“What?”
“It will be easier on my mother…when she has to…” She broke off and opened her eyes again. They shimmered. “Just consider it a…last request.” She blinked and met his gaze squarely. “Could we get this over with? I never thought I’d go out bawling, but if you drag it out much longer, I—”
“Hell!” He thrust the gun back into the shoulder holster and grabbed her again. “Will you get his through that thick skull of yours? I am not going to kill you. You have trouble with English or something?”
Eyes flashing wider, she exploded in a burst of Spanish, none of which he understood. He supposed he could probably guess at most of it, though. He hadn’t meant his remark as a racial slur. He hadn’t realized her Gypsy-like looks were due to a Hispanic bloodline until this moment. Did her exotic beauty come from her mother or her father? he wondered, then he wondered what difference it made.
Her stream of insults ended. She drew a breath and whispered, “I speak English better than you do, you overgrown thug. I was born ten miles from here. My mother teaches English lit—” She bit her lips as if to stop herself. That aroused his curiosity.
“Go on. Where does she teach?”
She averted her gaze. “What are you going to do with me?”
So she wasn’t talking. All right. He could find out anything he wanted to know in less time than she would believe possible. “I’m taking you home with me.” He said it slowly, watching her face.
She looked up fast, her shock in her eyes. “You’re kidnapping me.”
Toni shivered. She was soaked, she was barefoot and she was mad as hell. How dare the bastard make a remark like that when he was constantly sprinkling his speech with “gonna” and “wanna”? Her father may have been Puerto Rican, but he’d also been one of the finest surgeons at Saint Mary’s. Her mother—as she’d very nearly blurted—taught English literature at NYU. Toni had grown up hearing both languages, and she spoke both fluently and flawlessly. Her English had no trace of an accent, nor did her Spanish. She was proud of her parents. The past had taught her that nothing was more dangerous than an ignorant bigot.
Unless it was being kidnapped in the middle of the night by a hit man. She shook her head slowly as she walked with him back toward the car. Months of lurking around courtrooms and reputed mob hangouts had given her a lot to work with. Nothing, though, had prepared her for this. When she’d followed Vincent Pascorelli from the jail, she’d expected to see him meet with one of Taranto’s men, maybe even Fat Lou himself. She hadn’t expected to get a front-row seat at a contract killing.
She glanced again at her captor. His London Fog trench coat hung open, and his tailored three-piece suit was soaked—ruined, she hoped. At least he still had his shoes on. If he hadn’t been so damn big, she might have managed to get away from him. She supposed she’d have to make the best of it until she had another opportunity. She was beginning to believe he wasn’t going to kill her. It made no sense, but he’d have done it by now if he were going to.
Her foot came down on something sharp, and she winced. The only things between her sensitive feet and the littered ground were the remnants of her stockings—not exactly prime footwear. She lifted her foot, jerked her hand from his and ran her fingers over the arch. No cut. She supposed she’d live. He watched her, his dark brows drawn together over his narrowed eyes, as she put her foot down again.
The next thing she knew, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her. When she tried to fight him, his powerful arms tightened and she gave it up. The guy was just too big. She sat still and grated her teeth. His jaw was set, she noticed. Did he find this as distasteful as she did, then? He carried her as if she weighed no more than that gun of his. She wished she was eighty pounds overweight. She wished carrying her would give him a hernia.
This close he wasn’t as frightening. Big, yes, but that hardness to his face was only in the expression. He’d lose the hardened-criminal look the minute he smiled, she thought. She could see the shadow of a beard darkening his jaw. As they moved past the glow of the car’s headlights, she saw his thick lips and the cleft in the center of the upper one, which gave it a sensual shape—when he wasn’t snarling. He wasn’t so mean, she told herself. He wasn’t half as scary as he probably thought he was. He could’ve killed her. He hadn’t. He could’ve roughed her up, slapped her around until she was ready to do whatever he said. He hadn’t. Hell, he couldn’t even make her walk barefoot over a lot of broken glass and litter.
When he dropped her onto the passenger seat, slammed her door and started around to his side of the car, she thought about yanking the door open and running again. He must’ve seen it in her face, because he tapped the window with the gun barrel and shook his head. In another second he was behind the wheel.
He drove fast, but not recklessly, away from the city. The headlights barely cut a path through the pouring rain. She watched him often. He didn’t look her way at all.
He’d driven in silence for forty-five minutes before she drummed up the nerve to ask, “Where do you live? Tibet?”
His brows went up, and he glanced at her briefly before returning his attention to the highway. “It isn’t much farther.”
He took the next exit, and they spent ten minutes negotiating side roads before finally pulling up to a tall iron gate. He took a remote control from the dash and thumbed a button. The gate swung open and they drove through. It closed smoothly behind them. The house that loomed ahead was a fieldstone monstrosity. It towered, three stories of it, and all of them the color of mud.
He thumbed another button when they drew near, and an overhead door rose. The headlights pierced the black interior of the garage. He pulled the car in, shut it off and closed the door. They sat in total darkness. “Don’t go nuts on me,” he said, his voice very low, as if he thought someone might be listening. “This is for your own good.”
She stiffened in anticipation, but he had her wrists quickly imprisoned in one huge hand. His other hand smoothed something sticky over her mouth. Tape! She heard his door open. He pulled her across the seat to get out the same side he had. He kept hold of her wrists and managed to stay far enough ahead of her to avoid her attempts at kicking him. A lot of good it would’ve done, she thought miserably. She was barefoot.
He hauled her forward, flung open a door and drew her through it. She was in a kitchen, dim but not dark. The impression she had was of shiny copper and chrome. He tugged her through another door and along a hallway. She glimpsed a huge formal dining room to the left, and what might be a library to the right. He moved too quickly, his long legs eating up the distance as she stumbled in his wake. Another doorway, and she would have gasped if she could, at the living room. A marble-topped bar with crystal glasses suspended upside-down from a rack above it. Brass-legged coffee tables and end tables with glass surfaces. White marble sculptures stood on every one of them: a rearing stallion, a Bengal tiger, Pan with his pipes. The ceilings were stucco, and there was a chandelier with crystal droplets turning slowly. Money, the place seemed to say. Not in a whisper, but loud and clear.
He pulled her at a frantic pace over the plush carpet that felt like heaven to her frozen, bruised feet. She saw a foyer beyond a mammoth archway and what she took to be the front entrance. She paused for a moment, frowning, her body jerking forward again when he yanked her hands. She’d caught an unnatural glimmer from the left eye of the bear’s head mounted on one wall. It caught her attention immediately, and when she looked at it, she realized that the two eyes didn’t quite match. Because one of them concealed the lens of a video camera. She’d been at this game too long not to spot surveillance devices as obvious as that one. The question was, who did the big lug want to watch? Or was someone watching him? Did he even know the thing was there?
Her pondering was cut short when they came to a broad staircase and he pulled her up it behind him. At the top they veered down a hall and mounted still another staircase, this one steep and narrow. At the top of that,
another hall, nearly pitch-dark, and through a doorway into what might have been a study. There was a desk silhouetted in the darkness. Other shapes loomed, but she didn’t have time to identify them. He drew her right up to a bookcase at the far end of the room and he did something to it. Suddenly it swung inward just like a door. She felt her eyes widen in fear. Gangsters and hit men she could deal with. Not secret passages in creepy old houses, though. No way. She braced her feet and resisted, but he pulled her hard and she stumbled through into total blackness. The bookcase door closed.
What was this? Was she in some cobwebbed and rat-infested partition between the walls? Was he going to entomb her here and leave her to die where no one could hear her screams? God, this was like something Poe might have written. He dropped her hands and moved away from her, and she shot forward, simultaneously ripping the tape from her mouth, regardless of the sting. She grabbed for his arm, and when she touched it with her groping hand, she clung. “Don’t leave me in here. You can’t…”
She stopped when she heard the soft click and the room was flooded with light. She blinked and saw that she’d been acting like an idiot. She released his arm and looked around. This was a compact living room, with a small camelback sofa and a couple of chairs in a soft fawn brown, a carpet a shade lighter, a stereo system on a shelf near one wall and a good-sized television beside it. Off to her right was a tiny kitchenette. To her left was an open door, beyond which she saw a king-size bed.
She heard his deep sigh when he crossed to the sofa, no longer concerned about her getting away, it seemed. He sunk down as if exhausted and leaned his head back. His hair was no longer combed down gangster style. The rain, combined with wrestling her so many times in the past hour, had it curling over his forehead as crazily as her own. It was dark brown, like sable, and still damp.
She studied him, her fear nearly drowned out by her boundless curiosity. “What kind of a setup is this?”
“What’s your name?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard her question.
She hugged herself as a full-body shudder raced through her. She hesitated over that question. If he knew who she was, he’d change his mind about keeping her alive in a hurry. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to tell him her true name.
“Antonia Veronica Rosa del Rio.” She pronounced it with the smooth Spanish accent she used when she wanted to impress someone…or confuse someone. As far as recognition went, she knew there would be none. It was a far cry from her pseudonym, Toni Rio.
His stern expression changed. He seemed amused. The hard lines in his face eased, and his lips curved upward at the corners. “I guess I don’t need to ask if you’re making it up.” He tipped his head back and regarded the ceiling. “Antonia Veronica Rosa del Rio,” he mused. “What do your friends call you?”
“Irrelevant, since you’re no friend of mine.”
His head came down, and he fixed her to the spot with deep brown eyes. In this light she could see the tiger stripes surrounding his pupils. “Glad you realize it, Antonia.” He watched her for a minute longer. “You’re shivering,” he said at length. He nodded toward the bedroom door. “Bathroom’s through there. I’d suggest a hot bath and some sleep. You can use one of my robes.”
“¡Que cara!”
His brows went up. “Problem?”
“I’d sooner stay wet, than—than…” She was shaking harder now, and it wasn’t entirely from the cold. He was big. Not big like some guys were big; this guy was big like Schwarzenegger. When he started talking about baths and sleeping and her wearing his robe…well, maybe she was a little more afraid of him than she’d thought. After all, they were alone here. They were isolated, cut off from the world.
He stood slowly, and came closer until he was only inches from her. He towered over her, making her feel as small as a child. Her pride wouldn’t let her back down. Her gaze stayed on the tie he’d yanked loose. Her lungs slowly filled with his scent and that of the rain on his body.
“Look at me, Antonia.” She did. She didn’t like looking into those eyes from such a small distance, so she tried focusing on the lips. The sensual curl of them made them more disturbing. “If you don’t get out of those wet clothes,” he told her, “you are likely to catch pneumonia. I’m not in any position to take you to a hospital, so I can’t allow that to happen. Now, are you going to take them off, or am I?”
She tried to swallow and couldn’t. She wanted to move away from him, but her feet seemed to have grown to the floor. He took her inaction for defiance. She knew it when he shrugged as if it made no difference to him and reached up to release the top button of her blouse. She drew a calming breath and told herself to move. He released the second button. At the third, his fingertips brushed over the mound of her breasts, deliberately, she was certain. The way he slowed his movements, made them a caress, was a dead giveaway. The contact shocked her out of her momentary paralysis. She balled up one hand, drew back and let him have a left hook he wouldn’t soon forget. When he rocked from the impact, she whirled and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door and leaning back against it. She was certain he’d come after her, and God only knew what he’d do.
Chapter 2
Nick stared at the door, rubbing his jaw. She’d surprised him more than she’d hurt him. A grudging smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he shook his head slowly. Damned if he’d come across many men who’d slug a guy his size—let alone one who happened to be packing a 9 mm automatic. This mite of a woman didn’t hesitate. She was gutsy; there was no denying it.
At least he’d managed to figure out what she reacted to. He’d been worried for a while. His gun hadn’t seemed to intimidate her, or his size, or his best street-thug imitation. When he touched her, though, that was a whole other story. When he’d trailed the backs of his fingers over her breast, she’d gone three shades whiter. Her pupils had dilated until her irises vanished. Then she’d decked him. So he’d learned two valuable methods of dealing with his little Gypsy. He could intimidate her with sexual innuendo, and he’d better duck whenever he found it necessary to do so—because it scared her. He didn’t imagine there were many things that did.
Nick tore his gaze from the door and glanced around the room. She’d be safe here, and no threat to his cover. He unplugged the phone, wound the cord around it and tucked it under the couch. He’d take it downstairs later, while she slept. He double-checked the door—the only way out of this hidden apartment. It could only be opened by pressing the right combination of numbered buttons on the panel beside it. A light would flash and an alarm would sound if anyone tampered with the lock, so there was no chance of her getting away.
He felt a momentary pang, but he forced it aside. It wasn’t difficult. What he was doing was far too important to put it at risk just for one woman. So she’d be scared for a while. So her family would go nuts worrying about her. So what? Kids were dying every day, and Lou Taranto was as responsible for that as if he were choking the life out of them with his own fat hands. Nick’s own brother…No. He wouldn’t think about Danny—not now.
Too late, a voice whispered from within, and the memories crashed over his mind like a flash flood.
Nick squeezed the limp hand tighter, as though he could squeeze the life back into it. “Don’t die on me, man. You’re all I got, Danny, hold on. Hold on for your kid brother.”
Blue eyes opened, but they were filmy—glazed. “S-sorry, Nicky…let you down…you kep’ tellin’ me…poison, man…poison.”
Sirens screamed nearer, louder, until they tore Nick’s brain apart with their noise. The wind blew like frozen death into the condemned, rat-infested heap the Cobras called their own. No one who stood there now wore the colors. Danny’s “brothers” had run off, and left him there to die alone. Nick didn’t know what kind of garbage Danny had OD’ed on, but he knew where it had come from. He reached down to brush an auburn tangle from Danny’s forehead. Danny had all the Irish blood in him, from their mother. Fiona had walked out two years ago—just left. Th
ey didn’t need her, though. They had each other. Nick was the image of their father, but he didn’t want to be. A. J. Manelli was doing eight to fifteen in Attica. They didn’t need him, either.
“Help’s here, Danny. You hear me?” There were voices and thundering feet now. Flashing lights bathed the still face in color. Red and blue. The cops were here, too, then. Nick felt the dampness on his cheeks and swiped it away. “They’re here, Dann-o. It’s gonna be okay. You’ll be fine—home in time for your eighteenth. We’ll party like we planned. It’s gonna be okay.”
Only it wasn’t.
Nick shook himself free of the rage he’d felt in the months following Danny’s death. He’d blamed the gang, but he’d only been sixteen then. Street smart but naive. Those kids, he learned later, had been just like Danny. Young, cocky, following the pack. It was the filth responsible for bringing the drugs into the country—into the streets—who ought to pay.
“And pay he will,” Nick muttered. “If it causes an inconvenience to one sloe-eyed spitfire, well that’s just too damn bad.”
He realized that water was running into the tub. She was going to take that hot bath he’d suggested. He frowned. He hadn’t expected her to comply quite so easily. Maybe he’d scared her more than he thought. He told himself that was a good thing. She’d be more cooperative, and a hell of a lot less trouble, if she were afraid of him. God help him if she ever got it in her head that he was all bark and no bite. She was cocky enough as it was. She wouldn’t be, though, if she had a clue about how much trouble she was in. Nobody—nobody—eyeballed Viper and lived to tell. That Lou Taranto had trusted Nick enough to send him along on one of Viper’s hits was the best thing that had happened since Nick had come in. To think it had all nearly gone to hell because some dusky Latin beauty happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time!
Reckless Angel Page 2