by Anne Woodard
“It will if I say it will.”
“The hell it will.”
She opened her mouth to deliver another furious blast, choked and reached for the door handle, instead.
It was still locked.
She gave it a couple of vicious yanks, then threw up her hands in frustrated fury.
“And you still haven’t unlocked the damn door.”
Maggie deliberately didn’t look at Rick as he unlocked her door, and she spurned his offer to help her into the truck. She even managed to ignore him as he walked around the truck to open his own door. But it was impossible to pretend he wasn’t there when he slid onto the same seat she was sitting on, with nothing but three feet of upholstery and empty space dividing them.
That he was working as hard at ignoring her as she was at ignoring him only made it all that much more impossible to pretend that absolutely nothing had happened.
What in the devil had come over her? she wondered, appalled. She’d behaved like a spoiled, irrational child and now she felt like a fool. She’d never, ever gone off the deep end like that before. Not at any time, for any reason, and certainly not for anything as stupid as this.
She wasn’t being fair. She was the one who’d kissed him awake last night. She’d seduced him, not the other way around.
Worse, blaming him for her own lack of control was downright dishonest. Rick Dornier was the kind of man who’d have stopped if she’d said stop, even after she’d started it. Snarling at him now was the same as blaming the other guy for your own mistakes. She’d hated that kind of behavior when she was a kid, and she liked it even less now. Especially since she was the one who was at fault.
She turned to face him. “Look, I—”
“I owe you—” he said at the same time.
He blinked.
She bit her lip, then tried again.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I need to apologize,” he said, before she’d even gotten to “sorry.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “I’m the one who’s behaving like a jerk.”
“But I—”
Her frown stopped him cold.
He opened his mouth once, twice. Nothing came out. He snapped it shut and frowned right back.
It might have been easier if he’d argued about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Calmly, this time, and very clearly. “I’m sorry for being so rude. I’m sorry for yelling at you. I’m really, really sorry for having let things get out of hand in the first place.”
Again he started to say something, but she held up a warning finger. Reluctantly, he subsided without a word.
“Neither of us can afford to have any distractions right now. We both know that.”
He didn’t even try to respond. It might have been easier if he had.
Maggie forced herself to meet his waiting gaze.
“There’s one thing I’m not sorry for,” she said. “I’m not sorry for what we shared last night. Or this morning,” she added, suddenly remembering the feel of butter-slick fingers trailing across her bare ribs and down her side.
“I’m not sorry for it,” she insisted, “but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again. We can’t afford to let it. Right?”
For a moment, he simply sat there, not saying a word, his unreadable gaze fixed on her face. She’d about given up hope of an answer when he let out his breath in an exasperated sigh.
“Right,” he said.
“Great.” That was the way it had to be, Maggie told herself. So why did it feel like she’d just lost the fight instead of won it?
He started the truck, then let it idle while the engine warmed. “Where to now?”
He might have been asking directions to the bus stop for all the emotion in his voice. Not that it mattered, Maggie told herself. It would make things a lot easier for her if they kept their relationship strictly professional.
If she worked at it, she might even begin to believe it.
“Let’s hit Jerelski’s office,” she said. “I want to find out what’s going on. If we’re lucky, Bursey’s guys will still be there, checking things out.”
“All right.”
He didn’t say another word as he pulled out of the parking lot and slid into the morning traffic that wouldn’t be rushing anywhere for the next couple of hours.
She tried to tell herself that was okay, too.
I have a job, she silently reminded herself. He’s part of it, but that’s all. The sex had muddied things up a bit, which was what always happened when you made the mistake of trying to mix your personal life with your professional. She wouldn’t let it happen again.
Right now, she wasn’t even supposed to have a personal life. They were too close to bringing down Jerelski and his friends. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake now. Her boss would kill her if she did, and she wouldn’t be too happy about it, either.
She sure as heck wasn’t happy about losing control like she had there in the parking lot, but that wasn’t going to happen again, either. She’d make sure of it.
Think about the job, she told herself sternly. Think about Tina, and Jerelski, and this guy that nobody seems to recognize. Except that professor, and he’d—
Maggie bolted upright in her seat.
Wait a minute. What had Denise said? Something about the professor thought he’d seen the guy at some conference of other, right? If the professor was there in the middle of the uproar in the art department, then he had to be a professor of art, too. Which meant a conference, to him, would be something having to do with art. And one of those piles on Tina’s desk—
“Turn the car around!”
Rick jumped, startled out of whatever dark thoughts he’d been thinking. “What?
“Turn the car around,” she insisted. It was all she could do to keep from bouncing on the seat. “We’ve got to go back to Tina’s apartment. Now.”
Chapter 12
T o Maggie’s relief, Rick didn’t ask any questions. He just made an illegal U-turn at the next intersection and headed back toward the campus while she explained.
“Seems awful thin to me,” he said doubtfully when she’d finished. “Besides, even if he was at a conference, and that just happened to be the same conference Tina and this professor went to, how are you going to find him? I don’t know about the art world, but some of the professional conferences I go to have more people attending than most towns in Montana have residents. And that’s just the ones that are registered.”
“I’ll admit it won’t be easy,” Maggie said. “But right now, it’s all we’ve got.”
Before she could say anything more, Rick abruptly stomped on the brakes, hard enough so the seat belt clamped down, half-strangling her. “What the—?”
“Black pickup,” he said, pointing. “And I think it’s ours.”
Maggie spotted it a moment later. “And that’s the parking lot for Tina’s apartment complex that he’s pulling in to.”
His eyes narrowed. “There’s binoculars under your seat. See if you can identify him when he gets out.”
While she dug out the binoculars, Rick drove past the entrance, then swept around in another illegal U-turn and parked where they had a good view of buildings, the parking area and the truck.
The binoculars were top of the line. Maggie fumbled with the focus, then gave a little crow of triumph.
“Gotcha, you jerk! It’s him. It’s definitely the guy from the sketch.” She adjusted the focus for even better detail. “And he’s headed toward Tina’s apartment. You are mine, buster, all mine!”
Maggie had her seat belt off and her door half open when Rick stopped her.
“Wait! I’ve got a better idea.”
Before she could object, he was out of the truck and unlocking the big metal tool chest bolted on behind the cab. She climbed out after him.
“I need you to stand watch, make sure he doesn’t come out too soon,” he said as he dug through the chest. “All I need is a
couple of minutes. Don’t try to stop him. Don’t try to talk to him. When you see me back here, come on back. All right?”
“But—”
His gaze locked on hers. “Trust me, Maggie. Please. I’ll explain later. Now, just go!”
Her hackles rose at the peremptory order, but rather than waste time arguing, she went, moving fast and keeping her head down like someone who was running late and had just discovered she’d forgotten something important.
What in hell did Rick have planned? Trust him? Who was the cop, here?
Play it by ear, she told herself, pushing aside her irritation. He wouldn’t do anything that would put Tina, or their hopes of finding her, at risk. More to the point, if he hadn’t said a word she’d still be doing exactly what she was doing right now. So what was the point in getting pissed?
Maggie swung by the black pickup to make sure there was no one else in it. Empty. She made a mental note of the license plate number and hoped it didn’t come too late to help Tina.
Ignoring the temptation to let the air out of one of the tires, she took the path leading to the building next to Tina’s. Luckily, the apartments were the kind that opened out onto open walkways rather than closed hallways. The arrangement made spying on someone a whole lot easier.
Once she reached the second floor landing where she could watch both the parking lot and the stranger, she paused and pretended to fumble in her pocket as if searching for her key. And while she searched, she scanned the area.
Rick was strolling across the lot toward that black pickup as casually as if he had all the time in the world. He had something in his hand, but at this distance, Maggie couldn’t tell what.
On the third floor landing of the building opposite, the stranger stopped in front of Tina’s door. He glanced over his shoulder, then slid a key into the lock, opened the door and, with one last, apparently casual glance to either side, disappeared.
Maggie desperately patted her sides, still searching for the nonexistent key. The gun in her zipped-up jacket pocket was temptingly solid.
What would Mr. Black Pickup do if he walked out of Tina’s to find a gun pointed at him by a woman who knew how to use it?
Too bad she wouldn’t get a chance to find out.
Rick had disappeared from sight. The parking lot was empty, so far as she could tell. If there were any sounds coming from Tina’s apartment, she was too far away to hear them.
Trust me, Rick had said.
She did. That and her own professional training were all that were keeping her here right now when what she really wanted to do was break down Tina’s door, grab whoever it was inside, and wring the information they needed out of him. Drop by drop, if necessary.
The door to a nearby apartment suddenly swung open and a young woman rushed out, her coat and backpack half on, a coffee mug in one hand, the other reaching to pull the door shut behind her.
“I’m going to kill him,” the woman muttered, angrily fumbling with coat and pack and coffee. “Switch off the alarm and never tell me. I’m absolutely going to kill him.”
She gave Maggie a distracted smile as she rushed past, then disappeared down the stairs, still muttering, oblivious to Maggie’s cheerful wave. By the time she reached her car, Maggie knew, she would have thought of a dozen different ways to avenge that switched-off alarm clock, and she would have forgotten all about the unknown woman she’d passed on the landing outside her door.
More important, however, anyone watching would think that two neighbors had just exchanged a friendly greeting, and be reassured.
In the building opposite, Tina’s door opened a crack.
Rick was still nowhere to be seen.
Maggie threw up her hands as if in disgust at not finding her keys, then headed back down the stairs, heart racing. By the time Mr. Black Pickup got to the bottom, she was standing in the middle of the walkway leading to the parking lot, her back to the buildings behind her, her hands fisted on her hips, scowling at the ground on either side of the path as though searching for something she’d dropped.
She pretended not to notice when he hesitated at the bottom of the steps. It was only a moment’s hesitation, just long enough for a visitor to get his bearings…or for someone who didn’t want to be noticed to decide how to slip past a stranger planted in the middle of the walk, blocking his escape.
He opted for the brisk, I’m-in-a-hurry approach. Maggie waited until he was almost on top of her before looking up as if startled. Like the woman whose boyfriend had switched off the alarm clock, she gave him a friendly, distracted smile and pretended to turn back to her search. He was six feet away when she called out, stopping him in his tracks.
“Hey! Hi!” She hurried up, beaming and blushing and friendly as all get out. “I know you! You’re the guy who was with Tina at the Good Times a couple weeks ago, right?”
She didn’t stop for an answer, and she didn’t miss the way his body stiffened or his eyes went flat and wary.
“You are! I knew it! I couldn’t possibly forget someone as good-looking as you!” She laughed. “Lucky Tina! I’m going to have to ask her what her secret is.”
He really was as handsome as Grace had said, sleek and casually sophisticated. The kind of man who ought to be used to exactly this sort of friendly yet pushy come-on from women he didn’t know.
“I’m sorry—”
“Oh, yeah. You gotta run. I understand.”
Out in the parking lot, like a man who’d just stooped to tie his shoe or pick up something he’d dropped, Rick gracefully straightened.
Pickup Man was edging away.
Maggie cheerfully, rudely, got closer. “If I hadn’t dropped my damn keys somewhere I’d already be gone, too. Guess it was lucky I did, because otherwise we wouldn’t have run into each other like this, right?”
“Right, but—”
“I’m going to give Tina a talking to, keeping you hidden like this!”
She giggled. Pickup Man gritted his teeth.
Behind him in the parking lot, Rick was casually cutting between two cars, yet covering ground fast. He would only need another minute or two.
“Anyway, I don’t want to keep you and all, but I thought maybe you’d know where Tina was?”
For an instant, she would swear Pickup Man stopped breathing.
She got closer still, let her voice drop just a little to show she was a concerned friend.
“I haven’t seen her for days. Not since I spotted you two in Good Times, come to think of it.”
He blanched.
“Anyway, she promised to help me with this paper I gotta write, and I really need to talk to her but she hasn’t been around, you know? And Grace says she doesn’t know where she is, so it’s really lucky I ran into you because maybe you can help me?”
He shook his head regretfully. “Actually, I’ve been wondering the same thing because she hasn’t been returning my calls. If you see her, would you tell her to call Mike?”
Give the man credit—he recovered fast, and he was a darned good liar.
“Oh. Well, sure.” She let her shoulders droop a bit in a disappointment that wasn’t entirely feigned. “Call Mike. I’ll be sure and tell her that, next time I see her.”
“Great. Thanks.”
He smiled. One hundred watts of pure masculine sex appeal Maggie thought sourly, though she took care not to let the thought show on her face.
He was already walking away. “Good luck on that paper!” he called back over his shoulder.
It was all Maggie could do to let him go. To hell with her cover. She’d drag him in to “assist” the police in a missing person’s case and wring the truth out of him. Drop by drop, if necessary.
And what if he’s one of the bad guys and someone’s waiting for him to come back? What would happen to Tina then?
She bent to check under a juniper bush at the edge of the walkway.
What if he knows and could lead us to her?
What if—?
Magg
ie cut the anxious thoughts short. There were way too many what-ifs and not nearly enough answers, and she didn’t have time for what-ifs right now, anyway.
She forced herself to return to “searching” for those imaginary lost keys, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw him unlock his pickup and climb in.
What if Tina’s joined up with the bad guys?
When he pulled out of the parking lot, he used his turn signal and kept below the posted 25 MPH speed limit.
Maggie’s stomach churned. He hadn’t looked like the kind of guy who would normally pay attention to turn signals or speed limits.
What if Tina hasn’t joined the bad guys, but it’s way too late to matter?
The instant he was out of sight, she took off running. If Rick couldn’t tail him, she’d boot him out of his own truck and do it herself. She was not going to lose the bastard this time! Not even if it meant driving straight up a mountain after him.
Yet even as she ran, Rick’s words pounded in her brain.
Trust me. Trust me. Trust me. Trust me.
She let him go!
As he watched the black pickup pull out of the lot, Rick sank back with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been sure she would.
He didn’t know much about police procedures, but he was quite sure Maggie would have found a way to take the guy in if she’d wanted to. No matter how much he’d objected. She’d proven that in the alley behind the Cuppa Joe’s.
But his way was better.
He punched a couple of keys, studied the computer display in front of him, and smiled grimly. His way was definitely better.
An instant later, Maggie wrenched the passenger’s side door and flung herself into the cab.
“Go! Go, go, go, dammit!” she shouted.
He snatched up the open laptop computer before she could sit on it. “Watch my gear, will you!”
“What the—?” She stared at the computer, openmouthed, then plopped down where it was safe and leaned closer for a better look. “You’ve got a GPS tracking system?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I track bears for a living, remember? And close the door,” he added. “We don’t need the whole world knowing what we’re up to.”
Maggie shut her mouth with a snap and did as he said. She was flushed from her dash across the parking lot, and beautiful, and he could have kissed her for having trusted him enough to let the driver of the black pickup go.