Up In Flames

by Lori Foster

  She hurried out front, with both of them rushing behind her. A taxi rounded the corner onto the adjacent street, and she jogged across the parking lot to hail it, just wanting to escape, to be alone—as she’d accustomed herself to being. She had the cab door open when Josh grabbed her arm.

  “Delilah, wait.”

  She looked up at him—and saw Mick standing in the station doorway. “He can explain,” she said, tears filling her eyes to the point where everything blurred. “Goodbye.”

  Josh had no choice but to release her. She didn’t look back to see them talking. She knew what Mick would tell them, what he believed, and she couldn’t bear to see them turn on her, too. She’d finally gotten comfortable with them, accepted them as a part of her life, a disruptive, unruly, fun part.

  And now it was over.

  She dropped her head forward and covered her face. How? she wondered, wishing she could understand what had happened, how it had all gone so wrong in the blink of an afternoon.

  The man Mick had shot was no longer unconscious. And he’d told Mick something, found some way to convince him that she was involved. Mick had said he knew personal things, intimate things. That had to mean details of their lovemaking.

  Judging by the way Mick had looked at her, he hadn’t told a soul, so he’d assumed that she had done the blabbing. To a criminal. To a man who’d tried to kill her and had shot him.

  And then the shock of it hit her. She felt chilled to the bone, shivering with realization, revulsion.

  The cabby pulled up to her apartment, and Del handed him a twenty, not even thinking about getting change, or how much she’d tipped him. She stumbled to the steps leading to her apartment and stared up at the front door.

  There was only one thing for her to do.

  She had to leave.

  * * *

  Mick hated to admit it, but he was relieved to see that Josh and Zack had followed Delilah to the station. That meant she hadn’t been alone when the detectives took her. He’d regretted sending for her almost immediately, but then he had a lot of regrets, and they all centered around her. He had to stop thinking with his emotions and start using his head instead.

  He turned to Josh as he approached, but wasn’t prepared for the solid pop in the left arm his friend delivered.

  “Ow, goddamn it!” Awkwardly, he rubbed his arm and glared at Josh. “That hurt.”

  “Good.” Josh looked ready to take another swing, this one at Mick’s head. “What the hell did you do to her?”

  “To Delilah?”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “No, to Queen Elizabeth. Of course to Delilah. She came out of here nearly in tears.”

  “Not nearly in tears,” Josh accused, his nostrils flared like a charging bull. “She was crying, damn it.”

  Mick hurt from his hair to his toenails, and not all of it was physical. The idea of Delilah crying only added to his pain, making it more acute when he’d thought he couldn’t hurt any worse. Dully, wishing he could undo the past, or somehow change it, he said, “She’s not who you think she is.”

  Zack went very still, then stiffened. “What did you do?”

  To see his two best friends rallying to her defense added one more bruise to his already battered conscience. He’d wanted them to accept her, and vice versa. But now it hardly mattered.

  In the briefest terms possible, Mick explained the situation. He hated going through it again, hated rehashing all the ways he’d been duped, all the ways she had lied.

  When he finished, Josh popped him again.

  Mick squared off, unwilling to let Josh’s hostility continue. “Will you quit that!”

  Pushing himself between them, Zack said, “Josh has a point.”

  “A point?” Mick stared at him, incredulous. “All he did was hit me!”

  “Because you needed to be hit,” Zack explained, always the cool one, always the peacemaker. “Jesus, man, you don’t know anything about women. I realize you don’t date much—”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “—but I figured you’d have picked up some things just from being around Josh, if only by osmosis.”

  “I know more than I care to,” Mick grumbled in return. He knew that he was a lousy judge of character, that he’d allowed his gonads to overrule his good sense. That few people could be trusted, but he was too damn stupid to learn that lesson.

  “Not,” Josh said, pressing forward again, “by a long shot.”

  Mick was amazed by Josh’s red-eyed, aggressive attitude, which went well beyond defensive friendship for Delilah. He was acting territorial. Mick closed the space between them in a heartbeat. “What the hell does she mean to you?”

  “More than she does to you, obviously!”

  Again, Zack wedged into the middle, chest to chest with Mick, forcefully moving him a few feet away from Josh. “Quit baiting him, Josh. And Mick, he’s right. Why the hell didn’t you talk to her privately?”

  “I’m a cop,” he reminded them, with an enormous dose of sarcasm and a chip on his shoulder so large his knees almost gave out. “I’m supposed to bring in the criminals.” No sooner did the words leave his mouth than he winced. He sounded just like Rudy.

  Josh shook his head and all but shouted, “You’re also in love, you ass.”

  Mick stared at him, and wondered if he could reach him before Zack intervened. Probably not, judging by Zack’s watchful attention. Mick settled for saying, “Go screw yourself.”

  “Oh yeah, that’ll fix things.” Josh threw up his hands. “Do you have any idea how rare a woman like Delilah is?”

  Possessiveness bristled along his nerve endings, despite what had just transpired in the interrogation room. “Not more than a few days ago, you were calling her strange!”

  “Strange, unique, rare.” Josh shrugged. “But that was ten days ago, before I really knew her.”

  “You’re keeping count!”

  “She’s damn special.”

  Zack nodded. “Very special.”

  “Did either of you hear me?” Mick demanded in a shout, so frazzled and confused he knew his hair should be standing on end. “She’s dealing with Rudy. She was in on the whole thing.”

  Zack leveled him with a pitying look. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Neither do I,” Josh added. “If you’d talked to her privately, maybe she could have explained.”

  “She had a chance to explain in there,” Mick roared, stabbing a finger toward the station, “and all she did was deny any connection to him.”

  “Maybe because she has no connection, and maybe because you threw her for one hell of a loop.” Josh squeezed his eyes shut. “God, she looked so hurt, it’s breaking my damn heart, and I’m not the one in love with her.”

  Zack raised a brow over that, but refrained from saying anything.

  “She’s crazy about you, Mick. She trusted you.” Disgust filled Josh’s tone. “And you just tossed her to the wolves.”

  Mick looked away from the accusation in Josh’s eyes. “All I did was have her questioned.”

  “All you did,” Josh said, grabbing him by his shirtfront and shaking him, “is show her that you don’t care two cents for her feelings, that you don’t trust her and that you’ll gladly believe a man capable of murder rather than hear her side of things.”

  Put that way... Mick shook Josh off and paced across the parking lot. Heat rose from the blacktop in waves, adding to his frustration, making him sweat.

  His first sight of Delilah in the interrogation room had showed her to be wilted, stunned. By the time she’d walked out she’d mustered up a bit of stiff-backed pride. But the incredible vibrancy that he’d thought an integral part of her had been gone. He shook his head, wanting to dispel the image of her beautiful blue eyes clouded with distress. “I was...sick when I got done talking to Rudy.”

  “Sick and stupid,” Josh sneered.

  Zack grabbed Josh. “Will you knock it off! This isn’t helping, and to be frank, I’m beginning to be
a bit suspicious of your interest myself.”

  Josh glared at him, then at Mick’s questioning gaze. Finally, he shrugged. “If Mick wasn’t interested in her, I’d have been hot on her trail. So what?”

  Already on a short fuse, Mick exploded. “You miserable son of a—”

  This time Zack had to leap between them, shoving at both men hard to keep them from coming to blows. “You’re both causing a scene, damn it!”

  Around Zack’s body, Josh taunted, “What’s it matter to you, buddy? You just threw her away.” And then, as if that wasn’t enough to curdle Mick’s blood, he added, “I think I’ll go console her.”

  Another struggle ensued, while Zack did his best to keep the two of them apart. Josh, muttering a sound of disgust, finally gave up and stepped away. “Fine, you still want her? Well then, go after her. But listen to her. And don’t you dare make her cry again.”

  Mick, red in the neck and teeth gnashing, subsided as well. He didn’t really want to take his rage out on a friend. It took him several moments, but he finally got the words out. “You honestly think there might be another explanation?”

  They both nodded at him. Josh said, “I believe in her. She may be good at coming up with elaborate plots for her books, but she’d never hurt someone she cared about.”

  Mick wondered if, after what he’d just put her through, he could still be counted among those she cared for.

  “And no way,” Zack added, “would she take a chance on innocent people getting caught in the cross fire just for publicity.”

  Mick groaned, hearing the ring of truth in their words. Josh walked away from them both and went to stand near a telephone pole. Zack squeezed Mick’s uninjured shoulder. “Yep, I’m afraid you might have blown it. Better to get there as quick as you can and start your apologies. If you give her too much time to consider what you’ve done, she may not be able to forgive you.”

  Mick stared at his feet. “I can’t imagine what explanation there could be. Rudy knew things that no one should have known.”

  “It would be easy enough for him to guess that you were sleeping together. That doesn’t take an Einstein.”

  “He knew...details. Specific details that went beyond—”

  “I understand,” Zack rushed to say, before Mick could stumble on. But Mick noticed there was a gleam of curiosity in his eyes, too.

  He straightened. “I’ll give her a chance to talk to me, one on one. And I hope like hell you’re right, that she can clear this all up.”

  “Ha. I think you better do more than that. You better get down on your knees.”

  Mick glared at him, but as he walked away, he didn’t rule out the possibility of begging. He’d never felt so miserable in his life—not when Angel had been threatened and he knew he couldn’t protect her, not even when his mother had died in a stranger’s shack, an empty whiskey bottle beside her. No, the thought of losing Delilah was a gnawing ache that kept expanding and sharpening until his guts felt on fire and his chest threatened to explode.

  Even if she had been in on the scheme, he didn’t want to lose her. He’d find a way to keep her out of jail, keep her straight, even if that meant keeping her in bed, under him, from now on.

  Before he reached his car, he was running.

  It occurred to him with a blinding flash of insight that if his friends were right, if Delilah was in fact innocent, he’d just left her alone and vulnerable. Anything could happen to her.

  He stepped on the gas and made it to her apartment in record time.

  * * *

  Josh saw Zack glaring at him and he grinned, though his grin felt more sickly than not. “What?”

  “Don’t use that innocent tone on me. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Forcing a chuckle, Josh shook his head. “I just worked him into a lather. He needed to be shook up or he’d have stood around here pondering all the possibilities, and by the time he realized we were right, it would have been too late. I saved him some time and heartache, that’s all.”

  “So everything was an act? You’re not hung up on her?”

  Josh winked, and lied through his teeth. “Not at all. You know I like to play the field.”

  “Huh. I know you’ve never had a woman show complete and utter disinterest in you before.”

  “True.” Delilah had gone from not noticing him, to grudgingly accepting him as Mick’s friend, to displaying a fondness that bordered on sisterly. From the start, she’d made her preferences known, and it had been Mick all the way. Josh laughed. “I tell ya, I can live without it ever happening again.”

  Zack turned to look at the road. “I hope Mick doesn’t kill himself getting over there.”

  “I just thought of something,” Josh said, and reached for the cell phone clipped to his belt. “Since we both know Delilah didn’t have any part of sharing that information, someone must have been spying on them.”

  “But how?” Zack asked. “Mick claims it was very personal in-the-bedroom stuff.”

  Josh grinned. “Yeah, I wish he’d elaborated on that.” Zack laughed, never guessing exactly how big a lie that was. The last thing Josh wanted to hear was the personal sexual details between them. It ate him up.

  Delilah, with her contrary ways and openness and brutal honesty, had stolen a piece of his heart. It was the damnedest thing he’d ever experienced, and while he was thrilled all to hell and back for Mick, he couldn’t help wishing that he’d found her first.

  He shook off his melancholy. Right now, all he wanted was for Mick and Delilah to be happy, and that meant Mick had to get her to forgive him. To that end, Josh wanted to figure out what had gone wrong.

  “You think someone could have seen in through the bedroom window somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” Josh admitted, “but I know who could find out.”

  Awareness lit Zack’s eyes. “Alec?”

  “You betcha.” He punched in a series of numbers and waited until the call was answered. “Alec Sharpe, please. Yeah, it’s an emergency.”

  Only a few seconds passed before Alec took the phone. “Sharpe here.”

  It would have taken far too long to explain, so Josh merely said, “Hey, Alec, this is Josh. Mick is kind of in trouble and you need to get over to Delilah’s apartment.”

  To Josh’s surprise, Alec didn’t ask any questions, didn’t ask for details of any kind. He said only, “I’m on my way,” and the line went dead.

  Zack looked at Josh as he closed the cell phone. “Well?”

  Josh shrugged. “He, uh, he doesn’t say much, does he? But he’s heading over there now.” He glanced at his watch. “Figuring he was at the office, I think it’ll take him about forty-five minutes.”

  Zack frowned in thought. “With what I’ve heard about Alec, I wouldn’t be surprised if he made it in thirty.”

  Then they stared at each other. Josh shifted, looked up at the broiling afternoon sun and then the glare off his car’s windshield. He propped his hands on his hips and tilted his head at Zack. “You got anywhere you need to be?”

  After glancing at his watch, Zack said, “Not for a few more hours. Dani was going to the pizza parlor after the movie.”

  They’d been friends so long, they often shared thoughts without words being spoken. “Think we should?” Josh asked.

  Neither one answered, then in unison they said, “We should.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mick sat out front for several minutes, stewing in his own misgivings. He hated to admit how much he hoped, prayed, that Delilah could come up with an alternate explanation. Even now he wanted to hold her, to tuck her close and tell her everything would be all right, that he’d keep her safe and keep scum like Glasgow away from her.

  He groaned. It was entirely possible that she’d set up the whole robbery, that he’d gotten shot because of her.

  It was even probable, given the facts at hand.

  Cowardly bastard, he accused himself, and jerked his car door open. He’d face the outcome,
whatever it might be, just as he’d faced everything in his life, good and bad.

  He took the concrete steps two at a time. The long flight of stairs leading to the upper level didn’t slow him down, either. He bounded up them, anxious to speak to Delilah, to figure things out.

  He started to knock, then decided to use the key she’d given him. She might refuse to let him in under the circumstances, so he unlocked the door and stepped quietly inside.

  The apartment was silent, causing his instincts to scream. Mick reached to the small of his back and pulled out his gun. He’d armed himself right after seeing Rudy in the hospital. He hadn’t worn the gun before that because he hadn’t wanted to make Delilah suspicious, and he was only a mediocre shot with his left hand. But he’d felt naked without it.

  Every light in her apartment blazed, and things were scattered everywhere—boxes on the floor, cushions pulled loose from the sofa.

  Fear for her clawed at him. Mick crept forward, away from the open door, then quickly ducked as the chopping block from the kitchen whooshed past him, barely missing his head. It fell to the floor with a clatter, the wood neatly splitting down the middle. He whirled and aimed.

  Thrown off balance by the impetus of the attack, a small body tumbled forward and landed against his chest, warm and familiar. Mick automatically raised his gun to the ceiling while catching her.

  He and Delilah stared at each other.

  Slowly, Mick lowered his arm to his side, watching her warily. She stepped back and away from him, then covered her mouth, breathing hard. “Ohmigod.” Her fingers over her open mouth trembled. She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

  All color had leached from her face. Her eyes appeared huge and distressed. Everything inside Mick melted, all the suspicions and the worry and the anger temporarily replaced by the need to protect her. “Are you all right?”