by Anne Woodard
Maggie had answers. He wasn’t leaving her alone until he had them, too.
The door on the right opened. Maggie was the first out, furious and moving fast. An angry protest came from the room behind her, but she didn’t stop and she didn’t look back.
Rick set his coffee cup on a low table littered with other abandoned cups and got to his feet.
Maggie sailed past him without so much as a glance. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
She was already halfway to the outer door.
“Manion!”
The angry shout from the hall behind them brought her to a halt, one hand on the push bar for the door. For an instant, Rick thought she was simply going to walk on out. Instead, she turned, head high, shoulders defiantly squared.
“Yeah?”
David Bursey halted at the opposite end of the room, hands fisted on hips, head lowered like a bull about to charge. Behind him, the two plainclothes men watched and waited.
“Don’t think you can go haring off on your own, dammit! You worked for me, I’d bust your butt.”
Maggie’s chin came up. “I don’t work for you anymore, remember?”
“You’re too emotionally involved in this, Manion,” Bursey growled. “I know it. You know it. You get involved, you make mistakes. And in this business, mistakes can cost lives.”
Maggie’s chin came up another inch. “I’m not dropping this, Bursey. And I’m not making a mistake.”
And then she spun back around and marched out of the building. She moved so fast, the door had almost closed by the time Rick slipped out behind her.
Maggie beeped the car doors open but didn’t bother to look to see if Rick was following. She slid behind the wheel, then simply sat there, the keys in her hand, blankly staring out the windshield. Her thoughts were such an angry jumble that she couldn’t grab hold of anything, couldn’t think what she ought to do next.
Rick slid in beside her, then slammed the door so hard it made her jump.
“The key goes in the ignition,” he said. “Then you fasten your seat belt, turn on the engine and drive away. Think you can do that?”
His anger cut like a knife.
She shoved the key in, started the car, then fastened her seat belt as the engine warmed and her brain started working again. “How long’s it been since you last slept?”
“Too long. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“We’ll get your truck,” she said, before she could think of all the reasons she shouldn’t do what she was about to do. “Then you can follow me back to my place. I’ve got an extra bed. You can crash there for tonight. Or for what’s left of it, anyway.”
She put the car into gear, but before she took her foot off the brake, she looked over at him, meeting his suspicious gaze squarely.
“I owe you some explanations,” she said.
He drew in a deep breath, then slowly let it out.
“That you do, Ms…. Manion,” he said flatly. “That you do.”
Maggie Manion lived in a two-bedroom apartment near the campus. The place was clean, comfortable and as bland and impersonal as only furnished temporary apartments can be.
Rick dropped the overnight bag that he always kept in his truck on the floor by the sofa, then set the long, hard-sided locked case he carried down beside it.
Maggie drew the curtains, then bent to turn on the lamp by the sofa. Her gaze flicked to the locked case.
“You always carry a rifle with you?”
“Not always.” He didn’t feel like explaining himself to a woman who carried a pistol in her pocket and knew how to use it.
Wisely, she didn’t press him.
“That bedroom’s yours,” she said, pointing.
“We’ll have to share the bathroom. You can go first.”
A bed sounded wonderful, but tired as he was, he wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet.
“We have to talk.”
She didn’t look at him as she pulled her gun out of her pocket and set it on the table, then shrugged out of her jacket. Her movements were slow, a little uncoordinated. Maggie Mann—Manion—was almost as tired as he was.
That fact didn’t make him feel any more kindly disposed to her.
“We can talk tomorrow,” she said, still without looking at him. “I said I’d explain, and I will. Tomorrow.”
She started to slip past him. He grabbed her arm and dragged her back.
“It’s already tomorrow, and we’ll talk right now.”
He was stronger, he knew, but she was faster and better trained. If she really wanted to break free of his hold on her, she could. But this wasn’t a test of strength, it was a test of wills. And he had to know what she knew, or suspected, about Tina.
He wrapped his hand around her other arm and drew her closer.
Even as the questions took shape in his mind, some part of him was aware of her as a woman—a brave, strong, desirable woman who could, as he’d already discovered, all too easily distract him without even trying.
This close, she was definitely distracting.
She was slim, but he could feel the firm muscle beneath the heavy flannel shirt she wore. Her head would easily rest on his shoulder. If he were to slide his arm around her shoulders, her body would fit perfectly against his.
When she tilted her head to look up at him, her throat curved, open and vulnerable. He could see the pulse beat at the corner of her jaw. That little patch of skin would be warm, he knew, and soft. The secret sort of place where a woman dabbed perfume when she wanted to attract a man.
Maggie smelled, distantly, of coffee, soap and weariness, and yet he found himself responding the same as if she wore some rare, elusive scent.
Her chin was more pointed that he’d realized, her mouth wider, softer, fuller. Hard, now, yet still desirable.
Her eyes were the dark, secret green of a high country forest. He hadn’t noticed that before.
It angered him that he could notice it now, when there were more important things to think of.
Frustrated, he gave her an angry little shake, then let her go.
She winced and grabbed her injured arm.
Rick bit back a curse.
“You’re sure that’s just a bruise?”
“Yes.” That forest-dark gaze came up to meet his worried one. Anger snapped in those dark depths. “Don’t ever touch me like that again.”
“No. I’m sorry. I was out of line.”
“Way out of line.”
Maggie felt a surge of gratitude for the anger. Anger was so much safer than the confusing, dangerous emotions he so easily roused in her with just a laugh or a casual touch.
Rick Dornier, Ph.D., was in need of a shave, a bath and a good ten hours of sleep. He was worried sick about his sister, and, after the past few hours, Maggie knew he didn’t trust her as far as he could spit, but none of it was enough to keep him a safe emotional distance from her, or her from him.
Whatever it was between them, it flared as easily as fire from a struck match, and that scared the very devil out of her.
Her fingers trembled as she raked them through her hair.
She was tired, that’s all. The confrontation with Bursey, Nichols and Gage at the station had been even more unpleasant than she’d expected. And her shoulder really did hurt, a low, dull throbbing that she couldn’t quite ignore.
Still, she needed Rick Dornier on her side. She wanted the answers to Tina’s disappearance almost as much as he did. That’s why she’d brought him here. She needed to remember that.
“You were right, you know,” she said. “I am an undercover DEA agent. Or was, until tonight,” she added with a grimace. “Not much cover left now.”
She wearily rubbed her arm. “Those two who attacked us still aren’t talking, but they both have records. My guess is that they were hired to watch me, maybe break into the Cuppa Joe’s, see if they could find anything that might tell them what I know. We surprised them, and they weren’t bright enough t
o stay hidden until we’d gone.”
Or maybe they were supposed to keep things simple and just kill me.
That’s what Bursey suspected. She’d tried hard not to think about that possibility. In her job, if you spent too much time thinking about what could happen, you would never do anything at all.
“You want to sit?” she asked abruptly.
She didn’t wait for an answer, just automatically settled into her favorite corner of the sofa, then, when Rick claimed the other end, wished she’d chosen the lone chair, instead. Too late now.
Since she couldn’t run, she drew her legs up, then wrapped her arms around them. Maybe he would think it was weariness, not cowardice, that made her curl into a protective ball.
From the corner of her eye, she studied him, the strong, rough lines of his face, the masculine curves and angles of his body, the underlying strength beneath the physical exhaustion.
Her gaze dropped to where his hands rested atop his thighs.
The backs of his hands were broad and strong, carved by the bones and ropey veins beneath the tanned skin. His fingers were long, square-tipped and solid-looking. She would bet his palms were callused from rough outdoor work, but that his touch would be gentle as a whisper when it mattered.
They were strong, capable hands. The hands of a man you could trust.
In her line of work, trusting didn’t always come easily. But she would trust Rick Dornier, she thought.
Truth was, she already did. That made the explanations easier.
“I’m here in Fenton because there’s been an influx of Asian White heroin into the market in the past few years, and we don’t know the source.”
“Heroin?” That made him sit up in surprise. “I thought that was out of fashion.”
“It was…for a while. Not anymore. People stupid enough to use drugs will go with whatever they can get. And they’re always willing to try something new, something ‘better.’”
Greg certainly had.
Maggie angrily pushed away the thought. She tried not to think of Greg. It hurt too much.
“There’s still plenty of cocaine and meth and all the rest of it out there,” she added. “But heroin’s back, too. First it was from Mexico, cheap and fairly readily available. Mexican Brown, they call it. Something new for those who like a little variety in their entertainment and weren’t around the last time heroin was the drug of choice.
“But then Asian White started finding its way in. The White is cleaner and more potent. It costs more, but that hasn’t stopped its spread. The users figure they’re getting more bang for their buck,” she added bitterly.
“Afghanistan used to be a big producer. A nice cash crop for a struggling farmer, like coca in South America. We’ve cracked down on Afghani production, but that hasn’t stopped the flow of the stuff. These days it’s coming out of lots of places—Thailand, Myanmar, India.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. If you stop production in one place, it will just pop up in another. There’s too much money in it not to.”
“But why you?” Rick demanded. “Why here?”
“Here, because there’s a lot of it on the streets. Me…” She shrugged, trying to feign a professional detachment she’d never been able to master. “I go where they send me, do what they tell me to do, and I’m young enough to fit in with the college scene here.”
“And what did they tell you about Tina?”
There was a coldness in him, suddenly. He hadn’t budged from his corner of the sofa, but it felt as if he’d moved away somehow, put an impassable distance between them.
She didn’t care, Maggie told herself. This was her job, nothing more. There was nothing personal between her and Rick Dornier and never would be.
That didn’t make it any easier.
“I got the job at Cuppa Joe’s because it’s a popular college hangout, but not the sort of place that dealers would be looking for someone like me. I got to hear a lot of gossip, meet a lot of people. It’s been…useful.”
“How useful?”
Her chin came up at the challenge. “Useful. That’s all I can tell you.”
He considered that for a moment. But there was only one thing that really interested him, and they both knew it.
“So where does Tina fit into all of this?”
“Maybe nowhere.”
“You don’t believe that.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. But I don’t think she’s in the middle of it, either.” His mistrust stung. That shouldn’t matter, Maggie knew, but it did.
She gnawed on her lower lip, weighing what she could and couldn’t say, then tucked her legs under her and leaned toward him.
“We can’t prove it—yet—but we think the main source of the White is a professor of art history named Nicolas Jerelski.”
He frowned. “Tina’s faculty advisor?”
“That’s right. She’s also one of his student assistants, paid under one of his research grants. Which means she sees him a lot.”
“Damn!”
“Exactly. Jerelski is a respected expert on Asian art. He also runs a little import business on the side. High-end original art and reproductions for the home-decorating market. Or so he claims. We think the import business is just a lucrative cover for his even more lucrative drug dealings.”
“And you think Tina was involved somehow?”
Maggie shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t know anything about the drugs.”
“But…?”
She hesitated, but in for a penny, in for a pound. To hell with what Bursey or her boss would say.
“Bursey thinks she’s directly involved in the trade somehow. I don’t. But she is bright, inquisitive and trusting. Since she works for Jerelski, there’s always the chance that she saw or heard something she shouldn’t have.”
Rick surged to his feet. For an instant, she thought he was going to hit something. Instead, he stalked to the other end of the room, then spun on his heel and angrily stalked back.
“What about the man who was seen with her?”
“We don’t know who he is,” she reluctantly admitted. “He might be nothing more than an innocent bystander who happened to be attracted to a pretty girl in a bar.”
Rick’s jaw hardened. “Innocent bystanders don’t run like scared jackrabbits when someone’s on their tail.”
“No,” she admitted, even more reluctantly.
His gaze pinned her to her seat. “I’m going to find her. Whatever’s going on, whatever the reason behind her disappearance, she’s not a part of it. She’s safe somewhere, and I am going to find her.”
Chapter 5
T he statue, glittering with gold leaf and gemstones, emerged from its nest of swaddling silk and wood shavings like a blood-drenched black Venus from her shell. Diamonds glinted in the eyes of the skulls strung like a necklace around its neck. The silver sword raised in one of the eight hands looked sharp enough to slice a finger to the bone.
“Beautiful! Beautiful!” He cradled the thing in his hands, scarcely breathing. Its beauty roused an almost sexual heat in him. “It’s even more exquisite than I imagined.”
Carefully, he set it down in the light of the green-shaded desk lamp and stepped back to admire the effect.
Eyes wide with awe, his assistant leaned forward to touch it.
He slapped her hand away.
“Don’t touch it! It’s not yours. Something this perfect, this rare, isn’t for the likes of you.”
Tears started in her eyes, glistening like the diamonds in the skulls.
He frowned, then sighed, reminding himself of the need for patience for a while longer. But only for a little while.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He didn’t sound as if he meant it, but she told herself it was just the excitement, that he was distracted and she’d interrupted. She knew better than to interrupt. That was the very first lesson she’d learned—never, ever interrupt.
Yet she couldn’t
keep silent, either. She was just as tense as he was, though not for the same reasons, just as awed by this horrifying, glittering statue that had come so far and at such cost.
“It’s very old, isn’t it?” she said, because she couldn’t bear the silence. Even one of his cutting put-downs was preferable to that.
He was too wrapped up in his new possession to chide her. His gaze devoured the thing.
“Our ancestors were still living in mud-floored huts and picking fleas off each other when the artist that created this was alive,” he said, gently touching the thing. His thin, elegant lips lifted in a smile. “And now it’s mine.”
The hunger in that smile made her flinch and ache with need.
He liked to possess beauty, she knew. It was that fact more than anything else that had convinced her she must be beautiful, too, for he possessed her, body and soul.
“You’re going to keep it?” She hated the thought of that thing here, watching her.
“For a few days. Just until my bank in Zurich confirms the deposit of three point two million dollars to my account.” His smile widened. “Tax free and untraceable. The very best kind of deposit.”
He also liked money. Lots and lots of money.
Delicately, reverently, he traced a line from the tip of the statue’s jeweled crown, down the terrible face, the skulls, over the bare breasts and belly.
“Kali,” he crooned, more to the statue than to her. “The Divine Mother.”
His hand dropped along the angled line of hip and leg shrouded under the carved draperies, down to the bare foot planted atop a carved human skull.
“Hindu goddess of death. Consort to Shiva, god of destruction.”
He shifted the thing slightly in the light, his touch as gentle as a lover. “She is…exquisite.”
His eyes were like coals burning in the shadowed sockets of his skull. The effect was a trick of the light, she knew—he was such a handsome man she would never have thought such a thing if it weren’t for the light and the horrible, glittering goddess with her necklace of skulls that stood on the desk between them.
She shivered, then shifted on her chair, pressing against the growing ache between her legs. She could tell that his breathing had gone shallow and tight, just as it did when he was focusing on one of the more challenging tantric sexual positions that he always insisted they get just right.