by Alice Orr
“Why don’t you just let me go? That way, you wouldn’t have to take all this trouble. And I promise I wouldn’t say anything to anybody till you had time to get away.”
He almost wanted to believe that could be true. Lord knows he didn’t feel right about dragging her all over town and scaring her the way he’d been doing. She’d never done anything to him to deserve that. But then he’d never done anything to deserve what was happening to him tonight, either.
“I can’t let you go,” he said, making himself sound determined about that, for his own sake as much as hers. “You’re my bargaining chip, the only thing I’ve got to trade if the time comes for that to be necessary.”
She opened her mouth, probably to give him another argument. She closed it again and set her lips together in a stubborn line. She was standing up to him again. She wasn’t going to beg for her freedom, especially when she was easily smart enough to know he wouldn’t give it to her. He wished that stubbornness didn’t appeal to him as much as it did. The last thing he needed was to start thinking of this woman as anything more than what he’d just called her: a bargaining chip and a trade-off.
“Get over here on the bed,” he said.
“I most certainly will not.”
“I’m not going to do anything to you but tie you up so you can’t get away while I’m gone.”
“You’re not tying me up,” she said defiantly. “I won’t allow it.”
Memphis sighed. He should have known this wouldn’t be easy. “You either come over here willingly, or I’ll carry you.”
“You lay a finger on me, and I’ll scream these walls down.”
He could tell by the look on her face that she meant it. “Listen to me, Bennett,” he said, rising from the bed in the hope that his superior size might intimidate her. “This place is only a half step up from those dark spots in the park where we were earlier, maybe not even that far. The help you’d get by screaming in here could help you into bigger trouble than you’ve got already. I don’t mean to do you any harm. If I did, I would have done it already. I’m just not holding many cards right now, and I have to use every one I’ve got. You go along with me awhile longer, and you’ll get out of this mess just fine. You call attention to yourself with the creeps who flop in this joint, and I can’t guarantee you’ll get out of this mess at all.”
She didn’t look very intimidated. She stared at him with steel in her blue eyes for a long minute. Then she got up and walked across the room and past him to the bed, one step at a time and at her own speed. He had to hand it to her. She really was a piece of work. Once again, he wished that didn’t strike him as quite so damned attractive as it did. But he couldn’t think about that now. He busied himself with tearing the bed sheet into strips he could use for tying.
MEANWHILE, BENNETT’S message had been received but not in the way she would have hoped. At the very moment she was being tied to the scarred wooden headboard of a bed with squeaking springs on Forty-second Street, a late-model dark sedan was slipping through midtown traffic in her direction. The man behind the wheel was a good driver but the worried type. The hands that steered so skillfully sported fingernails bitten to the quick. His companion was quite the opposite, cool and hip when his temper wasn’t riled, adjusting the impeccable cuff that extended just the right distance from his Hugo Boss sleeve.
“I don’t like this,” the driver said.
“Rudy, you don’t like anything.”
“I especially don’t like this.” Rudy navigated a busy intersection with ease.
“You worry too much. We do the job we been sent to do and get out fast. We do it that way, I’ll get back downtown while the night’s still shakin’. Then I’ll be a happy man.”
“That’s all you think about, getting boozed up and cattin’ around.”
“What else is there? You know, Rude, you oughta come out with me sometime. I’d show you how to loosen up. If anybody ever needed loosening up it’s you, Rudy. I’m tellin’ you true on that score.”
“I’m a married man with responsibilities. I’ve got no time for playing around all night and sleeping half the day like you do.”
“Except when I’m on the job.” He straightened his handtailored silk tie. “I don’t never sleep on the job.”
Rudy blasted the horn at a pair of carousers carrying bottles in brown paper bags who had backed off the curb into traffic just past the corner of Broadway.
“I hate this neighborhood,” Rudy said, sounding even grouchier. “Nothing but sleaze buckets down here. I hope they get it cleaned up soon like they say they’re going to.”
His companion laughed, more sneering than joyful. “You kill me, Rudy. A hit man who worries about gettin’ lowlifes off the streets.”
“I live in this town. I got to worry about such things.”
“You live in Queens.”
“That’s part of this town,” Rudy said indignantly. “And, you’re the hit man, not me. I’m just here for backup.”
“Okay, Mr. Backup. You just make sure that’s what you are in case there’s any trouble. From what I been told, this guy could give us a jolt if we don’t catch him off guard first.”
“It’s not the guy I’m worried about. It’s the girl.”
“What you talkin’ about, Rudy? The girl’ll be a piece of cake. She’s just a dame, after all.”
“I don’t like doin’ women.”
“You got too many don’t likes, pal. Just do what Falcone sent us to do, and everything will be A-okay.”
“Then, let’s do it quick and get it over with,” Rudy said, looking around for the best place to park the car.
His companion pulled a pair of soft, black kid gloves from his pocket and smiled. “Not to worry,” he said. “They don’t call me Nick for nothing. I always show up in the nick of time.”
Chapter Ten
Bennett could hardly believe how easily she had convinced Memphis to tie her up too loosely for the knots to be effective for very long. She’d simply flinched as if in pain when he pulled the strips of sheeting to secure them. When he slackened the material to make her more comfortable, she twisted her wrists at an angle so that when she twisted them back again later there would be room to spare between skin and bond. Her heart was pounding all the while because she was certain he’d catch her doing it, but he didn’t. He seemed too intent on not hurting her to notice much else.
She was reminded of the way he’d stepped in front of her when Royce showed up with a gun in his hand. She hadn’t understood that, either. Memphis was supposed to be a criminal, a murderer, yet he had shielded her from harm, even at the possible cost of his life. He had taken her hostage to prevent harm to himself. Then he put himself at risk for her sake. It didn’t make sense. Tying her less than maximum tight also didn’t make sense—unless maybe he was as innocent as he claimed to be.
She couldn’t think about that now. Innocent or not, he had made her his prisoner and forced her into one dangerous situation after another for his own reasons. He might not, in fact, be the villain she’d believed him to be. There was some chance, though not yet proven, that she and everybody else had been wrong about him. Still, he had used her for his purposes with little thought to how she might be affected or even injured by what he did. That was the bottom line in this case. Her first priority had to be to get herself out of her present predicament. Memphis Modine would have to take care of his priorities himself.
Most of all, she had to keep herself from thinking about the way her heart did a bit of a flip when he looked deep into her eyes. She wasn’t quite certain when that had begun to happen. Maybe it was when he was tying her up and his hand lingered on her arm a few seconds longer than was necessary, as if he could hardly bear to stop touching her. At one point, he had stroked the inside of her wrist to soothe the skin when she flinched from the supposed chafing of the bed sheet strip. She had felt the warmth of that stroke all the way down to the pit of her stomach. She had told herself to pay no attention t
o that then, and she did so again now, but she was too forthright a person to try to pretend it had not happened.
All the while she was considering these things, Bennett had also been worming her way out of the pieces of sheeting around her wrists. She had rubbed her skin raw and sore in the process. He hadn’t tied her loosely enough to prevent that. She took only a moment to chafe the tender areas, and to remember how much more comforting his touch had been, before starting to work on the ties at her ankles. He should have hitched her to the top and bottom of the bed. That would have made it much more difficult to get free. She was amazed that he hadn’t thought of that.
Unfortunately, she had little time to ponder that or anything else. She was barely free from her restraints when she heard footsteps in the hallway outside the hotel room door. Could he be back already? She had expected him to be gone longer than this. She heard voices. It sounded like two men, but she couldn’t make out more than that. Had Memphis brought someone back with him? Who could that possibly be? He’d said he had to contact some people he knew in town. Maybe he’d managed to do that. Or, the men out there could be residents of the hotel. Bennett didn’t even want to think about what they might be after. Whoever her visitors were, she had no desire to stick around to meet them. She had to get out of this room fast.
Bennett remembered Mexico, where she had to use her wits to survive. Nobody cared what her last name was there or if she was from uptown or down. She could recognize a similar situation now, and the challenge was almost welcome. She grabbed the strips of sheeting and tossed them under the bed. She smoothed the worn and faded bedspread and the lumpy pillows. She wanted to make the room look as if she hadn’t been there, at least not in quite some time.
She hurried to the window and pushed it open as quietly as she could manage. As she had hoped, there was a fire escape outside. She remembered seeing it, zigzagging down the front of the building, when she and Memphis first arrived there. She hiked her skirt up and climbed over the window ledge onto the slatted iron floor of the fire escape. Her pumps were a hindrance here so she took them off. She needed to get out of sight of the window, but she also wanted to hear what went on inside the room. First she lowered the window to a few inches above the sill so it wouldn’t be obvious that she’d climbed out this way. Then she crouched below the sill and pressed herself back against the brick wall.
She had just barely slipped out of sight when she heard the door open. She was tempted to peek over the sill but didn’t. That would be taking too much of a chance. There was street noise from below, car traffic mostly, which made it difficult to hear what was going on inside the room. A minute or two passed before whoever it was actually came through the door. That led her to suspect that this most likely wasn’t Memphis. He would have rushed in, especially after seeing that she was gone.
“Dammit! There ain’t nobody here,” she heard a man say, definitely not Memphis.
“Looks that way, Nick. So, since you’re supposed to be the smart guy, tell me what’s next.”
“First off, don’t use names.”
The other one laughed, a scoffing sound. “Who do you think’s going to hear me? The cockroaches?”
“No names, no matter who’s gonna hear,” the one called Nick growled. “You do what I say. I’m in charge of this one.”
“Okay, General,” the other one said. He still sounded scoffing.
“Let’s look around and see what they left.”
“I don’t see a thing. It looks to me like, if they been here at all, they’re long gone and probably not coming back. Or maybe they weren’t even here, and this place was a bum steer.”
“Falcone doesn’t send us out on bum steers.”
Bennett almost gasped out loud. She bit her lip to keep herself from making a sound. That was the name of the man Memphis said he was working for.
“I thought you said no names, Mr. Man-in-Charge.”
“You better shut up if you know what’s good for you,” Nick snapped.
“I think we’d better get out of here if we know what’s good for us. I don’t like this setup. Something’s fishy. I can feel it.”
“You get those fishy feelings every time you turn around. I don’t know how a guy as antsy as you ended up in this business,” Nick said.
“Being antsy’s kept me alive more than one time. You’d be smart to get a little antsy yourself.”
All the while this conversation was going on, Bennett thought she could hear them moving around inside the room, opening drawers in the dresser, looking into the closet. She wondered if either of them had thought yet to look out the window. If they hadn’t, she guessed they would soon.
“The only thing I worry about,” Nick was saying, “is not getting right what the boss sent me to do. I got a rep for doin’ the job and doin’ it right, and our job on this one is to find these two and shut ‘em both up permanent.”
Bennett did gasp this time. She covered her mouth to keep herself silent, but she couldn’t still the pounding of her heart. They were talking about Memphis and her. She was almost sure of it.
“I’ll say it again. I’m not comfortable with doing that girl,” the man with Nick said.
“You’re never comfortable with anything.”
Bennett knew somehow that they had to be talking about her. They had been sent to kill her, as well as Memphis. She pressed so hard against the wall under the sill that the rough brick scratched the skin beneath her thin dress. She was so preoccupied with shrinking herself as small as she could get that she almost missed the next exchange inside the room.
“What the hell was that?” Nick exclaimed. There was silence for a few seconds. Bennett strained to listen. “It’s somebody at the door,” he said, almost too low to be heard.
Bennett tensed. That would be Memphis coming back from whatever his errand had been. He wouldn’t know these two men, these two killers, were in the room. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat. Memphis was in terrible danger. A dim voice somewhere off to the side of her brain told her that she shouldn’t care what happened to Memphis Modine. He was her kidnapper, and he deserved whatever he got. That voice was nowhere near as loud as the one that reminded her of how Memphis had risked himself when she was in danger, and another that said he didn’t deserve to be done in by two henchmen and the boss who had obviously betrayed him.
She guessed that those henchmen would be concentrating their attention on the door. She crept quietly from her hiding place and eased herself upward just enough to peer over the sill. She saw a rather pudgy man of medium height and a taller one with reddish hair. Both had on dark suits, but the pudgy one looked disheveled, while the other one was quite dapper. She deduced that the dapper one would be Nick. She couldn’t be absolutely sure without hearing their voices again, but they were silent now. They had positioned themselves on either side of the door. Bennett thought her heart might stop from terror when she saw that each of them had a gun in his hand.
MEMPHIS HAD A FEELING something was wrong as soon as he put the key in the lock. He wrote that off to ragged nerves, till the door swung open and he found out his premonition had been right. The first thing he saw was the bed where she should have been. It was empty. He didn’t have time to do more than register that before two hulking shapes leapt at him, one from each side of the doorway, with two guns pointed at his head. One of the hulks grabbed his arm and pulled him into the room while the other one shut the door.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” the tall redhead asked.
So they didn’t have her with them. Memphis breathed a sigh of relief. Wherever she might be, she was probably better off than with these characters.
“He said, where’s your girlfriend?”
The shorter guy shoved Memphis up against the wall with a thud that rattled the mirror above the dresser. Ordinarily Memphis would have been on top of him in a flash, gun or not, but he was playing it cooler than usual till he was sure she’d gotten away.
“I don’t
have a girlfriend,” Memphis answered, staring the short guy straight in the eye.
“Well, ain’t that sad.” This was the redhead chiming in. “I guess you think we must be playin’ with you here, or you wouldn’t be giving us that smart lip stuff.” He pulled his arm back and struck Memphis on the cheek. “That’s to show you we don’t play games. And, even if we did, you wouldn’t be coming up the winner. Do you hear what I’m sayin’, pal?”
“I hear you,” Memphis answered.
What he also heard was ringing in his ear where this clown had smacked him. Memphis was already planning what he’d do in return if he ever got to be top dog in this situation, though the chances of that happening didn’t look good right now.
“Tell us where the girl is and tell us right now.”
That was the short, chubby one again. Memphis couldn’t decide which one he liked least. He had decided that this guy was probably the weaker link. If he lowered his guard, and his gun, even for a second, Memphis would be all over him.
“I don’t know what girl you’re talking about,” Memphis said.
The redhead stepped forward and took the other guy by the shoulder to move him aside. “Take this,” the redhead said, handing his gun over. “We’re gettin’ nowhere fast here. It’s time I did some serious persuading.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of brass knuckles. Memphis sucked in a deep breath in preparation for the beating he couldn’t stop from happening. The redhead fitted the brass finger holes over his black gloves. Memphis was watching this and wondering how long he could hold up against the kind of battering brass knuckles can give, when he noticed a streak of movement over the redhead’s shoulder. Memphis barely had time to react.
That streak of motion was Bennett. She’d come from the other side of the room at a run. Memphis caught a glimpse of the open window behind her and figured she must have been hiding out there all this time. In the next instant, she was on the redhead’s back. She looped a long, double strip of fabric over his head and around his neck. Memphis recognized the sheeting he’d tied her up with earlier. She pulled the strips tight and twisted them at the back of the redhead’s neck, then heaved with all her might as he clutched at his throat and his face began to turn the same color as his hair.