by Jo Leigh
He’d been so scared. Like nothing he could remember.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“I’m still in the hospital.”
“Yep.” He’d been getting fresh ice all night, in case she woke up. He’d filled the cup only a half hour ago. Giving her a spoonful, he marveled again at how small she was. The lengths he would go to to keep her safe.
“What time is it?”
“Almost seven.”
“AM or PM?”
“Morning. You slept through the night.”
“Did you get any rest?”
“Enough.”
“Liar.”
“Hey.”
She smiled at him. That alone made the uncomfortable night worth it.
“I want to sit up.”
“Tell you what. You let me get the nurse in here, then we’ll see.”
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever you say.”
Bax was thrown out of the room as the nurse attended to Mia. He couldn’t make phone calls in the hallway so he went to the waiting room. He called Piper. They’d spoken last night, and he’d promised her word first thing. Then he called Grunwald.
The CSI guys had combed the whole damn garage, but they hadn’t found the bullet or a casing. So they had nothing. No one seemed to know why Mia had been in that part of the garage, and the doctor had said she might never remember.
His gut told him it was Oscar Weinberg who ordered the hit. He didn’t believe that oaf would do the shooting himself, but damn it, she’d gotten too close when she found those memory cards.
By this time, Weinberg had probably ditched them. Even if Bax could get a search warrant, he was damn sure he’d come up empty.
Not that he could afford to eliminate Danny Austen or Nan Collins from his list of suspects, but neither of them seemed as likely as Oscar.
Bax wanted to go straight to the hotel and put a bullet through the fat fuck’s head, but he wouldn’t. He’d follow the rules because that’s what he did. But there wasn’t going to be a thing he didn’t know about Weinberg. Not one thing. And he would be there to watch as they led him to prison.
“Detective?”
It was the nurse.
“How is she?”
“Remarkably well. Rounds have already started, so the doctor will be in soon. But I can’t see why she’d need to stay here. She’ll have to take it easy, and you’ll have to watch her for the next few days, but she should be able to go home.”
“Are you sure? If there’s any risk—”
“The doctor will fill you in on what to look for.”
“Thanks,” he said, wondering how in hell he was going to take care of her and solve the damn case at the same time. He’d figure something out.
Before he went back to her room, he got another cup of ice and yet another coffee. Mia smiled at him, and she looked so good sitting up that several of the knots in his neck released their hold. The only evidence that she’d been hurt was a goose egg that was thankfully much reduced from the night before. There was a bandage on her shoulder, of course, but she looked great. Beautiful. Alive.
Just then, the doctor came, trailed by his posse of medical students, their white coats and stethoscopes bright in the light from the window.
He went into the hall again, wishing he’d brought his coffee. Leaning against the pale-blue wall he thought about what to do with her. He didn’t want her to go to her apartment. Going to his apartment didn’t make much sense, either. Maybe she could stay with one of her friends. He didn’t think her parents were in New York, but if all else failed, he’d ship her to them.
He checked his watch three times before the doctors left, and craned to hear what he could. Turns out he needn’t have bothered as the doctor et al called him in and explained everything he’d need to know. What to look for, when to give her the antibiotics, all of it. He’d given Mia a prescription for pain pills, too, but he didn’t think she’d need them past today. Finally, they were alone again.
“I get to go home.”
He nodded as he sat. “We need to talk about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you to be alone,” he said.
The light in her eyes faded a bit. “Someone really tried to kill me.”
“I’m going to find out who.”
“I just—” She stopped, her gaze on the door.
He turned to see Piper Devon carrying a Barneys bag. She was a stunning woman, one who commanded attention even when stock still and silent. She had that rarefied air about her, the kind that comes with a lifetime of money and breeding.
“May I come in?”
Bax stood, pulled the chair back a bit and waited for Mia’s boss to sit down.
“I brought you some things,” Piper said. “I figured you wouldn’t have much to wear.” She held up the bag. “It should do for today.”
Mia’s cheer had disappeared and her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t shoot yourself,” Piper said kindly.
“There are things you don’t know.”
Ms. Devon sighed. “You mean about you going into Mr. Weinberg’s suite? About your resignation?”
“How did you—”
“You dropped your letter in the garage. I have to say, going into the suite wasn’t your most shining moment. But no, I’m not going to accept your resignation.”
Mia looked from Piper to Bax and back again. The tears that had threatened glided down her soft cheeks. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you were trying to help, and more than that, I know you won’t do anything remotely like that again, yes?”
“Never.”
“Then it’s settled.” Piper turned to Bax. “I’m going to put her up at the hotel, Detective. I’ve arranged to have her guarded until you find out who did this to her.”
“That’s great,” Bax said. “I can keep my eye on her, too.”
“I assumed,” Piper said, then she turned back to Mia. “You’re going to stay in that room until there’s no more danger, right? No more trying to solve mysteries, no more walking in on actors unannounced?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Since you’re being released, why don’t you get dressed and we’ll get you to the hotel. I’ve got the limo downstairs.” Piper left the bag on the bed, then went into the hall.
“Oh, Bax,” Mia whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
“You’re lucky,” he said. “In so many ways.”
She sniffed, and wiped her cheeks with her hands, wincing as she lifted her left arm.
“Do you need help getting dressed?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Yell when you’re ready,” he said.
Piper met him in the hallway, and for the next twenty minutes he ran down every lead, every rumor and every possibility. Then, after telling him that her decision not to fire Mia had more to do with the hotel’s reputation than being a nice person, she asked him if he could catch the bad guy.
“I will,” he said. “Count on it.”
10
THE PILLS, AND MIA COULDN’T remember the name of them, worked really, really well. Or maybe her pain had been lifted out of the sheer joy she felt that she wasn’t fired.
Probably the pills, though.
The limo ride back to Hush was sweet and quiet. Quiet because she was afraid of saying something stupid. Sweet because Bax held her hand the whole way.
The dress Piper had brought her fit like a dream and didn’t even need to be hemmed. It occurred to her that perhaps it had been purchased from the kid’s department. Didn’t matter. It was simple and easy to wear and she thanked God she’d shaved her legs this morning. Uh, yesterday morning. Yesterday, before she’d been shot.
It still felt so odd. Her. Shot. With a gun. Someone wanted her dead, and now she was moving into a room at the hotel to be safe.
Surreal didn’t even begin to describe it.
/> They reached the hotel and from what Mia could see, there was no filming going on. At least not outside. Perhaps they were inside, in Exhibit A. Or a location away from the hotel. She doubted they had called things off because of the shooting.
Piper accompanied them to the front desk. Mia could tell everyone wanted to ask her questions, find out how she was, but nobody spoke because, well, of Piper. She picked up the key they had ready, then turned to Bax. “Take Mia up. There’s everything she’ll need for awhile. I suggest you get some rest yourself. You look like hell.”
“Thanks. For everything.”
“Find this bastard,” she said. “Put him away forever.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Piper gave Mia a pointed look. “Don’t do anything dumb.” Then she left, heading back toward the front entrance.
“That was very cool.” Mia thought about taking Bax’s hand again, but didn’t.
“Let’s go.” He walked her to the elevator, then pressed the button for the 14th floor.
“What’s the room number?”
“1406.”
“That’s not a room. That’s a suite.”
“Really?”
Mia nodded, but that pulled on her shoulder and made her head feel weird. “This is unbelievably generous. You know how much those suites go for?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I don’t remember. But it’s oodles and oodles.” She turned to him, which wasn’t so simple. She had to turn from the waist up. Then, because she liked the sound of it, she said it again. “Oodles. Oodles and oodles. What are you giggling about?”
“I don’t giggle.”
“Sounded like a giggle to me.”
“It was a manly chortle.”
“Ha,” she said, then faced the elevator door again. “Chortle my behind.”
He did it again. A verifiable giggle.
“I’LL SLEEP LATER,” Bax said, anxious to get down to his office and talk to Grunwald. A hell of a lot had happened since the shooting, and he felt completely out of the loop. Not that he would have done anything differently, but now was not the time to lie down.
“You have to sleep, even if it’s just for a twenty-minute power nap.” Mia gave him her puppy-eyed stare. “Please?”
She was in bed, with a bottle of designer water on the night table, along with a small bowl of fresh fruit and the TV remote. Her cell phones were both on the bed next to her. The only thing he hadn’t wanted within reach was the bottle of pain pills. They worked, all right, but she was loopy from them. What she needed was rest.
At least here, in the security of the suite with the guard on duty just outside the door, she wouldn’t have to be scared. And he could concentrate on the case instead of worrying every minute about her safety.
But damn, the bed looked big and soft and it was tempting as hell. “I’ll come back in an hour. That’s when you’re supposed to have your next antibiotic, anyway. I’ll rethink sleep then.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. “I’m going to call you in one hour and annoy you until you climb into this bed. You hear me?”
He did. His gaze shifted to the armoire. It was closed, and he hadn’t seen inside it. But he knew what was hiding. What waited. What he was a callous, insensitive bastard for even thinking about.
Which was just another reason for him to get the hell out of here. Away from sex cabinets and loopy women. “Rest. Heal. I’ll be back in an hour.”
She smiled at him. “I brushed my teeth.”
That stopped him. “That’s great.”
“I mean, before I got into bed. I’m minty fresh now.”
He moved a bit closer to her, wondering if he should be worried. “Minty fresh is good.”
Her sigh was twice as big as she was. “So if a person, say a person who’d saved another person’s life, wanted to kiss a person, it would be okay because that person had brushed her teeth.”
“Ah.”
“Geez. Talk about slow.”
“I don’t know, Mia. There’s still the case and—”
“We almost lost me yesterday. Do you think it’s smart to put this off?”
He opened his mouth, but whatever he was going to say vanished in light of her statement. So he did what he probably should have done when he’d first had the urge. He touched her cheek with his palm then took her in a kiss that made more sense than anything had in years. She was, indeed, minty fresh.
If anyone had accused him of tearing up, he would have denied it to the death, but damn it, he was glad she was here.
When he finally pulled back and looked into her dark eyes, the small remnants of his doubts and reasons became like dust on the wind. He kissed her forehead, glad there was no fever, glad she didn’t hurt too badly, and very glad that this was where he’d return to when the workday ended.
“Be careful out there,” she whispered. “Someone’s playing for keeps.”
“You have my word.”
BAX LOOKED AT HIS NOTES, worried that if he didn’t transcribe them now, he wouldn’t be able to read his own writing. But Mia was upstairs needing her medicine. He closed his notebook and left.
The call had been helpful. Very helpful. That, connected with the memory cards Mia had found in Weinberg’s suite had helped him paint a picture. A story, he believed, which began in 2001 in Churubusco movie studio in Mexico.
There were still missing pieces, and he still couldn’t put the knife that killed Gerry Geiger in the hand of the killer, or say for certain who had shot Mia, but he knew that not many of these movie people were innocent. Murder, blackmail, collusion all leading back to one primary motive—money. Money for private jets and fancy suites and yachts in Cannes and all the other bullshit that made small men feel big.
It was the same motive that kept gangs in business despite the human toll. The same thing that made one guy beat up another guy at a bar.
Mia was finished as his informant, finished as everything but patient until this mess was over. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk things through with her. Get her opinion. She was smart and she understood these particular baddies better than he did. She was around celebrities and high society on a daily basis, while Bax did his best to avoid those kind of folks.
She’d be a good sounding board. Even if the medicine did make her a little nuts.
He was relieved to find the security guard awake and alert by the suite. He’d have to remember to get the guy something to eat, if Piper hadn’t already seen to it.
It only took a minute to discover that meals and everything else had been handled by one of Piper’s assistants. Good to know.
Bax used his key and entered the suite as quietly as possible. If Mia was sleeping, he wasn’t about to wake her.
He hadn’t really looked at the room, well rooms, that Piper had so generously given. They were ridiculously elegant with an unbelievable view of Manhattan. The floor was gold and black tile, the couches made of some shimmery material he didn’t recognize. Everything was gold, green or black, and while he wouldn’t have thought that could work, work it did.
No detail had been left untended. Fresh flowers filled black vases. A fantastic assortment of beverages and snacks filled the large pantry. The TV on the wall was at least fifty-two inches of flat-panel luxury.
But nothing could hold his attention like the woman in the bedroom. He made his way to the door and peeked in. Mia was nestled in a cocoon of pillows, her dark hair messy and sexy against the pure white of the sheets. She wasn’t sleeping, but she hadn’t seen him yet, which was just fine, at least for now.
It was easy to see that the doctors had done a good job with her. She wasn’t feverish or too uncomfortable. On the contrary, she looked relaxed. Dazzling.
He’d thought a lot about what she’d said. They had almost lost her. A few inches over and she would have been a goner. Lost forever. And he would have been heartbroken, not just with guilt, but with remorse.
This woman, this slip of a girl, w
as something special. Something he’d never thought he’d encounter. He might have been a fan of romantic literature, but he’d treated it as fiction. As unlikely to occur in his life as encountering Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.
And there she was. She’d turned his head. Tweaked his heart. He wanted to know everything there was to know about her. Everything she loved or hated. What she tasted like, and how she sounded when she made love.
He would have set about to do just that, if he wasn’t so worried about hurting her. She’d been shot less than twenty-four hours ago. He wasn’t about to send her to the hospital just because he was horny.
“Are you ever going to come in?” she said.
He should have known. “I was watching you,” he said.
“I know. You were also thinking, and that has me worried.”
“Not as worried as I am. How do you feel?”
“I’m sore, but I’ll live.”
“You need a pill?”
She moved her head a bit. “Yeah, I think so. If I don’t move I seem to be okay. Although now that I’m thinking about it, it kind of throbs. See what happens when people think?”
“Throbbing occurs?”
“Very funny, Detective.”
He got her medicine from the dresser and made sure she had a full bottle of water. Then he hovered as she drank.
“One more thing,” she said as she handed him the almost empty bottle.
“Your wish is my command.”
“Help me get up. I need to go to the bathroom.”
“You should have called me earlier.”
“I didn’t need to go earlier.”
He put her good arm around his shoulder as he helped her to her feet. Once up, she seemed quite capable of handling things. At least that’s what he interpreted from the slap she gave his butt.
“It’s time for your nap,” she said. “When I get back, it’s lights out, mister.”
“It’s only four-thirty.”
“Oh. Then order yourself some dinner, then it’s bedtime for real.”