by Gina Wilkins
“Yeah. There was a break-in at the apartment he keeps close to his office in downtown Atlanta. Some cash, jewelry and silver was stolen, along with several paintings that he had intended to place on display in the lobby of a local bank. It was the first time Willfort had ever announced plans to share any of his private art collection with the public, so it got some attention. Apparently, someone found out the paintings were being stored at the apartment and managed to get to them.”
Tara frowned. “But wouldn’t there have been heavy security in an apartment that contained cash, jewelry, silver and art?”
“There was. A guard was seriously wounded, almost killed. It looked like a professional job.”
“An inside job, maybe?” Tara hazarded, thinking of all the TV she’d watched during the past two weeks.
Blake shrugged. “That’s always a possibility.”
“The insurance company you’re working for—did they carry the policy for the items that were taken?”
“Yes. I’m often called in for big claims like this, either to try to recover the merchandise or to make sure no insurance fraud is involved. All I was told this time was that someone who works for the Pryce Gallery—someone who was afraid to give his name or come out publicly—had some information concerning the robbery. As I’ve already told you, I was to meet him in the men’s room, where he would give me an envelope and then discreetly disappear. I was to leave the gallery, check the contents of the envelope to see if it contained anything of interest, and then get back to my client at the number he gave me. Quick. Simple. Safe—or so I thought. But no one showed up in the men’s room, and when I went back to collect you...well, you know what happened then.”
“So what went wrong?”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I wish to hell I knew.”
“Why aren’t you calling the police?” She finally asked the question that had been bothering her the most. Every time she’d mentioned the police, Blake’s expression had grown shuttered. She wanted to know why.
Again, Blake’s eyes shifted away from hers. He glanced at his watch, then reached for the television remote that lay on the nightstand beside the telephone.
“You’re going to watch TV?” Tara asked in disbelief. “Now?”
“I want to check the local news,” he replied, pressing the power button. “Before we call the police, it might be a good idea to see what’s being said about tonight’s events.”
Tara tried to be patient as he concentrated on the unfolding news report. Several national stories took the lead, and then both Blake and Tara tensed as the news anchor mentioned a robbery at a local art gallery that evening. Cash and a collection of valuable framed miniatures that had been stored in a back office for an upcoming show were missing.
“Details are still sketchy,” the anchorwoman recited, “but police are searching for a man and woman, both blond, both believed to be in their early thirties, who attended the showing this evening as Mr. and Mrs. Bill Austin. If anyone has any information regarding this robbery, they are asked to call the Atlanta police department.”
Tara spun in her chair to stare at Blake. “The police are looking for us? But what about the man who was killed? And why didn’t they mention my real name, since they know who I am?”
“I don’t think the police have as many details about what went on there as we do,” Blake replied.
“You mean they don’t know someone was murdered at that gallery tonight?”
He nodded.
Tara sprang to her feet, moving toward the telephone. “Blake, we have to tell someone. We saw him. We’re witnesses.”
Blake stood, blocking her way. “We’re suspects.”
His blunt words made her catch her breath. She shook her head slowly. “No one would believe we had anything to do with this.”
“We were there, under assumed names. We were wandering around in the back of the gallery during the show. I’m quite sure there are a couple of loyal gallery employees who would be willing to swear they saw us coming out of that office. The same loyal employees who tried to put a bullet into us earlier.”
“But you’re a private investigator. You were there on a case. And I’m an attorney—or at least, I was until...”
She bit her lip. Having been recently fired by her law firm didn’t exactly provide a glowing character reference.
“In general, police officers aren’t all that fond of private investigators,” Blake murmured. “And at the moment, I can’t reach my client to prove that I was there on a case. I have a few friends on the force, but I’d rather wait until we have more to go on before I risk getting us hauled in for interrogation.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Blake?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing specific,” he assured her. “I just...well, I have a feeling.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “A feeling?”
She would almost have sworn that his cheeks darkened as he cleared his throat and looked away. “Sometimes I just know when something’s all wrong. And I’ve been hearing all kinds of mental warning bells about this mess, ever since I found out the number I was given isn’t a working number.”
Narrowing her eyes, she searched his face. “You’re saying that you’re...what? Psychic?”
He scowled. “Let’s just say I’ve learned to trust my instincts.”
“And your instincts are telling you not to call the police.”
“Yeah.”
He looked at her squarely. “I don’t know what’s going on, Tara, and I’m sorry as hell that I’ve gotten you involved in it. I know you think we should call the police, tell them what happened, and let them take care of everything. If that’s what you really want me to do, I’ll call and we’ll take our chances.”
“But your instincts...or your funny feelings, or whatever you call them, tell you that would be a mistake,” she finished slowly.
Still holding her gaze with his, Blake nodded.
She drew a ragged breath. “You’ve had a lot more experience with this sort of thing than I have,” she said after a long pause. “Do what you think is best.”
To her surprise, he bent his head and pressed a quick, hard kiss against her mouth.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “For trusting me.”
He was going to have to stop doing that, Tara mused as Blake moved away. For some strange reason, her mind simply stopped functioning when his lips touched hers.
Blake picked up the phone and punched in a number. Tara watched and listened as he identified himself to someone on the other end.
“It’s Blake,” he said without bothering to add a surname. “I need you to do something for me.”
Whoever it was he was talking to apparently agreed without hesitation.
As Blake continued giving instructions, Tara found herself wondering if anyone ever denied this man anything.
The fact that she was here in this room with him, involved in something that made no sense at all to her, was proof that he was extremely persuasive. She was going to have to be on her guard to make sure that he didn’t talk her into a great deal more than she could handle.
3
TARA WAITED until Blake hung up the phone before asking, “What are we going to do now?”
He smiled at her, obviously trying to reassure her. “We can wait here for a while longer. We should be...”
His smile faded. He turned his head suddenly toward the window, like an animal that had just caught a faint whiff of danger.
“What is it?” she asked, her own instincts going on alert.
It seemed that she, too, was beginning to trust in Blake’s “feelings.”
He moved swiftly across the room and shifted the curtain just enough to allow him to glance out into the parking lot.
“We have to go,” he said, dropping the curtain back into place. “Now.”
Tara’s heart tripped as Blake took her hand in an urgent grip. “What did you see out there?”
“The same c
ar that was following us earlier. It just cruised past my car. We’re about to have company we don’t want.” Blake was moving toward the bathroom as he talked, pulling her after him.
“How did they know to come here?” she whispered, as if their pursuers could hear through the walls.
“I don’t—oh, hell.”
She eyed him warily. “What?”
“You have caller LD. at your apartment.”
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded, anyway. “Yes.”
He hissed a curse through his teeth, apparently directed at himself. And then he pulled at her hand again. “Come on. We’re going out the window.”
“How are we going to get to your car?” she asked.
Blake already had the window open in the old-fashioned bathroom. He’d left the light off and Tara could see that there was nothing behind the little cabin but an empty lot filled with thigh-high weeds, scraggly bushes and a few trees. Beyond that was what appeared to be a rundown used-car lot, now closed for the night.
Without pausing to answer her question, Blake turned to boost Tara out the window. She hiked the slim-fitting skirt of her black dinner suit high up on her thighs, telling herself this was no time to worry about modesty. She doubted that Blake was interested in gawking at her legs when they had much more serious matters to concern them.
Blake slipped through the opening with far more dexterity than Tara. The minute his feet touched the ground, he was on the move again, headed for the empty lot. Tara clutched his hand and stayed very close to his side, half expecting to hear a shout or a gunshot from the cabin behind them.
The weeds and bushes tore at her hose, and she stumbled across the uneven ground in her heeled pumps. Blake steadied her, murmuring something encouraging. He seemed to be headed toward the car lot. She followed him mutely, trusting him to know what he was doing.
Her heart was pounding, her pulse racing. She told herself it was fear—but she was also aware of an underlying exhilaration that startled her. She was a tax attorney, for Pete’s sake, not one of those dashing secret-agent types from the movies!
Keeping low, and urging her to do the same, Blake zigzagged through the collection of rather dilapidated vehicles until he reached a black pickup truck that looked somewhat better than the rest of the lot. Tara was startled when Blake pulled his key ring out of his pocket and shoved a key into the lock of the driver’s door.
“Get in,” he said, motioning for her to climb in and scoot over.
She did.
As Blake started the engine and shifted into drive, Tara saw a light go on in the bathroom of the cabin they’d just deserted. A dark figure was silhouetted against the window for a moment, and then Blake pulled out of the car lot and accelerated, leaving the motel—and his sports car—behind them.
They were on the road for well over an hour, driving a circuitous route that finally took them into Carrollton, some forty miles southwest of Atlanta. Blake explained briefly that he didn’t want to get too far out of the area, and that was just about the extent of their conversation during that drive. Blake seemed lost in thought, and Tara was too busy trying to make sense of the evening to attempt to draw answers out of him.
Blake pulled into a service station and parked at the side, next to a door marked Men. He reached into the storage area behind the seat. Tugging a duffel bag into his lap, he opened his door.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Lock the doors.”
That was one instruction he didn’t need to repeat. She had the doors locked almost before Blake had climbed out of the truck.
She didn’t recognize the lanky cowboy who approached the driver’s door a few minutes later. He was wearing snug jeans, a white, long-sleeved western-cut shirt, boots and a black hat pulled low over his face. Even his walk was different, a slightly bowlegged amble that drew her eyes to his slim, rolling hips.
Only the duffel bag beneath his arm looked familiar.
Blake tapped on the driver’s window for her to unlock the door.
“I should make you say ‘trick or treat’ before you get in,” she muttered as she opened the door for him.
He chuckled. “The suit matched the sports car,” he explained. “A pickup truck calls for an image change.”
He tossed the duffel bag over the seat and slid behind the wheel. His hat almost touched the top of the cab; he tugged it off and laid it on the seat between them.
“Don’t touch my hat,” he warned in a broad Texas drawl. “That was my great-granddaddy’s hat. I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to it.”
She looked up from pulling a burr off her tattered hose. “Don’t worry about your hat. It’s your throat I’m going for if this evening goes much further downhill.”
Blake flashed her a quick, bright grin. “That’s the spirit,” he murmured in his own voice.
She opened her door to toss the bit of weed out of the truck, then closed it firmly again and drew a deep breath. “Okay, Tex,” she said. “What are we going to do now?”
BLAKE HAD TO ADMIRE Tara’s composure. Considering everything that had gone wrong that evening, it was a wonder she wasn’t a basket case.
All he’d wanted was an excuse to spend time with the most appealing lawyer he’d ever met—one who had hardly given him the time of day while she worked for Carpathy, Dillon and Delacroix. He’d certainly never anticipated getting her involved in a murder case, or sending her on the run from people who seemed intent on putting a bullet in her.
Events had been spinning out of Blake’s control ever since he’d seen Tara struggling with that ape in the art gallery office—or maybe when he’d waited for a contact who’d never shown up. Or even sooner, when Tara had opened her door to him, looking more lost and wounded and vulnerable than he’d ever imagined the cool, competent, almost intimidatingly intelligent attorney could appear.
Blake wasn’t accustomed to being caught so completely off guard. Nor had he ever before been so distracted by a woman that he forgot to listen to his usually reliable instincts.
He was making mistakes tonight. And he hated admitting that his feelings toward Tara McBride were making him careless. He’d always been damned careful not to let anyone get in the way of his job.
He should have just asked Tara to a movie.
It was after midnight now. She looked tired when he glanced sideways at her as he pulled into the parking lot of yet another motel, this one a budget-priced, nofrills chain.
“Wait out here for a minute, okay?” he asked. “I’ll get us a room.”
“Blake, shouldn’t we go to the police?” she asked, looking at him with searching eyes. “We have to tell them what we saw. We’ll make them believe us somehow.”
He understood her fear, and her automatic assumption that the police would take care of everything for them. But he didn’t share her optimism. He’d been taking care of himself for too long to turn his fate over to anyone else.
“Just let me make a couple of calls first. I want to ask a few more questions, okay?”
She hesitated.
“We’re both tired,” he added logically. “It can’t hurt to get a couple of hours’ rest before we try to deal with the cops, can it?”
“Not unless they charge us with obstructing justice because we waited so long.”
“Tara, we’ve no proof of anything we tell them. All we have is a wild tale of seeing a body in a back room, of being shot at and tracked to a motel. The police obviously have no body, since they’re looking for a thief rather than a murderer. I’ve got a friend making some inquiries for me. Let me call him and find out what he’s learned. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
After another long moment, Tara sighed and nodded. “All right. Whatever you think best.”
He wanted to kiss her again. He tried to tell himself it was only because he was grateful for her trust and her courage...but since he’d wanted to kiss her from the moment he’d met her, he knew there was much more to it than that. Just as he knew this
wasn’t the time to follow through on the impulse.
“I’ll get us a room,” he repeated gruffly. “I won’t take long.”
He heard the truck doors lock almost as soon as he climbed out.
Tara wasn’t taking the evening’s adventure quite as calmly as she pretended.
THE MOTEL ROOM was even smaller than the little cabin in Marietta. It was furnished with two double beds that almost filled the room, with a nightstand between them, and a long, cheap dresser bolted to the opposite wall. There wasn’t even space for a table or chairs. An open dressing area with a single sink and a bar for hanging clothes took up the back of the room and led into the tiny cubicle that held a bathtub and toilet.
“Not exactly the Ritz, is it?” Blake asked, looking around the room with a grimace. “But it’s quiet, anonymous and close to the freeway in case we need to make a quick exit.”
“It’s clean,” Tara said wearily, sitting on the edge of one of the beds. “That’ll do.”
Blake eyed her a bit too perceptively. “When’s the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”
She didn’t exactly remember. She’d been so stressed over the situation at the law firm....
“I’m all right,” she said.
“You’re dead on your feet,” Blake returned flatly. “Lie down. Get some rest. I’ll make my calls and then I’ll let you know when it’s time to move on.”
She couldn’t imagine getting any sleep with him moving around the room, talking on the telephone. Watching her.
But she was tired. So tired that she suddenly ached.
“Maybe I’ll just put my feet up for a little while,” she murmured, slipping out of her shoes. Her cramped toes seemed to sigh in relief.
His thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his comfortable-looking jeans, Blake eyed her with a frown. “You can’t relax in that suit. Why don’t you take off the jacket and skirt?”
She thought of the scanty black bra and bikini panties she wore beneath the suit. No way was she stripping down to her underwear in front of Blake. “I’m fine,” she assured him.