by Jane Graves
Then he heard a key in his front door.
He closed his eyes. Well, here it came. Facing his sister while he was handcuffed to this bed—naked—was going to be just about the most humiliating experience he could imagine. She’d never let something like this go without squeezing as many laughs out of it as she possibly could, quite possibly for the rest of eternity.
He decided he wouldn’t say a word. Whatever story Renee had concocted to get her to come over here...well, he’d just let Sandy think that, then stay away from family lunches for the rest of his life.
He heard footsteps in the hall, and someone appeared at his bedroom door.
He blinked. It couldn’t be.
Renee.
She paused at the door a moment, then walked over to the bed. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she’d been crying. She was holding the key to the handcuffs.
To his utter astonishment, she sat down beside him. Her hands were trembling, so she had to take three stabs at getting the key into the cuff. After a shaky twist of her fingers, it fell away from his wrist.
The moment he was free, all of John’s pent-up frustration was released in a sudden blast of action. He grabbed Renee by the shoulders and pushed her backward onto the bed. He held her by her upper arms, pressing her into the mattress, hovering over her. She squeezed her eyes closed as if she expected some kind of onslaught—verbal, physical, or maybe a little of both, and right about now, he wasn’t ruling out anything. A dozen different emotions swam through him, and he didn’t know which one to address first. Finally the frustration he’d felt for the past hour came rushing out in a torrent of anger.
“What’s the matter with you?” he shouted, giving her a good, solid shake. “Don’t you know that leaving here was the stupidest thing you possibly could have done?”
She swallowed hard, staring up at him and looking terrified.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Still she didn’t respond, as if her vocal cords had suddenly been stolen away. Anger and frustration still raged inside him, but as he looked down at her, the emotion that finally took over was one he hadn’t counted on. Relief. Sudden, overwhelming, almost incapacitating relief that she was back.
“Are...are you going to take me to jail?”
She stared up at him with those tear-filled blue eyes, and the last of his anger drained away.
Innocent people stay and fight.
He couldn’t believe she’d actually come back, risking the prison sentence she was so terrified of. In that moment he knew that no matter what happened, no matter what his job told him he was supposed to do, there was no way on earth he’d be able to turn her in.
He relaxed his grip on her arms. “No,” he told her, his voice a weary whisper. “I’m not going to take you to jail.”
“Not now? Or not ever?”
How had this happened? How, in the span of only a few days, had everything in his life turned upside down, changing his priorities until his job wasn’t the number one thing in his life anymore? Until it wasn’t even a close second?
“Not ever,” he said.
“Do you still believe me?”
“I don’t think I ever stopped believing you.”
Relief washed over her face, and he felt her go limp beneath his hands. “Oh, God, John. I was scared. I was so scared to come back. I just didn’t know—”
He sat down on the bed, pulling her up and into his arms. She wound her arms around his neck in a desperate hug.
“Shhh,” he whispered, as she sobbed against his shoulder. “You did the right thing, sweetheart. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
What a lie. There was one hell of a lot she had to be afraid of. He knew he was making promises he couldn’t keep, and that a dozen more were liable to spill out his mouth and he wouldn’t be able to stop those, either. But the moment she’d shown up at his door something gave way inside him, unleashing a flood of protectiveness he’d never felt before.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he said.
“I was almost out of town. But I couldn’t leave. I had to come back. I realized I couldn’t run forever, and...and after last night—” She pulled away and stared up at him. “I know you must have been with a lot of other women, so it was probably nothing special to you. But to me…
Her voice faded away, and he saw color rise on her cheeks. Nothing special? How could she even think that? Making love with her had awakened something inside him that he hadn’t even known existed, a feeling he wished he could hold on to forever.
“It meant everything to me, too, Renee. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come back.”
He touched his lips to hers in a tender, bittersweet kiss that bound them together more powerfully than a pair of handcuffs ever could. Then he eased her back down to the mattress again, her hair fanning out in a honey-gold cloud around her head. He lay alongside her, resting his hand along the curve of her waist. She touched his cheek, staring up at him as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time.
“I’ve never known a man like you,” she murmured. “A man who does what’s right instead of what’s easy.”
“I’m not the only one, Renee. I know how hard it was for you to come back here. But I promise you it was the right thing to do.”
There he went again with the promises. He just couldn’t seem to stop himself, even though their shadowy future loomed ominously in his mind. What would he do if he couldn’t find enough evidence to sway a jury in her favor? Continue to carry on a relationship with a woman who was running from the law?
He closed his eyes, refusing to think about it. She’d come back to him. And right now, that was all that mattered.
“Make love to me,” Renee whispered, and for the next few hours, that was exactly what he did.
Chapter 17
Shortly after noon, Renee waited at John’s kitchen table while he went to the front door and paid a delivery guy for the Chinese food he’d ordered. Her neck ached from the collision in Leandro’s car, but the pleasant exhaustion she felt from spending hours in bed with John made the pain seem like nothing at all.
When she’d returned and unlocked that cuff from his wrist and he’d reacted so violently, she’d cursed her decision to come back, thinking surely he was going to take her to jail. But then he’d swept her into his arms and held her so tightly, and in that moment all her anxiety had fled. She realized how wrong she’d been to ever think she couldn’t trust him.
As they dug into the moo goo gai pan and sweet-and-sour chicken, John asked her about what had happened this morning when she left his house, and she spilled the story of how she’d gone to Paula, who’d loaned her money, and then gotten nabbed by Leandro.
John froze at the mention of that name. “He grabbed you again?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get away from him?”
She related the story. John looked at her with total disbelief, his fork hovering in the air.
“You set off the airbag? Right in his face?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And wrecked his car? And smashed his nose again?” He looked at her with total incredulity. “How do you do it?”
“Uh...I’m afraid his car wasn’t the only casualty.”
John’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you talking about my car? What did you do to my car?”
“When I saw Leandro, I locked the doors, but he had this baseball bat, and, well...the driver’s-side window...”
“Is in a million pieces.” John closed his eyes and shook his head.
“It kind of got caught in the cross fire. I’m really sorry.”
He held up his palm. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. And it beats a bullet hole in my radiator any day.”
“I’m sorry about that, too.”
“Don’t be. That beat a bullet hole in me.”
“You know I never would have shot you!”
“I know,” he said with a smile. “But I think
I’ll keep the guns out of your reach just the same.”
She grinned. “You’ve got to admit I’m a pretty good shot.” “Sweetheart, you were shaking so hard I thought you were going to take a bird or two out of the treetops.” He laid down his fork and shoved his plate aside. “Okay. This means that Leandro knows you’re back in town, and he’ll be gunning for you. And he’s going to be more pissed off than ever. Any idea how he found you this time?”
“None at all. But this town’s not that big. Maybe he just got lucky.”
“Maybe.” John looked unconvinced. “Did he recognize my car? He saw it out at that cabin, you know. If he ties you to me—”
“No. I don’t think he remembers. It was pretty dark out there that night. And he’s such a jerk, I know he would have mentioned it if he did recognize it.”
“Still, he’ll be on the lookout for you, so I don’t want you leaving this house. If he and Paula are the only ones who know you’re back in town, you should be safe.”
“Uh...”
“What?”
“They’re not the only ones. I saw a few other people.”
“A few? How many is a few?”
“When I went to Paula’s apartment, Tom was there. And Steve was, too.” She paused again. “And Rhonda.”
“Steve’s new girlfriend? The one who hates you?”
Renee sighed. “That’s the one.”
John rubbed his hand over his mouth. “The more people who know you’re back in town—”
“But they all believed I was on my way out of town.”
“Nobody knows you were coming back to my house?”
“No. Absolutely not. Not even Paula.”
“Do they know my name? Anything to connect you to me?”
Renee thought for a moment. Even though she’d told Paula the whole story, she hadn’t mentioned John by name. “No.”
“Then you should be safe here. Just don’t step foot outside.” He got up and retrieved the pad and pen he’d used the other night. He sat back down next to her, so close their thighs brushed against each other, and already she wanted him again. He turned and met her eyes. She gave him a suggestive smile, and the way he smiled back at her made her body temperature shoot through the roof.
“Business first,” he told her, as if he’d read her mind.
And then pleasure, she added mentally, knowing he was thinking the same thing.
“Okay,” John said. “Let’s go over what happened the night of the robbery one more time.”
For the next half hour, Renee stepped back through the events of that night, and when she’d already gone over it three times, John made her go over it again. Then he told her the specifics of what he’d discovered when he’d questioned the victim, and when he got to the part about her description of what the robber was wearing, Renee crinkled her nose with disgust.
“The robber was wearing what?”
John consulted his notes again. “A leopard-print blouse, black pants, white shoes, black gloves. And, let’s see...huge dangly earrings shaped like rainbows.”
“Well, that clinches it. I’m innocent. I’m not exactly a fashion plate, but white shoes with a leopard print? Really? And no self-respecting woman would ever venture out in white shoes after Labor Day.”
“If this were a self-respecting woman, she wouldn’t be robbing a convenience store.”
John stared at his pad some more, shaking his head. “There has to be something we’re missing. There has to be.” He tapped his pen on the table. “Tell me about Rhonda again. You saw her this morning. Is there any way she could have robbed that store?”
“It’s possible, I guess. But you said the victim emphasized that the robber was tall. Rhonda isn’t.”
“She could have been wearing high heels. And the victim is about four-foot-zero. Anyone would look tall to her.” He put a question mark beside Rhonda’s name.
They went back over some of the events again, but eventually they realized they were talking in circles and not gaining any ground.
“I know you’re assuming the robber is someone who lives in the vicinity,” Renee said. “But couldn’t it just as easily have been somebody totally anonymous who lives on the other side of town whom we’ll never find?”
“Statistics don’t bear that out.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Yes. But something tells me that if somebody threw the stuff in your car, there’s a connection to you, however small.”
“Well, I’m not aware of any women who live around there with taste in clothing that’s as bad as that,” Renee said, still reeling from the fashion nightmare John had described. “Even Rhonda’s a step up from leopard prints and white shoes. I just can’t imagine any woman—”
She stopped suddenly, feeling a sharp tingle race down her spine, followed by a current of excitement that made every nerve ending in her body come alive. She put a hand against John’s arm.
“Unless it isn’t a woman.”
“What?”
“Maybe it’s a man.”
A glimmer of understanding entered John’s eyes. “A man?”
“Yes.” Renee was almost afraid to say it out loud—afraid it would sound too outlandish when in her brain it was starting to sound very logical. “Maybe a man dressed as a woman. The robber was tall, right?”
“The victim said so.”
“With big feet?”
“Yes.”
“Deep voice?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t it make sense, then, that—”
“Yes,” John said. “Perfect sense.”
There was a long silence, with enough mental energy shooting back and forth between them to electrify the entire state of Texas.
“I think you may be on to something,” John said.
“But it doesn’t get us any closer to finding the culprit.”
“Sure it does. There are far fewer guys dressed in drag in this town than there are blond women.” John made a few notes, then looked back up. “Okay. I’ll call Dave and get him to check the crime computer to see if there have been any other robberies in town where a male dresses in drag as part of his m.o.”
“Won’t Dave ask why you want to know?”
“No. He doesn’t spend a lot of time wondering about other people’s business. He’ll just assume I’ve been thinking about a case I’m working on, and since I’m not supposed to be back in town yet, I can’t go in to check something out myself. Now, Alex is another story. He practically makes a career out of sticking his nose into everybody else’s business.”
“I’m glad he was away on a fishing trip, then.”
“That makes two of us.” John made a note on his pad. “Then later this evening I’ll go to Colfax Street and hit a few of the clubs down there that cater to, shall we say, the gender nonspecific.”
“Gender nonspecific?”
“Sorry. Is my police sensitivity training showing?”
Renee rolled her eyes.
“I’m hoping,” John said, “that somebody’s wandered around down there wearing those clothes and that somebody else remembers.”
Renee frowned. “That’s a long shot, isn’t it? If you’re going to rob a convenience store, would you run around in public in the clothes you did it in?”
“Probably not. But maybe he went out in them sometime before the robbery and somebody will remember.”
“And maybe we’re totally off base here, and it really was a woman, and all this is just a waste of time.”
“Maybe. But right now we haven’t got much else to go on.” Renee stared down at the table. John slipped his hand against her thigh.
“Don’t worry. We’re not beaten yet.”
She wished she could feel that optimistic. Telling her not to worry right now was like telling her not to breathe.
John called Dave, leaving a message for him since he wasn’t in. As he disconnected the call, she started to ask him what was going to happen if a few days passed, or a wee
k, and still they’d found no solid evidence either supporting her innocence or somebody else’s guilt. But in the end, she decided not to ask, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.
She followed him to the back door. He must have read the concern on her face, because he stopped and pulled her into his arms. “Hey, didn’t I tell you not to worry?”
“I can’t help it. If I go to prison, I’ll be losing more than just my freedom.” She melted into his embrace, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’ll be losing you, too.”
He held her tightly, running his hand along the length of her hair in soothing strokes, and she wondered how in the span of only a few days things could have changed so much. The man who had been her captor had become her ally. Her friend. Her lover. And the thought of being taken away from him was more than she could bear.
“You know I’m going to do my best to get you out of this,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered, but she couldn’t help wondering if his best was going to be enough.
Several years had passed since John had worked the streets on the south side, and he found that nothing much had changed, except that the storefronts and sidewalks were a little rougher around the edges. It was a little after seven o’clock when he parked along Colfax Street, the epicenter of Tolosa’s alternative-lifestyle crowd. At least three clubs in the area—Queen’s Court, the Chameleon, and Aunt Charlie’s— catered to people who hopped across gender boundaries like fleas from one dog to another.
He got out of the car, knowing he was going to stand out in these places like a full moon on a clear night just by looking normal. He’d never get any answers by engaging in casual conversation the way he’d done with that old lady at the convenience store. Many of the people down here flirted with the edge of the law, so they could make a cop in a heartbeat. He had no choice but to flash his badge and hope somebody was in a talkative mood.
He entered Aunt Charlie’s and headed toward the bar, and in no time he was approached by a tall man wearing a long black wig and a short black dress, holding a thin brown cigarette between manicured fingers. He looked like Cher on steroids. If not for the Adam’s apple, the five-o’clock shadow, the hairy arms, the knobby knees, and the size-thirteen feet, he might have actually resembled a woman.