“God, I thought he’d never leave,” a voice said from the other side of her. “No, don’t look at me. Just casually turn to the attendant and ask for two tickets to Detroit.”
Christine Bowman. Ripley didn’t have to look to know it was her. It also didn’t take much to figure out that she’d probably been in the bus station since before Ripley came in and that not one single agent had identified her.
Figured. Ripley had been having too much fun for something not to go wrong.
She did as Christine requested, then slid a glance toward the woman in question.
Christine had the audacity to smile at her. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming here. Now, move casually, normally, toward the women’s rest room. There, to the right.”
Christine was decked out in full call-girl mode. Curly red wig. Bright red lipstick. Scarlet red dress that hugged her in all the right places. And a small black handbag that very obviously held the gun Ripley was far more familiar with than she wanted to be.
Oh, sure, Christine garnered the expected leers from every guy in the joint, agent or otherwise, but not a one of them seemed to put together that she was Christine Bowman.
Oh, boy.
“You know,” Christine said, steering her toward the ladies’ room. “I didn’t have a clue how I was going to get inside that locker what with all the G-men crowding the place.” She nudged Ripley with her bag, the unmistakable metal jabbing into her side. “Then I saw you come in thinking you were going to fool me with that getup, and I knew I was saved.”
Ripley smiled at Polk, trying to do a head tilt toward Christine, but Polk seemed too interested in checking out Christine’s wares than in Ripley’s subtle gestures.
The door to the ladies’ room closed with an ominous click behind them. Christine checked inside the stalls, making sure they were empty, then threw the lock on the door, likely there to keep people from coming in while the room was cleaned.
“Strip.”
Ripley blinked at her. “What?”
The handbag moved. “You heard me. Take off every last piece of clothing you’ve got on.” She wrinkled her nose. “Except for your underwear. That, I can do without.”
“Gee, thanks for small favors.”
Ripley shrugged out of her coat, took off her hat, then her jeans and T-shirt, laying each over a nearby sink. The coat was an impulse buy last fall, an expensive designer name. But it was having to give up the shoes Joe had given her that annoyed her most.
“You know, you’re never going to get out of here with those diamonds,” she couldn’t resist saying.
Christine’s brows shot up as she kept her purse aimed with one hand and wiped off the loads of makeup she had caked on with the other. “So you know.”
“Yes, I know. And I also know that a smart woman would wait a day or two for things to calm down before trying to get them.”
Christine slanted a look at her as she pulled off the wig. “That’s what I said to myself two months ago. And look where that’s gotten me.” She blew out a long breath, carefully maneuvering the purse as she slipped out of her dress. She bent to pluck off one of her shoes.
Ripley shot forward, her intention to catch the woman off balance and grab her purse.
Christine instantly straightened and thrust the gun into Ripley’s stomach. “I knew you’d do that.” She pushed harder. “Get back.”
Ripley did as she was ordered, hating that she’d left her gun at the apartment. Don’t worry, she’d told herself, there’ll be enough firepower there to stop a horse.
Only that horse had been wearing a slinky red dress and appeared to have a price tag stamped on her back.
A female agent would never have fallen for the getup.
“Put on the dress.”
Ripley stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me.” Christine slipped into the jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, all the while keeping the purse on Ripley. Ripley was only slightly mollified that the other woman couldn’t do up the top button of the jeans.
Within moments, the two had completely swapped clothing and Ripley finished applying the lipstick Christine handed to her. She turned her head this way and that. She didn’t look half bad as a redhead.
“Come on,” Christine said, handing her the locker key then jabbing the purse into her side again.
“Would you stop? You’re going to give me a bruise.”
“You’ll be lucky if a bruise is all you come away with. Now get a move on.” She unlocked the door and motioned for Ripley to precede her out. “I want you to head straight for the locker. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Got it?”
Ripley whipped her arm away. “You know, this probably all would have gone much smoother if you’d just paid me what was due.”
“Move it.”
And Ripley did. Straight to the locker. It wouldn’t do any good to try to signal anyone. They would probably think she was looking for some business, given her new attire.
Except for Joe. Joe would certainly know that Christine wasn’t her. Wouldn’t he?
She glanced to find him leaning against the wall, pretending to read the business section of the newspaper, Agent Miller giving him an earful of what were undoubtedly threats. Neither one of them was looking in her direction.
Great. Just great.
She reached the lockers far more quickly than she would have thought, and her heart started beating double time in her chest. Things were definitely not looking good for her. She had little doubt of Christine’s intentions once she had the diamonds in hand. Namely pull the trigger on the gun poking into her side and make a run for it. While Ripley didn’t think the other woman’s chances for escape were good, the chances Ripley would get out of the station without a little extra lead looked dim, indeed.
“Open it,” Christine whispered, pretending an interest in the locker two up from the one in question. She put what looked like her lipstick in it, then added the coins that would release the key. Out of the corner of her eye, Ripley noticed Miller part from Joe then loom a little closer, probably wondering what the hell she was up to.
Ripley slid the key to the locker in and popped open the door. Only it was yawningly empty. Oh, boy.
“Give it to me!” Christine ordered harshly as half the homeless people in the station started closing in on them.
In a panic, Ripley scanned the faces of the under-cover agents, only to realize that the homeless men were real homeless men. Nelson’s dearly beloved face was right in the middle of them. He winked at her. It was all she could do not to smile back.
“No problem,” she said to Christine’s request.
Ripley slammed the locker door open and right in Christine’s face, reaching for the purse at the same time.
The homeless men, led by Nelson, swooped down on them from all sides. Nelson reached to help Ripley. The non-homeless agents had finally caught on and surrounded the others that surrounded them.
Only, unlike Nelson, they thought she was Christine.
“Wrong woman,” Nelson shouted, grabbing an agent away from Ripley.
Ripley had a stranglehold on Christine’s purse with one hand and reached up to pull off the wig with the other. The agents hesitated, obviously confused. Christine regained control of the gun and hit Ripley upside the head with it. Ripley smacked into the lockers, the din echoing through the station. In that one moment, she realized Christine might get away. Due to the agents’ advance on them through the horde of homeless men, the path to the exit was left completely unblocked. Christine made a run for it. And with Ripley’s sneakers, she just might make it.
A sound swirled up Ripley’s throat, and she launched herself at the retreating figure, catching her around the knees and pulling her straight to the floor with a dull thud.
“Freeze!” someone finally yelled, and Ripley was half afraid it was she.
She turned to find it hadn’t been her. Nelson, of all people, had shouted the command. The agents we
re all over her and Christine. They pulled Ripley to her feet, then confiscated Christine’s purse and cuffed her on the spot.
Ripley gasped for air, trying not to notice the way her breasts threatened to spill out of the top of the dress or ponder the reason she was getting entirely too much of a breeze on her behind. Nelson gently moved her away from the ruckus.
She blinked at him. “How did you spot Christine?”
He grinned at her. “Simple. I know all the ho’s that work the station, and she wasn’t one of them.”
Ripley laughed.
“Besides, she dressed more like the hundred-dollar variety, instead of the ten-dollar ones we usually get down here.” He eyed her. “Red suits you.”
“I’ll remember that.” Ripley turned to look for Joe, and her gaze fell instead on somebody else—a figure near the opposite door standing in partial shadow. The person stepped briefly into the light, her black vinyl rain slicker shimmering.
Nicole Bennett.
Ripley blinked as Nicole smiled.
Then she was gone.
14
JOE PATIENTLY applied antiseptic to Ripley’s skinned knees. She sat at the dining table that dwarfed the room it was in. The apartment was small but neat, unassuming but filled with quality items, much like the woman herself. He swapped knees, and Ripley flinched. It was all Joe could do not to take a peek under the hem of the cotton shorts she’d put on after her shower to see what color underwear she had on.
He dragged the back of his hand across his forehead, thinking the place could stand some air-conditioning.
He slowly tuned in on Ripley’s nonstop litany of the evening’s events. The only time she’d hesitated in her speech was when he first hit each of her surface scrapes with the antiseptic.
“I about died when she told me to strip out of my clothes,” she was saying, her brown eyes animated, her slender, sexy body radiating energy. “But you’ll never guess who I saw after Christine’s apprehension, standing calm as you please at the other end of the station.”
Joe put the cap on the bottle and wadded up the cotton balls. “Who?” he asked without enthusiasm.
“Nicole Bennett.”
That did prick his interest, but only because during two hours of grilling by Miller and his men, in which he and Ripley had had to repeat and repeat again everything that went down, Ripley had neglected to share that little piece of information.
Her smile was anything but repentant.
He sank back on his heels and rested his forearms on his thighs. “Let me get this straight. In the middle of everything going down, Nicole stood watching from the corner?”
“Uh-huh.” Ripley got up, went to the refrigerator and took out two bottles of what looked like chocolate milk. She held one out to Joe. He took it even though he could have used a beer or something stronger right about then.
“So I guess we don’t have to wonder where the diamonds went, then, do we?”
Unfortunately, Miller didn’t seem all that convinced that Joe and Ripley weren’t behind the missing gems. After all, they’d had the key in their possession until an hour before the grand opening of the locker.
Ripley led the way into the living room and he followed, sitting on the arm of an easy chair while she sprawled across the sofa. She took a long swallow of milk. “It was nothing but a wild-goose chase,” she said half to herself. She turned her head to look at him. “The trip to Memphis, the pawnshop owner. When Nicole Bennett took that job at Christine Bowman’s, she knew exactly what she was looking for. And it’s my guess she had the diamonds five minutes after she got the key.”
“But why the wild-goose chase?”
“Simple. She had to make sure Bowman was out of the picture or else she’d have her on her tail for however long it took to find her.” A thoughtful expression wrinkled her lovely face. “She must have known the FBI had Christine under surveillance.” She pulled at the label on the bottle. “I can’t figure out how she got to the diamonds, though. Didn’t Miller say they’d had the station staked out for the past two months?”
The more she talked, the more distant Joe became. He couldn’t quite believe this was the same woman who’d had the muzzle of a gun pressed against her forehead, was forced to strip out of her clothes at gun-point, then struggled with an armed woman all within the span of an hour.
She was looking at him. He sighed. “It’s my guess that once Bowman picked up stakes here and they followed you to Memphis, they lightened manpower at the bus station. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to have arranged for some sort of distraction, taken the diamonds, then returned to Memphis.”
She sat up. “That’s right. Nicole didn’t sell the box to the pawnshop owner until a day later.”
Joe stared at the bottle in his hand, started to take a drink, then grimaced. He put it on the coffee table, untouched.
Now that the mystery was solved, Ripley seemed to have run out of gas. Unfortunately, Joe had run out of gas somewhere between Memphis and St. Louis. And with the threat hanging over their heads gone…well, he felt more at odds than ever.
“Joe?” Ripley said quietly.
When he looked at her, the frown she wore told him it wasn’t the first time she had said his name.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. But the moment the words were out of his mouth, he recognized the lie for what it was. He pushed from the chair arm and paced a short way away, running his hand over his hair. “Actually, no. Everything’s not fine.”
While she was in the shower, he’d used a towel to dry his hair then stripped out of the T-shirt she’d loaned him. He was in his trusty old white shirt, tie and slacks. Only, when he looked down, he barely recognized himself. What did it mean when a guy didn’t feel comfortable in his own clothes?
He turned toward Ripley, his gaze settling on her unforgettable face. A need so intense, so overwhelming, gripped his stomach, making him want to stride across the room, sweep her up from the couch and carry her off to the bed that lay behind the door just a few feet away.
“I’ve got to go.”
Joe heard the words. Saw Ripley wince from the impact. But for the life of him he didn’t think he’d said them. But there they lay. Hovering between them like a bird neither of them wanted to catch.
Ripley was the first to glance away. She slowly put her bottle on the table next to his, the pain on her face ripping him in two.
“I see,” she said quietly.
Joe strode to collect his suitcase from the dining room and placed it next to the door. “Do you? Because I sure as hell don’t see much right now.”
She got up from the couch. He nearly held his hand out and shouted, “don’t,” for fear that he would never get out of that door if she moved within touching range.
Instead he stood pole straight, his throat tight and raw as she stepped haltingly in front of him. She looked about to hug him, withdrew, then went ahead and threw her slender arms around his neck anyway, resting her cheek on his shoulder and facing away from him. Joe closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Her breasts pressed against his chest, making his heart kick up, while her hips nestled snugly against his, making other parts of his anatomy kick up. Parts he didn’t want to acknowledge. Hadn’t they already gotten him into enough trouble?
“Thank you,” Ripley whispered in his ear, pressing her soft lips against his neck.
Joe groaned, unable to hold back. His arms curved around her, tugging her closer, every part of him reveling in the feeling of her nearness. He’d never experienced emotions so pure, so out of control, before. And, simply, they scared him more than the gun Christine had wielded.
Looking back, he realized he’d always had a certain vision of his life and how it would turn out. And everything that had happened over the past few days was so far outside that as to emerge surreal. He had the company he’d built up with his own two hands, his family in Minneapolis—everything that was familiar and safe and his.
“Where will you go?” she asked, her arms holding him even tighter.
“To Memphis, I guess. I’ll get my car.” And attempt to put his life back into some sort of order. Maybe contact the reps at Shoes Plus and try to make amends. Or maybe he’d drive straight to Minneapolis. Being home might help snap him out of his zombielike state.
He heard her breath catch. “You, um, could stay here.”
Joe nearly groaned at her whispered words.
“You know, for tonight. You could leave in the morning.”
Of course. What had he expected? That she was asking him to stay for good? And what if she had? Would he have stayed? Joe didn’t know. And that scared him more than everything else combined.
He somehow found the courage to set her away from him. “I can’t.” He’d rent a car and drive to Memphis if he had to. He didn’t care. He knew he had to get out of here…now, before he made an even bigger fool of himself.
Ripley’s brown eyes were soft and watery.
He turned toward the door.
“Joe?”
He braced himself but refused to face her.
“Will I see you again?’
He silently cursed. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether business brings me through St. Louis or not.”
He hated saying the words, but for the life of him he couldn’t come up with anything else.
He opened the door and walked out.
RIPLEY STOOD staring at the closed door for so long her eyes hurt. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe he’d just walked out like that. Every bit of adrenaline that had been roaring through her system from the night’s events had stopped midstream. What had just happened? Was it something she said? Something she did?
Forcing her legs into action, she hurried toward the window, peering out much as she had earlier. But instead of trying to spot the FBI surveillance vehicles, she sought Joe’s familiar silhouette. There. There he was. He’d crossed the street and was walking, head down in the rain, toward downtown. She opened her mouth to call to him through the open window, but that’s how her mouth stayed. Open. Silent.
Private Investigations Page 17