A Rare Chance

by Carla Neggers

  For those endless minutes in his arms, she did.

  He cried out her name when his own climax came, and she smiled, wanting nothing more. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she’d care about Lizzie’s package and whether she should show it to him and discover what demons her friend was fighting. She’d care about her job and what to do about Scag when her own money ran out. She’d care about all of it tomorrow.

  She ran one palm up Cam’s smooth, muscled back, slick with perspiration. Definitely. Tomorrow she’d care about tomorrow.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  Using a set of keys he’d found during an unsuccessful search of the Fairfax house on Beacon Hill, Pete Darrow let himself into Gabriella’s apartment on Marlborough Street. It was an unseasonably cool afternoon, but clear and sunny. He didn’t have a clue whether Gabriella or Yeager was there, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d pussy-footed around long enough. Right now he cared only about finding Lizzie Fairfax and her diary.

  He’d seen Joshua that morning up on Reading Point. Not a happy camper, Joshua. “You knew, didn’t you?” he’d asked. “About this Tony Scagliotti character. You knew he was in town, that Lizzie had brought him here and didn’t tell me.”

  “What difference does it make if I did or I didn’t?”

  “It means I can’t trust you.”

  Darrow had laughed. Of course the stupid shit couldn’t trust him. Darrow was trying to blackmail him.

  “Scagliotti’s a certifiable lunatic so far as I’m concerned. If the papers find out he’s in Boston, back with his daughter, they’ll be all over them for interviews, talk-show appearances. I had no idea Lizzie was so mixed up with him. I’ll look like a fool for not knowing who I’d gotten myself engaged to. You know I prefer to keep a low profile.”

  “That’s how come you keep a couple Uzis around,” Darrow had said.

  Joshua hadn’t reacted, unusual for him. “Gabriella’s history now, for sure. It’s simply a question of how we get rid of her. Titus is hedging his bets, but with Lizzie doing this damned disappearing act and Gabriella clearly lying on her behalf—well, I’ll find a way to force her out. Titus will come ’round in the end.”

  Darrow had grinned nastily. “I love corporate America.”

  “I should have had this information sooner, Darrow. That’s your job, remember?”

  The guy did have his illusions, Darrow gave him that much.

  Gabriella Starr’s apartment was quiet, its creams and beiges and good taste about what he’d expected. The lights were all out, the windows shut against the chilly breeze. Nice place. Nothing Reading-esque about it, but nice. He did a quick check of the kitchen, the bathrooms, the two bedrooms. Both beds were made. He wondered if Yeager and Gabriella were sleeping together. She wasn’t Cam’s type outside of bed, but Darrow would guess he’d like her just fine in bed.

  He found the stairs up to the roof and figured he’d have a look up there, make sure no one was around, before he began a serious search. Ol’ Joshua did have his knickers all in a knot over his missing fiancée and especially her missing diary. Thought he was in control of the situation, or at least of Darrow. Little did he know. Until they found her and her diary, Joshua wasn’t in control and neither was Darrow. Lizzie Fairfax was.

  Knowing Lizzie, she’d stashed the diary with Gabriella.

  Knowing Gabriella, she’d tucked it somewhere safe and kept quiet about it because Lizzie had made her promise.

  Darrow prided himself on his judgment of character. He knew how people thought. It was his gift.

  At times, it was also a curse.

  Lizzie, Lizzie, he thought. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?

  Yeah, she would. She was scared and she didn’t understand what was going on, and together that made her dangerous.

  He climbed out onto the deck, taking in the expensive furniture, the stone pots. A quick glance at the view. He could see glimpses of the Charles. Probably could watch the fireworks on the Esplanade from up here. But the orchid greenhouse drew his attention. Quite the hobby Gabriella had. He pushed open the creaky aluminum door.

  A scrawny old man was at a messy worktable. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  Darrow swore. He should have expected the father. Tony Scagliotti. Grade A fruitcake.

  “Pipe down,” Darrow told him. “I just want to take a look around.”

  “You can take a look around somewhere else. Out.”

  Out? Like he had any say?

  Darrow smirked. “I don’t think so.”

  The old man snatched up a potting tool that had sharp, curving hooks and could probably gut an elephant and came at him with it. Darrow couldn’t believe it. He side-stepped the old geezer and popped him one, knocking him out cold. He went down in a bony heap, and Darrow set to work. The old man would identify his assailant, but that didn’t worry Darrow much at all because Yeager would already know who was responsible, even without an eyewitness. And it was only Yeager who worried him.

  Yeager, who wanted to save his ex-partner from himself.

  Too late, pal.

  “Screw it,” he muttered, shoving around plants and pots and big urns of distilled water. Starving people in the world and these idiots were spending a fortune on frigging orchids.

  Ten minutes later, sweating his ass off in the third section of the greenhouse, surrounded by the cloying smell of orchids and the oppressive heat, he found a padded envelope stuck behind a churning fan that didn’t cool the air, only kept it moving. Hell of a hobby. Some of the orchid blossoms weren’t all that impressive, so far as he could see, and an orchid not in bloom was nothing but scraggly roots and ugly leaves. A couple of them looked like some science experiment gone awry.

  Not that he gave a damn. He had just found Lizzie’s journal and her pictures of her fiancé’s secret weapons arsenal.

  Tucking the package under his arm, he moved back through the two cooler sections of the greenhouse. At the worktable, the old man was just coming to. Darrow decided not to pop him again in case he had a heart attack. No point going up on murder charges. He scooted back downstairs and out.

  He set the package on the car seat beside him. Joshua Reading wasn’t getting hold of it, not until Darrow had had a chance to check out the contents. Then he’d see about sweating the sick bastard about what Lizzie had to say about him, be it about grenade-launchers and such or just good old-fashioned kinky sex. Either way, Darrow thought, starting up the car, Lizzie’s journal could be his ticket to the good life. Finally.

  But Lizzie was still out there, waiting for Joshua Reading to find her.

  Darrow made a sound of pure disgust. Lizzie first. Blackmail later. It maybe wasn’t the smartest plan in terms of his self-interest, but who needed to know?

  After walking through the Public Garden three different times, three different ways, attempting to clear her mind and body of Cam Yeager and focus instead on what was going on with Lizzie, Gabriella returned home to her apartment. She would get Lizzie’s package from in back of the fan and open it. Then she would decide whether or not to show the contents to Cam.

  She admitted—grudgingly—that he was right. The promise she’d made to Lizzie had been exacted under pressure and was not in Lizzie’s best interests or her own.

  But she found Scag gray-faced at the kitchen table, applying a bag of ice to his head. His hands were trembling. She lunged toward him, afraid he would pass out. But he only regarded her with irritation.

  “I’m too old for this shit,” he said.

  “What happened? Did you fall, did someone hit you? Scag—” Her heart was pounding, her throat constricted. Tears welled in her eyes as she took in her father’s bad color, his obvious pain. She’d wandered off this morning to clear her head and left him to his fate. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “Now just hold on,” he said, grimacing. “I can’t afford any damned ambulance and I don’t need one. That ex-cop friend of Yeager’s cold-cocked me. What the hell’s his name?
”

  “Pete Darrow.” Her voice cracked with tension. Darrow had been here, inside her apartment. He hadn’t given up. He wouldn’t.

  “Yeah, that’s him. Thought he’d killed me. Christ, I don’t have a dime in insurance. You’d have to fork over to bury me.”

  Gabriella ignored his gallows humor, a cold determination propelling her to the phone. “I’ve had it. I’m calling the police.”

  “Whoa, there, missy,” Scag said, removing the ice pack. A large lump on his right temple was already blossoming into shades of blue, purple, and red. “I’ve had worse bumps than this. I’d just as soon not involve the authorities if I can help it. You know cops. They’ll want to know who did what when, what I saw. They’ll be all over the orchids, and then you’ll have to explain me, and Lizzie’s name’ll come up for sure, and it’ll be a goddamned mess. None of it’d endear you to the Readings or help Lizzie.”

  Gabriella managed a weak smile. “You’ll never change, Scag.”

  He started to grin, but the pain was clearly too much. “Call your cop buddy instead.”

  Gritting her teeth, Gabriella dialed Cam’s number. She didn’t understand why she had it memorized. She didn’t understand any of what was going on between the two of them. She got his machine and left a message, trying not to sound panicked. “Darrow’s been to my apartment. He knocked Scag on the head, but he’s not seriously hurt. I’m here with him.”

  When she’d hung up, Scag asked, “Where do you think he is?”

  “Probably on Darrow’s heels. I’m going to check the roof, see if he did any damage. You’ll be okay for five minutes?”

  He scowled. Pain usually just made him grumpy. “Funny how I managed to get along for decades without you.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea how you did it,” she teased, but her pulse was racing as she charged upstairs, two and three steps at a time.

  She pushed through to Number Three, nearly knocking over the fan when she checked behind it.

  “Damn.”

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Lizzie should never have trusted her with the damned thing.

  Maybe she’d wanted Gabriella to have it in case something happened to her, or as collateral to prevent something from happening. Maybe she’d just wanted Gabriella to know she had something exciting and dramatic and had never anticipated trouble. Gabriella simply didn’t know.

  Now the package was gone and Pete Darrow had it.

  She trudged back down to the kitchen, accepting that she would have to tell Cam. He’d go all cop on her and tell her she’d been a jackass. She’d known Darrow was a professional. She should have done a better job of stashing the package. She should have let him open it. Instead she’d endangered her father and left it for Pete Darrow to find.

  Cam buzzed. Gabriella let him in.

  “Well, what a mess,” he said after checking on Scag in the kitchen. “Darrow get the package?”

  It was a pro forma question, as he knew the answer already. Gabriella nodded glumly. She was an ass. Untrustworthy. When it came right down to it, she hadn’t taken Lizzie seriously.

  “And we don’t even know what’s in it,” Cam said, all business. “Cute. I guess I can kick into high gear, chase him down, and get it from him—provided he’s still got it.”

  “Why would he get rid of it?”

  “Depends on what’s in it. If it’s anything incriminating to him, he’d dump it in the Charles. If it’s incriminating to Joshua—well, that’s another matter. Point is, we don’t know what’s in it.”

  Scag set his ice pack on the table. He was still pale, but a little color had crept back into his face and he was looking smug. Weak, still, but smug. “I figured something like this was bound to happen when I found that damned thing this morning.”

  Cam and Gabriella both looked at him.

  “I was keeping an eye out for it, like you asked, Cam.” He waved off Gabriella’s expected protest before she could make a sound. “Found it behind the fan in Number Three when I was back there making room for some potting mix I wanted to store.”

  “Then Darrow didn’t get it,” Gabriella said, a surge of adrenaline giving her fresh energy.

  “No, he got it. I put it back where I found it—after I’d opened it and had a peek inside. It was some kind of diary or journal. Anyway, I hadn’t made any promises to anybody, so I took the thing around the corner and had a copy made. Messed up my schedule and cost me a bloody fortune. I didn’t fool with it, just retaped it as best I could. I must’ve been back twenty, thirty minutes when that goon showed up.”

  Cam maintained his cool, professional demeanor, but Gabriella could tell he was excited. “Where’s the copy now?”

  “I tucked it in with the fern root and moss up by my worktable in Number One. Figured I’d give it to you next time you turned up.”

  Gabriella glared at her father. “What do you mean, give it to him? What about me?”

  The old man shrugged, unperturbed. “You’re not rational where Lizzie Fairfax is concerned. You’ve known each other too damned long. You can’t be objective.”

  “As if you can?” Gabriella snorted. “That package was my responsibility, Scag, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to have my own father sneaking around behind my back.”

  He leveled his dark eyes on her. “I don’t recall you mentioning to me you’d hidden a package right under my nose that some goon’d be willing to knock me on my ass to get his hands on.” He didn’t sound particularly annoyed; he was just setting the record straight.

  Seeing that she didn’t have much leverage in the argument—and the whole issue was moot anyway—Gabriella abandoned it. Cam, having the sense not to come between Scagliotti father and daughter, headed up to the roof to fetch Scag’s copy. If he’d come along and found Scag first, the two of them might never have told Gabriella about the copy. She’d have been shut out.

  “Did you read any of it?” she asked her father.

  “Nope. Hardly even touched the thing. I don’t want to know any of Lizzie Fairfax’s deepest secrets if I can help it.”

  Gabriella wasn’t sure she did either. A journal. Of all things to put in her safekeeping. “Look, Scag, I want you out of here. The orchids will be fine without you for a few days. You can go to the Cape and stay with some of Mother’s friends. They’ll put you up if I ask. You can take the bus—”

  “What would I do on Cape Cod?” He shook his head, adamant. The effort must have caused him some pain because his entire body seemed to shudder. But he rallied. “I don’t want you starting to think I can’t take care of myself and plan to make myself a burden to you. I’ll just lay low for a while and recuperate. My place’s safe.”

  “You should see a doctor.”

  “Nah, I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this.”

  “You were a lot younger too.”

  He grunted, dismissing her concern. Cam returned with a large manila clasp envelope haphazardly stuffed with the copied pages of Lizzie’s diary or journal or whatever it was Scag had found.

  To Gabriella’s surprise, Cam handed it over to her. “Here, she’s your friend.” His gaze dropped to Scag. “You going to be all right or should we take you to Mass General?”

  “It’ll take more than a knock on the head to kill me.”

  Cam nodded, grim. “Hardheadedness is another Scagliotti trait. Well, Darrow won’t be back now that he has what he wants, but we shouldn’t take any chances. It’s obvious he has a key. I can drop Gabriella off at my place and you off at yours, Scag, and then go see what I can find out. Then we can figure out what to do.”

  Gabriella bristled at his take-charge attitude, never mind that what he said made a certain sense. But knowing that she was at least partially responsible for Darrow’s attack on her father had badly shaken her, and having Cam there to absorb some of her frustration and self-doubt helped.

  “I suppose I can take a look at Lizzie’s journal while you’re gone,” she said.

  Ca
m gave her a knowing smile. “Just making sure I know you’re not letting me get away with telling you what to do, are you?”

  “She’s stubborn that way,” Scag said, staggering to his feet. “But you wouldn’t want a woman who didn’t have a mind of her own, would you?”

  Trying to explain the finer points of independence and self-reliance to either of them, Gabriella decided, would be an exercise in futility. Hugging the copy of Lizzie’s journal tightly to her chest, she led the way out.

  New locks for her door would be a high priority—one thing she didn’t need either Cam Yeager or Tony Scagliotti to tell her.

  Cam dropped Gabriella and the copy of Lizzie’s journal off at his place on lower Pinckney, leaving her with the key and instructions to lay low, getting a scowl for his trouble. Then he drove Scag over to Cambridge. Despite the obvious pain from his knock on the head, the old man seemed to take a perverse pleasure in his day’s adventure. He told Cam not to worry, that he’d hit up the Chinese students with whom he shared his rooming house for some non-Western cures. “To think I came to Boston to rest up,” he said.

  Cam could see how Tony Scagliotti got on people’s nerves.

  From Cambridge, he headed straight to the North Shore and out to Reading Point. At the unmanned security gate, he told whoever was on the other end of the intercom that he was looking for Pete Darrow and he was coming in, one way or another. The gate opened. When he got up the driveway, Darrow was waiting for him. “Figured I didn’t want to chase you down on the rocks,” he said languidly as Cam jumped out of the car.

  “I know what you did, Darrow, and I know why.”

  He didn’t seem too concerned. “The old man wants to press charges, I’ll say he mistook me for an intruder, overreacted, and I defended myself.”

  “You were an intruder.”

  “Prove it. I had a key.”

  “That you stole.”

  “Prove that too.”