Before The Fall

by Patricia Rosemoor

  “Angel as in…heavenly?” she joked. “I find it hard to believe you see anything positive in me.” After all, she certainly hadn’t given him reason.

  “Call it insight. Under other circumstances…”

  Under other circumstances, Angela knew she wouldn’t have given Micah Kaminsky the time of day. She would have been too busy polishing the armor protecting her soft side to notice more than his good looks. And what a waste that would have been. She would have missed his quick wit…his humor…his affinity with gadgetry and his strange attachment to a vehicle far past its prime.

  When Angela vaguely wondered what she might have missed about Douglas and whether or not she would care if she knew, tentacles of guilt wrapped around her. Here she was, wanting to get closer to another man while the one she had was too far away to do anything but worry himself sick over her.

  What kind of a person was she?

  Micah’s hearty “Welcome to Wall” drove the question from her mind. They’d just entered the town limits.

  “Civilization,” she breathed with a sigh of relief. “At long last.”

  “I had the feeling you were less than thrilled with our surroundings the last couple of hundred miles. You’d think you’d never been on a wide-open road before, when Nevada is full of them.”

  Roads she neatly avoided. “When I leave Las Vegas, it’s to fly to San Francisco or Dallas or New York.” She glanced at him when she added, “Or Chicago.”

  Oddly disappointed at his lack of reaction, she shifted around in the seat that was starting to feel as if it was made of lumps. Maybe Micah wasn’t from Chicago. She knew so little about him.

  “When you were a kid, didn’t you ever go camping?”

  “You mean outside where things could creep and crawl over me when I’m asleep?” She shuddered. “Please.”

  “Hmm. Thinking about camping makes me visualize the stars overhead and wonderful night sounds carrying on the breeze.”

  “Like coyotes howling?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Oh, that’s different, then.” She rolled her eyes, then froze. “Hey, you’re not getting any weird ideas about saving a few bucks, are you?”

  He choked back a laugh. “Don’t worry, we’re sleeping indoors tonight.”

  After securing a room at another no-name motel at the edge of town—at least it was a clean one this time—Micah suggested they stretch their legs at the now infamous Wall Drugs, which he described as a potpourri of connected stores selling mostly Western memorabilia.

  Either he’d seen the place before or he’d been reading travel brochures in some men’s room along the way.

  Even though darkness was descending rapidly, Angela could tell his face was looking drawn again. Unless his not shaving made him look so tired. His five-o’clock shadow had progressed to some serious growth. Still, she was concerned, especially since he wouldn’t consider letting her drive.

  “What about sleep?”

  “I was thinking we’d find clothes for you first. But we need to hurry. The town’ll probably shut down in another hour or so.”

  Angela set on the dresser the cans of soda they’d gotten out of a machine. Asking “In a tourist place, how far can twenty bucks go?” she crossed to the window where the drapes were only half-closed.

  “Maybe I can loosen the purse strings a little.”

  Thinking about the luxury of material that was clean and soft against her skin infused her spirits with anticipation. Before snapping the drapes together, she barely noted a vehicle pulling up in front of the motel office.

  “Give me time to shower first. I promise I’ll be quick.”

  “Go. I’ll catch up with the news.” He switched on the television anchored to the wall.

  Angela was nearly euphoric. Clean body. Clean clothes. She grabbed a can of soda to take into the bathroom with her. What more could she ask for?

  Uh-oh.

  Of course there had to be a hitch.

  “Ahem. I need a hand. Two, actually. This gown isn’t exactly a do-it-yourself deal.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Micah’s agreeable response swept through her like a heated caress. And he was gazing at her through slitted eyes, his expression sexy and suggestive.

  Wishing he’d left the mirrored sunglasses on so she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, she spun around on her heel, presenting him with her back. That way he

  wouldn’t notice the rising color that had to be creeping up her neck to her ears. She pressed the can of soda to her throat, hoping to cool herself down. But as he undid the tiny buttons at the top of the bodice, his fingers brushed her skin.

  Her sensitive flesh responded instantly.

  She covered her quick intake of breath by clearing her throat and shifting.

  “Something wrong?” he asked,

  “Dust,” she lied. “I’m allergic to it.”

  “And you live in the southwest?”

  “It’s a different kind of dust than you have around here.”

  “Sure it is. Sand is infinitely less irritating.” He unzipped the material. “Good grief, you’re being held captive by a Merry Widow.”

  “Believe me, there’s nothing merry about being stuck in this thing for days at a time.”

  “I can only imagine.” He started unhooking it. “So why have you?”

  Aware of each of his fingers on her even as a surfeit of air began to fill her lungs, she said, “I haven’t exactly had any options.”

  “In the early seventies, women burned their bras.”

  A liberating thought.

  She swallowed hard. “Got a match?”

  Catching the front of the gown and corset to her, she held her breath and clenched her jaw against the sensations rocking her as Micah undid the last of the hooks. His fingers lingered in the hollow at the small of her back a tad too long for her comfort. Warmth bloomed and spread through her middle and threatened the rest of her if she didn’t do something to break the contact now.

  She practically jumped away from him.

  “Thanks.” Physically exposed and emotionally vulnerable, she wasted no time. She scooted into the bathroom with the promise “I’ll only be a few minutes” tumbling from her lips.

  Inside, she flipped the door closed and leaned against it to catch the breath that she’d somehow lost again Of course she’d be quick.

  After all, how long could anyone stand a cold shower?

  THINKING BETTER of leaving the room at all, Micah tried using the televised news to busy his mind and to bring his body some relief from the instant frustration he’d experienced on touching Angela. He sat in a rickety armchair before the television, but failed to concentrate.

  Instead, he thought about buying her new clothes. He should have found a way earlier. Helping her out of the gown had been a test of his inner strength. He had a special affinity for lingerie, and the corset had nearly undone him. He didn’t know how he’d restrained himself from taking her in his arms and making love to her…if she would have let him.

  He suspected his odds were pretty good.

  And then what?

  Angela Dragon wasn’t the kind of woman a man made love to, then walked out on. And what other choice would he have? When she knew who he was—understood what he was—she’d want nothing more to do with him. He couldn’t tolerate the thought of her looking at him with the same cold, angry expression she wore when talking about her father.

  He wiped a hand over his face as the truth hit him.

  How could he have let this happen? If he thought traveling with her had been rough before…

  The screech of the plumbing made him start. Not wanting to listen to Angela’s shower noises, to imagine her soaping her naked body—something he’d dearly love to do himself—Micah increased the volume on the television, reminding himself they weren’t supposed to have been attracted to each other, and he wasn’t supposed to have become personally involved.

  He’d merely been returning a favor…
squaring accounts…performing what he’d thought of as a piece-ofcake assignment.

  There weren’t supposed to be all these damnable variables.

  Micah sighed. He guessed fate wasn’t particularly responsive to man’s demands. He, of all people, should know that by now. No matter how he’d tried to live his life, from the start fate had had other ideas for him.

  He forced himself to watch the news.

  Another skirmish in the Middle East…

  A national campaign against teenage smoking…

  A local politician caught with his pants down…

  He didn’t really give the tube his full attention until he was jerked from his passivity by Angela glaring at him from the television screen.

  Or rather, glaring at the reporters barraging her for a story.

  “The trial of Angela Dragon may be put on hold,” the anchorwoman was saying as a knock came at the motel-room door. “After being indicted on Thursday afternoon, Dragon dropped out of sight.”

  The shot pulled out to show her surrounded by family, her lawyer and a fair-haired man with a possessive posture. Micah sat up straighter. He’d forgotten that Angela had claimed she’d used his cell phone to call her supposed fiancé

  .

  “According to our sources, she jumped bail and may be fleeing across country with this man.”

  An old mug shot filled the screen.

  And Micah’s fingers dug deep into the arms of his chair.

  The rest of the story was lost to him. He couldn’t focus on the voice. Couldn’t make sense of the words. He was aware of a pounding sound coming from somewhere, but he put it down to his own phobic heartbeat.

  He was being implicated in another crime…but how? Who was this source? Only one person had been privy to his plans. The man who’d sent him on this mission.

  The walls began closing in on him until the room felt as airless as a jail cell.

  The noise was magnified until he realized it was coming from outside himself. From outside the motel room. A crash followed by a splintering of wood got his complete attention. Micah whipped out of the chair.

  The door had caved in with little trouble.

  And two men were coming for him.

  CLEANLINESS WAS definitely a virtue, Angela decided as she wrapped a towel around her hair and dried herself off.

  Raised voices in the other room caught her attention, but she attributed them to the television.

  Her clothes littered the small floor where she’d stepped out of them. And the only things she was willing to step back into were her dress and shoes—and for propriety’s sake, her high-cut briefs. She put them on first, shoes next. No more corset! She stuffed the thing into the wastebasket along with her ripped pantyhose. Micah was resourceful. He’d get her back into the gown somehow.

  A heavy weight whomping against the bathroom door and nearly popping it from its hinges was her first clue the din in the other room wasn’t coming from the television, after all.

  “Micah?”

  Suddenly alarmed, she nearly flung the door open until she realized she was next to naked. She struggled into the dress, fighting to get her arms through the holes.

  A crash and loud grunt knotted her stomach and stole her breath. A thief must have broken in to their room.

  Instinctively, she looked around for a weapon, but neither the tiny soap bars nor the plastic wastebasket seemed as if they’d be the least effective. Her panicked gaze lit on the full can of soda. Hanging on to the front of the gown with one hand and grabbing the weighty soft drink can with the other, she cracked open the door as a dark-clad body went flying past in a blur.

  Adrenaline pumping, she flung the panel wide to see a second man in dark clothing with his hands around Micah’s throat. Like a lioness protecting her young, she let go a screech that came from deep inside. The villain started, head turning toward her as she pulled back her arm.

  She stared him straight in his beady eyes as she flung the can of soda.

  He ducked.

  Micah didn’t—the can bounced off his temple, whipping his head back.

  “Oh, my god!” Distressed at the unfortunate hit, she picked up the dresser lamp and charged the villain.

  At the same time, Micah recouped and grabbed the man’s shirt. Whipping him around, he smashed his fist into the attacker’s nose. Blood spurted everywhere.

  And the villain sprawled back against the nightstand, knocked over the telephone, which flew against the wall, and crumpled to the floor unconscious.

  Angela would have gone after his partner, but the second man had already beaten a retreat through the open door. And from the sound of the squeal of tires, she suspected he didn’t have much loyalty for his cohort.

  “What’s going on?” came a faint woman’s voice from somewhere nearby.

  “I don’t know,” a disgruntled-sounding man answered, “but I’m gonna find out. I need my sleep tonight!”

  Setting down the lamp, she took a strangled breath as she caught sight of Micah’s face, streaked with blood, his temple already discoloring. She’d done that to him.

  Fisting the gown’s bodice to her chest, she asked, “Are you all right?”

  “No thanks to you,” Micah said wryly, already searching the man he’d downed.

  She winced. “I was aiming for him.”

  He removed both a knife and a gun. “That’s a comfort.” Then he went through the man’s pockets.

  Even as he checked over the objects he removed, she started for the telephone. “I’ll ask the night manager to get the local authorities over here.”

  “No!” he said sharply.

  Angela stared at him, a growing fear holding her to the spot. Instinctively she knew the men weren’t thieves preying on tourists.

  “What’s going on, Micah?”

  Staring at a wrinkled scrap of paper, he muttered, “They’ve caught up to us.”

  “They, who?”

  Rather than answering, he rose and moved toward the bathroom where light poured out the door. He showed her the piece of notepaper decorated with the Joshua tree and coyote—familiar symbols in Nevada—across which was scrawled WX 9428.

  “My license plate number.”

  He shoved the paper into his pocket.

  So the men had been on their trail. For how long? Since Chicago?

  “Is it really us they’re interested in?” she asked. “Or just me?”

  “I’d say it’s a toss-up.”

  Which meant they both could have been killed….

  And suddenly Angela didn’t feel like playing heroine anymore, not when the rules weren’t negotiable. If being shot at once hadn’t put the fear of God into her, she was feeling all too mortal now. Looking at Micah made her feel even worse. And determined.

  “We need to bring the authorities in on this.”

  “No.”

  “This is more than we can handle, Micah. It’s more than I can handle.”

  She stared into the face that had become so familiar to her and hardly recognized it for all the bruising and blood. Taking a chance with her own life was one thing. Taking a chance with someone else’s—his—was another.

  “If we call in the authorities and tell them what’s going on,” she said, pushing past the lump forming in her throat, “they’ll put guards on me until they get me back to Nevada.”

  “If they believe you.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Why wouldn’t they believe someone set you up in the first place?”

  She shrugged. “They didn’t have proof.”

  “They still don’t.”

  “The real criminal is on to me.” Her succeeding at whatever she’d put her hand to in the past had convinced her she could do anything, but now she had to reevaluate. To be honest with herself. “The way my luck has gone so far, I don’t see how I’m going to figure out who that person is, no less get anything on him to clear my name.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  The un
expected offer gave her a start. Meeting Micah’s intense gaze, she wondered about his change of heart. Before, he’d been willing to leave her fate to the justice system. She supposed she’d grown on him, as he had on her. A taste of shared danger had had some kind of bonding effect on them both. That had to be it—the reason for their newly formed trust in each other.

  Or was it something far more personal?

  Blood suddenly rushed to her head, confusing her. And before she could respond to Micah’s offer, raised voices outside caught Angela’s attention.

  “I’m telling you, it sounded like a house coming down,” the disgruntled man was saying.

  “The deputy is on his way now,” returned a younger man, whom she took to be the night manager.

  “C’mon, Angel, let’s go while the going is good.”

  Hoping she wasn’t making a mistake in letting Micah talk her out of turning herself in, Angela was nevertheless tempted to rip the name of the man who’d hired him from the attacker’s throat. A quick look to the floor near the nightstand told her he wasn’t where he’d fallen. She whipped around in a circle, searching the room’s shadows.

  “He’s gone,” she said incredulously. “He got out of here without us knowing.” They’d been too intent on each other to pay him any mind.

  Micah was already at the door. “Hurry!”

  Still hanging on to the front of her gown so the bodice would stay in place, she rushed from the room, trying not to look in the direction of the two men just outside the door.

  “Hey, you!” yelled the disgruntled one.

  The motel manager cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir…”

  But Micah waited for no one. The car was humming even as he slid behind the wheel and Angela flew into the passenger seat. As they drove off, her mind raced as fast as her pulse. She looked around for either attacker, but both seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  As they escaped the grounds, the disgruntled man dispatched a rude hand gesture in their direction, while the manager ran into their room, undoubtedly to check on the damage.

  Their whizzing by the motel office jump-started Angela’s memory. “A tan Jeep…”

  “What about it?”