by Diana Palmer
“I’m sorry for the way I reacted,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t know.”
She shook her head. “Nobody knew. I was harassed, blackmailed and slandered by him for years, and he made everybody think it was my own fault, that I encouraged him.” Her gaze was flat, almost lifeless. “He was the most repulsive man I’ve ever known.”
He frowned. “He was good-looking.”
She glanced up at him. “You can’t make people love you,” she said in a subdued sort of tone. “No matter what you look like. He was coarse and crude, and ugly inside. That’s where it counts, you know. The outside might have been attractive. The devil, they say, was beautiful.”
“Point taken.”
She finished her coffee. “Where do I go now?”
“Back to your apartment. I’m coming with you, to see what I’ll need for surveillance.”
She frowned. “Surveillance?”
He nodded. “I want cameras and microphones everywhere. It’s the only way we can save your life.”
And in that moment, she realized, for the first time, just how desperate her situation really was.
Millie’s apartment was on the third floor of a building about ten blocks from the library. She had a small balcony, on which lived many plants during the warm months. Now, the pots contained nothing except dead remnants of the autumn foliage that she’d been too busy to clean out. The past few weeks had been hectic indeed.
Her walls were full of bookcases and books. She was a great reader. Tony noted the titles ranged from history to gardening to languages to true crime. He smiled when he noticed all the romance novels, including several that had to do with professional soldiers. He’d never told her what he did for a living until today, and she hadn’t guessed. But apparently she had an adventurous nature that she kept tightly contained, like her hair in that bun.
He noted that she liked pastel colors, and used them in her decorating. The apartment’s contents weren’t expensive, but they suited the rooms in which she lived. She had good taste for a woman on a budget.
He poked his nose into every nook and cranny of the place, making notes in a small notebook, about entrance, exit and possible avenues of intrusion. Her balcony was a trouble spot. A man with an automatic rifle could see right into the apartment through the glass sliding doors, which had no curtains. The doors had the usual locks, but no dead bolts. The apartment was only feet away from an elevator and a staircase, which gave it easy access. There was no security for the building, and Tony had noticed two or three suspicious-looking men on his way up in the elevator.
He dug his hands into his pockets. It had seemed like a good plan at the time, but now that he’d seen where Millie lived, he knew he couldn’t just move in with her and start waiting for an attack to come.
“This won’t work,” he said flatly.
She turned from the hall closet, where she’d been pulling out a coat and a sweater, and stared at him blankly. “What?”
“This place is a death trap,” he said matter-of-factly. “Easy entrance and exit right outside the door, no dead bolts, a perfect line-of-sight aim for anybody with a high-powered rifle with a scope. Add to that a noticeable lack of security and a few shady characters who live in the building, and you’ve got an impossible situation. You can’t stay here.”
“But it’s where I live,” she said plaintively. “I can’t just move because some crazy person is trying to kill me. Besides, wouldn’t he just follow me?”
“Probably,” he had to admit.
“Then what do I do, live out of my car and switch parking lots every night?” she wondered.
He burst out laughing. He hadn’t credited her with a sense of humor. “You’d need a bigger car,” he agreed.
She let out a long breath. “I guess I could do something illegal and get arrested,” she thought aloud. “I’d be safe in jail.”
“Not really,” he replied. “Gangs operate in every prison in this country, and in other countries. They’re like corporations now, Millie—they’re international.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, aghast.
“It’s the truth. They have a hierarchy, even in prison, and some measure of control and exploitation. They can order hits inside or outside.”
She sat down heavily on the arm of her sofa. “Call the U.S. Marshal’s office,” she said. “Tell them I qualify for the witness protection program. I can be renamed and transplanted.”
“Not unless you testify against somebody really evil,” he returned. “Sorry.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Ouch.”
He lifted a huge shoulder. “So we have to look for a different solution. I’ll take you back to the hotel with me—”
She flushed and stood up. “I’m not moving in with you.”
“Okay. Which one of your coworkers would you like to put into the line of fire?” he asked. “Because that’s your choice right now.”
She looked worried. “I don’t know any of my coworkers that well, and I wouldn’t ask them to risk being killed on my account even if I did.”
His eyes were curious. “You’ve worked there for years, and you don’t know any of your colleagues well?”
She bit her lower lip. “I don’t mix well. I live in another world from most modern people.”
“I don’t understand.”
She laughed. It had a hollow sound. “I go to church, pay my bills on time, obey the law and go to bed with the chickens, alone. I don’t fit into a society that rewards permissiveness and degrades virtue. I don’t go around with people who think cheating is the best way to get ahead, and money doesn’t mean much to me, beyond having enough to get by. Making money seems to be the driving force in the world these days, regardless of what you have to do to get it.”
She made him feel uncomfortable. She was describing his own world, into which he fit quite well.
She saw that and sighed. “Sorry. I told you I wasn’t normal.”
“I haven’t said a word,” he said defensively.
She searched his dark eyes. “Frank mentioned that you think women are a permissible pleasure, and that the brassier they are, the better you like them.”
His jaw tautened. “What’s wrong with that?” he asked. “I’m a bachelor and I don’t want to settle down.”
She lifted her hands. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I’m just pointing out that our views of life are very different. I’m not going to be happy staying in the room, overnight, with a man I barely know.”
He could have debated her take on their relationship. They’d known each other for years, even if distantly. But he didn’t pursue it. He cocked an eyebrow. “I haven’t offered you half my bed,” he said curtly. “And I never would. You aren’t my type.”
“I thought I just said that,” she replied.
He made a sound deep in his throat. She made him feel small. He looked around the apartment. “I’ve got a suite,” he said after a minute. “You’ll have your own bedroom. The door has a lock.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Not that you’ll need it.”
That was meant as an insult. She understood it. But she’d had years of practice at hiding her feelings from him. She didn’t react. She didn’t have much of a choice, either. Thinking of her close call at the library was still unsettling. John’s criminal friends would see her dead, if they could. Tony was the only thing standing between herself and a funeral parlor, and she was arguing. She pushed back a wisp of brown hair and turned away from him. She was running out of choices.
“Well, I can’t stay here,” she said to herself.
“No, you can’t. And local law enforcement doesn’t have the sort of budget they’d need to house and feed you indefinitely. This could go on for weeks, Millie.”
“Weeks?” She was staring at him with pure horror. “Surely not! The bomb…”
“May have been a test,” he interrupted, “to give your assassin a dry run, show him how quickly local law enforcement reacts to an emergency call.”
“You should. This isn’t some petty criminal,” he added. “He’s a professional. He may not be the best—that plastic explosive he used for the bomb wasn’t well concealed or particularly well made. But he knows how to get to you, and that makes him—or her—dangerous. We have to put you someplace where he doesn’t have easy access, lure him in and help him make a mistake, so we can nab him.”
“How do we do that?” she asked.
“You move in with me,” he said simply. “We let the word get around. Then we wait for developments.”
“Wait.” She tugged at a lock of loose hair. “I can’t wait a long time,” she worried. “I have to work. I have to support myself.”
“You have to be alive in order to do those things,” he reminded her. “I’ll call Frank. He can get his contact in the police department to help us out.”
“That might be wise,” she agreed. She was still debating her options, but she didn’t seem to have any left. She wished she could go back in time, to a period in her life when she hadn’t known Tony Danzetta. She’d eaten her heart out over him for so many years that it had become a habit. Now here he was, protecting her from danger, for reasons he still hadn’t disclosed. He was honest to the point of brutality about his lack of interest in her as a woman. Was it guilt, she wondered, that drove him to help her? Perhaps she’d have the opportunity in the days ahead to learn the answer to that question.
* * *
His hotel suite was huge. Millie was fascinated by the glimpse of how the other half lived. She knew what a suite cost in this luxury hotel, and she wondered how Tony’s government job made it affordable to him. Maybe, she considered, his father, the contractor, had left him a lot of money. He was obviously used to having the very best of everything.
“Hungry?” he asked when he’d put her suitcase inside what was to be her bedroom.
“Actually, I am,” she said. “Could we go somewhere and get a salad?”
He pursed his lips, smiling. “What sort of salad?”
“A Caesar salad would be nice,” she said.
“How about a steak to go with it, and a baked potato with real butter and chives and sour cream?”
Her eyes widened. “That sounds wonderful. Coffee, too.”
He nodded. He picked up the phone, punched in a number, waited a minute and then proceeded to give an order to someone on the other end of the line. It must be room service, she thought. It fascinated her that he could just pick up the phone and order food. The only time she’d ever done that was when she ordered pizza, and small ones, at that.
“Thirty minutes,” he said when he hung up.
“I’ve never stayed in a hotel and had room service,” she confided. “I went on a trip for the library one time, to a conference up in Dallas and stayed in a hotel. It was small, though, and I ate at a McDonald’s nearby.”
He chuckled. “I couldn’t live without room service. I flew in from Iraq late one night, starving to death. I ordered a steak and salad and this huge ice cream split at two o’clock in the morning.”
“There’s room service then?” she exclaimed.
He didn’t mention that he paid a big price for having those items sent up, because room service didn’t operate in the wee hours of the morning. He was also friends with the general manager of that particular hotel. “There is in New York City,” he told her.
She sat down in one of the big armchairs and he took off his jacket and sprawled over the sofa.
“I guess you’ve been a lot of places,” she said.
He closed his eyes, put his hands under his head and smiled. “A lot.”
“I’d like to go to Japan,” she said dreamily. “We have this nice old couple who came from Osaka. I love to hear them talk about their home country.”
“Japan is beautiful.” He rolled over, facing her, tugging a pillow under his head. “I spent a few days in Osaka on a case, and made time to take the bullet train over to Kyoto. There’s a samurai fortress there with huge wooden gates. It was built in 1600 and something. They had nightingale floors…”
“What?”
“Nightingale floors. They put nails under the flooring and pieces of metal that would come in contact with the nails if anyone walked on the floor. It made a sound like a nightingale, a pretty sound, but it alerted the samurai inside instantly if ninja assassins were about to attack them. Ninjas were known for their stealth abilities, but the nightingale floors defeated them.”
“That’s so cool!” she exclaimed.
He studied her with new interest. When she was excited, her face flushed and her eyes shimmered. She looked radiant.
“I’ve read about Japan for years,” he continued. “But little details like that don’t usually get into travel books. You have to actually go to a place to learn about it.”
“I watch those travel documentaries on TV,” she confessed. “I especially like the ones where just plain people go traipsing into the back country of exotic places. I saw one where this guy lived with the Mongols and ate roasted rat.”
He chuckled. “I’ve had my share of those. Not to mention snake and, once, a very old and tough cat.”
“A cat?” she asked, horrified. “You ate a cat?”
He scowled. “Now, listen, when you’re starving to death, you can’t be selective! We were in a jungle, hiding from insurgents, and we’d already eaten all the snakes and bugs we could find!”
“But, a cat!” she wailed.
He grimaced. “It was an old cat. It was on its last legs, honest. We used it for stew.” He brightened. “We threw up because it tasted so bad!”
“Good!” she exclaimed, outraged.
He rolled onto his back. “Well, the only other thing on offer was a monkey that kept pelting us with coconuts, and I’m not eating any monkeys! Even if they do taste like chicken.” He thought about that and laughed out loud.
“What’s funny?” she wanted to know.
He glanced at her. “Every time somebody eats something exotic, they always say, ‘It tastes just like chicken!’”
She made a face. “I’ll bet the cat didn’t.”
“You got that right. It tasted like…” He got half the word out, flushed and backtracked. “I’d rather have had pemmican, but it’s in short supply in the rest of the world. My great-grandmother used to make it. We visited her a couple of times when my stepfather was working in Atlanta and we lived with him. She lived in North Carolina, near the reservation,” he recalled thoughtfully. “She was amazing. She knew how to treat all sorts of physical complaints with herbs. She went out every morning, gathering leaves and roots. I wish I’d paid more attention.”
“She was Cherokee?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
He nodded. “Full blooded,” he added. His expression grew dark. “Like me. My mother married an Italian contractor. They didn’t like it. He was an outsider. They disowned her, everyone except my great-grandmother. She died when I was a kid, and I haven’t been back since.”
“That’s sad. You still have family there, don’t you?”
“Yes. An uncle and a few cousins. I heard from my uncle a couple of years ago. He said I should come home and make peace with them.”
“But you didn’t.”
“My mother had a hard life,” he said. “When my sister and I went into foster care, it was like the end of the world. Especially when they separated us.” His face went taut. “She killed herself.”
“Your sister?” she asked, sad for him.
“Yes.” He glanced at her. “Didn’t my foster mother tell you any of this?”
Millie flushed. The woman had told her quite a lot about Tony, but nothing really personal. She wasn’t going to admit that she’d tried to worm things out of her. She averted her eyes. “It must have been hard on you, losing your sister.”
“Yeah.” He stared at the ceiling. “Some boy in foster care got her pregnant and tried to force her to ha
ve an abortion. She wouldn’t. She was deeply religious and she saw it as a sin if she went for a termination. She told the boy. So he made threats and she felt that she had nowhere to turn.” He sighed, his eyes sad. “She would never have done that if she hadn’t been half out of her mind. She thought of suicide as a sin, too. But in the end, she took the only way out she could find.”
“I hope he ended up in prison,” she muttered. “That boy, I mean.”
He made a deep sound. “He did. And shortly afterward, he died mysteriously. Strange things happen to bad people.”
She wondered if Tony had any hand in the boy’s demise, but she didn’t want to ask.
There was a knock at the door. Tony sprang to his feet, grinning. “Food,” he guessed.
He peered out the keyhole and saw the trolley, and the waiter. He opened the door and let him in.
* * *
Lunch was delicious. Millie had never had food served on a white linen cloth, with heavy utensils and dishes under metal covers. It was a revelation. She munched her salad with obvious enjoyment and went into ecstasies about the tenderness of the steak and the delicious baked potato. Even the coffee was wonderful.
Tony found her obvious delight in the meal humbling. He took fancy food and fancy hotels for granted. He’d long since become blasé about such things. But Millie came from a poor background, and lived on a meager budget. He imagined she’d never stepped into the lobby of a luxury hotel, much less been a guest in one. He pictured taking her out for a spin in his convertible, or taking her sailing on his yacht down in the Bahamas and lying with her in the sun. She had a delightful body. He wondered how it would feel to make love to her on a sandy tropical beach. Then he wondered what the hell he was thinking of. She wasn’t his sort of woman. Millie would never go to bed with a man she hadn’t married, no matter what her feelings for him were.
That brought back a comment of Frank’s, that Millie had once been in love with Tony. He recalled her shy presence at his foster mother’s house from time to time as an invited guest, her radiance when he dropped in at the library to see his parent and Millie happened to be around. He must have been blind, he decided, not to have noticed how his presence illuminated the quiet, introverted woman across from him at the table.