by Diana Palmer
“Oh, good Lord, you poor man!” She laughed. “A librarian! How did you ever get talked into a job like this?”
He was offended by her attitude toward Millie. “It’s not exactly easy to get those jobs,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “My foster mother was a research librarian. She went through college to get the job, and even then she had to beat out the competition for it. So did the woman I’m guarding. It takes a good education,” he added.
“Well, excuse me.” Angel laughed. “Here I am with my little high school diploma making fun of a college graduate!”
He felt uncomfortable. He pushed her away and got to his feet. “It’s just a job.”
She got up, too. She gave him an amused smile as she picked up her purse. She stopped just in front of him. “Just how old is this bookworm you’re taking care of?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in her twenties.”
“Pretty?”
He frowned. “Inside, she’s pretty,” he replied.
“Poor man,” she sighed. She reached up and kissed his cheek. “I guess we all meet our Waterloo someday. Looks like this is yours.” She chuckled. “Good luck.”
That same thought was only beginning to form in his own mind. He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. Thanks.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “It was fun while it lasted.”
“Same here. See you around,” she added, and winked as she let herself out.
Tony stood, staring at the closed door, with his hands in his slacks pockets and his heart even with his shoes. He’d made a terrible mess of things. Millie was going to hate his guts.
He paused outside her door. He wanted to apologize, to tell her that inviting Angel over was mean-spirited and he was sorry about it. He was sorry for pushing her into a corner and making her feel guilty and cheap, when it was his own fault. He was the one who’d caused the problem and he’d blamed her. It was going to hurt, this apology. With a wistful smile, he knocked gently on the door.
“Millie?” he called.
There was no answer. He tried again, with the same result. She might be in the bathroom and couldn’t hear him. Gently he opened the door and peered inside. The bed was empty. Millie’s coat and purse were gone. He ran to the bathroom. It was empty, too. She’d gone! She’d walked out, probably while he was in the shower gloating about having Angel come over to show Millie he couldn’t care less what she thought of him. Now she was walking into danger. If the contract killer was keeping an eye on her, he’d see her leave the hotel, in the dark, all by herself. He’d have a prime opportunity to kill her, and Tony would be responsible.
He grabbed his cell phone and punched the speed dial for Frank’s number. God, he hoped Frank had it turned on!
Sure enough, he had his cell phone on. He answered on the second ring.
“Frank!” Tony said at once. “I need you to call your detective friend and tell him that Millie’s on her way back to her apartment, alone. I have to get my car out of the parking garage and it will take precious time. He needs to send somebody to her address right now!”
“She’s gone home alone?” Frank was all at sea. “But how did she get out past you? And why did she leave in the middle of the night?”
Tony ground his teeth together. “Tell you later,” he gritted. “Do what you can about getting somebody to her apartment, will you? She may be perfectly safe, but I’ve got a feeling… Never mind. Thanks.” He hung up before Frank had the chance to ask any more embarrassing questions. Then he ran down the stairs, foregoing the elevator, on his way to the parking garage. He prayed every step of the way that he wouldn’t be too late. That sweet, gentle woman wouldn’t stand a chance if the contract killer was anywhere nearby!
* * *
He broke speed limits and ran red lights across the city getting to Millie’s apartment building, and had the good luck not to be seen by a squad car in the process. He parked in the first spot he came to, got out and ran toward the building. He didn’t see another car, or another person, on the way in. Maybe, he thought, just maybe he’d get lucky.
He took the staircase up to the fourth floor and walked cautiously down the hall. He stopped in front of Millie’s apartment, looking around carefully. He was relieved not to see any activity. He’d just relaxed and was about to knock on the door when he heard voices inside the apartment. One was male.
Tony almost threw his weight against the door to force it in a moment’s panic, but that way would get her killed if the voice he heard was the killer’s. So he slipped out of his shoes, picked the lock with ridiculous ease—thanking God that she didn’t have a dead bolt lock—and slid his sidearm out of its holster as he silently opened the door.
“…never thought it would be this easy.” A male voice chuckled. “So much for your boyfriend’s skills.”
“Could you just shoot me,” Millie asked in a world-weary tone, “and not talk me to death?”
“Well, you’ve got grit,” the man said with reluctant admiration. He raised a pistol with a makeshift silencer—an empty two liter soft drink bottle—duct-taped to the muzzle. “Goodbye from John.”
“No. Goodbye from me.” Tony had the pistol leveled at the man even as he spoke, his hands steady, his voice calm and cool.
As the hit man turned, shocked, and then lifted his gun again, Tony pulled the trigger. The killer fell to the floor and didn’t move.
Tony put away his pistol, checked to make sure the hit man wasn’t going to get up again and knelt beside Millie, who was sitting frozen on the edge of her bed. Her face was white. Her eyes were blank with shock. She looked at Tony, but she didn’t even see him.
There was an urgent knock at the door. “Miss Evans?” a voice called with deep concern.
“Stay put,” Tony said gently. “I’ll answer it.”
He opened the door, and Frank’s detective friend was standing there with a patrol officer.
“We heard a gunshot when we got off the elevator. Is Miss Evans…?” the lieutenant began.
“She’s fine,” Tony said. “But, sadly for him, the hit man didn’t hear me come in.”
The lieutenant noted the pistol in its holster. Tony reached for his ID, but the lieutenant waved it away. “No need,” he said. “I was on the phone with your boss just this afternoon. Where’s the deceased?”
“In here.” Tony led them into Millie’s bedroom. She was sitting, staring into space. “She’s pretty shaken,” he told the other men.
“Miss Evans, wouldn’t you like to sit in the living room while we process the scene?” the lieutenant asked her.
She looked at him blankly. He grimaced.
Tony bent and lifted her into his arms, cradling her a little too close to his massive chest in the aftermath of fear, and carried her tenderly into the living room. He brushed his mouth over her forehead as he put her on the couch. “It will be all right,” he said softly. “I promise.”
She didn’t make a sound. In the space of minutes, her whole life had been turned upside down. The night had gone from a fulfilled dream to a nightmare. Tony, kissing her. Tony, furious and insulting her. Tony, bringing his girlfriend to the apartment to humiliate her. And now, Tony shooting another man in a space of seconds without hesitation, with eyes so cold they didn’t even seem alive. She looked down and saw tiny droplets of blood on her overcoat. The killer’s blood.
She took it off, with jerky motions, and dropped it quickly on the floor. She shivered. Tony’s job had seemed otherworldly to her until tonight. Now she understood how deadly he was, how dangerous he was. Her eyes went involuntarily to the crumpled human figure on the floor of her bedroom, with dark stains growing around it. She shivered again. She’d only ever seen dead people in caskets. This was sickening. Terrifying. She realized that it could be her own body lying on the floor like that, except for Tony’s dark skills.
Tony drew in a quiet breath. “I’m so sorry,” he said. He pulled a crocheted afghan off her easy chair and draped it around her. “I never meant tonight to end like this.”
&nb
sp; She shivered again. She didn’t answer Tony, or even look at him.
* * *
People came and went. A team of crime scene investigators tramped over the apartment in funny blue pull-on boots, wearing masks and gloves, taking samples of everything, lifting fingerprints, bagging evidence. If Millie hadn’t been so shell-shocked, she would have enjoyed watching the process that she’d only ever seen in television dramas.
Through it all, Tony stood with the detective, watching and commenting. At one point, Tony came back in with statement forms and asked if she felt up to writing down what had happened when she got home. She nodded zombielike, took a pen and started writing. Tony filled out his own form from across the room, just to make sure the lieutenant knew he wasn’t collaborating on stories with Millie.
Hours later, many hours later, the police and the medical examiner’s crew left with the body.
“You can’t stay here,” Tony told her quietly. “Not after what happened.”
There was a tap on the door. Tony opened it and Frank came in. “I just got off work,” he said, hesitating when Millie jumped up from the sofa and threw herself into his arms. She cried as if all the tears in the world were suddenly pouring out of her. She clung to Frank, sobbing incoherently. He held her, patting her back, while Tony looked on with anguish. He didn’t need to ask why she was suddenly so animated with another man. She’d seen Tony shoot a man. His profession had suddenly become crystal clear to her, and she was afraid of him now. It was a miserable feeling.
“You can’t stay here,” Frank told her gently. “You can stay with my mother. I already talked to her about it.”
“That’s so…so kind of her,” Millie choked, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“She likes you. Don’t worry about packing anything,” he added quickly when she looked, horrified, at her crime-scene-taped bedroom door. “She’ll lend you a gown. Come on.”
“Okay.” She held on to his sleeve. She didn’t quite meet Tony’s searching eyes. “Thank you for saving my life,” she said, like a child reciting a line her parents has prompted her to say.
“You’re welcome,” he replied in a cool tone. He was more shaken than he let on. He’d just killed a man. It wasn’t the first time. But then he’d never seen himself through the eyes of an innocent. Millie couldn’t even look at him anymore. He felt less than human.
Frank saw that. “I’ll call you later,” he told his friend, knowing that Tony would still be awake however long that was.
Tony drew in a long breath. “Sure.”
Frank drew Millie out the door with him. He left it open. Tony stood there watching them until they were out of sight.
* * *
He went back to the hotel, but he didn’t sleep. He was still awake late in the morning, so he ordered breakfast and sat down to eat it when it came. He called Frank as he made inroads into his second cup of strong black coffee.
“How is she?” he asked his friend.
“Shaken,” he replied. “She couldn’t stop talking about the way the man got into her apartment so easily, even before she had time to take off her overcoat. She figured he was watching and followed her home.”
“That would be my guess, too.”
Something in Tony’s tone was familiar to the man who’d known him for so many years. “You never really get used to shooting people, do you?” he asked.
Tony sighed. “No. It goes with the job description, I guess, but in recent years I’ve been more of a planner than a participant. It’s been a long time since I had to throw down on an assailant.”
“You’ve got too much heart, and too much conscience, for the line of work you’re in,” Frank said flatly. “You need to consider a change, before you get so old that they retire you. Imagine having to live on a government pension,” he added, and chuckled softly.
Tony laughed, too, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Your friend the lieutenant have anything more to say about last night?” he asked.
“About the killer, you mean? He knew the guy, actually. He’d weaseled out of two homicide charges, just in the past year. In one of them, he shot a pregnant woman, killing her and the child. Funny thing, the two witnesses died in strange accidents, about a week before they were going to testify against him. He said the guy would do anything for money, and it’s no loss.”
“He was still a human being,” Tony said in a dull, quiet tone. “He had family that must have loved him, at least when he was little. He had a mother…”
“He pushed her down a flight of stairs and killed her when he was eight,” Frank mused. “It was in his juvy record. The psychiatrist figured it was a terrible accident and shouldn’t be held against the poor orphan.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“The psychiatrist was later sued by the victim’s family.”
“No wonder.”
“So stop beating your conscience to death,” Frank counseled. “I’d like to tell you about my new job.”
“In Dallas, I guess. Angel was over here—” He stopped dead. That had been a slip he shouldn’t have made.
There was a long pause. “So that’s why Millie went home alone, huh?” Frank asked, and in a different tone of voice. “Don’t tell me—you made a heavy pass at Millie, she ran, you called Angel to come over and soothe you so that Millie could hear it all and see what she’d missed.”
“Damn!” Tony muttered. Frank knew him right down to his bones, and he didn’t like it.
“She’s a virgin, you idiot!” Frank grumbled. “That sort of woman isn’t going to go running headlong into a one-night stand. She believes it’s a sin.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the time!” Tony shot back.
“Now you are, and you’ve blown it,” Frank advised him. “She doesn’t want to see you again, ever.”
Tony’s heart felt as if it were weighed down with bricks. “Yeah. I sort of figured that’s how she’d feel.”
“Someday, you’re going to fall for a woman. I hope for your sake that she doesn’t treat you the way you’ve treated Millie,” Frank replied. “She’s special.”
“I guess she’ll marry you and live happily ever after, huh?” Tony asked sarcastically.
“Don’t I wish,” Frank sighed. “Why do you think I’m moving to Dallas? I’m sick of eating my heart out over Millie.”
“You might try candy and flowers and soft music,” Tony replied, trying to sound lighthearted.
“I’ve tried everything. She told me once that you can’t make people love you,” he added bitterly. “She was right. So I’m cutting my losses.”
“She’ll have nobody left to talk to,” Tony said quietly. “She doesn’t mix well. She’s never had a real girlfriend that she could confide in. She won’t let people get close to her.”
“You don’t know much about her, do you?” Frank asked.
Tony hesitated. “Not really, no.”
“Her father was a roughneck, worked on oil rigs. When he came home, he drank. Excessively. Millie’s mother tried to leave him, but he kept Millie with him and threatened to cut her up if her mother didn’t come back. She was too scared of him not to do what he said. Millie’s whole childhood was one of stark terror, of being afraid to trust anyone. It was almost a relief, she told me, when he died of a heart attack. She and her mother finally had some peace, but it was too late for Millie to reform her character. She doesn’t trust anybody these days. And especially not after what John did to her. It was her father all over again, only worse.”
Tony felt even smaller. “She never told me.”
“Why would she? I’m sure she knew that you weren’t interested in her.”
“Yeah.”
There was another long pause. “What’s next on your agenda?” Frank asked.
“What? Oh. I’ve got an assignment over the border. Very hush-hush.”
“Most of them are.” Frank chuckled. “Well, I’ll leave my forwarding address with Angel. You can co
me see me up in Dallas after the first of the year.”
“I’ll do that. I won’t have any reason left to come back to San Antonio, once you’re gone.”
They were both talking around the fact that Millie would still live there.
“Can you tell her I’m sorry?” Tony asked after a minute. “I mean, really sorry. I tried to tell her just after I got the hit man, but she was too scared of me to listen.”
“Is that surprising? Most people are scared of you.”
“I don’t mind it with most people,” Tony said gruffly. “She’s gone through a lot. More than she should have had to. If I hadn’t listened to John, maybe I could have spared her some of it.”
“If.”
“Yeah. Your lieutenant thinks she’s out of the woods, then?”
“He does. One of his men’s confidential informants said that the gang boss who was holding the money for the contract killer decided he needed a nice new car, so he wasn’t passing the contract along. Good news for Millie.”
“Very good.” Tony was relieved. At least she’d be safe now, from John and his postmortem attempts on her life.
“So you can get on with your life now.”
“I can.”
“Keep in touch,” Frank said.
“You know I’ll do that. See you around, pal.”
“You, too.”
Tony leaned back and stared blankly at a painting of Japanese flowers and characters in the frame on the wall. It was all over. He’d go back to his assignments, Millie would go back to work, Frank would take up his new job in Dallas, and nothing would draw the men back to San Antonio ever again. Well, Frank’s mother still lived there, so he’d go to see her, probably. But he was willing to bet that Frank wouldn’t contact Millie again. Anyway, he consoled himself, he wasn’t emotionally attached to Millie. It had been a physical need, brought on by abstinence and proximity. He’d be over it in no time.
He got up and started packing.
* * *
Millie was back in her own apartment. Frank had called in a marker and had the people who cleaned the nightclub come over and scrub Millie’s apartment. He’d paid them out of his own pocket, but he hadn’t told her.