Backstreet Hero

by Justine Davis

  “When you’re on a roll,” Tony said, with an odd sort of sternness, “you could run me into the ground. Or Liana, who’s almost my age. Nobody at Redstone keeps longer hours than you do, except maybe St. John.”

  “Thank you. I think. I’m flattered. Really.”

  “To hell with flattered. I would have preferred interested.”

  Interested. If you only knew….

  “This is…” she said, then stopped, trying to gather her courage. “This is impossible.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Why would you look twice at someone like me when you’re used to the Daniel Huntingtons of the world?”

  And look where that got me, she thought. “Do you think I’m a fool, Tony?”

  He frowned. “You? Hardly. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

  “Smart doesn’t necessarily mean not foolish,” she pointed out. “But I would be foolish indeed to fall for the same kind of man twice. I know what that kind of surface charm is worth. Exactly nothing.”

  He winced, and she realized he was thinking that was at least in part aimed at him.

  “I’m not accusing you of that,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” he said, sounding rueful.

  “Yes. I know now you’re nothing like him. Daniel’s charm masks the fact that there’s nothing beneath it. Yours…masks that there’s too much.”

  He drew back slightly, his dark eyes widening as if in shock. “Lilith…”

  “Josh rarely makes mistakes about people,” she said. “And if I forgot that for a while with you, it was because of the unpleasant shock of having my ex-husband shoved back into my world. I reacted as I once did, defensively against any man. I’m sorry about that.”

  The shock she’d seen gave way to something else, something she couldn’t quite name, as he stared down at her. The only word she could put to it was pride, but that made no sense at all.

  “You are…amazing,” he said softly.

  To her astonishment, she felt her cheeks heat. She rarely blushed; it happened only when her emotions were running too high to control.

  Like now.

  “Does that mean if it weren’t for those twelve years, you’d be…?”

  “Interested?” She nearly laughed out loud again. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to lie about it. “Oh, yes. I’d be interested. You’re fairly amazing yourself, Mr. Alvera.”

  The look he gave her then was one of such heat that she nearly recoiled from it.

  “Good,” he said. Sharply. Succinctly.

  And Lilith suddenly realized she’d made a serious miscalculation. She’d thought she was firmly closing a door that should never be opened.

  She hadn’t taken into account that Tony Alvera was not the kind of man to let a mere closed—or even locked—door stop him.

  Chapter 17

  He went over her condo inch by inch but found nothing. No sign that anyone had tried any windows, no new marks on the doors or the locks.

  He still didn’t like that damned balcony, not when anyone with decent balance and a bit of strength could get to it from the landscaping wall below, or even more easily from the neighbor’s balcony.

  Out on the landing he checked the front door and its serviceable dead bolt once more. Then, as if there were some clue there he’d missed, he crouched down again to look at the grooves in the wood newel posts.

  His thought about the neighbor’s balcony coming back to him, he took a look at the door at the other end of the landing. Lilith had told him Mrs. Tilly was like a one-woman neighborhood watch; she had a lot of spare time and didn’t miss much. Except when she got on the phone with her daughter in Arizona, Lilith told him; then the world could cave in and she wouldn’t pay any attention.

  An old lady like that might seem like a tempting pathway to her neighbor, he thought. It wouldn’t take much to break in, overpower her and simply wait on that balcony for Lilith to arrive home.

  But there was no sign of tampering there, either—although he would ask to inspect the inside, later, to be sure—and he went back to those infuriating grooves in the wood again.

  Apparently the neighborhood watch aspect was in full force, because it wasn’t long before Mrs. Tilly opened her door and stepped out onto the landing.

  “Lilith told me it wasn’t the Wells boy after all,” the woman said without preamble. “Is that true? I thought she was just being soft. Why, she’s even thinking about getting the boy’s mother a job at that Redstone place.”

  “No, I don’t think it was him,” he said, thinking again how like Lilith that would be. “But it was someone.”

  “Is what happened why you’ve been coming here with Lilith all the time?”

  Whether she fell into the nosy or concerned category, he wasn’t sure. Lilith said concerned, but then she was a generous soul.

  He gave himself a mental tug when he felt himself start to veer down the road of all the other things Lilith was. “What makes you think that? Maybe I’m…a new boyfriend.”

  Mrs. Tilly snorted incredulously. Tony tried not to be insulted. When the woman went on, it was easier as it became clear what she’d meant.

  “Lilith? That girl barely takes time to breathe. Told her for years she needs a man in her life, but she just laughs and says work is safer.”

  Safer.

  The word made him wince inwardly. A memory of his mother, crying in the rocking chair that had been her mother’s in turn, because she no longer felt safe in her home, burned through his mind. But at least that threat had been from outside.

  He couldn’t imagine how it must feel to have the threat come from inside, and from the very person whose main concern should be keeping you safe.

  So now that’s your concern, he told himself. Get to it.

  When the woman had gone back inside—and quickly secured her dead bolt lock—Tony continued downstairs and headed for his car. Lilith was safely inside now; he could think. He would call Hill, have her come back, then…

  Then what?

  He had no idea.

  He yanked the driver’s door closed with more energy than was necessary, and the slam settled his nerves a bit. He did need to focus on this. Anything else—if there was anything else—would simply have to wait.

  It was dark enough now that the automatic sensors turned on the headlights. He drove slowly down the row of covered parking stalls. He didn’t like the things, didn’t like the vehicles being outside and vulnerable. Most people didn’t, he supposed, but their concerns were usually limited to weathering and the occasional vandalism.

  He tried not to glance over at Lilith’s car, at the now empty parking spot beside it. Ridiculously, his hands tightened on the wheel, and he realized he was fighting the urge to turn in and park there.

  And do what? he asked himself. Go back up, confront her, start one of Those Conversations any man in his right mind tried his damnedest to avoid?

  She’d already made it pretty clear how she felt. She thought she was too old for him.

  Or maybe that you’re too young for her, he amended silently, finally giving in and glancing at that tempting empty space as he went slowly past.

  He hit the brakes sharply.

  For an instant he just stared, wondering if he was imagining things because he’d just been thinking of the hazards of unsecured parking. But he knew it was there, that gleaming bit of fluid creeping out from under Lilith’s car, reflecting the head-light’s glare.

  He was out in an instant, the flashlight from his glove compartment in hand, kneeling beside the drying puddle. In the fading light it was difficult to tell, but it didn’t look like the greenish color of coolant, or the red of transmission or steering fluid, not even the darker shade of engine oil. It looked almost clear, just faintly golden.

  Suspicion bit deep, and he reached down to touch the wettest part of the small seepage. He rubbed the liquid between his fingers.

  Not just wet. Not oily. Slippery.

  Very sli
ppery.

  Brake fluid.

  He was on his back and under the car in seconds. He traced the brake line with the beam of light. He found no visible drip, but after a moment spotted a point on the line that looked cleaner than the rest. He touched it, and his fingertip came away once more slick and slippery. He focused the flashlight there, saw a barely perceptible puncture. Slightly elongated, as if it could have been made with the tip of a pocketknife, just enough to cause a very slow leak.

  He swore viciously under his breath, wondering how he could have missed this. That Hill had apparently missed it as well registered, and he thought it was a good thing the woman was gone or he might have chewed a piece off her, and that was Draven’s job.

  The puddle was dry enough that it likely had been there awhile. It was just barely visible beyond the edge of her car’s shadow, and they hadn’t really gone near her car all week, but that, to him, was no excuse.

  Not when it was Lilith.

  Not when this might well have succeeded in killing her. They obviously had every reason to think she’d have continued to drive this car, and the results eventually could have been disastrous.

  The thought chilled him much more than the cool asphalt at his back.

  It was time to get his freaking head back in the game.

  Chapter 18

  She opened the door hesitantly.

  “I’d ask if you forgot something, but I know you didn’t,” she said.

  Just my mind, he thought as he stared at her. She’d changed into some bluish-looking outfit, loose pants and a sweatshirt-type top, but it was in a fuzzy material he just knew would feel like warm velvet. The sheen of it seemed to ripple over her, changing with her every move, every breath. Her hair was pulled back into a tail at her nape, and he thought for all her concern about being older than he, at the moment she looked about twenty.

  He stepped inside, pushing past her, unable to resist the slightest brush of his fingers over that fabric; it felt even better than he’d imagined.

  And she felt more tempting beneath it than anything he could ever remember.

  “Put some clothes on,” he said, hating the snap that had come into his voice. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “I believe I have clothes on,” she said mildly.

  Put something on that won’t drive me insane, he amended, then held his breath, half-afraid he’d said it out loud. When she just continued to look at him with that cool, assessing expression, he pulled his thoughts together.

  With an effort, he presented her with a concise report of what he’d found. Then he got back to his original order.

  “Get what you need, while I figure out where we’re going.”

  “I am not leaving home,” Lilith said firmly.

  “That wasn’t a request,” Tony retorted.

  “You said yourself it probably happened some time ago,” she pointed out with annoying reasonability. “The spot was nearly dry, you said.”

  “Never mind what I said. It’s still twice they’ve come after you here.”

  “Maybe, but couldn’t it just as easily have been the same time? The brakes as backup in case the wire didn’t work? I haven’t driven the car since that day, and you said it was a small leak.”

  “Stop repeating what I said,” he snapped.

  He knew she was right, but he didn’t want to admit it now that it was helping her avoid doing what he wanted her to do.

  “So there’s no reason to assume the threat has suddenly become more…immediate,” she said. The fact that she wasn’t denying that there indeed was a threat mollified him a little. But not much.

  “Reason,” he muttered, “doesn’t seem to have much to do with it.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You can’t stay here.”

  She smothered a sigh. “You’re not listening.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Tony—”

  “You want to die to prove me right?”

  The sharpness of his tone got through to her. But she didn’t buckle. He wondered—if her life had been different, if she hadn’t had to learn to stand up to her ex, would she have given in by now? Ironic that, without even trying, Daniel Huntington was still affecting her.

  “I’m through running,” she said. “There has to be another way. If you must, have Taylor come back.”

  He took a breath, amazed that it took conscious effort. “No. If you won’t go, I’m staying.”

  Lilith simply looked at him, as if she were pondering the ramifications of his decision—one that he hadn’t even realized he’d made until this moment—not to call back the other agent.

  Whatever her thoughts were, they didn’t show. But then, she’d likely had a lot of practice hiding her thoughts from her ex-husband. That she would use that skill with him rankled, but he supposed she felt she had to. Now that he’d blurted out his idiot attraction to her.

  He thought she was going to argue with him, insist that he leave, that she’d be fine here alone.

  “I’m staying,” he said again. “Damned if I’m going to face Josh and have to tell him I let something happen to someone who matters to him as much as you do. So I’m staying. Whether it’s in here or out in my car is up to you.”

  There. He’d put it nicely in the context of it being his job. And bringing Josh back into it had been a master stroke, he told himself. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—argue with that. Nobody from Redstone would.

  And she didn’t.

  “There’s a lot of Chinese left,” was all she said. “You might as well eat, then.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “I’ll warm it up.”

  She was merely being polite, he knew; she had the leftover food, so he might as well eat it. There was nothing about her capitulation or her manner to indicate they were going to head into any deep, emotional discussion of his unwise confession.

  And what about hers?

  Oh, yes. I’d be interested. You’re fairly amazing yourself, Mr. Alvera.

  Her words echoed in his head, replaying in an audio loop that seemed endless. The part of him that wanted to seize on those words and go after what they implied was warring with the part of him that told him this was a job, and he needed to focus on that until he was sure she was safe. She was Redstone, and therefore his responsibility. She was one of Josh’s oldest and dearest friends, which made that even more imperative. He’d told the truth about that.

  When he’d finished the meal, or at least as much as he’d been able to force down, he sat at the cool granite bar in her kitchen, poking the last grains of rice around with the fork she’d given him when he’d told her chopsticks weren’t part of his milieu. He knew he had yet another battle in front of him, and he didn’t even know how to start.

  “I have some work to do,” she said as she opened the dishwasher and put in the plates she and Taylor had used. He set down the fork and picked up both it and the plate he’d used, then walked around the end of the dining bar to add them to the collection in the rack.

  At her glance, he shrugged. “I’m housebroken. My mother never had a dishwasher when I was at home, but she made sure Lucy and I cleaned up after ourselves.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Lucinda. My sister.” He got it out evenly enough. “My mother cleaned up after my father. It was their way.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a sister. Where is she now?”

  “Dead,” he said shortly, wishing he’d never let the name slip out. Something about this woman made him lose his usual care about speaking without thinking. He’d never really been aware how much of a buffer that studied flattery, the surface flirting created between him and every woman he dealt with, until he’d stopped using it on her. It hadn’t even been a conscious decision, it just hadn’t seemed right. Those practiced words and gestures were for casual acquaintances, for friends who didn’t mind the teasing nature of it, and for those he needed to finagle something from. Lilith wasn’t any of those.

  H
e just wasn’t sure what she was.

  “I’m sorry, Tony.”

  Her words were soft, and the long, silent moment she’d waited before saying them somehow took them out of the realm of automatic platitude.

  “It was a long time ago.” He was sounding gruff again, but he couldn’t help that.

  “She must have been very young, then.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “That’s horrible,” she said. “Was she ill?”

  He blinked. Then laughed harshly. “Of course you’d assume that. In your world, if a fifteen-year-old dies, it’s illness, or maybe an accident. In mine, the first possibility that comes to anyone’s mind is a drive-by bullet.”

  To her credit, although she paled, she didn’t back away. “Is that what happened?”

  “She wasn’t even out on the street. She was in her bedroom, trying on her new dress for her fifteenth birthday. We buried her in it, instead.”

  “I am sorry, Tony. There’s no excuse for that.”

  “They paid,” he said succinctly. He waited for her to ask, realized he was angry, wanted her to say something silly about the law and vengeance so he could unload all his tangled emotions. But instead she simply nodded, a little sharply, and said just one word.

  “Good.”

  She left him there, staring after her, as she went into the den that she used as an office. For a moment he couldn’t move. He so rarely talked about Lucy, he was a little stunned that it had come out so easily.

  Only one secret left, vato, he told himself.

  Since it was the one most likely to actually send her running, he didn’t know if he would ever spill it.

  Finally he walked to the door of her office, watching as she waited for the desktop computer to finish booting, then picked up the small flash drive that sat beside the keyboard and plugged it in.

  “You don’t get enough of this ten, twelve hours a day at Redstone?” he asked.

  “Josh brought me in to clean up this mess, and until we’re sure we’ve found everything that Stan Chilton might have tampered with or sold, then no, I haven’t done enough.”