by Anne Woodard
And just what did that mean for Tina? Was Tina involved in something…illegal?
The thought shook him even as he ruthlessly shoved it aside.
Impossible. He might not know his sister as well as he would like—their mother had seen to that—but he did know that Tina was a strictly law-abiding, straight-and-narrow type of person. An art history major, not a drug dealer or thief or whatever else Maggie Mann might suspect. He was sure of it.
Rick shifted so he could get a better look at the woman in the seat beside him. She didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes off the road in front of them, but he would swear she tensed.
She didn’t like him studying her.
Good. If she was after Tina, he wanted her off balance, uncertain.
In the light from the instrument panel her face seemed more finely drawn, more delicate, yet dangerous, too. Cop or not, he had to admit that she was a woman you noticed. Not pretty, but unforgettable. Not safe, but then, for him, danger had always had its own appeal.
In other circumstances, he would have asked her out, maybe angled to get her into bed. Too bad these weren’t other circumstances.
Tina was missing and for some reason, Maggie Mann wanted to know why almost as much as he did. But not because she gave a damn about Tina.
Rick shifted in his seat, sliding his left arm along the back of her seat.
“So,” he said, as casually as if he planned to chat about the weather. “What are you? A cop?”
That brought her head around with a snap. “What?”
“I figure you’re undercover, right? Have to be. College town. College kids. Drugs have to be a problem, right?”
“I’m not a cop.”
“DEA, then.”
She glanced at him, then back at the road. The collar of her jacket brushed against his hand where it rested on the seat back. The nylon shell was cool to the touch, but he’d swear he could feel the heat of her beneath it.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’ve been accused of that a time or two,” he admitted. “But I’ve never been accused of being stupid. That driving earlier? You were trained. Had to be.”
“I told you—”
“Yeah. You’re still angry that you didn’t get a dirt bike when you were a kid. Maybe. I can believe the bit about the dirt bike. But you followed that guy like a real pro. That kind of driving doesn’t happen just because someone fancies the idea of a little Motocross. You were trained to tail a car, trained for a high-speed chase.”
She shrugged. She tried to make it look like an expression of irritation, maybe anger, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. Underneath the irritation, she was wary as a cat.
“You’ve never heard of trying to help a friend?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Ever heard of being grateful?”
The cat had claws. Sharp ones.
“Look, I don’t give a damn if you’re a cop or not. But I do give a damn about my sister. You didn’t plunge into that chase just because you wanted to help. You wanted to know who that guy was and where he was headed as much as I did. Maybe more. I think I have a right to know why.”
The look she shot him was pointed enough to draw blood.
“You have no rights, and there’s nothing that says I have to put up with this. Or haul you back to town, for that matter.”
She had both hands clamped on the wheel now. He could see her curling and uncurling her fingers, probably fighting against the urge to let go of the wheel and wrap them around his throat.
Instead, she lifted her chin up and shoved her shoulders back. The thick curls at the back of her head brushed against the top of his hand, silken and cool. The inadvertent touch sent fire licking across the back of his hand.
An image flashed through his mind—of him grabbing those curls and pulling her head back. Of her throat curving, suddenly vulnerable, and her mouth opening.
Of him, kissing her.
The image was so immediate and vivid that he sucked in his breath, startled.
Sometimes there was a thin line between the adrenaline rush of anger and the equally hot, dangerous rush of sex. He’d seen it in the wild, but he’d never experienced it himself. Until now.
He didn’t much like it.
He pulled his arm off the back of her seat. The car was too small and she was way too close.
Tina. Think of Tina.
The thought brought him back to his senses as effectively as if he’d been dunked in an ice-crusted mountain lake.
Where in the name of all that was holy was she?
They were in town, now, almost to the edge of downtown. A digital clock on a bank flashed the hour. It was later than he’d thought.
He was tired, Rick realized suddenly. Bone tired. He hadn’t slept for two days, not since his mother had broken the news of Tina’s disappearance. Was that really only yesterday?
He slumped back, let his head tilt back, his eyes close. One deep breath. Two. He drew the air in deep, forcing his chest to expand to take it all in, then slowly breathed out.
It helped. Not much, but it did help.
He forced himself to sit up.
“I have to stop at the shop,” Maggie said abruptly, shattering the silence. “Make sure they’re okay closing up. I’ll take you to your truck as soon as I’ve checked in.”
“That’s all right. I’ll get a cab.”
“Fine.”
Rick winced at the angry edge in her voice, then wearily dragged his hand across his face. The rasp of stubble reminded him he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Hadn’t even bothered to change clothes.
He probably looked like something Maggie should have tossed out of her coffee shop two seconds after he’d walked in. Instead, she’d done her best to help him. Whatever her reasons, she didn’t deserve the rude distrust he’d just dished out.
“I owe you an apology, Ms. Mann,” he said. “A big one. I was out of line.”
That jolted Maggie out of her thoughts. She glanced at him, surprised.
“Way out of line,” she agreed dryly.
It was weariness that put the roughness in his voice, she realized. Weariness and worry. If she’d been in his place, looking for a sister who’d been missing for over two weeks, she would have been a whole lot more obnoxious.
She would like to think she would have been as good at putting two and two together and coming up with five as Rick Dornier, but she wouldn’t like to bet on it.
Whether he really believed what he’d said or not, Rick had nailed her. The question was, what was she going to do about it?
Nothing, she decided. For now.
Still, if her boss found out that Rick had pegged her as undercover DEA within hours of meeting her, Garrity would pull her off the job. She couldn’t let that happen. She was too close to finding out who was behind the sudden influx of high-quality Asian White heroin that was flowing into Colorado and the neighboring states to let anyone stop her now.
Her instincts told her Tina was involved in it somehow. Probably not as a dealer, but she knew something. Maggie was sure of it. But what? And why had she disappeared?
Or been made to disappear?
The thought made Maggie shiver.
Whatever Tina was up to, she was at risk. The sooner they found her, the better.
If she’d found Greg sooner—
Angrily, Maggie shoved the thought aside.
She liked Tina. A lot. But she couldn’t afford to let her liking a person get in the way of doing her job. And she wouldn’t let her own emotions get in the way of working with a man who might prove useful.
One thing, she was not going to let him get under her skin like he had. This was business, not personal. She needed to remember that.
Maggie relaxed her grip on the wheel, forced herself to relax.
“Apology accepted,” she said lightly. “Actually, I suppose I should be flattered. No one’s ever accused me of being a DEA agent before.”
Not while
she was undercover, anyway.
“And you won’t need to call a cab,” she added. “This time of night, it can take forever to get one. I won’t be five minutes, tops.”
Five minutes turned into thirty. There’d been a rush in the last hour so Steve and Sharon were tired and running very late.
To Maggie’s surprise, Rick pitched in to help clean up. The man was clearly exhausted, but too darned nice to sit when others were overworked and eager to get home.
Maggie tucked the evening’s take into the small office safe, shoved the stack of paperwork she’d meant to get to tonight to one side—working undercover like this meant she ended up doing two jobs, not one—and locked the office behind her. Dora, the morning manager, would have too much to do getting the shop ready to open at six to worry about whatever Maggie had left undone.
She emerged to find Sharon shrugging into her coat while Steve turned out the lights. Rick was standing in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, wearily staring at nothing.
Maggie squelched a sudden urge to wrap her arms around him and tell him not to worry, that it was all going to work out somehow.
Helping Rick Dornier was part of her job, she sternly reminded herself. She wanted to find Tina and so did he. It was as simple as that. She was not getting emotionally involved here.
The sound of her footsteps on the old wood floor evidently roused him from his thoughts, for he blinked and gave himself a little shake. And then he smiled at her, a tired, intimate little smile that made something tighten in her chest.
She saved her smile for the two college kids. “Thanks, guys. I sure appreciate your staying late to finish up. I’ll lock up behind you.”
“We’ve still gotta take out the trash,” Sharon protested, pointing to two well-filled plastic bags that had been set by the back door.
“I’m parked out back,” Maggie assured her. “I’ll get them. You two go on home. See you tomorrow.”
The click of the lock as she closed the door behind them sounded unusually loud. She paused a moment in the entry. To make sure her employees were all right, she told herself. Her hesitation had nothing to do with the man still in the shop, waiting for her.
At this hour of the night, the pedestrian mall was quiet, the restaurants and upscale bars the only places still open, and even they would be closing soon. She flicked off the lights, plunging the shop into shadow. Behind her, Rick Dornier stirred. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Maggie jiggled the doorknob to make sure. The low-wattage security light over the bar and the dull-gold light slipping in from the streetlights outside only made the shadows seem darker and bigger.
Rick Dornier loomed in the darkness, solid, human, inescapably male. Maggie’s nerve endings pricked into life.
“I’m sorry it took so long. We don’t usually get so many customers so late on a weeknight.”
“No problem.”
The only illumination in the back hallway was the emergency exit sign, but Maggie didn’t need to look to know where he was. She could feel him there, right behind her, close enough to touch if she wanted.
Instead, she opened the back door, then grabbed the overstuffed trash bags Sharon had left there. “Get the locks, will you?”
The cold night air hit her like a slap in the face.
The man who lunged out of the inky shadows by the door was swinging something that would do a lot more damage when it landed.
Chapter 4
I nstinct saved her.
Maggie ducked, then pivoted, swinging the only weapons immediately available—the trash bags she held in each hand.
The first hit and bounced off.
Her attacker, already off balance with the momentum of his swing, tried to dodge. The move made him stagger, then fall to one knee. Before he had a chance to realize what had hit him, she clobbered him with the second bag.
That one was heavier. Instead of bouncing off, it ripped, showering him in wet coffee grounds, sopping paper towels and napkins and the mushed remains of uneaten food.
Maggie had already released the first bag. When she let go of the second, it still contained enough trash that it plopped on the ground in front of him rather than flying off into the shadows.
Her attacker cursed, surged to his feet and stepped squarely in the slippery mess. His feet were already sliding out from under him when she swung back around and kicked him in the rear.
“Maggie! Behind you!”
Rick’s shouted warning made her duck and roll just as something long and heavy hissed down, slicing through the space she’d occupied an instant before. She completed her roll and was on her feet before the second attacker could recover.
Behind her, she caught the wet sound that a fist made when it connected, hard, with bare flesh and soft bone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the man try to recover from the first hit, then stagger as Rick landed a second, harder blow to the jaw.
She didn’t have time to spare another glance—the first man had recovered his balance and was coming after her again.
She ducked, feinted right, then spun left, but not fast enough. The weighted pipe he was swinging caught her on the left shoulder.
It was a glancing blow, but it hit with enough force to draw a grunt of pain and send her to knees.
He’d expected her to roll away. Instead, she lunged toward him, low and fast. The heel of her hand connected where she’d aimed—right on his kneecap, where the force of the blow should at least knock him down if it didn’t cripple him outright.
She felt bone crunch on impact.
Cripple him, then. Good. That helped.
She rolled away, got to her feet, then spun and kicked with all her might.
She’d been aiming for his other knee, but this guy was a bully, not a trained fighter. Instead of preparing to counter her next blow, he was folding in on himself, reaching for his injured knee.
Her foot connected with his ribs. It wasn’t a well-placed blow, and she was still too off balance to put a lot of force behind it, but it was enough. He let out his breath in an explosive gasp of pain and dropped, then rolled away, out of reach.
Maggie turned, ready to help Rick, only to find he’d flattened his opponent and was already shoving the guy onto his face. The hold Rick had on the fellow’s arm, which he’d twisted up behind his back, assured a groaning compliance.
“You all right?” Rick demanded. The raw fury in his voice startled her.
“Fine.”
More or less.
She forced herself to straighten. Now that the adrenaline was beginning to seep away, her shoulder was starting to throb. Gingerly, she lifted her arm.
Rick was on his feet faster than she would have thought possible for a man his size.
“Not fine. Your shoulder—” He gently took her elbow. “You’re hurt.”
“Just a little,” she admitted. The concern in his voice shook her more than the injury.
Cautiously, she swung her arm back, up, to the side, testing its limits. “It’s a bruise. Nothing’s broken.”
“You don’t know—”
“I know.” She shrugged out of his grip. “I’m fine.”
“You’re crazy.”
“And you’re not even breathing hard,” she snapped. Her heart felt like it was pounding against the inside of her rib cage.
“That’s because I was too damn scared to breathe at all.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
She glanced at the fellow spread-eagled, face-down on the ground at their feet. In the dark of the alley, the pulped, discarded napkins and half-eaten food that had spilled out of the ruptured garbage bag dotted the pavement, pale mush against the black.
“Oh, man…” Her voice trailed off in disgust. “Look at all this garbage I’m going to have to clean up!”
“He shouldn’t be that much trouble,” Rick assured her, straight-faced. “Even if he isn’t very happy about the state of his nose right now.”
From the corn
er of her eye, Maggie caught a movement in the shadows.
In an instant, the gun she hadn’t had a chance to draw earlier was out of her pocket and in her hands.
“Freeze or I’ll shoot!”
The second man, who’d been trying to crawl away, froze as ordered, then slowly, unhappily, stretched out, face-down on the ground, and laced his hands behind his head.
Silently cursing at her blown cover, Maggie shifted her grip on the gun, then drew her cell phone from her other pocket and handed it to Rick. “You want to call 9-1-1?”
She couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t smiling as he dialed.
The clock on the police station wall said it was twenty-seven minutes past twelve. Rick’s body told him it was a good twenty-four hours past his bedtime.
Any other time, he would have found an out-of-the-way corner, rolled his coat into a pillow and stretched out for a nap. He’d slept on enough rocky ground over the years that a hard floor was no impediment to sleep, especially not when he was as tired as he was now.
What he wanted right now, however, wasn’t sleep. He wanted answers.
Answers that were in extremely short supply.
There’d been plenty of questions. Questions from the officers who’d responded to the 9-1-1 call. Questions from the sergeant on duty in the station. And then more questions from two irritable plainclothes types who didn’t know whether to be more annoyed by what might be a premeditated attack on one of their own, or by being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night for what might simply be an attempted burglary gone bad.
When he’d finally lost his temper and demanded to know what in the hell all this had to do with his sister’s disappearance, he’d been handed another cup of bad coffee and relegated to the plastic visitors’ chairs in the hall. He would have called a cab long ago, but Maggie was still in that room down the hall on the right, talking to the two plainclothes and to Chief David Bursey, who hadn’t been in any too good a mood, either.
Rick sipped his coffee and listened to the muffled sound of voices raised in anger coming from behind that door on the right.