by Anne Stuart
He had to smile at that because he knew that was true. He was going to have to tell her the truth, he admitted grimly to himself. He couldn’t have her thinking her father hadn’t even noticed she was missing.
“Although, maybe that’s why Captain Roth was there,” she speculated. “Because Dad called to report us missing.” She enjoyed that thought for a moment, then shook her head on it. “No. He’d have responded to hearing my voice. Instead, he just sounded…uncomfortable.”
He was sure both he and Berto would pay a high price for the collusion, but certainly she’d understand.
Hal was putting the words together in his mind to explain when the sheriff walked up to stand in the open cell doorway, a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Just got this faxed reply about your gun permit,” he said to Hal with a wave of the paper. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a cop?”
CHAPTER NINE
GREAT. SO MUCH for his cover holding now that the collar was made. And so much for his determination—finally—to be honest with Kat.
He heard her intake of breath and her high-pitched, “What?”
The sheriff was taken aback by her surprise.
“You didn’t know your boyfriend was a highly decorated member of the Portland P.D.?” he asked.
She looked at Hal as though he’d just murdered Emeril Legasse. “No, I didn’t,” she answered.
“Says here he’s been a detective for three years—burglary division. Under Captain David Roth.”
“Roth?” she repeated questioningly. Then, her brows forming a vee, she turned on him. “That’s why he was at the restaurant just now!” she said, her voice trembling. “What’s going on?”
Before he could answer her, she seemed to have a sudden revelation, judging by the widening of her eyes. “Something was going on at the restaurant,” she said, murder in her eye, “and my father didn’t miss me last night because he didn’t expect me back! He sent me off with you because…because…” She didn’t seem able to find a reason.
He was so deep in it now, there was little point in pretending she was wrong.
“To keep you out of the way,” he replied, “so you didn’t get hurt.”
He expected her to turn on him in full fury. Instead she went to the cell door, planted a hand in the middle of the sheriff’s chest and pushed until he was out of the cell. Next, she closed the door, as though that gave them some kind of privacy. Then she turned on him.
“Keep me out of whose way?” she demanded.
He opened his mouth to begin an explanation when she raised one hand in a STOP gesture and said, “Wait! You’re not a waiter, you’re a police detective?”
He had a sense of the world collapsing under his feet. Or, at least, the future they’d been planning.
“Yes,” he replied intrepidly.
“And you’ve been lying to me for two weeks?”
“I’d put it differently than that, but yes.”
Her anger seemed to radiate off her. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes combustible. “Go on with your explanation. Keep me out of whose way?”
He told her about her father overhearing Percanto’s plan to break into the savings and loan from the restaurant, his call to Roth, and Roth assigning Hal to work undercover to get the details of when and how.
“That’s why I kept beating you to Percanto’s table,” he said. “Your father didn’t want you involved, and he knew that if you knew what was going on, you’d want to stop him yourself, or help stop him, or something equally dangerous. And because I was someone new, we figured Percanto would be less guarded around me. And Percanto was more comfortable with me. He probably thought I wasn’t paying attention. Because I was new he probably thought I’d be more focused on doing a good job and earning a big tip than listening to his conversations.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course. Keep silly Katarina out of danger. Let her do all the things that are really life-threatening like making the weekly schedule, or telling the chef his expensive addition to the menu isn’t selling, or bussing tables when the busboy ignores the schedule and takes Friday night off anyway! But send her out of town with a phony on a wild-goose chase when something important happens. And why don’t you crash her in a plane for good measure in the middle of a snowstorm. But, goodness, please keep her out of danger!”
“The plane crash was an accident,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t frighten you like that on purpose.”
“No,” she said, her glance poisonous as it raked over him. “You’d just lie to me and tell me you were falling in love with me, make plans with me and make love to me in order to keep me out of the way so I don’t get hurt! Why don’t you just put a gun to my heart?!”
“Kat, I’m sorry.” He was doing his best to be reasonable. “Okay, maybe your father didn’t handle it well, but his heart was in the right place. He wanted you safe. Certainly you’re aware that he loves you very much…”
“I’ll deal with him when I get home,” she snapped at him. “But you’re the one who carried out his plan! You’re the one who lied to…”
“Kat!” He had to shout to be heard because her voice had risen considerably. “A cop doesn’t go undercover to prevent a crime and then tell people who he is!”
“I wasn’t people, I was…me!” she shouted at him. “Maybe my father thinks I’m incapable of behaving like a businesswoman, but you knew me two weeks before he asked you to take me out of the way. Why didn’t you stand up for me?”
“Because I knew you to have precisely the traits he was afraid would get you in trouble,” he replied, getting to his feet to stand toe-to-toe with her. He was sorry that he hadn’t told her the truth before the sheriff spilled it, but he’d be damned if he’d let her accuse him of motives he didn’t have. “You keep tabs on everything that’s going on, and if you don’t like the way it’s going, you have to get involved, fix it or change it. Every detail of everything has to be the way you want it to be. And while that’s admirable in a manager, it isn’t ideal in a woman with people who care about her. You think of yourself as the restaurant, the business, and you would likely not think twice about putting yourself on the line for it. But your father thinks of you as his little girl, and I think of you as…” She wasn’t going to like this, but he was beyond caring. “I think of you as mine—not inferior, not subservient, but not ever to be left to fend for yourself as long as I draw breath. So be offended all to hell about that if you like, but you should know that now if we’re planning a future together. I’m sorry your feelings are hurt, but I’m not sorry that when my boss came down on Percanto last night, and Percanto drew his gun, that you were nowhere around.”
They were now glowering at each other, her chin stuck out pugnaciously, his hands in his pockets so he didn’t shake her.
“Go to hell,” she said in a furious undertone.
“Thanks.” He nodded. “I’m already there.”
KAT LET HERSELF out of the cell and went to the sheriff’s desk, intending to make it clear that she wanted out of there now.
Having heard the entire argument, he seemed well aware of her mood and warded her off with a slip of paper. “Seems the young couple who stole Darla’s books were arrested in a Jeep that went off the road several miles out of town, littering the snow with stolen books. So the two of you are free to go with my apologies.”
“Great!” She wasn’t even worried about how she was going to leave Nugget, she was just relieved to know this hideous experience was almost over.
“My secretary’s going to drive the two of you to Medford where we’ve booked you a 2:17 flight to Portland. All you have to do when you get there is pay for the tickets. You can do that?”
“Yes,” Hal answered.
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Kat added.
“Least I can do. Sorry about your…mishap.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant the plane or Hal.
“It’s never safe to judge somebody else’s intentions,” he said with a pater
nal smile. “Or you’d still be in jail instead of heading home. Things aren’t always the way they look.”
She thanked him for his help, but ignored his philosophy.
“Call your father and tell him when to expect you,” he said, turning the phone her way again.
THE SHERIFF’S SECRETARY was a plump blonde in her middle to late thirties who talked about her children all the way to Medford. Kat sat in the front passenger seat and Hal sat in the back, the atmosphere between them as cold as last night had been.
Kat felt a jolt at that thought. The truth was, last night hadn’t been cold at all. They’d kept physically warm in their little cocoon and then they’d discovered love and it had warmed their hearts.
She felt a sudden and violent sense of loss and abandonment. For the space of a few hours, it had looked as though all her dreams would be fulfilled—the restaurant, the house on the beach, the four little girls. And then it had all been ripped away at the realization that she’d simply been a pawn in an undercover operation.
How melodramatic.
She did her best to ignore Hal while they waited in the tiny terminal for the plane that would take them home. He paid for their tickets, then came back to her with two cups of coffee and two bagels, handing her one of each.
She accepted hers with a stiff thank-you, going immediately back to her Vogue magazine.
With a sigh of exasperation, he took the magazine from her and put it aside. “How long are you going to keep this up?” he asked impatiently, “because I’m getting tired of it.”
She tried to slap him with a look. “Keep it up?” she repeated, her voice strained by the effort not to holler. “Like it’s some kind of pose? Well, it isn’t! I’m completely disgusted with you and your lies, so the best thing you can do for both of us is just leave me alone.”
If she’d expected that little speech to inspire guilt and self-recrimination in him, she was sadly mistaken.
“Oh, grow up, Katarina,” he said, looking not at all remorseful. “Your father’s first thought was to protect you, but all you can think about is your own insecurities. So he’s a little misguided about your abilities. He’s a little old-world, but he’s not malicious. He probably just thinks a woman should have other things on her mind twenty-four hours a day but business.”
She glowered at him. “Considering the luck I’ve had with the men in my life, I’ll just devote my future to the business. It’s more rewarding.”
“Well, poor you. You’ll recall that I didn’t impregnate your best friend. All I did was follow through with a plan to keep you out of danger. And you know damn well everything that happened between us was as true as it gets, even though you thought I was a waiter instead of a cop. You just don’t like that the woman who has to control everything was manipulated by someone else—even if it was for her own good.”
“A lie is a lie,” she said judiciously. “There’s no way around that.”
“Please,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You told me you were falling in love with me, and yet this is how you react to an effort to keep you safe? I guess you could say that you lied to me, too.”
“It’s not the same thing!”
“You just said a lie is a lie.”
She had to walk away from him before she reclaimed her magazine and beat him with it.
There were enough vacant seats on the plane for them to sit separately, and she didn’t see him again until they disembarked.
Her father waited for them at the gate and wrapped her in his arms. She wanted to shout at him, too, but she was suddenly too empty of emotion. She felt as though she could sleep for a week.
Her father looked from her face to Hal’s grim expression and said without hesitation, “Sending you away was all my idea. Hal didn’t want to do it, but I insisted and Roth made him. So if you want to be mad at anyone, you should be mad at me.”
“Oh, I am,” she told him. “I’m giving you one month’s notice, Dad. I’m leaving the restaurant.” To Hal, she added, “And when we drop you off, I never want to see you again.”
“Fine with me,” he said.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WASN’T FINE with him at all, Hal thought as he stood on the sidewalk in front of the precinct and shook Berto’s hand. But he knew Kat was feeling betrayed and nothing he could say would reach her. He had to bide his time.
“I’m sorry,” Berto said, clapping him apologetically on the shoulder. “I didn’t mean to put you in the middle. I was just so grateful you were around to look out for her.”
“I was happy to do it for you, Berto,” Hal said, giving him a quick embrace. “Maybe given a little time she’ll change her mind.”
Berto tried to give him a plain white envelope. He pushed it back at him.
“But it was a private job for me,” he insisted. “You lost your plane, and I know how she can be. Please take it.”
Hal shook his head, his heart filled with memories of those hours in the darkness in the cockpit of his plane. “And I know how she can be. So, I can’t take it.”
He glanced toward the car as he said that and saw her set profile looking determinedly straight ahead, clearly not even tempted to get a last look at him before she rode out of his life. He experienced an anxious moment as he realized that her stubbornness could win out in this case.
Then he took a little comfort in the fact that he’d written the book on stubborn. It had always gotten him in trouble as a child, but had stood him in good stead as a cop. He just hoped he was right to think it would help in dealing with a woman.
THE SQUAD ROOM was a busy place as he walked in, but Roth waved him to his office before Hal could head for his desk. The office was small and cluttered, a double frame of Roth’s wife and two sons, also police officers, catching Hal’s attention from the top of a file cabinet.
Roth pointed him to a chair. “Sorry about your plane,” he said. “And sorry about…the whole thing with Katarina. Berto tells me she’s angry at all of us.”
Hal nodded. “Me, particularly. But it was the right thing to do. So, it all went down all right?”
Roth nodded. “It did. But we’ve got a loose end.”
Hal sat up and frowned. “What’s that?”
“We thought Percanto would hide out in the men’s room or something, so Berto would lock up and go home without realizing he was still there. So we planted Mark White as a late customer, and had him order dessert after closing so Percanto would be able to hide out.”
“And?”
“Percanto left, big as you please. I saw him get into his car and drive away.”
“But you caught him.”
“Right. He came back around 1:00 a.m., pulled around the back and got in through the alley door that leads to both the kitchen and the basement.”
Hal finally understood the problem. “So…somebody let him in.”
“Right.”
“Who stays that late?”
“Nobody. Berto says they’re all gone by midnight. I saw the chef, his assistant and the kid that runs the dishwasher all leave out the front door.”
“You think somebody came back to let him in?”
“I didn’t see anybody but him come back.”
“Then…somebody deliberately left the side door open before they left.”
Roth nodded. “Percanto had an accomplice inside, but he’s not giving him up. I checked backgrounds and…I have a thought.”
“And a plan?”
“You’re the department’s bright boy. I want you to come up with that.”
IT WAS VALENTINE’S DAY, the day after Kat’s return home, and there were several large parties scheduled for dinner. Though usually a night for intimate celebrations, the grille’s patrons this evening also included a single women’s group that met regularly there, a large Italian family that celebrated everything together and a motley collection of younger men who went to the gym across the street, then met at Umberto’s for drinks and antipasto.
Kat put
on a red woolen dress with long sleeves, a vee neck, fitted waist and a flirty flared skirt. She had to will herself not to burst into sobs as she brushed her hair. She caught it back in an old-fashioned but romantic French twist and fixed it tightly in place with pins. She attributed the tears in her eyes to the tightness of her hairstyle.
She went into the restaurant through the kitchen, remembering from the reservations book that the restaurant would already be full.
Marco, the chef, and Joseph, his assistant, looked up from their frantic pace to whistle and catcall. Johnny, a high school senior who did dishes, just stared.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said, pretending to take bows as she hurried through the kitchen. “How’s it going?”
“Everything under control,” Marco replied. “At least, for now. But you know how quickly that can change.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, the door from the dining room burst open and a young waitress stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and horrified. “An old lady,” she said on a gasp, “just fell into the dessert cart, and…and…”
Kat turned to Marco. “Keep your prophesies to yourself from now on,” she said, and donned an apron to hurry out and tackle the mess.
Her father was already there, supporting the little old lady to a bench in the small vestibule where he helped her lie down. Her husband, a wiry but little man, followed in their wake.
“Is she all right?” Kat asked, detouring around the mess on the edge of the floor and going to the bench.
“I think so,” her father said, taking his jacket off and placing it under the woman’s head. She was tiny and frail-looking, but the epitome of fashion in a beaded red dress that unfortunately now was marked with tiramisu, torta, chocolate mousse with grappa and cookie crumbs. Her white hair was short and fine, and Kat could see a purpling bruise on the pink scalp underneath. “But I’ve called 9-1-1, just to be sure.”