TALL, DARK AND TEXAN

by Jane Sullivan

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  Contents:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

  Epilogue

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  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  Wendy Jamison crept her 1992 Buick along the dark, deserted street, the February sleet storm pummeling her car and freezing wind whistling through the torn weather stripping around the passenger window. She hadn't planned on taking a midnight tour of the seedy part of downtown Dallas, but she'd lost track of the turns she'd made since exiting the freeway in search of a gas station and now she was hopelessly lost.

  On either side of her, warehouses loomed several stories into the night sky, the majority of them boarded up. Most of the storefronts looked abandoned, topped by apartments that showed only an occasional dim light in a window. The sleet had stuck trash to the sidewalk in big, soggy piles that would probably still be there after the spring thaw. If it had been a hot summer night, the place would undoubtedly be crawling with the shadier side of society, but now, when she desperately needed to ask somebody how to get back to the freeway, there wasn't a pimp, a crack whore or a drug dealer in sight.

  The problem was the trailer she was pulling. Filled with everything she owned, it had played hell with her mileage, running the little arrow on her gas gauge right into the red before she realized it. When that same little arrow had stopped floating and she still hadn't found an open station, she'd gotten a little uptight.

  Now, ten minutes later, she was wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans, trying to get a grip, telling herself that this was just one of those worst-case-scenario situations, which there had to be a solution to. Wendy knew how to stay alive during an avalanche, how to escape a sinking car and how to survive if her parachute failed to open in the event that she lost her mind and went skydiving. Unfortunately, she'd never read about how to get out of a sleazy, unfamiliar, convoluted downtown neighborhood during a winter storm in a car that was choking along on its last gas fumes.

  Find a way. You'll never get to L.A. if you can't get through Dallas first.

  She pulled up to the next intersection, which looked every bit as squalid as the last one. Putting her car in Park, she fumbled through the stuff on her passenger seat, looking for the Texas map she'd picked up at the border. She doubted it would include a map specific enough to get her back to the freeway, but right now it was her only shot.

  Then she noticed movement outside her driver's window. Whipping around, she was shocked to see a man standing beside her car. A big, ugly, hairy man.

  A big, ugly, hairy man holding a baseball bat.

  In the next instant, her car window exploded. She shied away, throwing up her arms against the sudden blast of broken glass. In the time it took her to realize that he'd whacked the baseball bat right through her window, he'd reached in, pulled up the door lock and yanked her door open. The moment he grabbed her arm, though, self-preservation kicked in. She remembered the mantra she'd learned during the two-hour crash course on self-defense she'd taken at a New York YMCA: Get mad, get loud, get violent.

  Letting out a nerve-shattering scream, she swung her foot out of the car and gave her attacker a boot right in the knee. He drew back, retaliating with an arm-wrenching yank that pulled her halfway out of the car. When she reached for the steering wheel and held on tightly, he leaned into the car to pry her fingers loose.

  Everything's a weapon, her German Amazon-woman instructor had said. Use whatever you've got.

  With a fury that would have made Greta proud, Wendy bit her attacker's hand. He recoiled, howling with pain, but before she could turn and get in another well-placed kick, he gave her arm a brutal jerk that dislodged her grip from the steering wheel. The next thing she knew, she was facedown on the slush-covered pavement.

  She pushed herself back up and flipped over, rocking to a squatting position, but he'd already slid into the front seat. Her car wasn't much, and neither were her possessions, but the five thousand dollars in her glove compartment was something she had no intention of giving up.

  With a desperate lunge, she grabbed the foot he hadn't yet tucked inside the car. The second she clamped down on it, he shook it wildly, but she clung to it like a bulldog.

  "Damn it, lady!" he shouted. "Will you cut that out?"

  "No! You're not taking my car!"

  "Oh, yeah? Is that right?"

  He reached beneath his coat, hauled out a gun and leveled it three inches from her nose.

  Uh-oh.

  She stopped pulling on his leg and stared down the barrel of the gun, breathing hard, wondering why her life wasn't flashing before her eyes.

  "Let go!" he shouted.

  She did.

  "Back off!"

  As she leaned away, her heel slipped from beneath her and her butt landed on the slushy pavement. Her friendly neighborhood carjacker slammed the door, jammed the car into gear, gunned the engine and took off down the street.

  Wendy scrambled to her feet, watching her car vanish into the night, willing it to use up its last trickle of gasoline and come to a choking halt.

  It didn't.

  She stood there dumbly for a moment, staring at her red taillights twinkling through the falling ice. She couldn't believe she'd been in town only twenty minutes, and already she was a crime statistic. She couldn't believe everything she owned in the entire world had just disappeared. She couldn't believe she was standing in the disgusting part of downtown Dallas at midnight with no coat and it was thirty degrees and sleeting like crazy and her car had just been stolen!

  Along with her five thousand dollars.

  A sick feeling rose in her stomach. It was gone. And she wasn't naive enough to think she'd ever see it again. She knew the time would come when she'd probably sob uncontrollably about that, but right now she had a much bigger problem.

  Survival.

  Anger had kept her momentarily oblivious to the cold, but now reality set in. She hugged herself, her teeth chattering so hard it had to be knocking her fillings loose. The frigid wind seemed to blow right through her, echoing through the empty streets like the mournful howl of a coyote, and she wondered how long she could last out here before hypothermia set in.

  She started to walk, chastising herself with every step. If only she hadn't gotten impatient, she could have waited out the winter storm of the decade and stayed on course through Oklahoma City instead of swinging south through Dallas. If only she hadn't messed around finding a gas station, she'd be in a cheap but warm hotel room right now. If only the windows of her old Buick were as strong as the Popemobile's—

  Stop with the ifs. Things happen. This is just one of them. A speed bump on the road of life.

  Actually, it was more like a speed mountain, one she'd have preferred to hit while driving through Miami. She made a mental note that the next time she decided to move across the country and start a new life, she'd wait until July.

  She trudged down the sidewalk, every muscle trembling in the cold, her boots slinging slush. Putting a hand to her head, she realized that her hair was turning into icicles. The longer she walked, the more uptight she became. This street seemed to be going nowhere. For all she knew, she could be walking straight into hell.

  Then again, at least hell would be warm.

  Then she heard it. The sound of an engine. It was soft at first, building in intensity as it drew closer, echoing off the walls of the abandoned buildings. She turned around to see a man on a motorcycle swing around and come to a halt in the street ten feet away, planting his booted feet firmly on the pavement. The moment she laid eyes on him, her breath caught in her throat.

  He wore a fleece-lined black leather jacket, jeans, black gloves, black boots. Even sitting on the motorcycle
, she could tell he had to be at least six foot five, with thighs the size of tree trunks and shoulders so broad she wondered if he could clear the average doorway. A jagged scar ran from his cheekbone to his chin, the kind men generally picked up in street fights or in prison, but his dark, short-cropped hair and surprisingly clean-shaven face made him seem almost handsome in spite of it.

  No. She was seeing things. This man was not handsome. No man who wore that tense, almost lethal expression, with eyes that could burn holes through steel, could ever be called handsome.

  Still … good Lord.

  In spite of the situation, in spite of the cold, in spite of the fact this man radiated danger all over the place, a blast of raw sexual awareness overwhelmed her, a prehistoric reaction that even a million years of evolution couldn't possibly arrest. She'd heard once that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, and this man exuded it with every breath he took.

  He leveled a gaze at her that would have frozen her to the pavement if nature hadn't beaten him to it. "What are you doing out here?"

  His voice was deep and commanding—the voice of a man who expected an answer the moment he spoke.

  "I—I was carjacked," she said, her voice garbled from the cold. "They got everything."

  "Live here, or just passing through?"

  "Heading to L.A."

  "Do you know anybody in Dallas?"

  "N-no," she said. "Nobody."

  For the first time, his intense expression shifted. He bowed his head, his body heaving with a sigh.

  "Get on," he said.

  She blinked with surprise. "E-excuse me?"

  "I said get on."

  Get on? Behind him? A clearly unhappy man who looked as if he ate scrap metal for breakfast? It was one thing to admire the king of beasts from afar, but she wasn't sure she should be crawling right into the cage with him.

  "Uh … sure. Can you take me to the police station?"

  "Not tonight. Too far away, and it's too damned cold. I'll take you someplace warm and safe."

  Warmth and safety. Currently the two most beautiful concepts in the English language. But was this the man who was going to provide those things?

  She looked around, shivering wildly, looking for options and finding none.

  He revved the engine. Last call.

  She mentally crossed herself, strode over and slung her leg over the back of his motorcycle.

  "Hang on, sweetheart."

  He hit the throttle, and only by clamping her arms around his waist was she able to keep from tumbling off backward. And in spite of the cold, the noise of the engine and her massive fear of the unknown, her only thought was that she'd just grabbed the Rock of Gibraltar. Even through the thick jacket he wore, she could tell he was all bone and muscle.

  "Where exactly are we going?" she shouted.

  No response. Either he couldn't hear her over the roar of the engine, or he chose to ignore her. As they sped down the deserted street, her icy hair swirled in a frenzy around her head, the frigid strands smacking her in the face. She ducked her head against his back, hoping to keep the ice cubes that had once been her ears from cracking and falling off the sides of her head. He made an excellent wind block, which was no surprise. A man his size could have blocked a category-five hurricane. Even through his jacket she could feel his body heat, and right now, heat from anywhere was welcome. She closed her eyes, resurrected a few childhood prayers and hung on tight.

  He seemed to drive forever before finally slowing down, and as soon as he did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a television remote. He pointed it at a large metal overhead door on the side of one of the buildings. With a grinding mechanical noise, the door came up. To her complete shock, he drove right underneath it into the building, the engine noise of the motorcycle reverberating off the walls of the empty warehouse.

  She glanced over her shoulder to see the door coming down behind them. That familiar sense of self-preservation surged through her again, but Greta hadn't addressed what do to when trapped on a moving vehicle behind a man the size of a redwood tree.

  "Hey!" she shouted. "Where are you going? Hey!"

  He never slowed down. He continued through the musty-smelling warehouse, dimly lit by a few overhead bulbs. Twenty feet in the distance stood two large metal doors. He leveled the remote at them, and they parted just as he reached them. He drove between them and swung the motorcycle around in a tight one-eighty just as the doors closed again. She looked around to see that they'd entered a room the size of a small bedroom. No doors, no windows. Then she heard a creaking noise, and it began to move.

  Good God, they were on an elevator.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked as they slowly ascended, her voice still paralyzed by the cold.

  "Home," he said.

  "Whose home?"

  "Mine."

  He lived here? What could possibly live in a place like this besides rats, roaches and ghosts?

  Serial killers.

  Live here, or just passing through? he'd asked her. Know anybody in Dallas? He might as well have said, Hop on, baby. It's easier to get away with murder if you're a transient.

  No. He'd said warm and safe. She'd heard him very clearly. It might have been a big fat lie, but right now she had no choice but to pray he was telling her the truth.

  The elevator chugged up three floors and stopped. The doors creaked open in concert with the soft rumble of the idling engine. He eased the motorcycle forward until it exited the elevator, then killed the engine.

  Wendy instantly got off and backed away. The light was dim, but still she could tell they were standing on a large three-story-high platform enclosed by an iron railing. The elevator led to one place—to this landing and a large metal door dead ahead.

  He smacked the kickstand down with his foot, got off the bike and stepped toward the door. Behind her, the elevator doors screeched closed. She whipped around, looking to the left of the elevator, then to the right. Where was the control panel?

  "Uh … no buttons," she said. "How do you call the elevator?"

  He held up the remote, then stuffed it into his coat pocket.

  "Stairwell?"

  "Not out here."

  She was trapped.

  She backed against the iron railing, her heart racing wildly, her teeth still chattering like crazy, sounding like a jackhammer in the silence of the huge warehouse.

  The man slipped his gloves off, stuffed them into his hip pocket, then pulled out a set of keys. He unlocked one lock. Then another. After the turn of a third key, he swung the door open, stepped aside and nodded for her to enter the darkened room.

  He'd looked big sitting on the motorcycle. He looked positively gigantic now. Her question of whether he could make it through a doorway with those shoulders was answered.

  Barely.

  Swallowing hard, Wendy glanced back at the useless elevator. The nonexistent stairwell. The sheer three-story drop over the railing. She wished she had a choice, but the weather, the situation and the look on this man's face had relieved her of all of those. Taking a deep, shaky breath, she walked through the door into the darkened room.

  Okay. It's warm in here. At least he didn't lie about that.

  That was her first thought, and for several heavenly seconds, it was her only thought.

  Then he turned on the lights.

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  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Wendy blinked against the sudden brightness, shocked at what came into view. The room was massive. No, it wasn't a room. Just an extension of the warehouse that contained it, with soaring ceilings crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and wires. Along one wall was a refrigerator, a stove and a few cabinets, with a nearby table and a couple of chairs, which she guessed qualified that area as the kitchen.

  Near an adjoining wall sat a television with a sofa in front of it. Against another wall was a desk with a phone, computer monitor, scanner, fax machine, printer. Industrial lig
ht fixtures hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room with a garish glow. The floor was nothing more than cracked, stained concrete without a rug in sight.

  She heard a clanking noise. Turning back, she saw him lock the door with twists, swipes and flips of his fingers. "Stay here," he commanded, then disappeared down a short hallway into another room.

  Wendy looked around the bizarre warehouse loft. The furniture, the computer equipment and the TV should have made it seem at least a little homey, but stuck inside this weird place, they looked strange and surreal. And not a single personal item graced a shelf, table or kitchen counter to indicate that he was a normal human being and not a reclusive psychopath. She tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but in spite of the warmth of the room, fear mingled with the cold she still felt until she couldn't tell which one was making her shiver.

  Venturing forward, she peered around a corner into another area and saw a door standing slightly open. A moment later she heard a scratching noise, and the door creaked open a few inches more.

  When a cat the size of a Yugo sauntered out of the room, Wendy leaped back with surprise. The animal stopped suddenly and glowered at her, and she was sure she'd never seen a more wicked-looking feline. He had fire-orange stripes, scruffy fur and paws the size of boxing gloves. But the scariest thing of all were his appendages, or lack of them. All of his left ear and half of his tail were missing.

  Good God. He's eating the cat. One bite at a time.

  And now the cat was going to eat her.

  "Hey, kitty-kitty," she said in her best cat-whisperer voice. "Nice kitty."

  The creature tensed. Then all at once he hissed, scurried across the floor, leaped to the kitchen counter and then to the top of the refrigerator, where he glared down at her with evil yellow eyes. Wendy backed up to the wall, her hand against her chest, trying to calm her wildly beating heart. It couldn't get any creepier here. No way could it get any creepier.

  Then she looked toward the room from which the cat had just emerged.

  Maybe it could.