by Karen Leabo
“Would ya look at that.”
Ryan Mulvaney glanced up from the early edition of tomorrow’s paper without much interest. He’d just spent a fruitless day trying to track down a certain prostitute who allegedly had an ongoing relationship with a certain well-known police official. But the prostitute, if she really existed, was more slippery than any politician he’d ever interviewed. Everyone on the street had heard of her, a few claimed to have met her or said things like “She’s a good friend of my friend Angie.” But no one could tell Ryan where to find her.
Exhausted, frustrated, he’d stopped in the first beer joint he saw, to knock down a cold one before heading home. Not a pretty place. Johnny’s was the type of bar that didn’t look too kindly on strangers.
But he wasn’t in the mood to be challenged, either. The regulars threw him a few suspicious looks, but when he glared right back at them, they kept their distance.
The man who’d spoken was standing in the open doorway, watching something in the street. Ryan dismissed him, resuming his perusal of the paper, grinning slightly as he skimmed over his own story. He loved that byline: Ryan Mulvaney, Special to the Guardian. Resigning his staff reporter’s job had seemed a difficult decision at the time, but freelancing was actually a lot more fun than being a staffer, even if the income was slightly... unpredictable.
Four guys had gathered at the doorway. They were all watching something in the street, adding their whistles and jeers.
Curiosity piqued, Ryan stood and sauntered to the door. He edged his way in front of the other men. And what he saw made him look twice.
An extraordinary-looking woman in a torn, soiled red cocktail dress was fighting off what looked like an entire gang. The teenagers wore Pit Bull colors-Ryan’s gut immediately tightened with an instinctual reaction—but by the looks of them they were junior members. The woman was barefoot, and she swayed on her feet like she was drunk.
A prostitute who’d bitten off more than she could chew. That was Ryan’s first thought. But something was out of kilter. That dress...and she certainly didn’t have the hardbitten look that a hooker in these parts would have.
Without considering the consequences of his actions, he strode out into the street, right up to the woman.
The gangbangers looked at him, surprised.
“You having problems, honey?”
“Sure am.” She dragged those two words out into several syllables. “They won’ let me leave. I di’n ask ’em to walk with me.” She considered him with bleary blue eyes. Then she smiled. “Oh, hi, Sam.”
He put his arm around her shoulder. She immediately plunked her head against his chest. “C’mon, honey,” he said. “Time to take you home. You’ve had a little too much to drink.”
The biggest of the thugs walked up to Ryan, chest puffed out. “She yours, man?”
“Ah, yeah.” For the moment.
“Wanta sell her?”
Ryan tried not to let his revulsion show. He knew all about the sexual habits of the Pit Bulls, but it never ceased to shock him that such things went on, mostly unchallenged. His own sister... But he wouldn’t think about that, now. It always angered him to think about her wasted life, and he needed a cool head.
Knowing these guys probably had weapons—knives, if not guns—he put on a brave front. “I’ve been tempted from time to time, but no, I think I’ll keep her.” He stared at the others one at a time, daring them to contradict him, praying they wouldn’t recognize him. Not much chance of that, really; these guys had still been in nursery school when Ryan raked the Pit Bulls over the coals in a series of shocking articles.
“That’s nice of you, Sam,” the woman murmured. “To keep me, that is.”
One by one, the gang members drifted away, with hard, parting stares. His arm still around the woman’s shoulders, Ryan turned and started down the sidewalk. She stumbled along with him. She didn’t smell too good, he noticed, but she also didn’t smell like booze.
“What’re you on, honey?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
Great. “What’s your name?”
“Ummmm, Chris—Chrissy.”
“Do you have a last name?”
She mumbled something that sounded like “Green,” but he couldn’t be sure.
“Well, Chris-Chrissy, I think I should take you home before you get into real trouble. Where do you live?”
“One-three-five... Are you a p’liceman?”
“No. Why?”
“’Cause I’m not going to give my address to just anyone. I learned that in kindergarten.”
“How about a general neighborhood, then?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Capitol Heights.”
Yeah, right. And he lived at the White House. They’d reached his car. He unlocked the passenger door of his ice blue Vette, relieved vandals hadn’t bothered it. The car parked next to his had a flat tire and a broken headlight.
“In you go.”
She more or less fell into the seat. He lifted her feet, which were encased in torn stockings, and tucked them in, noticing the firm muscles of her calves and her perfect pedicure. He touched the hem of the red dress. Silk. He would have bet her undies were Dior, too.
As he walked around to the driver’s side, he noticed a scruffy-looking man standing several yards away, staring like he wished he could take a picture. He didn’t look like a gang member—too old, too ragged—but he could be. Ryan shrugged. Who wouldn’t stare at his newfound companion ?
He slid behind the wheel and helped her with her seat belt. “What happened to you, lady?” he wondered aloud. “How in the hell did someone like you end up in this neighborhood? You could have been killed, you know. Raped, killed, thrown in the Potomac.” He felt a sudden surge of protectiveness toward her, mixed with anger. “If you’re going to do drugs, at least do them with people you trust, in a place that’s safe.”
“I don’t do drugs,” she said, sounding bewildered. “If you’re going to yell at me, I’m leaving.” She reached for the door handle, but he’d locked the door, and she couldn’t figure that out. Neither could she unfasten the seat belt.
She was sound asleep within three blocks. He should take her to a hospital, he decided. Turn her over to the authorities and be done with it. But his reporter’s instincts were kicking in. Who was this mystery woman, and how had she landed in such a predicament?
Ryan could already see a fuzzy headline: The Decadent Underworld: Washington’s Rich Risk Their Lives Living in the Fast Lane.
At a stoplight, he reached over and felt for the woman’s pulse. Her skin was smooth, the heartbeat strong, if slightly accelerated. Her breathing was deep and even. He decided she wasn’t in any immediate physical danger. He would take her home with him, wait for her to sleep off whatever she was on, then pump her for information.
Because of rush-hour traffic, it took him a full forty-five minutes to get home to his apartment in Georgetown. During that time, “Chrissy” stirred often, murmuring strange and intriguing phrases.
“And how much can we count on from you?”
“Not much, I assure you,” Ryan responded dryly, “unless you give me something in return.”
“Were you at the Swiss embassy party last Tuesday night?”
“Sure.” Like any reporter had been allowed into that bash. “Were you there?”
But she wasn’t hearing him. She was carrying on some imaginary conversation with someone in her head. “I thought so. I remember that darling mustache. So, tell me, who do you favor among the Republicans?”
Ryan rubbed his bare upper lip. She definitely wasn’t talking to him. “Personally, I like Adlai Stevenson.”
She giggled. Her eyes were firmly closed. “You’re so funny. But I’m engaged, you know. You shouldn’t stand so close to me, or people will talk.”
Engaged, huh? Figured. Probably had a rich fiancé who supplied her with all the dope she wanted. Bastard. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place her. But the
political beat had never been his thing. He was a crime reporter. Occasionally he ran across dirt on the Washington crowd and dutifully reported it, but he certainly wasn’t on a first-name basis with the D.C. glitterati.
As he pulled into the covered parking behind his apartment building, it suddenly occurred to him that he would have to sneak Chrissy past his landlady, Mrs. Reiser. He loved his old brownstone apartment, which had once been his aunt’s. All his neighbors were elderly and quiet, and most of the time it didn’t bother him that his landlady held certain rather antiquated ideas about houseguests of the opposite sex and the appropriate hours for entertaining. Actually, Mrs. Reiser’s rules came in handy when he needed to get rid of some clinging woman who’d misinterpreted his flirtation.
But right now, those rules were a pain.
Ryan walked around to the other side of the car and opened the door. He intended to simply throw Chrissy over his shoulder, fireman-style, and carry her up the back stairs to his third-floor balcony. But the moment he opened the door, she woke up.
“Hi,” she said with a ditzy smile.
“Good morning.” He freed her from the seat belt and hauled her onto her unsteady feet.
She looked around at the encroaching darkness. “It’s morning already? My, I never slept so fast.”
He laughed. “It’s evening. Time for all good girls to be fast asleep.”
“Surely not before they eat. I don’t think I’ve eaten in days.”
Yeah? Too busy cramming stuff up your nose? He bit his tongue. Had to keep on the good side of Miss Manners here. He eyed the broken glass in the parking lot, then swept Chrissy and her bare feet up in his arms.
She wound her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder in a trusting, childlike way that hit him right in his gut. Why should she trust him? He could be a sadistic rapist, for all she knew. Thank God he’d seen her when he did, or she’d be at the mercy of those punks right now. He’d seen the work they could do. He shivered.
All right, now to ease past Mrs. Reiser’s first-floor apartment. He could have come up the front where there weren’t as many windows, but the old lady was no doubt watching the front entrance. He couldn’t come in that way without her pretending to walk into the hall for something and quizzing him about his day.
When he reached the bottom of the back stairs, he set Chrissy down. “Think you can walk a little farther?”
“Sure. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Great.” He took her by the hand and led her onward and upward. “Tiptoes, now.”
Without warning, Chrissy broke into song, belting out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”
Ryan clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shh! You’ll wake the neighbors.”
“But I want to sing,” she protested. “I can’t remember the last time I did, but it sure feels good.”
“Hey,” Mrs. Reiser’s thickly accented voice boomed from behind French doors, “who’s out dere?”
“Oh, now you’ve done it.” Ryan grabbed Chrissy around the hips and hoisted her over his shoulder, then took the stairs two at a time.
“What—” she started to protest.
“Quiet. We’re almost there.” He was panting like a dog by the time he reached his own balcony. Thank God he hadn’t thought to fasten the dead bolt. He opened the French doors with his key and carried Chrissy safely inside, where he dumped her on his sofa with a sigh of relief. She was a slender woman, but she had to be at least five-foot-eight, and he didn’t have the stamina he used to when he was a young reporter, chasing thugs down alleys and over fences.
“Would you like to lie down and take a nap?” he asked his guest.
“Mmm...” Her eyes were already closed. “Where’s the bedroom?”
“I, um, thought you wouldn’t mind sleeping on the couch.” After all, a few minutes ago she’d been snoozing just fine in a bucket seat.
“Okay.” But she opened her eyes. “Bathroom?”
Lord, he hoped she wasn’t going to get sick. “This way,” he said on a sigh, leading her to his old-fashioned bathroom, with its ball-and-claw-footed tub. While she was busy, he went for the white pages. A quick perusal yielded no Chrissy or Christine Green, especially not. in Capitol . Heights. She probably had an unlisted number, he reasoned.
He gave her ten minutes in the bathroom. When she didn’t reappear, he went looking for her. Water was running. He rapped sharply on the door. “Chrissy?”
No answer.
She hadn’t locked the door. He cracked it open. She was in the tub, her hair piled up in a sudsy bouffant. And she was fast asleep. Another couple of minutes and the tub would overflow. Or she would slip below the surface and contentedly drown.
He stepped inside and shut off the water, trying to peer between the bubbles at the languid form beneath the water. All right, not very gentlemanly. But what guy wouldn’t, especially after feeling her softness pressed against him as he carried her upstairs?
He grasped her bare shoulder and shook. “Chrissy? You have to wake up now.” But she was out, this time for good.
With a sigh, he began rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, tipping her head back so that the soap wouldn’t get in her eyes. As he held her, his hand at the back of her slender neck, he couldn’t help but be affected by her with a certain tightness in his nether regions.
The response got worse when he emptied the tub and pulled her naked body into his arms. He felt horribly guilty, getting hard for an inert woman. But she was gorgeous, perfectly formed in every respect, from her scalp to her polished toenails and everything in between. Probably kept in shape by constant trips to the health club, he reasoned. Aerobics and juice bars by day, coke and booze by night.
He carried her, dripping wet, to the bedroom, where he’d laid out several towels on the bed. He laid her down, then rubbed her dry, enjoying the rosy glow her skin took on. She looked healthy. Couldn’t deny that. Her pulse and her breathing were still within acceptable margins.
With a sigh of regret, he yanked the covers out from underneath her and covered her up. He even pushed a pillow under her head, though he doubted she knew the difference.
“Mmm, thank you. This champagne is delicious. Imported?”
“Yeah, imported,” he murmured. He was sorry to say he didn’t have anything in the refrigerator fancier than plain ol’ American beer. Boy, was this little rich girl in for a surprise when she found out how far she’d come down in the world.
Chapter 2
Christine woke up to the delicious smell of clean sheets and fresh coffee. She inhaled deeply, stretched...and then her eyes flew open and she gasped as memories of the kidnapping flooded her consciousness.
Where was she? What had happened to her bug-infested mattress and the rope around her wrists and...for heaven’s sake, what had happened to her clothes?
Think, Christine, think. Okay. She remembered the guy with the knife. She remembered the syringe, and her drop into the bushes from the second-story window. She remembered running, and talking to a wino. But after that, it all became a blur, then a blank.
God only knew where she’d gone or what she’d done after the drug took effect. She might have landed herself in a situation as bad as or worse than the one before, although, she thought as she gazed up at the gently turning ceiling fan, she certainly couldn’t fault the sleeping accommodations. She was in a queen-size bed with feather pillows and a down comforter. Her lack of clothing bothered her, but at least she was...she paused and smelled the skin on her arm, and a handful of her hair. Yes, she was clean!
And if she’d been violated, she didn’t remember. She didn’t feel any soreness, except for her jaw where the kidnapper had hit her, and her elbows where she’d fallen. She examined her body, finding no other new bruises. In fact, she felt pretty good. She wondered how long she’d slept.
If she could just find some clothes, now, she’d be out the first door she saw and on her way straight to the police. Dragging a sheet with her, she wiggled off
the side of the bed and tiptoed to a closet door. When she opened it, a variety of long-sleeved shirts greeted her. They were large—a man’s closet. She grabbed the closest shirt, a pale blue number with minuscule pinstripes, and shoved her arms into it. It reached midthigh. She fumbled with the buttons, rolled up the sleeves, then began looking for something she could cover up her bottom half with.
Abandoning the closet, she decided to investigate the chest of drawers. The top drawer yielded briefs and socks. She appropriated a pair of each and quickly donned them. It felt funny to put on men’s underwear, but hey, it did the job. She rummaged around in the other drawers until she found a pair of denim shorts. The fit wasn’t too bad. The guy who lived here must be pretty slim, she deduced. But with wide shoulders.
She was searching the closet again for a belt when she saw, in the mirror on the inside of the closet door, a face behind her. And what a face. The enormously attractive man was watching, looking faintly amused, as she rifled what were presumably his things.
She caught his gaze in the mirror, and her breath whooshed out of her lungs. “Hi.”
“You’re awake, I see.”
Mmm, his voice was like warm whiskey, deep and—Jeez, what was she thinking? This guy could be some hood off the street. She had a fuzzy memory of talking with some young men in leather jackets. “Where am I?” she asked, turning around to face him. He was wearing jeans and a sleeveless ribbed undershirt that clung to him as if it were painted on. Yum. Like some primitive construction worker or... Egad, she was doing it again.
“You’re at my house. You were pretty out of it last night.”
“And you are...?”
“Ryan Mulvaney. You were wandering the streets last night, in a real bad part of town. You’re lucky I found you. There were other... interested parties.”
She shivered, imagining. “Well, thank you, then.”
He acknowledged her gratitude with a nod. “There’s coffee ready in the kitchen. Don’t have much in the way of breakfast, but I could fix you some toast.”
“That sounds divine.” She looked down at herself. “I guess I should have asked before I borrowed your clothes, but frankly, I was a little disoriented when I woke up. I wasn’t sure I was safe.”