On Thin Ice

by Susan Andersen

  Christ, that was too damn close for comfort. He couldn’t believe he’d nearly let himself get caught in the act like some goddamn neophyte. You’d thick he’d just fallen off the proverbial truck.

  The close shave made his eyes narrow. Wouldn’t it have been just too slick for words to have gotten trapped in her room like some rank amateur? Sighing, he pushed away from the wall and walked slowly back to his room. The mockery he perceived was most likely only in his own overworked imagination, but the sound of feminine chatter seemed to snigger as it followed him like a pointing finger down the hallway.

  He must be losing his touch. If he hadn’t left the door ajar, he wouldn’t have heard the elevator reach the floor and Nakamura conveniently call Miller by name as the doors were opening. In which case, the game would have been over before it had even begun. Sheer blind luck had saved his butt, and depending on that in this business could buy an agent a quick and painful death.

  So, okay, bugging had never been his forte, and ordinarily he left it to the techs. But that was no excuse. He had damn well better make it one of his strong points, because they hadn’t bothered to apply for a Title 3 intercept. In other words they were foregoing the court order in this case and winging it.

  That gave him a laugh, albeit a somewhat weary one. What they, Vinicor? Is there anybody here but us chickens? He was winging it, and no one else. Out in left field, all alone. Flying solo.

  Again.

  The point was, with a gig that moved around as much as this one did, he was going to have to go through this again and again in every damn city they moved to. Not that it should present a particular problem from this point forward. As the manager he’d be in control of room assignments and could therefore get to Miller’s room before she even checked in. Theoretically.

  The real problem here was his state of mind regarding this assignment: his attitude was in serious need of adjustment. He’d only been on the job two stinking hours and already he was mishandling it left and right.

  Fuck up number one was . . . using language like that in public. He was so accustomed to scamming dealers and the big-money men who supplied them, so used to associating with other lowlifes of their ilk, that he forgot not everyone in the world peppered their language with casual obscenities.

  On the other hand, neither had he realized there were still people in the world as tight-assed as that Corselli woman. Hell, even his mother had been known to utter the infamous “F” word once in awhile. Well, once anyhow.

  Okay, okay. Mom would have snatched him by the ear and dragged him to the nearest rest room to wash his mouth out with soap if she could’ve heard him this afternoon.

  “Face it,” he decided in self-disgust, “first day out and you screwed up big-time.” Usually A Closed Mouth Gathers No Feet was his anthem, a credo to live by, and he just naturally kept his lips zipped in a new situation until he knew damn good and well what the lay of the land was. Once that was established, he blended seamlessly into his environment.

  Instead he’d arrived at this assignment with a ready-made attitude, as if he didn’t have to try as hard because these were only skaters that he was dealing with and—face it—how tough could they be?

  He had always taken a great deal of pride in knowing that he was giving his very best to each and every assignment. But it was going to be a little tough maintaining his sterling record or even honestly calling himself a professional if he continued to coast on this one. Particularly in view of the fact that he’d be doing so simply because this was a case that didn’t strike him as being as crucial as the jobs he was accustomed to handling.

  Besides, ole Henry Chambers would be ashamed of him.

  He’d waylaid Chambers in his hotel room on the last night of the Follies run in San Francisco. Pulling out his shield and ID, he’d held it up for the man to see the minute he’d opened the door. “Henry Chambers?”

  “Yes?” The man had looked from Mick’s face to the San Francisco operative who was with him, and then stared at the DEA credentials presented to him. After a painstaking study of each identification card, he’d handed them back, looked up, and met Mick’s eyes once again, clearly perplexed.

  “I’m Special Agent Mick Vinicor of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This is Special Agent Erik Bell.” Mick had been at his most authoritative, knowing that it tended to intimidate people into doing what he wanted them to do. “We’d like to come in for a moment and speak to you.”

  He had to hand it to the man; Chambers hadn’t been a pushover. He’d let them in, and he’d listened to their abbreviated summary of the situation—with the suspect’s name deleted—and the reasons therein why Mick needed to take over his position with the Follies. But he hadn’t for one moment been placated when Special Agent Bell had tersely suggested that he, “Just think of it as a vacation for yourself with full pay.”

  It wasn’t until Mick finally lost patience and snapped, “Listen, if you want to do this the hard way just say the word and I’ll shut down the whole damn operation until I can finish conducting my investigation,” that Chambers had caved in . . . and even then it had been with a few conditions of his own.

  He had earned Mick’s respect.

  He’d also made it quite clear, when giving Mick a crash course in his job, that he had a particular soft spot for Sasha Miller. Mick knew Chambers wouldn’t reciprocate the esteem in which he was held if he knew Mick was failing to extend Miller the respect that Chambers seemed to think she was due. But Mick could rectify that, and he would. From this moment on, he’d extend respect like it was going out of style.

  Mick Vinicor was going to show her the same regard he would offer to any other quarry he was planning to bring down.

  Sasha got her first good look at the much-lauded new manager that night. She ran into him at the arena just before her first evening performance and understood immediately what Connie had been trying to tell her about the man. His impact ranked right up there with being slugged in the solar plexus by a giant unseen fist.

  She should have been clued in by all the talk that had spread like wildfire throughout the line women’s dressing room. With time to kill before she was due on the ice for her first number, she had as usual been hanging out with the line skaters in their locker room.

  As an Olympic medalist she was entitled to a private or semiprivate dressing room, but it was a perk she’d passed on her very first week with the show and she’d never seen a reason to go back on her refusal. She simply wasn’t comfortable copping a star attitude, and besides, it could get very lonely being set apart from all the other skaters.

  Since everyone paid their own room tabs, a few of the show’s stars did elect to stay at more expensive hotels than the rest of the cast could afford. Not Sasha. On the contrary, the first year she had skated with the Follies she’d actually roomed with several other women. The lack of privacy had quickly palled and she had given that up, but still she preferred the closeness to be found sharing travel and accommodations with the rest of the cast and crew.

  That night the locker room was abuzz. In retrospect Sasha realized Vinicor was the hot topic of the evening, but it hadn’t sunk in immediately for she had barely walked into the room when she caught her costume on the sharp edge of an open locker door. A seam ripped, beadwork scattered, and her whispered impieties momentarily overshadowed the snatches of conversation that she heard but didn’t actually assimilate until much later.

  Connie went to get the wardrobe mistress while Sasha got gingerly down on her hands and knees to retrieve the tiny sequins, rhinestones, and small crystal beads that had bounced their widely separate ways across the grimy floor. Eventually the costumer arrived, declared the damage too extensive for a quickie repair, ordered Sasha out of the outfit, and trotted off to fetch an alternate costume.

  The locker room had cleared out, the line skaters out in the arena for the opening production number, by the time Sasha had pulled everything together for the second time. Whispering a curse whe
n she saw the time, she snatched up her skates in one hand, and dashed from the room.

  And ran smack-dab into a solid wall.

  She heard it say “Oof” as she bounced off its hard surface. Clutching the skates to her stomach before they could slide out of her grasp, she reached out her free hand not only to steady herself but as a characteristically tactile way of apology. It grabbed onto warm, hard flesh.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped to the T-shirt-covered collarbone a scant inch from her eyes. “I should have been looking where I was going.” Her hand squeezed the forearm beneath her fingers as her eyes began to rise. “Forgive me. I swear I’m normally not this rude but it’s been the craziest damn night. My costume tore, I’m running late, and I . . .”

  Her eyes reached his face and she felt as if someone had stomped the wind right out of her. Struggling to catch a breath, she stared.

  This had to be Mick Vinicor and Connie was right, he wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t a frog or anything, but his features certainly were nothing to write home about. They were just sort of run of the mill . . . except for his teeth, which were orthodontia perfect and toothpaste-ad white, like something out of the glossies. She backed up a step in order to view him more clearly, her mind racing as she attempted to figure out exactly where his appeal lay.

  Weathered and muscular—masculine wasn’t such an inept description after all, she decided dazedly. He was a presence to be reckoned with, exuding something that was nearly . . . animalistic, even if she couldn’t quite pin down its origin. His hair was brown, his eyes were blue, nothing spectacular about the shade of either. But there was an intensity about him that was palpable as a force field, and it radiated from his eyes, was hinted at by his posture, giving him a vitality that made him seem almost . . . dangerous. But that, of course, was patently absurd.

  Wasn’t it?

  Well, whether it was or it wasn’t, she couldn’t quite see this guy as a business major, but then again the good Lord knew she wasn’t always the most astute judge of character. Just look at her blind defense of Lonnie. She hadn’t been able to see him as a drug dealer, either, and she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she’d known his character as well as she knew her own.

  It felt as though she had stood there for an age just gaping at the new manager, but in actuality her assessment was made quite speedily. She noted his height, which was average, perhaps five eleven, maybe six feet. Then she noted his build, and it nearly stopped her heart for an instant. A ridiculous reaction, undoubtedly, but there it was; in spite of the multitude of athletic builds she had seen in her many years on the circuit, she’d never before come across anyone who’d made quite this sort of impact on her. He was wearing a plain old white T-shirt and a pair of charcoal Dockers, and while she wondered in a distracted corner of her mind how he kept from freezing to death in this drafty back hallway, his clothing was certainly nothing she hadn’t seen a dozen times before on a dozen different guys.

  Yet on him they somehow managed to look extraordinary. No two ways about it, the man was built. Wide shoulders, solid chest, well-developed biceps, muscular forearms. Her eyes skimmed past the expensive-looking watch on his wrist to his large hands.

  Her gaze snapped back to the watch. She grabbed him by the wrist and turned it until she could see the face of the timepiece. “Oh, damn!” Dropping his arm she turned to sprint away. “Sorry again about barging into you,” she called back over her shoulder and then laughed when it hit her how demented she must appear to him. First she’d practically bowled him over and then she’d just stood there like a dufus with her tongue all but hanging out while she stared at him. Wasn’t chemistry a grand thing? Skates clattering against her hip, she raced down the concrete passage.

  Mick stood in the middle of the corridor and watched her until she disappeared. Then he slowly followed her down the hallway.

  She wasn’t at all what he had prepared himself for. He’d known she’d be pretty from her picture, but he had expected there to be a hardness about her in real life. Instead it turned out that the black and white photograph hadn’t even done her justice.

  In the flesh she was a warm golden color with touches of rose. Her eyes were pale gray rimmed with darker gray and they contained tiny flecks of gold near the pupils. Her hair was abundant, a black curly cloud that looked wild and soft.

  And that laugh.

  God, what a gut grabber that was.

  Somehow all his expectations had gotten knocked for a loop, in the space of a few measly minutes. Where he’d expected a demeanor that coolly invited all comers to drop dead, she’d instead been all flustered apologies, soft hands, and big eyes.

  Mick shook himself like a wet dog. So what? So she was pretty and had big, curious eyes. Big deal. Plainly the woman knew how to run a con even better than he did. That didn’t mean he had to be first class A-I chump and fall for it, did it?

  Arriving at the area that passed for the wings, he stood back out of the way, arms crossed over his chest, and surveyed Sasha’s firm little butt in its skimpily cut, glittery red briefs while she was bent over tugging her skate laces into place. He watched her lift her head up to grin at something a stagehand said to her and told himself sourly that her apparent friendliness was probably all part of the scam.

  “And NOW, ladies and gentlemen, PLEASE give a BIG WARM WELCOME to OLYMpic Silver Medalist, SA-SHA MILLER!

  Sasha tossed aside her jacket and the Nikes she’d just exchanged for her skates, slid her palm along Connie’s as they passed each other when the line skaters streamed off the ice, removed her guards from her blades, and stepped up onto the ice. Propelling herself into the arena proper, she glided around the rink, head back, arms raised, and laughed with pure joy while the crowd applauded. God above, she loved this.

  Every single show, it never failed that her initial appearance on the ice managed to provoke an identical response from her; and the musical director, who knew a commercial sound when he heard one, had been quick to cash in on it. He’d ordered a recording made of her contagious laughter and it played back now over the loud speakers, climbing to the topmost seat in the house, making people smile in reaction. Making men shift in their seats.

  The opening strains of “Angel from Montgomery” poured out of the loudspeakers and Sasha launched into her routine. Mick left his post against the wall and came up to the arena entrance to watch her performance.

  Because the music in Bonnie Raitt’s song was too slow throughout to sustain a long program, the musical director had recorded it in abbreviated form. Sasha glided with lazy ease, swooping and spinning languorously.

  Then the music changed. It segued into Richard Marx’s “Playing with Fire” and the tempo and style radically altered. The little fringed scarf tied around Sasha’s hips came off, exposing the almost thong-cut panty of her costume, and she began to move her hips and shoulders in subtle rhythms to the music. Mick, watching from the wings, found himself swallowing dryly before the song was halfway through.

  Connie Nakamura came up to stand beside him. Interested as always in catching people’s reactions the first time they saw Sasha perform, she studied his features carefully. Vinicor’s face was perfectly expressionless, but she noticed his Adam’s apple make several slow slides up and down his throat.

  “She’s something, isn’t she?” she finally demanded with typical enthusiasm. “It’s funny, because there are only so many moves a skater can make, so hers shouldn’t look all that different from what everyone else is doing. And yet”—her eyes on her friend’s performance, she pursed her lips and shook her fingers as if they’d been scorched, a gesture with which Sasha was very familiar—“when Saush does it, it’s pure sex appeal.” Then she turned her attention back to Mick once again.

  “You should’ve seen her with her old pairs partner,” she said. “I saw them once at a Pan American competition and they were so hot I kept expecting steam to rise up off the ice. I have never seen a program like it . . . before or since.”
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  “Yeah?” Wondering how much she would willingly volunteer, Mick raised an interested brow in her direction before his attention was drawn once again to the woman in the arena. “So where is this partner now?”

  Connie’s smile faded and she shifted slightly away from him. The space she opened up between the two of them was infinitesimal in distance, but Mick recognized it for what it was: a sudden mile-wide gulf. If he hadn’t already known about Miller and Morrison, her posture would have alerted him that there was a story here and caused him to go digging for it.

  “He’s . . . retired,” she replied repressively and turned her attention back to the performance out under the lights. Sasha Miller was her closest friend and there was no way on God’s green earth that Connie was going to resurrect that old scandal for the delectation of some guy she’d just met this afternoon—macho babe or not. If the new manager wanted to know about Lon Morrison bad enough, she wasn’t fool enough to think a dozen different people around here wouldn’t be more than happy to supply him with all the sordid details. But it wouldn’t be from Connie Nakamura’s lips that he heard it.

  The music reached a crescendo and Sasha exited the rink, flushed and happy. There wasn’t anything quite as stimulating as performing in front of a receptive crowd and she was flying high. It had been a dream of hers to skate for Follies on Ice since she was a young girl and she still had to pinch herself sometimes to accept that the dream had actually come true. The downside—the unrelenting pressure of constant travel, the occasional fatigue—simply didn’t matter once she hit the ice.

  Connie was standing by the new manager and Sasha flashed them a smile as she got out of the new act’s way. Stopping to apply her blade guards, she stepped off the ice, gathered up her Nikes, and slipped into her wool-and-leather letterman’s jacket.

  She loved this coat. It represented everything she’d missed out on back in her Kells Crossing high school days. She used to watch the girls who wore their jock boyfriends’ jackets—or better yet, the ones who had earned their own—and she’d always felt so envious and excluded. She hadn’t had time for extracurricular activities back then; her schedule had been devoted exclusively to skating. She’d loved it more than anything in the world, but it made her different from the rest of her classmates—and being different is not a lot of fun for a teenager. Particularly in a small town.