Up In Flames

by Lori Foster

She bristled at his demanding tone. At the very least, she felt the man owed her a few apologies. “Actually, Mick and I were coming in, anyway.” She didn’t mention her new “evidence” because she wasn’t convinced it would help. Mick could explain everything.

  There was a pause, then he asked, “How soon?”

  “Mick is about done showering now. I’d say we’ll leave here in the next fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said, and rudely hung up.

  A few minutes later Mick came out looking nicely rugged and sexy as sin in faded, well-worn jeans and a soft gray T-shirt. He wore scuffed, lace-up black boots. As Del watched, he checked his gun.

  She inched closer. “Can I see?”

  He glanced up. “What? My gun?”

  Nodding, she said, “A Smith & Wesson, right? Semiautomatic?”

  Mick held the gun out of her reach. “No one touches my gun but me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to fire it. And I do know a little about guns.”

  “Research, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then you know enough to understand how dangerous they are.” With a dexterity that proved how quickly he was healing, he tucked the gun into a holster at the small of his back, and smoothed his T-shirt over it. “And,” he said again, “no one touches my gun but me.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  He caught her before she could turn away, and kissed her neck. It was shameful, but she immediately softened, just as he’d probably known she would.

  “Who was on the phone?” he asked against her throat.

  Sometimes it was annoying, loving Mick. She couldn’t seem to stay angry with him, especially when he kissed her. “Your buddy, Faradon.”

  “He’s not my buddy, he’s just the lead investigator on the robbery and shooting.” He kissed her again, this time nuzzling beneath her ear. It felt like her toes melted. “What did he want?”

  Struggling to get her brain in gear, she succeeded in saying, “He has fingerprints and photos, and he wants us to come take a look for a positive ID.”

  Stepping back from her, Mick looked at the chunky black watch on his wrist. “Hell, it’s barely eight o’clock. He’s at it early.”

  Feeling hopeful for the first time, Del asked, “Do you think that means we’re close to having this wrapped up?”

  Mick took her arm and headed for the door. “Even with an ID, we’d still have to get hold of them, but it’d sure make it easier to track the bastards down. It’s tougher to hide when everyone knows who you are. There’s also the possibility that Rudy’ll be more willing to talk once we have names.”

  The sun never did quite rise. Instead, as they stepped outside, they saw that fat purple clouds had rolled in, leaving the air heavy with the scent of rain. In the distance, lightning flickered.

  Mick cursed. “Did you want to grab a jacket or umbrella?”

  “I won’t melt.”

  She saw his surprise, then his smile, as he opened the car door for her. “I’d forgotten your affinity for rain,” he said.

  When she raised a brow, he explained, “The day I finally met you, the day of the robbery. Everyone else had an umbrella, but you didn’t even seem to notice how soaked you’d gotten.” He slid his hand over her waist and squeezed suggestively. “I noticed.”

  Del smiled at that. It was nice being reminded that the awesome attraction went both ways. If Mick had indeed noticed her when she looked like a used rag mop, then his interest was as keen as hers. Maybe more so, because she hadn’t paid him a bit of mind until the shooting.

  Once he folded his big body behind the wheel, she told him, “I love running in the drizzling rain. It’s peaceful and it stimulates my muse.”

  He started to make a nasty crack, no doubt about stimulating her, and Del elbowed him. They both laughed and she thought how nice it was, how right, to be with Mick this way. She wondered, once everything was settled, what would happen. When it was no longer necessary for her to stay with him for protection, would he ask her to leave? Would he ask her to stay?

  Half an hour later she was still pondering that when the sky opened up. No slight drizzle this, but a raging summer storm full of power. The stuffy, humid air came alive with electricity, crackling and snapping all around them. Trees bent and dipped, leaves and debris danced across the rain-washed roadways.

  Del slanted Mick a look. “Rainstorms are sexy,” she whispered.

  “You’re sexy. Rain or no rain,” he replied, keeping his gaze on the road.

  She grinned, about to tell him how she’d like to spend the afternoon once they finished at the station, when they were blinded by a sudden glare. In the darkness of the morning storm, an approaching car’s bright lights reflected off Mick’s door. He flinched, throwing up a hand, but it didn’t help. The car came from an empty side street, and rather than slowing, it accelerated to a reckless speed across the slick roadway, coming right for them.

  Mick glanced out his window, gripped the wheel tightly and muttered with icy calm, “Hold on.”

  The car struck the back side-panel, throwing them into a spin. Del’s seat belt tightened; she yelped in alarm, barely keeping her wits enough to twist around, trying to see what happened.

  At the force of impact, Mick first overcompensated, and the car slewed off the road and into the mud before grasping the slick pavement again.

  Del, assuming it was an accident—a result of the rainy conditions—wondered why Mick didn’t just pull over. She looked over her shoulder, wide-eyed, in time to see the other car straighten and shoot toward them again.

  Mick’s hand flattened on the top of her head, and he shoved her down in the seat. “Stay there!”

  The rear windshield exploded, glass flying everywhere. “Dear God!” Del held Mick’s thigh, her face pressed into his side. This couldn’t be happening! She tried to sit up, wanting only to protect Mick.

  “Keep down,” Mick barked, again flattening her in the seat. It suddenly hit her who was after them and why.

  Del felt another impact, this time to the rear fender of the car, and there was no way to steer out of it. The car swerved off the road, slinging mud and fishtailing, and finally colliding with a scrawny tree, jarring them both hard.

  Mick’s head hit the wheel and he slumped.

  “Mick!” She screamed his name, scrambling to get her seat belt off, to reach him. Her heart leaped into her throat, her vision clouded with fear. Before she could reach him her door was jerked open. The thunderous roar of the storm intruded, along with a spray of rain and turbulent air. Hard hands grabbed her, yanking her back. She fought them, seeing the trickle of blood on Mick’s forehead, the stillness in his body.

  He needed help, a hospital! But already her feet were being dragged through the mud, and no matter how she fought, she couldn’t escape. The hands holding her only tightened with bruising force.

  Someone grabbed her hair and wrenched her head back. “Do you want me to go back and put a bullet in him to make sure he’s dead?”

  That voice was rough, familiar, and Del froze, choking on her terror. “No.”

  “Then come along and be quiet.”

  A hard shove landed her facedown in the front seat of the other car, and she barely had time to right herself before two men squeezed in around her. The battered car had been left running, idling roughly. The interior smelled of smoke and stale liquor. It was dirty, cluttered.

  The man on her right pressed a gun to her ribs, hard enough to make her groan, and with enough intent to scare her witless. She recognized them as the same men from the jewelry store—the men who wanted her dead.

  “What do you want?” she asked around her fear, wanting, needing Mick. Dear God, please let him be all right.

  “Shut up.”

  The car lurched away, tires squealing, zigzagging with a distinct lack of caution for the weather and road conditions. Wet tendrils of hair stuck to Del’s face and throat. She swiped them aside and twisted
to see Mick’s car as they made a screeching U-turn and sped away. Right before he was out of view, she could have sworn she saw him lift his head, but it was hard to tell with the rain streaking the dirty windows and the strobing effects of the electrical storm.

  Del closed her eyes on another silent prayer. Mick had to be okay. The gun prodded her when they made a sharp turn, keeping her own danger in acute perspective. She felt icy cold inside and out, and couldn’t stop the racking shakes that made her teeth chatter and her head hurt.

  Keep them talking, she thought. “How did you know where to ambush us?” she asked.

  Smirking, the man lifted his hand to his head, finger and thumb extended as if it were a phone. “This is Faradon,” he mimicked. “We need you to come to the station.”

  Her stomach roiled. “You had us bugged again?” Had these disgusting men heard Mick’s heartfelt admissions about his past? She couldn’t bear it.

  “Nope. I didn’t overhear the call, I made the call. Your protector was rather accommodating, sharing his home number with Faradon and asking him to leave any messages concerning the robbery on his message machine. He didn’t want you to know he was a cop, you see, but he still wanted to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. The son of a bitch was determined to get hold of us.” He shrugged. “He called his house and took his messages that way, and you went on in blissful ignorance, thinking you screwed a PI, not a cop.”

  Reality sank in. One more lie Mick had told. Strangely enough, she felt more concern for his guilt, if he should find out, than she did for the lie. She understood him. She knew why he hadn’t confided in her. She’d meant it when she’d said she forgave him for that. “You got Faradon’s name and Mick’s number from a call he made at my place.”

  “That’s right. So, no, Faradon isn’t expecting you. He won’t send out the cavalry.”

  Del looked through the mud-spattered windshield and saw they were headed toward the river. Not the Ohio—no, that would be too obvious. This was a much smaller, much dirtier river. But it was deep. And fast. Mostly isolated excepted for the occasional fisherman. But not today. Today the river was deserted.

  And she knew why they were going there.

  Do not get hysterical, she told herself, even as her breath hitched and her lungs constricted. She could smell the two of them in the stuffy, steamy interior of the car. She could smell her own fear and their excitement. Bile rose in her throat.

  They pulled off the main road and drove through a patch of weeds and scrub. A ramshackle outbuilding sat to their right, and a long wooden pier, probably private, stretched along the shore, then angled out into deeper water. The car bumped onto it, tires thumping along the uneven, weather-worn boards.

  Though they moved slowly now, edging nearer and nearer to the end of the dock, Del felt time speeding past her. A cabin cruiser docked to their right blocked them from view of the road.

  Over the river, lightning danced, temporarily illuminating the sky and emphasizing the blackness of the deep, churning water. They meant to drown her, to kill her and sink the awful, dirty car with her inside it.

  The driver laughed, reaching for her upper thigh and giving her a lecherous squeeze. “It’s a shame we have to end this so quickly,” he sneered. “Watching you with that cop makes me want to taste you myself.”

  Del slugged him.

  She didn’t think about it, didn’t weigh the wisdom with the folly. She simply snapped, then reacted on instinct. Using a technique she’d learned in self-defense classes, she brought her elbow up and back. Hard, fast. Right into his face.

  “Fucking bitch.” The driver grabbed for his bleeding nose and temporarily lost control of the car. The other man grabbed Del by the neck, squeezing as he shouted orders.

  In that single moment of chaos, everything became clear for Del, and she knew what to do.

  She ignored the fist clamped around her throat, making it impossible for her to draw air, and instead put her efforts into a hard shove on the driver. He lost his balance, and Del wedged her foot down to the floorboards. She found the gas pedal and jammed down.

  With a loud roar of the engine, the car lurched forward. The driver shouted, gripping the wheel, but Del had clamped both hands on it. They wrestled, but he sputtered blood and went blind with panic.

  The hand at her throat let go to grab her shoulder. It felt like her arm had been wrenched from the socket—but it was too late. The old car went airborne off the far end of the dock, suspending time and sound and reality, then dumped hard into the icy river with an enormous splash. Hissing and sputtering, the car tipped, engine first, and began sinking.

  Both men forgot about Del in their panic. They pounded at the windows, screamed as the blackness engulfed them and water began rushing in.

  Del concentrated on regaining her breath. Her throat felt crushed; it hurt to swallow, even to breathe, but she did it, slow, deep. The gun had dropped onto the seat beside her, forgotten. She tucked it into her pocket. The man to her right got the window open, and a great gush of frigid river water knocked him backward into Del. His elbow caught her shoulder, his foot dug into her thigh as he scrambled frantically to get to the window again, bent only on escaping the car.

  On her knees so that her head stayed in the pocket of air inside the car, Del inhaled deeply, then slithered to the back seat. Water closed over her face just as her fingers found the window handle.

  She thought of Mick, thought of everything she wanted to tell him, and did what she had to do.

  * * *

  Mick wiped blood from his face with one shaking hand and maneuvered the slippery, winding road with the other.

  After smacking his head on the steering wheel, he’d come to in enough time to see the car leaving with Delilah—but not in enough time to stop them.

  Going seventy miles an hour to diminish their lead, he’d called for backup. His actions had been by rote, because both his mind and his heart stalled the second he’d realized what had happened.

  He reached the river just in time to see the car sail off the dock and hit the churning water with crunching force. Terror blinded him. He wasn’t aware of slamming on his brakes. He wasn’t aware of the other police cars pulling up at the same time, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

  He threw open his car door and hit the ground running, his only thought to get to Delilah. The storm surrounded him, lashing his face, making his feet slip in the wet weeds and slimy mud. Just before he reached the end of the dock, he got tackled hard and then held down. He fought the restraining hands without thought, hitting someone, kicking another.

  “No, goddamn it,” Faradon shouted when Mick almost wrenched loose. “Hold him!”

  Mick barely heard. Three men gripped him, twisting his arms, making his wounded shoulder burn like fire, but it was nothing compared to the agony in his heart.

  They jerked him to his feet, and all around him men shouted orders, while sirens continued to squeal and blue lights competed with the white flashes of the storm.

  Numb, Mick continued to strain against the arms holding him. Faradon stepped up close. “We have a team preparing,” he said not two inches from Mick’s face. “Dawson, do you hear me? They’ll be in the water in ten minutes tops.”

  Mick shook his head. In ten minutes she would be dead.

  With renewed strength he lurched forward, taking the men by surprise. They lost their footing on the slippery, weathered boards and their holds loosened. Mick broke free.

  He’d taken two running steps when someone shouted, “Look!”

  A spotlight searching the surface of the water reflected off Delilah’s inky-black hair. She sputtered, coughed. Mick went into the water in a clean dive. With several hard fast strokes, he reached her.

  When he closed his hands around her, she at first fought him.

  “It’s all right, baby,” he said, spitting dirty water, “it’s me.”

  “Mick?” She dog-paddled, swallowed some of the water and choked, then cried, “Mick!
”

  She clung to him. Mick felt so weak it was all he could do to drag in air. Then several men surrounded them, catching them both and pulling them to the docks.

  He hoisted Delilah up first. Faradon himself leaned down. “Give me your hands, miss,” he said, and Delilah reached upward.

  Sloshing, shivering, she landed on the dock, and someone rushed to put several blankets around her.

  “M-M-Mick?”

  He heard the shivering alarm, the need, and helped to drag himself out. Officers tried to cover him, too, but he wanted only Delilah. Weaving on her feet, she reached for him, and then he had her, tight in his arms where she damn well belonged and where she’d damn well stay.

  He heard her crying, and his knees went weak. He tangled his hands in her wet hair, knowing he was too rough, but unable to temper his hold. “I’ve got you,” he said gruffly, and crushed her to him.

  “Mick, c’mon, man,” said a gentle voice. “Let’s get her out of the rain.”

  As if from far away, Mick heard Faradon speaking to him. He wrapped Delilah closer and allowed them both to be led to the outbuilding. It was dry inside, that was the best to be said for it.

  Faradon stood there, looking slightly embarrassed. “We’re, uh, fetching some dry clothes.”

  Mick gulped air, swallowed choking emotions and a love so rich he couldn’t bear it. Delilah clung to him, and he didn’t know if he’d survive the fear of thinking he’d lost her. He lifted his head. “The bastards who took her?”

  “We’re looking for them. If they surface, we’ll fish them out. If not, we’ll start diving until we find them.”

  Delilah struggled for a moment, and Mick loosened his hold.

  “Take this,” she said, digging a gun out of her baggy jeans pocket. She held it out to Faradon, and he carefully accepted it.

  “You disarmed them?” he asked, his voice heavy with awe.

  Mick pressed her face to his shoulder. “She can explain to you later.”

  Faradon didn’t look like he wanted to wait until later, but then a cop wearing a slicker stepped into the doorway. He held out a bundle of clothes, wrapped in another slicker, then nodded and excused himself.