Ryan's Rescue

by Karen Leabo

  “To the rescue again. You okay?”

  “No! That man—” She turned to point at the culprit. He had straightened up, and was staring at her with such animosity that it took Ryan’s breath away.

  “Give her back to me,” the man said to Ryan. “She’s ours. We found her, we did all the work catching her in the first place.”

  Ryan didn’t remember seeing this particular man among the group of Pit Bulls he’d rescued Chrissy from yesterday, but the guy must have been there. A while ago, Ryan had called a friend of his who worked on the youth gang detail for the police department. He’d asked the friend to check and see what the word was on the street—whether the Pit Bulls had a vendetta against him for stealing Chrissy from them. He hadn’t gotten an answer yet, but he already strongly suspected what he would find out.

  The vendetta was staring him in the face.

  “You think she’s yours, huh?” Ryan said, using his rusty bravado from the days when he’d been a tough customer on the street himself. “I took her away, fair and square. And she wants to be with me, right, babe?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Christine murmured, clinging to Ryan, her gaze glued to the man.

  “Maybe this will change your mind,” the man said, pulling an object from his jacket pocket. A blue steel revolver. The gun didn’t look like some cheap Saturday night special, either. It was amazing what gangs were carrying these days. The only thing that puzzled Ryan was why this young man was working alone. Where was his backup? Gang members always traveled in packs.

  Instinctively Ryan pushed Chrissy behind him. “She’s not worth that, man.”

  “I think she is.” The man stepped closer, an inch at a time. Clearly, he intended to simply wrest Chrissy away from Ryan, using the gun as insurance.

  Ryan caught a movement from the corner of his eyes. Fran! If ever there was a time when her talent for stealthy movements would come in handy, this was it. No one else was on the street to witness the assault. Even if there was, Ryan wasn’t sure anyone would care. Fran was his best hope.

  She sneaked up behind the man, quiet as any cat, and bided her time. Ryan tried not to give her away by looking at her.

  The man was close enough to touch now. He reached out with his left hand, while the right hand held the gun just out of Ryan’s reach, pointed toward the empty street. “Come on, now, girlie. Don’t make me hurt your boyfriend here.”

  “I’ll go with him, Ryan,” she said in a quavering voice. “There’s no use in your getting yourself killed.”

  No way was he letting her go. He’d seen his sister destroyed by members of this same gang. That fate would not befall Chrissy. He held her tightly with one hand.

  Fran chose that moment to strike. She kicked against the back of the thug’s knee, the same one Chrissy had injured, throwing him off balance. Before he could recover, Ryan lunged for his gun. The thing discharged, sending a bullet into the air. Chrissy jumped into the fray, pummeling the man’s head with her fists.

  At last he relinquished the gun. Without his weapon, he was a lot less brave. He turned tail and ran.

  Chrissy slumped in relief against Ryan. “Thank you. Thank you so much. And you.” She addressed Fran. “Whoever you are, I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”

  “I’m Fran,” the photographer said cheerfully. “And if you really want to thank us, why don’t you hop in the car with us, and we’ll take you someplace nice for dinner. We have a proposition for you.”

  She looked up at Ryan suspiciously as the first waves of relief subsided. “She’s with you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I don’t suppose your showing up here was coincidence?” She sounded a lot less grateful all of a sudden. She looked back at Fran. “I remember you. You got on the train ahead of us back in Foggy Bottom.”

  “She’s been following us all day,” Ryan explained. “She and her, um, camera.” He winced inwardly as he waited for Chrissy’s reaction. He and Fran had already agreed to level with Chrissy. They could get a hell of a lot better story with her cooperation. Right now, it appeared she was completely alienated. They were her only friends. Even the police had abandoned her. But she wasn’t going to like the fact that she’d been hoodwinked.

  “Come on,” he coaxed, when he couldn’t get a reaction out of her. “The car’s right here.”

  “All right, I’ll go with you,” Chrissy said, though he could tell she would have preferred it if some other choice had been offered. “Anything to get out of this neighborhood. But then you have some explaining to do, ace.”

  They all piled into Ryan’s Vette. Ryan got in last, and he noticed his hubcaps were missing. Jeez, he’d taken his eyes off the car for, what, sixty seconds? Those were some brazen thieves. Then again, the hubcaps were pretty cool. Custom design. Damn, this story better be worth it. He stuck the gun in his glove compartment.

  Fran squeezed into the tiny back seat, giving Chrissy and her long legs the front passenger seat. Chrissy locked her door, glancing around nervously, jumping at every shadow, every pedestrian, until the car made it to the freeway.

  No one had said anything. Now Chrissy broke the silence. “So, Ryan, you’re a reporter.”

  “Yup. I guess it wasn’t too hard to figure that out, since I’m toting around a photographer.”

  “Oh, I knew before I met your friend here.”

  “Really?” He was reasonably certain he hadn’t given himself away. He hadn’t flashed any notepads or tape recorders, and he’d kept his questions casual and friendly.

  “The detective who was handling my case knew you, or of you, anyway. Lieutenant Wilma Brich.”

  Ryan gave a low whistle. “Yeah, I know her, and I wish I didn’t, the old battle-ax. She was in charge of trying to solve your supposed kidnapping?”

  “It wasn’t a supposed kidnapping, and if you don’t believe me, you can let me off at the first corner.”

  “Okay, okay. It’s possible you were kidnapped.” Barely. “The point is, did she believe you?”

  Chrissy sighed. “Not a word. The more I tried to explain, the worse it got. I thought I could lead her to the place I was held captive, but I couldn’t remember well enough. Then I got so flustered I, um, sort of mispronounced her name.”

  “You didn’t. You did?” Ryan tried not to laugh, because he knew it wouldn’t win any points with Chrissy.

  “I called her ‘Lieutenant Bitch.’ She couldn’t stop the car and throw me out fast enough.”

  Ryan did laugh then. He’d been watching, but he’d assumed it was Chrissy who’d insisted on being let out in the middle of Peak Street. Now he could just picture Brich getting her girdle in a twist over a wild-goose chase and her passenger’s lapse in phonetic ability.

  He would love to hear Brich’s take on the story, if she didn’t stonewall him, the way she usually did. She didn’t much care for reporters.

  Neither did Chrissy, he reminded himself. And he’d better apply himself now to changing her opinion.

  “So you two have been following me since the zoo?” Chrissy asked.

  “Uh-huh. We took a cab and followed you to the police station. Fran stayed there and kept an eye on things while I went back to get my car.”

  He paused for impact. “We have a very interesting story shaping up. With pictures.”

  Chrissy turned visibly paler as she took in the implications; then she turned on Ryan like a she-wolf. “I’ll just bet, full of lies and unfounded suspicions. Is that how you earn your living? Printing half-truths and downright lies about innocent people?”

  She sounded like she was ready to cry again. Ryan wasn’t particularly enjoying himself. But he couldn’t quit now, just because he was getting soft in his old age.

  “I don’t work for a tabloid. My story will contain just the facts.”

  “What facts? If you print one word of your theories about drugs and drunken orgies and an abusive boyfriend, my father will sue you so fast your head will spin.”

  “The abusive
boyfriend was your story, not mine,” he reminded her softly.

  “And I recanted it.”

  “As for the rest of it, no, I don’t plan to mention my suspicions, only things I can prove. You were wandering around Peak Street in a dirty, torn red dress, unable to walk straight, slurring your words. Do you deny that part?”

  She dropped her chin. “No.”

  “You spent the night in a strange man’s apartment. You went shopping at Target the next day, went out to breakfast, went to the zoo. You never made any attempt to contact the police until after three o’clock this afternoon. Have I got anything wrong so far?”

  “No, but you’re leaving out some crucial facts—like the terrorist guy who tried to rekidnap me in the ladies’ room, then again on the street.”

  “He’s with the Pit Butts—the gang that was messing with you last night—and they want you back,” Ryan said, in what seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation for what he’d seen.

  “I don’t know anything about the Pit Bulls,” Chrissy insisted. “He was one of the ones who held me in that nasty apartment. He was threatening rape, threatening to cut off various body parts and send them to Dad. Maybe he’s affiliated with this gang of yours, but he’s also one of these radical environmentalists.”

  Ryan paused to think. Chrissy certainly seemed passionate about this environmental-terrorist fairytale. She hadn’t wavered from it since she first told it to him. When he recounted it to Fran earlier, she’d thought it sounded more plausible than he did. And there was some guy trying to grab her, who might be associated with the Pit Bulls but wasn’t wearing the official jacket.

  Could it be Chrissy was telling him some version of the truth? He wanted to believe she was. He hated thinking of her as some fast-lane junkie. That image hadn’t jibed with the Chrissy he’d gotten to know today, the one who laughed at the monkeys’ antics and sniffled over a baboon baby.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. So convince me. I can go with the story I have, or you can cooperate with me, answer my questions, and let your side of the story be heard.”

  Her sigh was world-weary, too much so for a young, beautiful woman with money and privilege. “You don’t give me much choice. I guess I have to cooperate. But you have to promise you’ll treat me fairly. If you mention the part about me spending the night in a strange man’s apartment, for instance, will you mention that I was unconscious? That I slept alone?”

  Ryan heard a snicker from the back seat.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ll be fair. I’m always fair.”

  “He is,” Fran interjected, sounding perfectly serious for once. “He doesn’t take cheap shots. It’s one of the reasons I like working with him.” Then she laughed, ruining the effect of her testimonial, and tugged on a lock of his hair. “Aside from the fact that he has great buns.”

  Ryan cringed. Fran always did this. She just had to make sure everyone knew the two of them had once had a thing going. She did it just to embarrass him, or maybe as retribution because he was the one who’d called things off. Or maybe to convince him it wasn’t a big thing to her anymore. She’d already ribbed him good and hard for “having the hots” for a society babe.

  Regardless, Ryan saw that Fran’s comment had had its desired effect on Chrissy. She was studying him with renewed curiosity, probably wondering just exactly what his relationship with Fran was.

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. What mattered was gaining Chrissy’s cooperation. It would be nice if she gave him her trust, too. But he would have to work hard to earn that back.

  “Um, Ryan, I don’t want to alarm you,” Fran said, “but a red Firebird has been on our tail for a while now. He could be our friend.”

  Chrissy whipped her head around, clearly alarmed. “Shoot, doesn’t that guy ever give up?”

  “Jeez, Ryan, she doesn’t even cuss,” Fran commented. “If ever a bad word was called for, this is the time.”

  Ryan glanced in the rearview mirror. “Ha. A Firebird. Does he really think he can keep up with me?” He punched down the gas pedal, and his Vette took off like a comet. All that tinkering he did under the hood paid off sometimes.

  Chrissy gave a little squeak of surprise. “Are you sure this is wise? What if you get a ticket?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said as he pulled between a couple of semis, then cut in front of one. Immediately he took the first exit. “Actually, I’d welcome a cop’s intervention.” He glanced in the mirror again, then turned his head to his left to look up on the highway. “It worked! The jerk didn’t make the exit.” He made a quick right at the light. “Anybody know where we are?”

  “I do,” Fran said, her voice exhibiting none of its usual bravado. “There’s a coffeehouse about five blocks straight ahead.”

  Ryan glanced at her in the mirror. Her face was pale as milk, each of the freckles sprinkled across her nose standing out in stark relief. “Did my driving scare you, Franny?”

  She snorted. “Of course not.”

  “How ’bout you, Chrissy?”

  She didn’t answer. She was bent over, her head on her knees, her hands clasped behind her neck in the classic airplane-crash position.

  He nudged her. “Hey, sweetie, it’s over. We didn’t die.”

  She raised up slowly and looked behind her. “Is he gone?”

  “For the moment,” Ryan replied. He didn’t mention the fact that he’d spotted a sticker on the guy’s rear bumper that gave him pause: Save the Wetlands. An odd sentiment for a Pit Bull.

  Chrissy gave him a shaky smile. “That was very interesting driving, Mr. Mulvaney. You scared the heck out of me, but you did the job.”

  Ryan wasn’t sure what to make of her praise. She’d been blazing-mad at him just a couple of minutes ago. “I used to race stock cars,” he said. “Till I realized I was mortal.” He spotted the coffeehouse, Java Joe’s, and pulled into the parking lot. He found a space in back, where his car couldn’t be easily spotted from the street.

  Chrissy reapplied her disguise of hat and sunglasses, then followed him inside without further comment. Fran trailed along behind, doing something with her camera.

  It was early evening, and the coffeehouse was almost deserted, so Ryan had his choice of tables. He requested a booth in the back, then sat where he could watch the door. He ordered black coffee, and Fran followed suit.

  “I’ll have a mochaccino, please,” Chrissy said. The other two stared at her. “Well, have you ever tried one? They’re good. What’s the point of coming to a place like this and ordering plain coffee? And can I order some food? I’m hungry.”

  “That figures,” Ryan muttered, but he shoved a menu at her. He wanted her cooperation. The story would be ten times better if he could question her directly. “Order whatever you want.” He could afford to be generous with Fran’s money.

  “A hamburger,” she said promptly to the waitress. “With cheese. And french fries.”

  “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll have one, too,” Ryan said. Except for popcorn, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, either. Fran gave him a dirty look, which he supposed he deserved. But he’d pay her back, every nickel, with interest.

  “I’m gonna catch a cab home and develop some film,” Fran announced suddenly, scooting out of the booth. “I think you’ll both be interested in the shots I took today. Ryan, I’ll catch up with you at your place later.” She melted away, gone almost before Ryan could blink.

  Chrissy, clearly unnerved by the mention of photographs, stared at the empty space where Fran had been. “She doesn’t care for me much.”

  “She’s got nothing personal against you,” Ryan said, almost believing himself. “She’s just temperamental. If anything, she’s mad at me.”

  “Because I spent the night with you?” Chrissy asked, raising one inquiring eyebrow.

  The waitress showed up with their coffees. Chrissy managed a smile of anticipation just before she scooped up some whipped cream on
the end of her tongue.

  Ryan tried not to groan aloud at the sultry image she presented. He stared at the sugar shaker until he could talk normally. “Fran’s mad at me because I borrowed money from her, and because I wouldn’t pay her up front for working this story with me. She most assuredly doesn’t care who spends the night in my apartment.”

  “You mean you and Fran aren’t, um—”

  “No. We used to be, but it ended almost a year ago. We’re just friends now.” And why did it matter that he make this so clear? he wondered.

  “Why would you need to borrow money from her?” Chrissy asked.

  “’Cause I didn’t have any cash on me. When I told you I was unemployed, I wasn’t exactly lying. I’m a freelancer. My income is somewhat ... oh, erratic. I guess that’s something you’ve never experienced.”

  “Ha! Ever since those guys kidnapped me, I haven’t had a cent on me. I have to admit, it’s a weird feeling to be without money and credit cards, no car at my disposal.”

  Ryan reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a tiny notebook and pencil.

  “Huh-uh, wait a minute,” she objected. “I didn’t consent to any interview.”

  With a shrug, Ryan closed the notebook and pushed it aside. “I have an audiographic memory anyway. I won’t misquote you.”

  He could almost see the steam rising off her. “Then from now on, everything I say is off the record. If you’re a decent reporter of any kind, you’ll respect that.”

  She had him there. “Yeah. Okay. We’re now officially off the record. But we either go back on real soon, or this gravy train comes to a screeching halt. No more free meals, rides, or roofs over your head. No more rescues.”

  She gave him a nervous smile. “Just give me a little time, okay? Whatever I tell you, it’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.”

  At least she’d gotten that right, Ryan thought.

  Part of Christine wanted to simply walk away from Ryan and his sleazy story. But another part of her realized that he was the only hope she had of convincing the world at large that she hadn’t made up the kidnapping as a publicity gimmick, or to cover up some less savory story.