefully wiped down the phone. “If they’ve got caller ID,” he told her, “they’ll track down where the call was made.”

  “And I take it your prints are on file.”

  He flashed a grin. “Just a little disagreement over pool in my misspent youth. Fifty dollars and time served.”

  Because he’d shifted, she was backed into the corner of the booth, pressed to the wall by his body. “It’s a little crowded in here.”

  “I noticed.” He lifted a hand, skimmed back the hair at her temple. “You did all right back there. A lot of women would have gotten hysterical.”

  “I don’t get hysterical.”

  “No, you don’t. So give me a break here, will you?” He tipped her face up, lowered his head. “Just for a minute.” And he closed his mouth over hers.

  She could have resisted. She meant to. But it was an easy kiss, with need just a whispering note. It was almost friendly, could have been friendly, if not for the press of his body to hers, and the heat rising from it.

  And an easy, almost friendly kiss shouldn’t have made her want to cling, to hold on and hold tight. She compromised by fisting a hand on his back, not holding but not protesting.

  If her lips softened under his, warmed and parted, it was only for a moment. It meant nothing. Could mean nothing.

  “I want you.” He murmured the words against her mouth, then again when his lips pressed to her throat. “This is a hell of a time for it, a hell of a place. But I want you, M.J. I’m having a hard time getting past that.”

  “I don’t go to bed with strangers.”

  “Who’s asking you to?” He lifted his head, met her eyes. “We’ve got each other figured, don’t we? And you’re not the kind of woman who needs fussy dates or fancy words.”

  “Maybe not.” The fire he’d kindled inside her was still smoldering. “Maybe I haven’t figured out what I need.”

  “Then think about it.” He backed off, then took her hand and pulled her out of the booth. “We’ll check the lockers. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  They didn’t. Not in that terminal or in the next two. It was nearly one in the morning before he pocketed the key.

  “I want a drink.”

  She let out a breath, rolled her shoulders. After twelve hours in a waking nightmare, she could see his point. “I wouldn’t turn one down. You buying?”

  “Why not?”

  He steered clear of any of the places where he might be recognized and chose instead a dingy little dive not far from Union Station.

  “Good thing I’ve had my shots.” M.J. wrinkled her nose at the sticky, stamp-size table and checked the chair before she sat.

  “It was either this or a fern bar. We can check out Union Station when we’ve had a break. Two of what you’ve got on tap,” he told the waitress, and cracked a peanut.

  “I don’t know how places like this stay in business.” With a critical eye, M.J. studied the atmosphere. Smoke-choked air, a generally stale smell, sticky floor littered with peanut shells, cigarette butts and worse. “A few gallons of disinfectant, some decent lighting, and this joint would turn up one full notch.”

  “I don’t think the clientele cares.” He glanced toward the surly-faced man at the bar, and the weary-eyed working girl who was casing him. “Some people just come into a bar to engage in the serious business of drinking until they’re drunk enough to forget why they came into the bar to begin with.”

  She acknowledged his comment with a nod. “That’s the type I don’t want in my place. You get them from time to time, but they rarely come back. They’re not looking for conversation and music or a companionable drink with a pal. That’s what I serve at my place.”

  “Like father, like daug
hter.”

  “You could say that.” M.J.’s eyes narrowed in disapproval as the waitress slammed down their mugs. Beer sloshed over the tops. “She wouldn’t last five minutes at M.J.’s.”

  “Rude barmaids have their own charm.” Jack picked up his beer and sipped gratefully. “I meant what I said earlier.” He grinned when her gaze narrowed on his. “About that, too, but I meant how you handled yourself. It was a tough room, M.J., for anybody.”

  “It was a first for me.” She cleared her throat, drank. “You?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t mind saying I hope it’s my last. Ralph was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve that. I’d have to say whoever did that to him enjoyed his work. You’ve got some real bad people interested in you.”

  “It looks that way.” And those same people, she thought, would be interested in Bailey and Grace. “How long do you figure it’ll take to find the lock that fits that key?”

  “No telling. Knowing Ralph, he wouldn’t go too far afield. He hid the key in his office, not his apartment, so odds are the box is close.”

  But if it wasn’t, it could be hours, even days, before they found it. She wasn’t willing to wait that long. She took another gulp of beer. “I need the rest room.” When he narrowed his eyes, she smirked. “Want to come with me?”

  He studied her a moment, then moved his shoulders. “Make it fast.”

  She didn’t rush toward the back, but her mind was racing. Ten minutes, she calculated. That was all she needed, to get out, get to the phone booth she’d seen outside and get through to Bailey.

  She closed the door of the ladies’ room at her back, scanned the woman in black spandex primping in the mirror, then grinned at the small casement window set high in the wall.

  “Hey, give me a leg up.”

  The woman perfected a second coat of blood-red lipstick. “A what?”

  “Come on, be a pal.” M.J. hooked a hand on the narrow sill. “Give me a boost, will you?”

  Taking her maddening time, the woman slid the top back on her tube of lipstick. “Bad date?”

  “The worst.”

  “I know the feeling.” She tottered over on ice-pick heels. “Do you really think you can squeeze through that? You’re skinny, but it’ll be a tight fit.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  The woman shrugged, exuded a puff of too-sweet designer-knockoff perfume and cupped her hands. “Whatever you say.”

  M.J. bounced a foot in the makeshift stirrup, then boosted herself up until she had her arms hooked on the sill. A quick wriggle and she was chest-high. “Just another little push.”

  “No problem.” Getting into the spirit, the woman set both hands on M.J.’s bottom and shoved. “Sorry,” she said when M.J. cracked her head on the window and swore.

  “It’s okay. Thanks.” She wiggled, grunted, twisted and forced herself through the opening. Head, then shoulders. Taking a quick breath, trying not to imagine herself remaining corked in the window, she muscled her way through with only a quick rip of denim.

  “Good for you, honey.” M.J. stayed on her hands and knees long enough to shoot her assistant a quick grin. Then she was off and running. She dug in her pocket as she went for the quarter habitually carried there.

  She could hear her mother’s voice. Never leave the house without money for a phone call in your pocket. You never know when you’ll need it.

  “Thanks, Ma,” she murmured, and reached the phone booth at a dead run. “Be there, be there,” she whispered, plugging in the coin, stabbing numbers.

  She heard Bailey’s calm, cool voice answer on the second ring and swore as she recognized the recorded message.

  “Where are you, where are you?” She clamped down on panic, took a breath. “Bailey, listen up,” she began, the instant after the beep. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but we’re in trouble. Don’t stay there, he may come back. I’m in a phone booth outside some dive near—”

  “Damn idiot.” Jack reached in, grabbed her arm.

  “Hands off, you son of a bitch. Bailey—” But he’d already disconnected her. Using the confines of the booth to his advantage, he twisted her around and clamped the cuffs on so that her arms were secured. Then he simply lifted her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

  He let her rant, let her kick, and had her dumped back into the car before a single Good Samaritan could take interest. Her threats and promises bounced off him as he peeled away from the curb and shot down side streets.

  “So much for trust.” And where there wasn’t trust, he thought, there had to be proof. Cautious, he doubled back, scouting the area until he found a narrow alley half a block from the phone booth. He backed in, shut off the lights and engine.

  Reaching over, he vised a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her face close. “You want to see where your phone call would have gotten us? Just sit tight.”

  “Take your hands off me.”

  “At the moment, having my hands on you is the least of my concerns. Just be quiet. And wait for it.”

  When his grip loosened, she jerked back. “Wait for what?”

  “It shouldn’t take much longer.” And, brooding into the dark, he watched the street.

  It took less than five minutes. By his count, a little more than fifteen since her call. The van crept up to the curb. Two men got out.

  “Recognize them?”

  Of course she did. She’d seen them only that morning. One of them had broken in her door. The other had shot at her. With a quick tremor of reaction, she shut her eyes. They’d traced the call from Bailey’s line, she realized. Traced it quickly and efficiently.

  And if Jack hadn’t moved fast, they might very well have snapped her up just as quickly, just as efficiently.

  The smaller of the two went into the bar while the other stood by the phone booth, scanning the street, one hand resting under his suit jacket.

  “He’ll pass the bartender a couple of bucks to see if you were in there, if you were alone, how long ago you left. They won’t hang around long. They’ll find out you’re still with me, so they’ll be looking for the car. We won’t be able to use it anymore around here tonight.”

  She said nothing as the second man came back out, joined the first. They appeared to discuss something, argue briefly, and then they climbed back in the van. This time it didn’t creep down the street, it rocketed.

  She remained silent for another moment, continued to stare straight ahead. “You were right,” she said at length. “I’m sorry.”

  “Excuse me? I’m not sure I heard that.”

  “You were right.” She had to swallow when she found herself distressingly close to tears. “I’m sorry.”

  Hearing the tears in her voice only heightened his temper. “Save it,” he snapped, and started the engine. “Next time you want to commit suicide, just make sure I’m out of range.”

  “I needed to try. I couldn’t not try. I thought you were overreacting, or just pushing my buttons. I was wrong. How many times do you want me to say it?”

  “I haven’t decided. If you start sniveling, I’m really going to get ticked.”

  “I don’t snivel.” But she wanted to. The tears were burning her throat. It cost nearly as much to swallow them as it would have to let them free.

  She worked on calming herself as he drove out of the city and headed down a deserted back road in Virginia. The city lights giving way to com forting dark.

  “No one’s following us,” she said.

  “That’s because I’m good, not because you’re not stupid.”

  “Get off my back.”

  “If I’d sat in there another five minutes waiting for you, I could be as dead as Ralph right now. So consider yourself lucky I don’t just dump you on the side of the road and take myself off to Mexico.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’ve got an investment.” He caught the look, the glimmer of wet eyes, and ground his teeth. “Don’t look at me like that. It really makes me mad.” />
  Swearing, he swerved to the shoulder. Yanking the key from his pocket, he unlocked her hands, then slammed out of the car to pace.

  Why the hell was he tangled up with this woman? he asked himself. Why hadn’t he cut himself loose? Why wasn’t he cutting loose right now? Mexico wasn’t such a bad place. He could get himself a nice spot on the beach, soak up the sun and wait for all this to blow over.

  Nothing was stopping him.

  Then she got out of the car, spoke quietly. “My friend’s in trouble.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your friend.” He whirled toward her. “I give a damn about me. And maybe I give one about you, though God knows why, because you’ve been nothing but grief ever since I watched you swagger up those apartment steps.”

  “I’ll sleep with you.”

  That cut his minor tirade off in midstream. “What?”

  She squared her shoulders. “I’ll sleep with you. I’ll do whatever you want, if you help me.”

  He stared at her, at the way the moonlight showered over her hair, at the way her eyes continued to glisten. And wanted her mindlessly.

  But not in a barter.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” Bitterness spewed through his voice. “That’s great. I don’t even have to tie you to the damn railroad tracks.” He stepped toward her, grabbed her by the arms and shook. “What the hell do you take me for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t use women,” he said between his teeth. “And when I take one to bed, it’s a two-way street. So thanks for the offer, but I’m not interested in the supreme sacrifice.”

  He let her go, started back to the car. Fury had him turning back. “Do you think your friend would appreciate the gesture if he found out you’d slept with me to help him?”

  She took a deep, steadying breath. The depth of his sense of insult had gone farther toward gaining her trust than any promise or oath could have. “No. It wouldn’t stop me, but no.”

  She stepped toward him, stopping only when they were within an armspan. “My friend’s name is Bailey James. She’s a gemologist.”

  He recognized the name from the doctored paperwork. But the pronoun was the most vital piece of information to him. “She?”