Out of Nowhere

by Beverly Bird

  She set her jaw and deliberately put her mind on finding the Rose.

  They were still an hour outside Boston when the dog started to act up. Fox frowned into the rearview mirror as he drove. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t like cars.”

  “We drove to New York with her without a problem.”

  Belle continued to stand with her paws braced against the back seat, snarling and barking out the back window.

  “Maybe she doesn’t like Jeeps,” Tara specified. There was one directly behind them. Then the vehicle in question turned off at the next light and the dog kept barking. Tara groaned. “This is getting on my nerves.”

  Belle kept it up until they made it into the city. By then, Tara had her hands pressed to her ears and Fox was scowling in a way she’d rarely seen him do. He dropped back even farther behind the Cadillac then he turned into a gas station.

  “What are you doing?” Tara shouted loud enough to be heard over the dog. “You want to get gas now?”

  He shot her a look. “My…way. Keep repeating it over and over until you grasp the concept.” He paused, seeming to think about it. “Now that we’re in the city I don’t want to take the chance of him noticing that we’re still behind him.” Fox rolled his window down when the attendant came to the car. “How do I get to Court Street from here?”

  “Head straight down Washington until it dead-ends,” the attendant said, then he shouted and jumped back from the car. “What the hell?”

  Tara turned in her seat just in time to catch the blur that was Belle out of the corner of her eye. The dog sailed straight through Fox’s open window. Tara cried out in alarm.

  “What I want to know,” Fox said with uncharacteristic anger, “is how much more wrong this little excursion can go.” Then he was out of the car and running after the dog.

  Instead of barking at something behind the car, now she raced in the direction Acosta had gone. He’s never going to catch up with her, Tara thought helplessly and wondered why she should care. They’d definitely be better off without the animal. But…she cared. The stupid little thing was going to get hit by a car if they didn’t catch her.

  Tara got out of the Mustang as well and took off after Fox and the dog. She saw him catch the mutt at the next intersection. The crazy animal had stopped dead in the middle of the street. She was still barking and now she was jumping around in circles, holding up traffic. Fox scooped her up with one hand and offered a sick smile in the direction of the stopped cars.

  Tara turned and jogged back to the Mustang. A moment later, Fox yanked his door open and tossed the dog inside. She was trying to bite him.

  “The beast is deranged,” he muttered. He waved his thanks at the attendant who was now avoiding the car. He put the Mustang back in gear and they hit the street again, shooting across traffic.

  “We don’t even know where Washington is!” Tara protested.

  “My…way,” he said again, then he relented. “I saw an exit for it before we left the interstate so it’s got to be back in this direction. It only stands to reason.”

  They picked up Washington Street just about where he’d thought they would. She was impressed. “You’re good.”

  “Darlin’, you’re catching on.” He turned north again.

  “How do we know the dead end isn’t the other way?”

  “My…way,” he repeated.

  A few minutes later, a dead end appeared in front of them. And there was Court Street. There was no sign of the Cadillac either left or right.

  “Now what?” Tara fretted.

  “I’m thinking.” Then he added, “First we need to get rid of the car. If he noticed it in the lot beside the restaurant, I don’t want him to see it again here.”

  “Not to mention the fact that we’ve been driving along behind him for the last three hours,” she mentioned.

  “Ah, but he didn’t see that.”

  “How do you know?”

  He grinned at her. “Darlin’, how quickly you forget. I’m good.”

  He circled around two blocks and found an empty metered spot at the curb. He dropped a Philadelphia Police Department sign on his dashboard.

  “That’s not going to work here,” Tara said.

  “If we come back and they’ve towed it we’ll have an intercity war. Come on.”

  Tara got out of the car then she hesitated. They had another problem. “What about the dog?”

  “Leave her.”

  “The way she’s carrying on?”

  “That’s exactly why we have to leave her. If she keeps it up, we’ll be about as subtle as a sonic boom.”

  “But what if she tears up your upholstery?”

  “Then she will die.”

  Tara leaned into the car again. “You heard him.” Belle looked at her briefly then she returned to the serious business of barking at the back window. Tara opened the window half an inch, then she locked and closed the door.

  Fox caught her hand in his. They ran back toward Court Street.

  “Does your way involve some kind of plan for when we get there?” Tara gasped.

  “It depends on what we find. But I’m good at thinking on my feet.”

  She started to worry about that but then they reached Court Street. And the Cadillac was there.

  Tara pulled up short and Fox urged her back around the corner. They peered around and watched Acosta get out of the car. Tara leaned against the building and fought for her breath.

  “He’s inside,” Fox said finally. “Let’s go.”

  The street was lined with four-and five-story brick apartment buildings. Fox stepped up the stoop of the one at 162 and gently tried the door. It was locked.

  “How did Acosta get in?” Tara asked, crowding up behind him.

  Fox motioned at the buzzer beside the door.

  “Oh.” Tara pushed it.

  Fox’s eyes went wild. “What did you just do? What did you do this time?” He caught her wrist, murder in his expression. Then he broke off because a man’s cultured, baritone voice was coming through the intercom.

  “Yes, sir. I have a delivery,” Tara replied to it. “From the…from the supermarket.”

  “The supermarket?” Fox mouthed disbelievingly. Then there was a buzzing sound and the door unlocked.

  “Take it straight up to the kitchen,” said the man’s voice. “And in the future, please use the back door. You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then. You’ll learn.”

  Fox grabbed the door before the buzzing ended and they stepped inside. Tara shot him a look. “Sorry. Your way wasn’t working.”

  “I hadn’t thought of a way yet!” Then Fox looked around and his brows climbed his forehead.

  “Wow.” Tara pivoted in place. “It sort of puts the Marsden place to shame, doesn’t it?”

  The room they stood in was immense. Normally, Fox reckoned, it would have housed four separate apartments, two to the left and two to the right. But while there was little doubt that the building had once been an apartment house, somewhere along the line it had been renovated into one very large single unit.

  The floors were marble. There were three sitting areas and a recreation area with a pool table and a bar in the far corner. To the left was an elevator. Dead ahead was a door.

  Fox pointed at it. “This way. I don’t want to use the elevator. It’s just a hunch, but the grocery delivery girl might not be expected to ride it upstairs.”

  As they reached the door and Fox pushed it open, a buzzing sound came from behind them. Tara jumped before she realized what it was. The door buzzer again. Someone was coming in behind them. She pushed frantically at Fox and they stumbled together through the door just as the one at the front of the room opened.

  They were in a stairwell. In contrast to the room they’d just left, it was all dull concrete and metal railings with a single dim yellow bulb overhead. Tara went to the rail and looked down.
There was an exit sign beside the door there. No doubt it was the delivery entrance the man had mentioned.

  She straightened and looked at Fox. “Nowhere to go but up.”

  He caught her hand and hurried her up the stairs. Tara kept waiting to hear the stair door open behind them. Her heart began jumping but it didn’t happen. Whoever had come in after them was obviously an invited guest and had used the elevator.

  At each landing, Fox paused and eased open the door. “Kitchen,” he said at the next level.

  They went up another flight. On the fourth level, just as Tara was beginning to despair of ever finding Acosta, Fox opened the door then quickly closed it again.

  “What?” she whispered. “What is it?”

  He held a finger to his lips and maneuvered her in front of him, reaching around her to inch the door open a crack. He cupped a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

  Tara’s breath left her. She couldn’t have uttered a sound if she had wanted to. The Rose. They’d found her Rose!

  The room beyond the door was as huge and hollow as the first level had been with the same marble floors and furniture isolated in groups. A silver-haired man in a burgundy jacket was seated at a desk thirty feet to the left side of the door. Acosta sat across from him, fiddling with his huge mustache. Something red caught the light on the desk between them.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Fox whispered. “We’re too far away to be sure. It could be anything.”

  “Good advice,” said a voice from behind them.

  Tara jerked around in Fox’s arms, looked over his shoulder and screamed.

  Chapter 17

  Fox rounded on the guy. His fist cut him under the chin and the man stutter-stepped backward beneath the blow. His heel missed the step behind him and he tumbled down the stairs.

  It bought them maybe thirty seconds, Fox knew.

  “Go up!” Fox slid his gun free from his shoulder holster, grabbed Tara and lifted her bodily toward the stairs. His mind leapfrogged ahead to various other alternatives, discarding them as quickly as they occurred to him. He could have gone down, could have shot his way right past the guy, Fox thought, if he had been alone.

  Panic twisted his guts. He saw no other way to keep her safe and alive than to head for the roof. If he could keep Tara near the door there, Fox thought, if he could somehow get the guy to move in front of them, he could hold him off long enough for her to race right down to the street again. If. It was the best he could come up with.

  Then a muffled gunshot sounded from somewhere distant, somewhere below them. Tara screamed again. Acosta. It had to be Acosta, Fox thought, or the guy in the burgundy jacket. The commotion had alerted them. Now, Fox figured, they were probably running for their lives from all of them.

  He shoved at Tara again and this time she turned and ran up the stairs. There was a door at the top and nowhere farther to go. She came up hard against it and her breath whooshed out of her as Fox backed into her hard. Tara pounded her hands helplessly against the metal bar on the door until it finally shot open. Then she staggered out onto the roof.

  For a moment, the building seemed to move beneath her feet. She was going to die. They were going to die up here.

  “Over here!” Fox shouted as he came through the door. “Stay behind me!”

  She whipped back to him. “Behind you? Are you out of your mind?”

  “If they run clear of the door, you can go back down! I’ll open it again as soon as I hear them get close! Their momentum should carry them a fair distance.” The clock in his brain clicked down. Twenty-three seconds, twenty-two, twenty-one. The fall down the stairs wouldn’t delay that guy forever, Fox thought again. He should be on his feet again and gaining on them by now.

  He was holding the door shut with his full weight. Any heartbeat now, the man would hit the other side. And when that happened, it would already be too late. His last, best plan would be shot to hell in a handbasket. For it to work, he had to open it before they got here.

  “Come with me!” Tara shouted instead of coming toward him.

  “I’ll be right behind you!”

  “Liar!”

  Liar? Liar? He stared at her a moment, and then everything inside him simply stopped.

  She was running for the edge of the roof.

  “Tara!”

  At the same time, the guy finally crashed into the door behind him. Fox took a single step forward to let him come through but the door had broken the guy’s momentum. He only staggered a few steps.

  Tara leapt to the roof of the next building.

  The building they were on was taller. She landed over there and disappeared from his view. He thought he heard her cry out. His heart was a sledgehammer against his chest, each excruciating thud tearing breath from his lungs. For the first time in his life, Fox knew stark, absolute terror. “Sweet, dear God.”

  In his peripheral vision he saw the man who had sneaked up on them begin to charge him. Fox shot, somehow missed. The man kept coming. Fox took off after Tara.

  He had never been particularly fond of heights and four stories was a very long way down. The gap between the buildings looked like five feet or more. Fox probably got up more speed than he had to. But he admitted it. Damn it, he was scared to death.

  He jumped.

  Then he was clearing the edge of the other roof by a good foot and a half. He hit and rolled and came up to find Tara on her hands and knees, panting for breath, staring back at him.

  “Will they follow?” she gasped. “Do you think they’ll jump, too?”

  His breath felt like flames in his lungs. “No. They’re not raving lunatics.”

  “I’m not a lunatic,” she whispered. “I only just found you. Didn’t want to die.”

  If he had been standing, it would have cut him off at the knees. Fox reached out for her. She crawled to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He buried his face in her hair and smelled something spicy and floral, heated and sexy and provocative.

  He opened his mouth and almost told her he loved her.

  Fox closed his eyes briefly. It wasn’t the time. He kissed her temple instead. “I’d like to spend a little more time with you as well.” It occurred to him then that if he had been in this situation with the kind of woman he’d thought he’d wanted—if he’d been with Adelia—they’d both probably be dead right now. There was no one quite like this woman, he thought, no one on earth.

  He put her carefully away from him and moved one leg then the other, his left arm, his right. There was no severe damage from his leap. She was already on her feet and edging back behind a huge heating unit on the roof. He stood as well and joined her at the heating unit.

  “We’ll go downstairs through the building,” he decided.

  “They’ll be waiting for us on the street!”

  “We’ll get to a phone and make sure there are cops there, too.”

  “You’re very good.”

  “If we get out of this with all our parts intact, I’ll even prove it. Again.” He hooked an arm around her neck and kissed her hard.

  Instantly, a shot rang out from the roof next door. “Time to go,” they said together and headed for the stairs.

  “I should have considered all the ramifications of that door buzzing behind us,” Fox said. “Someone has been following Tara for days. It only stood to reason that the guy was still on her trail. Then there was the matter of the dog.” It had been as though Belle had known, he thought. The idea unsettled him.

  Tara couldn’t stop shaking as she watched him brief the two cops who had answered their call. They were in the security office of the building they had jumped to and she sat in a metal chair against the wall clutching a cup of hot coffee between both her hands. This was, thank God, a normal apartment building, unlike the bizarre place next door. They’d found this room off the lobby, bursting in on a startled guard. Fox had called the Boston police. Now she let him do the talking. His voice was a comforting and distant murmur.

>   Her thoughts were jumbled. There were so many in her head, it was almost painful. She loved him. First and foremost, there was that. She wondered how she had ever let it happen. She was so careful, always careful with men! But she’d known it the instant she’d watched him jumping onto the building, flying toward her. She loved him.

  She’d thought he might not make it. She’d felt not a qualm when she had leapt, but the thought of him plunging four floors had debilitated her. Her legs had given out beneath her the first time she’d tried to stand. She couldn’t imagine going on without him.

  But, of course, she was probably going to have to. Because he hadn’t made any promises, after all.

  The second, duller ache in her heart was for the Rose. It had been on that desk next door. What were the odds that it was still there? Slim, she thought, groaning aloud, to none.

  Then Fox’s words penetrated her thoughts and she looked up sharply. The dog. “She knew we were being followed!” Tara said suddenly. “She must have…I don’t know, smelled him or sensed him or something. That’s why she was acting so wacko.”

  “She kept it up for a good hour or more,” Fox agreed. “It was…bizarre.” Then he put his own coffee cup down on the desk. “Not to take over for you guys—this is your turf—but I’d like to have a look next door.”

  Tara shot to her feet. The Rose. She had to find out if it was still there. She knew by the look in Fox’s eyes that he did not think it would be. She tugged him toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  Fox watched her pace ahead as they left the building and walked next door. Everything tightened inside him and he lengthened his stride to keep up with her. Her heart was going to break when they got to the fourth floor of the other building and she found out that her ruby was gone again.

  He nudged her gently aside to make sure he was the first one through the door at 162. The cops had called for backup and two more officers waited for them there. They had already disengaged the buzzer-lock system. Fox started to tell her to wait on the stoop for them, but she was safer with him than anywhere else. He loved her. He’d almost lost her. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.