by Mallory Kane
And he couldn’t blame her. He hadn’t given her one bit of proof that he was any better than Ramis.
Okay. Sure, he’d rushed over to rescue her, but by now she’d probably figured out that the reason he’d been so Johnny-on-the-spot was because he’d been afraid the camera she’d found was one of his.
Behind him he could hear her soft, even breaths. She’d fallen asleep. He was reluctant to move a muscle for fear of waking her up. But he did want to look at her.
For some reason, it was all he’d wanted to do from the moment he’d first seen her early on Tuesday morning as she headed out to her classes at Loyola. Truth to tell, in some ways, it was all he’d wanted to do for twelve years, since the night she’d surprised the heck out of him by kissing him.
It was why he’d taken this job instead of doing what Brad had asked him to do—what he should have done—recommend someone. He’d taken the job himself, even knowing that once Angela found out what he was doing, she’d hate him.
There was a part of him that had hoped seeing her again would prove to him that his memory of that kiss was way overrated.
It hadn’t. Of course, he could still hope that if he kissed her now it would be a disappointment.
He stole a glance, holding his breath in case she was awake and caught him.
But no, she was sound asleep. Her lips were slightly parted, and her chest rose and fell with her even breaths. Her eyes were closed, the dark lashes resting gently against her cheeks. The only indication that there was anything wrong in her life was the tiny wrinkle between her brows.
His thumb twitched to brush away that frown, but since it was his fault, it would only come back. At least she was sleeping for now.
He turned back to the computer screen and ran the lobby disk up to Wednesday afternoon. He fast-forwarded until he spotted Doug coming through the door from the street. Billy was nowhere in sight.
Sure enough, Doug went up to the door labeled Office and knocked. Within seconds, Bouvier opened the door. He was in an undershirt, and his left upper arm was covered with crudely drawn tattoos—prison tats.
Doug spoke to him for a few seconds, and the super nodded and glanced upward, toward the second floor. Then Doug took out his wallet and handed him some bills.
“Well, creep, whatever you’re up to, I’ve got proof,” Lucas muttered. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you hurt Angela.”
ANGELA WOKE TO THE UNMISTAKABLE smell of café au lait. She turned over and almost ended up on the floor.
“Whoa, Ange,” a familiar gravely voice said. “You’ve got to move slowly on that cot.”
She froze. That voice. Her eyes flew open and she saw Lucas. It wasn’t the first time in the past twelve years that she’d woken up dreaming about him. But it was the first time she’d managed to conjure him up in the flesh.
“Here,” he said. “I got you some coffee.”
In the flesh with café au lait. Nice dream. She took the paper cup and sipped it.
“Lots of sugar, right?”
She smiled and took a bigger sip. By the time the warm liquid hit her stomach, she remembered everything.
Doug. Lucas. Cameras. Danger. All the terrifying events of the night before.
She was here in the abandoned building across the street from her apartment because Lucas was hiding her from someone who wanted to kill her. She shivered.
And now she was watching him do what he’d been doing for the past several days—watching her through spy cams.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Don’t,” she grated. “Don’t talk to me.”
His eyes narrowed for a second, then he nodded and swiveled around to face the computer screen. He was fast-forwarding through one of the disks. The disks he’d recorded through cameras her brother had ordered set up—to catch a hit man.
She got up and moved to the other chair. She didn’t want to watch the figures on the screen, but it was impossible to look away. She sat there, clutching the cup with both hands, until she’d drunk the whole thing. Finally, fortified by the caffeine and sugar, she felt a little less fuzzy-headed. Even slightly less terrified.
Lucas didn’t say anything else. He appeared to be totally concentrated on the computer. He had on a lightweight jacket over a white shirt this morning. His hair was damp and he was freshly shaven. But his eyes were red. She wondered if he’d slept at all.
She focused on the image on the screen. “That’s the street camera,” she said. “Oh.” She chafed her arms. “I can’t stand this. The idea that Doug—and you—were watching me.”
He didn’t comment, but the straight line of his back underneath the lightweight jacket he wore this morning seemed to tighten. “This one’s yesterday morning. Thursday.” He paused the screen and then rewound it a bit.
“That’s me.” She watched herself leaving her building, her purse and book bag slung over her arm, headed southwest toward the streetcar stop.
It was a bizarre feeling, watching herself.
Lucas muttered a curse.
“What?” Then she saw what he’d just seen. “Oh, my God!” she cried. “That’s him! Do you see him? It’s the man from the streetcar. Go back.”
He was already rewinding.
“There. Stop.” Angela swallowed hard, feeling nauseated. “Look at him. He’s following me.”
Lucas hit Pause, freezing the guy in his tracks, then rewound and played, rewound and played, until he had the best view of the man.
“I thought he was bigger than that,” she said.
Lucas nodded. He pulled a small pad out of his pocket and wrote something on it and then clicked the mouse. A couple of seconds later a printer started up.
“He was waiting out there Thursday morning. He must have followed me to Loyola and back. Oh—” she took a deep breath “—I think I’m going to be sick.”
Lucas shot her a quick glance and then retrieved a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.
She accepted it gratefully and pressed the chilled bottle against her temple for a few seconds before she opened it and drank. It helped a little.
“How long has he—?”
“I’ve watched the feed from this camera since we turned it on Tuesday night, and this is the first time I’ve seen him.”
“Are you sure?” But she knew he was. He’d already spotted the guy before she’d said anything. Suddenly she realized he’d been watching this screen all night, looking for him.
“Can you tell anything about his face? I never got a good look. But that’s him. I’m sure of it. He’s the guy who followed me off the streetcar.”
“Watch how he keeps the brim of his cap down over his face. He’s used to hiding his face from security cameras. Can you make out the logo on the cap? I’m thinking it’s a Chicago Cubs cap. And I’d bet real money that he’s hiding a gun under that shirt.”
“Gun? He’s got a gun?” She sucked in a shaky breath.
“Yeah.” He studied the screen for a few seconds. “It’ll be easy to determine his height and weight. And if he hangs onto that shirt, he’ll be easy to find.”
“What are you going to do now? Can you have the police arrest him?”
“For what? Loitering in a tasteless shirt? No. But I’m going to send this disk to Dawson and see if he can get an angle on his face.”
“Your cousin Dawson helped you set up the spy cams, didn’t he?”
“Yep. He loaned me the equipment from his company.”
“What about this building? How’d you manage this?”
“There are several abandoned buildings on this street, which, by the way, makes it pretty unsafe for someone like you.”
“Someone like me? You mean, like a girl?”
“No, Brat. Like any ordinary civilian. There are reasonable precautions anyone should take. One is choosing a safe neighborhood to live in.”
“This neighborhood is just fine. But please. Keep going. Is there anything else you’d like to criticize about my life?”
“Convenient.”
He nodded and his mouth quirked wryly. “Sometimes it helps when everybody in the state knows your family’s name. Even if it is infamy rather than fame.”
“Oh, I know that.” She took a long swig of cold water. Amazingly, she was becoming inured to the horrific situation she found herself in. She glanced at Lucas and saw that his wry smile had softened, and his green eyes held a spark of amusement.
“What?” she snapped. Suddenly, she felt stiff and uncomfortable. The legs of her pants were twisted and her shirt had ridden up while she was asleep. She stood and straightened her clothes.
“Feel better now?” He nodded toward the water bottle.
“Better? You mean better than last night, when I found out that everybody I know has been watching me through spy cams in my apartment? My apartment.”
“Yeah. Better than that.”
“I need to get back to my apartment. I have to study. I have to return that DVD to Sal. I want to talk to Mr. Bouvier about installing deadbolts—” her voice broke and she shuddered.
“Right. That’s not going to happen. You’re staying with me until I get all this sorted out.”
She pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to pretend she didn’t notice them trembling. It didn’t work. “But I have a final on Monday.”
His brows lowered and his green eyes turned dark. “I’m not interested in whether you pass your test, Ange. Because you definitely won’t get the kind of job you want if you’re dead.”
Chapter Six
The man sitting at the outdoor café nursing a cup of black coffee looked less uncomfortable than he felt. He hated the ridiculous-looking orange and yellow bowling shirt. But it was either that or an even sillier oversized T-shirt, so he could conceal the Glock 22 tucked in his belt.
So now at least he was dressed a little more like the people around him, but he still felt conspicuous. He was used to silk shirts and suits custom-tailored to hide the gun that had been a part of his wardrobe since he was twenty, but which he’d never used outside the shooting range, thanks to Mama. He’d figured he’d be even more conspicuous in a custom-tailored wool gabardine suit. Not to mention he’d probably melt.
He took off his baseball cap and wiped sweat off his forehead. He hated the South. He figured God must, too, because he’d made it hot as hell.
Give him Chicago, where the heat generally stayed where it belonged, in the month of August, and there was no such thing as humidity.
And what was with the streets? They were narrow enough to begin with, and then people parked all up and down them, so there was no room to squeeze one car in, much less two going in opposite directions. The big Lexus he’d rented at the airport was useless here.
He looked around for the waiter. He couldn’t drink any more coffee. He needed a bottle of cold water. And he needed to piss. But he wasn’t moving, not until he saw her.
He’d been tailing her for two days, since Wednesday, on the hot campus of Loyola University, the steaming streets of the French Quarter, even back and forth on that suffocating streetcar. Both days she’d left her building by eight-thirty, stopped to get a cup of coffee right here at this café and headed toward the streetcar stop.
Not today. He’d been here since seven and it was after nine, and she still hadn’t shown. That put a crimp in his plans. He’d decided that neither the Loyola campus nor the streetcar would work for his needs. He liked the idea of catching her walking by an alley at dawn or dusk. That would be quick and clean.
His chest tightened with anxious anticipation. He was going to do it this morning. His first hit. And it would be a doozie. Popping the sister of the ADA who was prosecuting his father. Papa was going to be so proud. See if his brothers teased him about being the baby—Mama’s boy—now.
A familiar figure caught his eye.
There she was. The ADA’s sister, coming out of the abandoned building across the street from her apartment—with a man.
What the hell?
Not the soft guy who’d been hanging around her apartment building, either. This guy was tall, and nobody would ever call him soft. He looked like he could handle himself.
As he watched, the guy checked out the street, up and down, before he led her to an old red Mustang Cobra and held the door for her. He guided her with his hand at the small of her back.
The way he touched her, the way he looked at her, Tony figured they were lovers.
That explained the change in her routine. Damn it!
He sighed as he reached in his pocket for his cell phone. There was no way he’d make it back to Chicago in time for his son’s soccer game tomorrow. He’d figured it would be a quick, easy trip. Everything he’d observed in the past few days told him she lived alone and didn’t have a boyfriend.
But now she’d acquired a protector. It was going to take longer than he’d thought to eliminate Angela Grayson and scare the ADA into throwing the trial. He knew his plan would work, because if Nikolai Picone’s family could find and kill Brad Harcourt’s half-sister a thousand miles away, not even an order of protection could keep his wife and daughters safe.
The thought that popped into his brain gave him pause. It was awfully convenient that the guy had shown up when he did. Had Brad Harcourt hired her a bodyguard?
It made sense. He was staying in an unoccupied building across the street from her apartment. He could have been there the whole time, watching, waiting.
Looking for Tony. Well, he wouldn’t find it easy to catch Tony Picone. Being the youngest and the smallest of four brothers had its advantages. He’d learned early how to sneak around to find out what he needed to know to hold his own with his older brothers. He’d relied on stealth and blackmail rather than strength. It had worked, to a certain extent.
His brothers gave him a wide berth, but they didn’t respect him, either. They respected brawn, not brains.
A smile spread his lips as he watched the vintage Cobra pull away from the curb. Now that he thought about it, this was much better than a classic hit. He didn’t have to take Angela Grayson out in the same clumsy, distasteful way the others handled their assignments.
He had a better idea. He’d show his brothers what brains could do. His degree in electrical engineering would come in very handy for what he was planning.
She and her convenient protector would be back soon enough. In the meantime, he had a few purchases to make. Then all he needed was the cover of darkness. His new plan was going to be more elegant than a messy gunshot in an empty alley that could be dismissed as a mugging gone bad.
This message would be loud and clear.
Very clear.
And very loud.
ANGELA’S PHONE RANG AGAIN. Both Lucas and Dawson looked at her. She shrugged at Lucas, then excused herself and skipped out of Dawson Delancey’s office, and into the reception room. She didn’t have to look at the display. She knew who it was. Doug Ramis. It was the third time he’d called in the past hour.
“Oh, no,” she muttered, staring at his name as her ring tone played. She didn’t want to answer it, but it was torture to listen to the ring and do nothing.
She could feel Dawson’s receptionist looking at her. Finally she hit the Reject button to turn off the sound.
She knew Lucas wouldn’t be much longer. He and Dawson were winding up their conversation. He could tell her what to do about Doug. Whether to answer and let Lucas listen in or just ignore his calls. Although, if she didn’t answer eventually, she knew what would happen. Doug would go by her apartment looking for her. And if he didn’t find her there, then what would he do? Call the police? Report her missing?
Just as she reached fo
r her purse to put her phone away, the door to Dawson’s office opened and Lucas came out. He was grinning.
She gasped, then quickly covered it with a pretend cough. Dear God, she’d forgotten about that grin.
The Delancey grin. All three of his brothers—hell, the whole Delancey clan—had it.
It lit up the room—the entire world. Lucas Delancey was gorgeous no matter what he was doing, but that grin was worth a million words in any language.
He walked over to where she was sitting. “Everything all right? I’m guessing by your expression that was Doug calling.”
She nodded.
“You didn’t answer it, did you?”
“No. I didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s the third time he’s called since last night, right? He’ll call back.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I’ll deal with him. But first, let’s get some breakfast—” he looked at his watch “—or lunch if you’d rather, and then head back.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said automatically, as she stood.
“Yes, you are. How about Lou-Lou’s?”
She tried to shake her head. Tried to say no, that she really wasn’t hungry. But Lou-Lou’s Café had the best breakfast in the world, bar none. Huge fresh biscuits with butter and homemade jelly, fluffy omelets golden with cheese, thick slabs of smoked bacon and coffee that must have been made in heaven. Her mouth watered just thinking about it.
Lucas sent her a quick smile over the roof of the Cobra. “I can hear your stomach growling from here. I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I thought you didn’t want anyone in Chef Voleur to know you were back here. If we go to Lou-Lou’s, the word will be out before she brings the coffee. And my stomach’s not growling.”
“Oh, yes it is. Lou-Lou’ll let us eat in the kitchen. She’s really good at keeping secrets.”
LOU-LOU WAS THRILLED to see Lucas, and she made Angela bring her up-to-date on Brad’s daughters. She sat them down at the big wooden table in the café’s kitchen and fed them breakfast and gossip in equally large, mouth-watering portions.