The 14th... And Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  Not just the after-theater set, he suddenly realized. His gaze narrowed on a striking miniskirted brunette bending over to chat with the driver of the Mercedes that had pulled up to the curb just ahead. The petite, ebony-skinned woman standing next to her zinged a dazzling smile over the hood of the Mercedes at the limo.

  A barked order came over the intercom. “Slower! Go slower!”

  Jack shot Angela an incredulous look. “I hope to hell Top Hat’s services don’t include pimping for that character in the back!”

  “Of course not! He just likes to look. A lot.” Sighing, she began another slow circuit. “Four hours’ worth, at a hundred and fifty dollars an hour.”

  They drove back to Top Hat’s lot long hours later, with the rear windows wide open to the air and the front heater going full blast. Throughout the short trip, Jack struggled with a primitive, protective streak that was growing wider with each passing hour in Angela’s company. The idea of her having to put up with the likes of the Browser bothered him. Big-time. Almost as much as the idea of her roaming D.C.’s streets in the middle of the night.

  He knew damn well his urge to shield her from the Browsers of the world was irrational. He’d met her less than twelve hours ago, for pity’s sake. And Angela Paretti wasn’t the kind of woman who wanted to be protected from anything. Still, when they finally climbed out of the limo, he slammed the door with more force then necessary.

  “Does your mother know what kind of customers you haul around?”

  “Good Lord, no! That’s between Gus and me. And Tony. He taught me a few interesting moves to take care of characters like Browser.”

  “Is that right?” Jack knew his voice had an edge to it, but he couldn’t seem to shake it.

  “That’s right,” she replied, digging into her purse for the keys to the Chrysler. “I came pretty close to giving you a demonstration on the bridge this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” She fumbled with the keys, then aimed the starter at the distant sedan. “You go get warm in the car. I’ll turn in the keys and take you back to—”

  His hand closed over hers, stilling it. “Why didn’t you, Angela?”

  She frowned up at him. “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “Think about it.”

  “You took me by surprise, okay? My heart was still pumping pure adrenaline.”

  “What’s it doing now?”

  Her eyes flared, then narrowed dangerously. Before she could let loose with the scathing retort he saw forming on her lips, he lifted her hand and laid it against his sternum.

  “Mine’s been jumping its tracks all day. And night. The Browser just about toppled it right off the rails. I wanted to do something very unaccountant-like tonight, about the third or fourth time we took him around the circle.”

  “Why, Dr. Merritt, I do believe that’s a real emotion I feel beating in your breast.”

  “Very real.”

  Angela caught her breath at the husky rasp in his voice. The shivery awareness that had percolated just below the surface of her skin all evening heated.

  “Careful, Merritt. You just might make me believe you’re human after all.”

  “I might at that. Want to try again, Angela? Eyes closed this time?”

  The heat dancing under her skin burst into flames. Fire raced along her nerve endings, fanned by the drumming of Jack’s pulse beneath her fingertips. Valiantly Angela tried to douse the brushfire before it got out of control.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “I do. In fact, I can’t think of a better one, given the occasion.”

  “What occasion?”

  His eyes danced. “Valentine’s Day.”

  “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Valentine’s Day ended sometime during our fourth or fifth circuit of DuPont Circle.”

  “Then we’d better make up for lost time.”

  Wrapping his free arm around her waist, he brought her up against him. The hand still covering hers was trapped between their bodies. Jack felt the flutter of her fingers as they flattened against his chest, and the sharp end of a key digging into his breastbone.

  This time, he didn’t take it slow and easy. This time, he didn’t give her the option of drawing away at the last moment. And this time, he noted with soaring, searing elation, she closed her eyes.

  When her mouth molded to his, the world exploded around them.

  Literally.

  For one crazy instant, they stared at each other, not understanding what had happened. Then shock waves reverberated across the lot, and flames lit the night sky.

  Distance and several rows of parked limos had saved them from the effects of the blast, but still, they hit the ground. Instinctively. Automatically. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

  Chapter 6

  Hands on hips, Ed Winters surveyed the Chrysler’s twisted, smoldering remains. His lips pursed in a long, soundless whistle.

  “I don’t think the mayor can fix it this time, Angie.”

  “I don’t think anyone can,” she replied morosely. “There’s not enough left to salvage for parts.”

  Hunching her shoulders, she tried to hold in the warmth of Jack’s body. Someone had draped a worn football jacket over her shoulders—one of the drivers who’d come running at the sound of the explosion, she thought. But Jack’s arm had remained wrapped around her from the moment they picked themselves up off the ground. She didn’t even try to pretend that it wasn’t welcome.

  Winters’s gaze ranged to the man beside her. In the glare of the flashing lights from the police cruisers, the detective’s face could have been chipped from black granite.

  “This hasn’t been your lucky day, has it, Merritt?”

  “Let’s just say it’s been interesting.”

  “You two want to fill me in on a few details? Like what you’re doing in the Top Hat parking lot at 3:00 a.m.? And where you’ve been tonight? And what the hell happened here?”

  Angela swept her palm across her forehead in a useless attempt to keep her tangle of windswept hair out of her eyes. This afternoon, she’d felt a scorching fury at the random violence that had touched her. Now, she felt only stunned confusion.

  “It’s too cold to answer questions out here,” Jack interjected. “I suggest we move this discussion to the dispatch center.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Winters signaled to his partner, a stoop-shouldered veteran in a tan overcoat. “We can go over the witness statements inside, Lowrey. Tell the uniforms to let us know when the bomb squad gets here.”

  As she turned to leave, Angela took a last look over her shoulder at the charred, blackened wreckage. For an eerie instant, the February chill took on a muggy, humid heat. The scents of benzene fumes, axle grease and male sweat clogged her senses. Once again, she stood transfixed beside the other members of Tony’s crew as emergency vehicles converged on a billowing column of black smoke. The acrid taste of terror rose in her throat.

  Then Jack’s voice penetrated the smoke. Calm. Steady. An anchor in a spiraling, swirling vortex.

  “Let’s go inside, Angela.”

  She gave herself a little shake and turned her back on what remained of the Chrysler.

  Her cousin’s husband met them at the door to the dispatch center. Worry carved deep grooves into a face rounded by years of her cousin Teresa’s pasta. Gus had raced to her side mere seconds after the explosion, and returned to dispatch only when a police officer asked to review the logs for the night.

  Easing out of Jack’s hold, Angela summoned a lopsided grin. “Too bad it wasn’t 286 that went up, Gus. That slug should have been put out to pasture years ago. Can we use your office for a while?”

  “Sure, sure. There’s coffee in there. Help yourself. And when you get through, for God’s sake, call your mother! If she hears about this on the morning news, she’s gonna kill somebody. Most likely me!”

  The tiny glassed-in cubicle
barely held the four of them. Angela perched on the phone console and declined Jack’s offer of coffee with the warning that Gus’s brew could strip paint faster than any solvent known to man. Ed Winters closed the door and wedged sideways to take the chair the others declined.

  “Okay, Angie. Start with the explosion. Tell me in your own words what happened.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I used the remote ignition device to start the engine, and the car blew up.”

  “How does this device work?”

  She dragged the Chrysler’s keys out of the pocket of the football jacket and passed them over. “It sends a radio signal, just like a garage-door opener or TV remote. You click once to unlock the doors, a second time to start the engine.”

  Winters stretched out his arm, aiming at the far wall. “So you just pointed at the car and pressed?”

  “More or less.”

  “More or less what?”

  “I, uh, didn’t exactly point it and I’m not sure who pressed.”

  He lowered his arm. “I’m missing something here.”

  “The device was in my hand, which was caught between Jack and me, and we both...sort of pressed.”

  “Is that so?”

  The detective’s gaze drifted to the man sipping coffee from a chipped green mug. Tilting his chair back on two legs, he came as close as a police officer allowed himself to a smirk.

  “You both just sort of...pressed?”

  “Look, Eddie,” Angela said impatiently, “it wasn’t what you think. Okay, maybe it was. But can we focus a little more on the fact that the senator’s car just went up in flames here?”

  She wasn’t ready to admit to Eddie or anyone else how close she’d come to going up in flames, too. That explosive kiss couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, yet its heat had blazed a fiery path to her every extremity.

  Angela remembered her toes curling in her sneakers and her fingertips sinking into the springy hair at the back of Jack’s neck. She remembered closing her eyes and opening her mouth to his. Seconds, or maybe hours, later, the Chrysler had lifted off the ground.

  She had a feeling that this Valentine’s Day would stay etched in her memory for a long, long time.

  “All right,” Winters said, bringing the front legs of his chair to the floor with a thump. “We know how the bomb went off...sort of. We know where and when. We won’t know what kind of explosive we’re talking about until the bomb squad does their thing. So that leaves the why and the who.”

  “Who planted the bomb, you mean?” Angela threw him an exasperated look. “If we knew that, we wouldn’t be sitting here, would we?”

  “Not only who planted it,” Winters said gently. “Who it was intended to take out.”

  She sucked in a quick breath. Involuntarily her gaze flew to Jack. His jaw flexed, but he didn’t say anything. His turn would come, she knew. Dragging in a deep breath, she tried to bring some order to the thoughts that had tumbled chaotically through her mind since the Chrysler exploded.

  “I was the target. Or Jack. Or the senator. The bomb could have contained a delayed timing device that the remote shorted.”

  Ed nodded. “That’s a possibility. Where is the senator tonight?”

  “He had an engagement. He told me to use the car, since he wouldn’t need it, and take Jack to dinner.”

  “Then you dropped by Top Hat to visit Gus?”

  “No, I took a couple of gigs to help out. You know how it is on Valentine’s, Eddie. Jack went out with me as, uh, driver-in-training, and we left the Chrysler at the lot.”

  “I see.” Winters’s tone said clearly that he didn’t, but he let it pass. “Any ideas why, Angie? Why you? Why Jack, or the senator?”

  “None that make any sense.”

  “Try me.”

  She flung out a hand, almost dislodging the football jacket. “This is crazy, I know, but the only thing I could think of is that this incident is related to the drive-by shooting. Maybe the shooter heard that I was the one who identified him and did the composite. Maybe he got my name, and somehow tracked me down.”

  “And maybe the shooting wasn’t a drive-by,” Winters’s partner put in.

  Shocked, Angela whirled to face him. “What?”

  “You could have been the target of that hit all along. Or Dr. Merritt here. Or maybe it was just a warning.”

  “A warning? What kind of a warning?”

  The older man shrugged. “Everyone knows about your family’s troubles, Ms. Paretti. Maybe someone was trying to send your brother a message.”

  “My brother!”

  Winters threw the sloop-shouldered cop a frown. “What the hell are you talking about, Lowrey?”

  “It’s possible, is all I’m saying. How much did Tony Paretti cost his backers when he cracked up that fancy race car? Who backed him, anyway? Racing’s gotten big, too big for organized crime to keep their fingers out of. Maybe there was some ‘family’ money involved, money that hasn’t been repaid, and Ms. Paretti here—”

  “You bastard!”

  Angela launched herself off the console, fury in every fiber of her being. The older detective almost tripped over his feet as he scrambled backward.

  “It’s possible, is all I’m saying.”

  She put herself right in his face. “And you’re a flatfooted idiot, is all I’m saying.”

  “Jesus, Lowrey.” Shaking his head, Winters tugged her away from his partner. “Calm down, Angie. We’re just talking things through here, thinking out loud.”

  “I don’t want that kind of talking or thinking about my family!”

  She glared at the older man, who matched her glower for glower-but wisely refrained from further comment.

  “He’s right.”

  Jack’s comment fell like a stone in the heated silence.

  “There’s a possibility that a professional might be behind both incidents.”

  All three antagonists spun around to stare at him. Surprise blanked Lowrey’s face. Suspicion sharpened Winters’s. And unrelenting hostility etched Angela’s into a mask of anger.

  “If you think my brother—anyone in my family!—owes anything to the Mafia, you’re crazy. Worse than crazy. You’re—”

  Jack caught her hands at the top of a wild arc. Gripping them tightly in his own, he abruptly altered the rules he’d been playing by for the past four months.

  “I’m not talking about the mob.”

  “Then what? Who?”

  “Another organization. Not as powerful, maybe, but desperate. I didn’t make the connection this afternoon. All the evidence pointed to a drive-by shooting. The green shirt. The talk of gang initiations. The random path of the bullets.”

  Jack’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t going to forgive himself for this afternoon. Or for tonight. Not for a long, long time. He should have known that shooting was anything but random. Should have rejected the flimsy evidence that supported the gang initiation theory. Instead, he’d let himself fall into a deadly trap.

  He’d been too caught up in a damned paper investigation! They all had, he and the team of highly skilled special agents he’d been working with. They’d been using financial analyses and computer printouts and telephone records to unravel a tangled web of kickbacks and phony research grants and “consulting fees.” Because the suspects tangled in this ever-expanding web were highly placed drug company executives and respected physicians and, possibly, legislators, they’d let the paper chase blind them to the desperate stakes involved.

  Jack had questioned HealthMark’s, willingness to pay his way to “conferences” at exotic locations. He had suspected the company was behind the offer to play games that the blonde in Tampa whispered in his ear. But he hadn’t believed the company might resort to more violent means to take him down. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  And he wouldn’t forgive himself for pulling Angela into the morass that sucked at him. Ever.

  His gut instincts had told him she wasn’t part of the ever-w
idening circle of corruption he’d stumbled into. When the Chrysler’s hood blew off and the car lifted into the air tonight, instinct had convulsed into absolute certainty. Whoever wanted to silence him had decided Angela was expendable, too.

  Dragging his gaze from her stunned face, he pinned Winters with a hard look. “How long will it take the bomb squad to do their thing?”

  “Two, maybe three hours on-site, then a day or more at the lab. You got something you want to tell me about this, Merritt?”

  “I can’t tell you anything, but I know someone who can. Call Special Agent Manny Rameriz at the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations in Miami. Tell him what happened and fill him in on both incidents.”

  Winters rocked back on his heels. “The FDA, huh? You working for the feds?”

  “I’m working with them.” He transferred his grip from Angela’s hands to her elbow and reached for the door. “Tell Manny I’ll get back to him as soon as I can.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Lowrey demanded.

  “To someplace safe, and you’re going to provide a police escort to make sure we get there,” Jack growled. “Until we know for sure who planted that bomb and why, we’re laying low.”

  Winters nodded. “Until we know for sure, that’s what I would recommend.”

  Angela listened with a growing sense of disbelief. Since she’d met Jack Merritt, her world seemed to be spinning out of control.

  “Wait a minute.”

  Her protest went unheeded as Jack edged her out of the tiny office, Winters hard on his heels.

  “We maintain a safe house,” the detective said. “We can put you up there.”

  Angela dug in her heels. “Hey! Throttle back here, guys.”

  She waited until she had their attention, then grabbed at the control that had slipped away from her. “Tell me about this safe house, Eddie.”

  “We keep it for snitches. Sometimes the streets get too hot and they need a place to hide for a while. We’ll lock you up nice and tight, bring your meals. You won’t have to step outside until we’re sure it’s safe.”

  “I don’t like it.”