Hero Undercover: 25 Breathtaking Bad Boys

by Annabel Joseph

  "I'll call my realtor, first thing in the morning, officer. I promise."

  Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, the shorter cop suddenly decided to join the interrogation.

  "And your name, again?"

  And that's when I blew it. Without thinking, I opened my mouth, gave my real name, and then, like an idiot, tried to take it back. (I would have made a very bad spy. You wouldn't even have to torture me, just ask politely for the nation's nuclear secrets.)

  "I'm sorry," I said lamely. "What I meant to say…my name is actually Peterson—Pauline Peterson."

  The taller cop was giving me a suspicious look, and when I glanced over at Dan, he seemed…not suspicious, but annoyed, maybe? With me? It was hard to tell from his expression, but it was easy enough to see that he was displeased about something.

  The shorter cop wasn't too pleased, either. "Why did you just tell me that your name was Walker?"

  "My pen name," I explained quickly. "I'm a writer, you see, and....well, anyway, I was working on my latest book when what happened happened, and when you asked for my name, I just blurted out my pen name, by mistake. Sort of."

  Taller cop asked, "Can you show us some identification, please."

  We all trooped inside, where I showed the officers my picture on Pauline's driver's license, along with the credit cards I'd been given by the Justice Department—also in Pauline's name. The taller cop wrote something on the little pad, but he seemed satisfied.

  As soon as the two cops left, my knees started to give way, and I sank down on the couch, exhausted.

  "You sounded nervous out there," Dan observed with a frown. "Is there something about all this I should know?" I had noticed that he was becoming increasingly curious every time I opened my mouth, and that scared me. Until now, the only time I'd had to remember the details of my "story" was in front of the people who'd made up the damned fairy tale to begin with.

  I shrugged. "Not a thing. It's just that it's been a kind of amazing day, all things considered."

  He smiled. "Is it too much to hope that you're including me in that?"

  "You mean dinner and all that?" I asked stupidly. I knew that I was blushing, and I was very, very glad that the room was dark. (Oh, yeah, did I mention that the power was out, due to the electrical box being what my grandmother used to call, "smashed to smithereens," by the air conditioner in its suicidal descent?)

  Dan pulled me up from the couch and into his arms. "It looks like I didn't put enough into that goodnight kiss to make my point. If it's okay with you, I'll try again."

  It was more than okay with me, of course. And this time, there was absolutely nothing platonic about the kiss—or what followed the kiss.

  Since my bedroom was a windowless disaster area, and since the second bedroom didn't have a bed at all, we made love on the living room couch—the first time, anyway. The second time, he threw all the sofa cushions on the floor, which turned out to be far more comfortable, since it allowed for a number of positions and activities that would have been difficult to manage on a narrow couch.

  It was almost dawn when I finally fell asleep in Dan's arms, exhausted after a third time, sexually sated, and wondering dreamily if Pauline had enjoyed it all as much as I had.

  Just before he left to go back to his own wee house, Dan gave me a scare.

  "A question," he said. "Since last night, when the police were here, something's been bothering me."

  I froze. "Bothering you?"

  "Yeah. Somehow, the name Pauline just doesn't seem to fit you."

  Relieved, I took a deep breath. "No kidding. Go and file a complaint with my mother. She named me after her third-grade teacher—a nun called Sister Paulina," I lied. "When I was a kid, everyone called me Polly." These lies weren't simply off the top of my head, by the way. I'd been thinking about them since the day they changed my name. I've always thought of "Pauline" as a serious, no-nonsense sort of name. Very adult and not exactly at the top of the modern-day hit list, name-wise. It was bad enough that no one at the DOJ had seemed to notice that my new initials were P.P.

  He grinned. "Okay, then, Polly it is." I could only hope he hadn't noticed the face I made. As a kid, I had a dog I had named Polly. I loved her with all my heart, but she was ugliest dog I'd ever seen, and she was so fat she had to eat lying down, with her face in her food dish.

  After Dan had gone back to his place, I puttered around the house for a while, smiling as I put the cushions back on the couch. I was remembering Dan's hot, searching mouth, and his strong, capable hands exploring all those nooks and crannies on my body that hadn't been explored in far too long. The air conditioner situation notwithstanding, life was definitely looking up.

  And if I hadn't turned on the TV, I would probably have stayed in that lovely frame of mind for the remainder of the day.

  I don't watch a lot of television, normally, and I can't remember why I decided to turn it on that morning. But I did, and as luck would have it, the local news was just beginning. And the lead story? You guessed it. Some woman, for reasons that remained unclear, the commentator remarked, had hurled a gigantic air-conditioner out her second-story window, creating a large pit in her own yard and a cloud of debris that caused several of the possibly demented woman's neighbors to complain to the police.

  It was obvious that Boardman, California was the kind of town where not much of a newsworthy nature ever happened, making my hapless air conditioner interesting enough to draw the attention of one of the station's ace reporters, who was now interviewing one of my more agitated neighbors on live TV. None of which would have been a serious problem, had the interview been conducted almost anywhere else on the planet, and not directly in front of my grungy little house, with the street sign in the background and the house number clearly visible on my crippled mailbox.

  And then, to my horror, the reporter gave the homeowner's name—thanks to my big, fat mouth—as Mrs. Pandora Walker. If I died at the hands of Frank Bugosi, et all, I would at least go to my death as a married woman, which would be sure to please my mother, who had been waiting to celebrate my nuptials for a decade or more.

  In those first awful seconds, I went from mildly annoyed to total panic, then back to reality. It was pure chance that I had seen the broadcast. The chances of Frank Bugosi seeing or hearing about it were unlikely, to say the least. And yet…

  I would have to notify my 'local contact,' that was clear, but what I desperately wanted, now, was to talk to someone I knew—someone who cared about me, and not just about seeing Frank Bugosi go to prison. The only person I knew who even remotely fit that description was Dan, but did I really want to drag him into this nightmare, or worse yet, be forced to confess that everything he thought he knew about me was nothing but a jumble of lies?

  The phone rang—the phone I hadn't used, even once, since I moved into the house. The phone with a number that no one, other than the people from the Witness Protection Program knew. The phone I had been ordered not to use, other than for an occasional local call to a movie theater or a drugstore. I didn't pick up the receiver, and after what seemed an eternity, it stopped ringing and I started to breathe again.

  The little red light in the base of the phone began to blink.

  A message, but from whom? I picked up the phone and listened to the recorded message. "You have one missed call."

  And then, a voice I'd never heard before began to speak. Male, probably young, with an accent I didn't recognize. Probably not New Jersey, I reasoned, but then I remembered that the city of Newark has always been famously multi-ethnic, so…

  "Mrs. Walker, are you still there?" the voice inquired. "Anyway, if you can hear me, this is John Murchisen, at Channel Eight News? If you could please call me back when you have a minute to talk, I'd like to get your input on a human-interest piece we're trying to put together regarding an incident at your home—involving an air conditioner? The number here in the office is..."

  I copied the number, then slammed the phone down
without hearing the remainder of the message. When I checked the Channel Eight News website on my laptop, I found a short list of the editorial staff and reporters, a smiling photo of each, and a much longer list of the station's other employees.

  What I didn't find was anyone named John Murchisen—or a phone number that matched the one "John" had given me.

  Shit!

  Chapter 6

  Close to panic, now that I was convinced that Bugosi had located me, I dashed upstairs to locate my second secure cell phone, and finally found it in my underwear drawer— useless, despite the multiple warnings I'd been given to keep my remaining phone charged at all times.

  Two minutes later, I was mostly dressed and out the door, on my way to the bus station, where I was sure there would be a genuine, old-fashioned, hopefully untraceable pay phone. I spent a few moments of the trip there cursing a thoughtless communications system that chose to do away with all its real telephones and leave those of us who are cell-phone challenged to wander about, looking for what we used to have, but didn't truly appreciate. It was ten blocks to the bus station—short blocks—but it was hot as hell, and by the time I'd gone three blocks, the happy mood with which I'd begun the day had completely evaporated.

  I was a block from the bus station when I happened to glance in a shop window and noticed—reflected in the glass—two suspicious-looking men walking a few paces behind me. In spite of the heat, both men were dressed in similar dark gray suits, and in my agitated state, it struck me as an odd coincidence that the pair were moving at the same speed as I was, with their heads down, as if they were trying to avoid being recognized.

  When I began to walk a bit faster, hoping to leave them behind, the two men seemed to increase their speed, as well. But then, at last, I saw the bus station. I hurried across the street and through the front doors, and when I turned around to see if they had followed me into the building, the two men had vanished.

  There were two pay phones next to the restrooms, both defaced with graffiti and one missing its receiver. Its battered companion had a handwritten note taped to the coin slot that read, "Out of Orrder." The note was discolored with age and hanging by a strip of cracked masking tape, so I picked up the receiver and gave it a try, anyway, hoping with my usual blind optimism that the phone had been repaired, at some point, and that someone had simply forgotten to remove the note. That could happen, right?

  The phone was truly out of "orrder,"and had probably been in phone heaven for months.

  And here's the best part. As I returned the dead receiver to its cradle, I saw the two mysterious men, again. They were sitting at the tiny snack bar, now, not twenty feet away, and pretending to eat two hot dogs piled high with chili and onions. I was trapped.

  So, I decided to take a trip to Seattle.

  The ticket counter was just around the corner from the snack bar, but only one end of it could be seen from the snack bar. Luckily, there was no one else in line, so if the two thugs—obviously Bugosi's men— wanted me, they'd have to look up from their chili dogs long enough to notice that their prey was about to make a clean getaway.

  The bus had already boarded all the other Seattle-bound passengers by the time I clambered up the steps and handed the driver my one-way ticket.

  "What the hell," I thought as I sat down in an aisle seat at the back of the bus. "I've never been to Seattle. It's as good a place as any to disappear."

  The plan, if you could call it that, was to place a call to my 'local contact' from the first place the bus stopped, even if I had to steal or borrow a damned phone to do it. If the 'Chili Dog Guys' were on my trail, I was going to need a change of location, anyway. When I got to Seattle, I'd phone Dan and tell him that I'd been called away on a family emergency. I felt bad about it, though. The lies just kept piling up.

  I hadn't slept much in the last week, so when the bus was maybe thirty or forty miles out of town, with no indication that I'd been followed, I felt safe enough to lean back against the seat and try to relax. I'd done everything I could do on my end, even giving the two thugs at the bus station the slip. The rest—saving me from the Iceman and the rest of his murderous minions—was up to the friendly folks on the Witness Protection team. After one last look out the back window to check for the 'Chili Dog Couple,' my stomach started to rumble, and I remembered that I hadn't eaten anything that morning. I would have welcomed a nice, fat chili dog, smothered in onions and that fake, drippy cheese everyone puts on chili dogs, these days. Even though I could probably have lived for a few weeks on the weight I'd accumulated since this nightmare began, I felt like I hadn't eaten for days.

  Even my hunger pains couldn't overcome the need to sleep, though. I closed my eyes and fell asleep within seconds.

  I don't know whether or not I was mumbling about chili dogs and cheeseburgers in my sleep, but I was awakened by a tap on my shoulder and opened my eyes to find a pleasant-looking young woman smiling at me—and holding out a sandwich. It looked like chicken salad and smelled like heaven.

  "I'm sorry I woke you up," the woman said softly. "But you got on the bus at the last minute. I thought you might have missed your lunch. I packed four sandwiches and some fried chicken for the trip, more than I need. I don't know about you, but I always get car sick if I don't eat something on a long trip. I have ham and cheese if you don't like chicken salad."

  "I love chicken salad," I said, accepting the sandwich gratefully. "I want to pay you for it, though."

  She laughed and waved her hand "Don't be silly. It'll just go to waste, if you don't take it. I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach when I packed all this. So, are you going all the way to Seattle?"

  "Yes, I am. Are you headed there, as well?"

  We chatted for almost half an hour, the way you sometimes do with your seatmate on a plane or a train, about nothing, really. Her name was Jackie, and she was going to Seattle to see her mother. I didn't bother to tell Jackie that my purpose in traveling there was to escape a pair of hired killers who liked chili dogs.

  A few minutes later, the bus pulled off the road at a truck stop—for a twenty-minute rest stop, the driver announced. All the other passengers hurried to disembark, but even though the one chicken-salad sandwich had left me still hungry, I was tired and eager to get back to sleep, so I declined Jackie's offer to join her for a cup of coffee and settled in for a much-needed nap. A quick glance at my watch told me that I'd been traveling for just under two hours, with no sign of the 'Chili Dog Couple.' So far, so good. My luck was holding.

  As usual, I had miscalculated exactly how far luck alone would take me. There was a sudden burst of noise from outside, and when I looked out the window, I was startled to see Jackie being forced into a black van. I hesitated for a moment, about to get off the bus to see what I could do to help her, when suddenly, the bus door flew open and a man boarded. Trapped like a rat in a tin can, I scooched down in my seat, closed my eyes, and waited to be shot.

  I could actually feel someone towering over me, and when I opened my eyes and looked up, I was both relieved and irritated to see Dan standing there, looking pretty irritated, himself. And without knowing why—or admitting to myself why—I was frightened. For the first time since I'd met him, I began to ask myself what I should have asked on the day he showed up on my doorstep. What did I really know about the man who called himself Daniel J. Crawford?

  He didn't say anything, but grabbed my elbow and pulled me out of the seat and into the aisle. And after I recovered from the initial shock of seeing him there and opened my mouth to complain, he beat me to it.

  "Just shut up and come with me," he ordered. And then, he yanked my blouse up and over my head and dragged me from the bus.

  With my face covered, I couldn't see what was going on or tell if the black van was still in the parking lot, but considering what had occurred just minutes earlier, it was amazingly quiet. I could hear the other passengers talking to one another in hushed tones, though, and the shuffling of their feet as they
climbed back aboard the bus. It seemed I wasn't going to Seattle, after all.

  Moments later, someone handcuffed my hands behind my back and placed a heavy hand on my head to push me into the back seat of a car—or perhaps into the same black van that had swallowed up Jackie. The door slammed, and the vehicle careened out of the parking lot, hurling gravel as it sped away, and hurling me against the door hard enough to leave an enormous bruise my shoulder.

  I was still frightened, but angry enough to at least try to fight back— against who or what, I had no idea.

  "Where are you taking me?" I shouted.

  No answer.

  "Goddamnit, Dan!" I screeched, suspecting that he was also in the van, somewhere. "What the hell is going on?" I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that I already knew what was going on, even if I didn't know the unpleasant specifics. What was bothering me almost as much as my imminent demise, though, was my bad judgment. How the hell could I have been so wrong about Dan? How the hell could I have fallen in love with a killer?

  "All right, then," I screamed. "If you don't stop this car and let me out, I'll save you assholes the trouble of rubbing me out by jumping out, into traffic!"

  There was a chuckle from the driver's seat, and a male voice—not Dan's—finally spoke. "Knock yourself out, lady." And then, the unmistakable click of the back doors being automatically locked.

  The trip—presumably to a secluded location where I could be dispatched without a lot of annoying witnesses—took about half the time the bus had taken, but it was dark by the time we pulled into the driveway of what turned out to be my own house. I had managed to chew my way through the front of my blouse, giving me a one-inch hole with which to enjoy the passing scenery and to inspect the back of my kidnapper's head. (Dark hair, swarthy neck, big ears. And whoever the guy was, he'd done a lousy job of shaving.) I had already determined that there was no one in the front passenger seat—unless he was very, very short. So, where the hell was Dan?