Triumph

by Janet Dailey

  June’s makeup job had been on the light side, thank goodness. Kelly hadn’t had the time to take it off and start over.

  She was good at landing on her feet, whether they were bare or in high heels.

  With a lot of fanfare, Kelly had cut the ribbon with Monroe Capp at her side. The club’s security detail had seemed more interested in getting into the pictures than in holding back the surging crowd. It wasn’t all about her. The Kiss Kiss owners had persuaded or paid other local celebrities to appear.

  “Be nice to the fans. It’s great for our ratings,” Monroe had muttered in her ear as he escorted her through the door.

  Kelly had shaken lots of hands, posed with bigwigs, smiled brilliantly for the cameras, and sipped iced tea. Duty done. She wanted to get home. She’d slipped the chauffeur a twenty and a spare key to retrieve her car from the WBRX parking lot and stash it in a nearby parking garage for a quick, discreet exit.

  The street in back of the new club was deserted and eerily quiet. Atlanta’s renowned nightlife was mostly contained within high walls of new hotels and towers. Some venues were underground in vaulted, spectacularly lit spaces where the revelry never seemed to end.

  Kelly looked down the empty street, seeing no one, forcibly reminded of the abandoned building halfway across town.

  This neighborhood was far more posh. But the darkness seemed solid as concrete, slashed only occasionally with light when an unseen door opened somewhere. She walked quickly, ignoring a gleaming SUV emitting a thumping bass as it rolled past her and picked up speed. An all-night party on wheels—one of the newer Atlanta traditions.

  Up ahead was the long neon sign of the garage. She was nearly there. Kelly breathed a sigh of relief. A prickle of warning and the odd sensation that she was being followed made her turn around suddenly. She saw no one.

  But a sports car was racing toward her, an expensive model with slanting headlights. The blinding halogen glare hurt her eyes until the car whizzed past in a spray of dirt and gravel. Blinking, Kelly looked down and brushed at her dress. No harm done.

  She straightened the evening bag on a thin chain over her shoulder and looked up at the same second as a man stepped out of the darkness and came toward her.

  Instantly, Kelly unclasped the bag, searching for the slim canister of Mace she carried before he stopped a little distance away. She palmed it, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. Her well-honed reporter’s skills tried to peg him.

  Tourist, maybe. Staying at a pricey hotel if so. Good suit. Conservative tie and haircut. Middle-aged, going gray. Regular features. Pale-colored eyes. His face betrayed no particular expression.

  “Hey there. Aren’t you Kelly Johns?”

  Be nice to the fans. She wasn’t sure if that applied under the circumstances.

  “Just making sure,” he added in a polite voice.

  “Yes, I am.” She stepped sideways toward the street to go around the man. “But I can’t chat, sorry. My driver is waiting for me around the corner—”

  “Is he?” He looked over her shoulder.

  She pointed and kept going with a fast lie. “He’s right there—”

  “Watch out!” He reached out to take her arm and stop her. His grip conveyed a strength that scared her—and made her drop the Mace.

  In another second a black sedan sped by in silence, the whoosh of air ruffling her dress. The man watched it go.

  “Must be one of those hybrids,” he said pleasantly enough. “I didn’t hear it coming, did you?”

  “No. Now let go of me,” she snapped, thoroughly rattled when he released her and bent down to pick up the Mace, holding the cylinder out to her.

  “You dropped this.” He still blocked her way. His courteous tone didn’t hide the fact that he stood a fraction too close, even without touching her. She felt violated by his nearness and angry—but she took the Mace.

  He moved around her and went on his way. Kelly stared after him. At the end of the block, another man, not as tall, materialized out of the shadows and joined him. Neither looked back at her before they walked quickly around the corner.

  Her moment of unease before the man had stepped out of the dark came back to her with startling clarity. She had been followed. The two men must have communicated somehow with each other as she walked, moving closer until she had been unknowingly caught between them.

  Kelly ran the rest of the way to the garage. She’d never been so happy to be under glaring fluorescent lights and wait in line for her car. The attendant rolled up fast with it when the other customers were gone. The Lone Star decoration on the mirror was still swinging when she got in. That and the headrest-high stack of file boxes on the front passenger seat was how she picked it out from other, similar vehicles. Other than that, there was nothing special about her car.

  Driving home, she kept looking into the rearview mirror, partly because she was scared and partly because she was speeding. Through her rolled-up window, she nodded to the doorman at her condo building when he stepped forward. He was a big guy. She felt fractionally safer just looking at him. He welcomed her with a tip of his hat and turned away to ring for a valet who would park her car in the adjoining multistory garage. They were good about keeping her car near the elevators. Once in a blue moon they put it on the roof of the garage where she could see it from her window high above.

  Right now she didn’t care where they left it. Kelly stuck an arm through the front seats to retrieve a knit poncho from the back before she got out. Yes, she was almost home, but she wanted to be wrapped in something huge and shapeless.

  Yanking the poncho over her head, she made sure the key was in the ignition and got out, moving past the doorman and through the lobby before he could ask questions.

  She pressed the button for the elevators to the higher floors, impatiently watching the numbers go down. Kelly prayed that no one would join her. She couldn’t make small talk. The strangest day of her life was finally catching up with her.

  The elevator doors opened silently and she stepped inside, jabbing at the control panel. She willed the doors to close, afraid she would see the man who’d stopped her on the street. The thick carpets in the lobby hushed every footstep, but the mirrored walls would give her a moment’s warning. She stared at her reflection until the doors finally drew together.

  The hush of the lobby was replaced by the faint whine of the car moving upward. Kelly watched the numbers light up, then unclasped her bag and got out her apartment keys before she got off. Once in the hall, she looked both ways.

  Quiet as the grave. Not a neighbor in sight. But then there never was. She sometimes wondered who they might be. Breathing more slowly, she unlocked her door, got inside, and relocked it.

  Kelly flung her bag onto an armchair and bent down to unstrap her stilettos, kicking them into a corner. She padded across the white carpet and pulled the ceiling-to-floor drapes tightly shut. This high up, it really didn’t matter. No one could possibly see in. But she didn’t care.

  It would be great to have someone to come home to. That hadn’t been the case for quite a while. But then she didn’t really think of the apartment as home.

  Now that she was here, she could have something stronger than iced tea. She made herself a drink, something she rarely indulged in, and curled up on the sofa, pulling the soft knit poncho over her bare legs.

  Kelly was so used to the hard work of chasing stories, she hardly thought about it. All of a sudden, this story seemed to be chasing her. After the shoot-out and tonight, she had to wonder whether it was worth it to constantly put herself in harm’s way.

  Adrenaline be damned. The mellowing effect of the drink was taking hold.

  She’d been harassed before, threatened more than once. But not at this level. There was no telling if it would be worth it. A little soul-searching—never her favorite indoor sport—seemed to be in order. To her chagrin, Deke had kept his distance, and not only because he had his own agenda.

  She wasn’t sure she even k
new how to talk to someone anymore without turning it into a ratings-grabbing interview or grist for the news mill. That wasn’t all. Kelly didn’t remember the last time she’d read a book from start to finish, gotten on a horse and rode like the wind, or just plain breathed.

  Tough luck, she told herself. Breathing was automatic. She’d survive.

  In another hour, she fell into a troubled sleep.

  Deke entered his suite in a skyscraper hotel before dawn. A panoramic view of Atlanta was visible from every corner of the rooms. Vehicles cruised slowly down avenues and streets that confused everyone who didn’t live here—far too many were named Peachtree Something. But from up here, the metropolitan plan made some sort of sense. Beyond the city lights was a vast expanse of black. Another hour would change that, the endless green vista of Georgia appearing out of the mist as the sun rose.

  He went to a window, looking down at the city. Where was Kelly in all of that?

  Deke had no idea where she lived. It was no secret that news anchors pulled down big bucks. Most likely she had a house in one of the expensive suburbs that ringed Atlanta.

  What a day. First a stakeout, followed by a shootout. Then her. He’d tried not to say too much and ended up tipping his hand a little. Of course, Kelly Johns would have had to know exactly what he was up against to pick up on that.

  The lithe outline of the woman who came out to meet him had been instantly familiar to Deke—the fitted suits she wore on the air were famous. And so was her blond hair, even in a ponytail. It was the black-framed eyeglasses that threw him for a moment.

  Somehow she looked even sexier in them. If he had to write words under the mental picture, he would need only three. Intelligent. Ambitious. Stubborn.

  He guessed she was single, very single. Too busy for a boyfriend, too serious to fool around. But gorgeous. All she had to do was give him half a chance and he’d be around.

  Deke ran a hand along his jaw, feeling the stubble. He’d shave later, after he caught some sleep. He was more tired than he was willing to admit. Going back to the crime scene hadn’t netted more information. He’d been in the way of the detectives and cops marking spent shells and measuring distances between the bodies at the site, and his colleagues kept him sidelined out of concern for his health.

  He’d checked in with a medic. No lasting damage. Nothing to do but follow up with Kelly. She’d seemed okay. He guessed the cameraman and the other one hadn’t been hurt either.

  Kelly was sharp.

  It was interesting that she had spotted the woman in the second car—he had told Kelly the truth about not knowing anything concerning her. No one at the scene had a clue. The bodies were all suits. Deke had seen the woman, too, but only for a second and not clearly.

  Kelly would make one hell of a good investigator. He could teach her what she didn’t already know, fast. The problem would be handling her. She was smart but maybe too headstrong to take direction.

  He looked down again, feeling a little dizzy this time. Generally speaking, he liked to sleep closer to the ground.

  But he hadn’t had a choice of suites.

  Deke moved away from the window to check the feed from the bug hidden in the wall. Nothing. The bug could have been disabled, but his gut told him no one was in the suite next door. He unlocked his door and exited to check and make sure.

  A stocky housekeeper in a hairnet wearing a striped uniform over pants came out of the elevator, pushing a steel cart piled high with folded linens and towels. He thought about asking for extra soap and decided not to be annoying.

  The housekeeper stopped the cart at a door up the hall as Deke used a master keycard to enter the neighboring suite. He flipped the inside bolt and took a moment to survey the scene. The occupants were gone. A room service tray on the coffee table held plates and cutlery covered with congealed grease and a few crusts.

  Hungry, hungry hoodlums. They’d eaten everything.

  Empty suitcases lay open on the carpet, the linings slashed. Deke snapped on a rubber glove he took from an inside pocket and ran a hand inside the nearest suitcase. Vinyl and cardboard. Cheap construction. No contraband. No nothing.

  Still, the crime lab two states away might find microscopic evidence. He’d put in a request for techs to clear the room and retrieve the bugs in the lamps and walls. The audio would be analyzed and voiceprints made, fingerprints run through the national database.

  They might get a hit or two. But the brains behind this operation preferred mules with no police records who often didn’t know what they were transporting.

  The bunch in this room seemed to have figured it out and helped themselves to the goods. The body count would go up when the operation’s enforcers caught up with them.

  What a bust.

  Deke had followed his orders to the letter, getting into the abandoned building by afternoon, doing surveillance on the parking lot pinpointed by the informant, watching for a major drop. Then everything went haywire—why, he still didn’t know. Not because of the news crew.

  The thugs in fancy cars started shooting at each other, not at Kelly or the two people with her. With the news crew out of the way, the real excitement began. Three dead. He didn’t have what it took to feel sorry for criminals with homicidal inclinations, but like Kelly, he wondered about the unknown woman in the car, now missing. Still, it was all over but the paperwork, which Deke hated filling it out.

  A knock on the door made him straighten again. “Housekeeping,” called a voice.

  He took off the glove and snapped it into a wastebasket. There was another knock, louder this time. He went to the door and flipped back the inside bolt, then opened it.

  “Good morning,” Deke said pleasantly, flattening himself against the wall.

  “If you say so.”

  Leaving the cart at the door, the housekeeper entered, brushing past Deke. She was a lot bigger when she was that close, about the size of a linebacker. A thick hand yanked at the hairnet, dragging a wig off with it and revealing a crew cut. Both got tossed on the floor.

  An armchair groaned as Huxton Smith settled his bulk into it, unbuttoning the striped uniform to reveal a bulletproof vest. He scratched his sandy, gray-speckled hair.

  “Whew. Glad this stakeout’s over. I hate wearing a disguise. Especially that wig.”

  Deke laughed. “But you look great with a center part.”

  “Shut up. I never knew making beds was such hard work.”

  “How were the tips?”

  “This suite, not great. Your criminal element tends to be cheap.”

  “They know they’re not coming back, Hux.”

  His partner looked at the slashed suitcases. “Guess they got what they came for.”

  “You didn’t hear them leave?”

  “No. My supervisor had me cleaning room 17-B right around then. A bunch of frat boys hired strippers and sneaked in a keg.”

  “Whoopee.”

  “You got it. Quite a party. They served beer plus vodka plus a mixed assortment of uppers in a candy bowl.”

  Deke grinned. “You took inventory.”

  “While I mopped up the vomit, yeah.” Hux scratched his head with both hands. “What a bunch of gorillas. According to hotel security, they trashed the furniture and started a slugfest, during which the strippers helped themselves to the loose wallets and vamoosed. Cops got called, hauled everyone in the room out and down in the service elevator.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “The fratties are probably sleeping it off in the drunk tank downtown. The strippers went back to the Bump ‘N’ Grind, I guess. And here I am.”

  “You have it easy,” Deke said dismissively, “handing out pillow mints while I dodge bullets.”

  Huxton looked him over. “Heard you almost took one. I can see the mark from here.”

  Deke glanced down at a streak in the shoulder of his leather jacket and shrugged. “A graze. Good as a miss.”

  “Tough talk. Move faster next time, Bannon.�
��

  “I had to get some people out of the way. A TV news reporter and a crew of two.”

  “What the hell were they doing there?”

  Deke sighed and leaned against the wall across from Hux. “Using the building for a backdrop. Unannounced and unexpected.”

  “What? I didn’t get briefed on that.”

  “I got them out before the law arrived.”

  Huxton’s face creased into a frown. “How come I didn’t see anything on the news?”

  “I talked to one of them afterward, asked her to keep it to herself and her crew. She didn’t seem eager to let her boss know that they’d been there.”

  “And why was that?”

  Deke shrugged. “She knew she’d stumbled onto a hot story and she doesn’t want it taken away from her. That was my understanding, anyway. First time I ever actually talked to a reporter.”

  “Then watch your back,” Huxton said emphatically. “Total pain in the butt, those news people. Bigger snoops than we are, and sometimes they’re better at it.”

  Deke nodded.

  “But they don’t have skin in the game. Once they ramp up their ratings or print a screaming headline that sells papers, they’re done. We’re still fighting it out with the bad guys.” Huxton paused, narrowing his eyes at Deke. “So did you two actually make some kind of a deal?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Hux sighed. “Here’s how it works, babycakes. You pretend to be her source in return for her silence.”

  Deke shook his head. “I’ll try. I need to talk to her again.”

  “Lead her on. Stall. Distract her with a nice safe story about blueberry smugglers or something. Whatever it takes.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the advice.”

  “And keep her close,” his partner continued. “I mean, by phone. Whatever you do, don’t sleep with her. Is she pretty? I forgot to ask.”

  “She’s beautiful.”