The sudden imagery of two naked bodies, breasts to chest, hugging each other so they could use their nails on each other’s backs… It was almost too erotic for her to contemplate. At least while standing up in the realism of her own messy office.
So she sat down at her desk. And noticed the light blinking, signifying she had a message.
The voice, when she played it, was not familiar. She couldn’t even tell if it was a high male tenor or a low female alto. “Hello, Ms. Hamilton,” it said. “I hear you are looking for answers about Ranger Corporation. I have a few. If you want to hear them, meet me at five o’clock this evening at the Mustang Valley High School jogging track.”
Cara glanced at her watch. Four forty-five. She would have just enough time to get there, if she hurried.
Unwise to set up a meeting with an anonymous source? Maybe. But the track was public. And she’d be careful.
She tried hard not to break any speed limits on her way from Main Street to the Mustang Valley Municipal Park. The high school was right next door. She parked and ran from her car, through the grove of trees toward the chain-link fence surrounding the school’s familiar athletic area. She’d been on the track team herself when she’d been at MVHS. It seemed so long ago….
She hurried through the gate, through the pretty landscaped bushes nearest the fence and toward the running track. Too bad she was wearing her usual boots, or she could jog around while looking for whoever left the message. Right now she seemed to be alone—
Until someone grabbed her around the throat. Tightened the grip as Cara choked and gagged.
And no matter how much she struggled, the grip grew even tighter.
Chapter Nine
Calm, calm, calm, shouted a voice in Cara’s head. A familiar voice. Oh, yeah. That voice. Her long-time self-defense instructor.
That recollection was all it took. Not that she could ignore the pressure on her neck that was hurting her. Making her grow woozy. But her training kicked in.
No kicks for this situation. Instead, she drew one arm forward, made a fist that she grabbed with the other hand, then propelled it backward and up. Hard. It connected with something soft. A stomach, maybe.
The person holding her grunted in pain. The grip eased a bit—enough for her to pivot and use her knee, right to the groin.
Her attacker was most definitely a man, for he doubled over in obvious distress. Cara couldn’t have told what sex he was otherwise, draped as he was in a baggy black sweatsuit, collar turned up to hide the bottom of his face. The top was swathed in a low-brimmed hat and huge reflective sunglasses.
“Who are you?” Cara demanded, reaching for the glasses. Her hand didn’t get far; the guy drew a gun from his pocket and aimed it at her.
Cara swallowed. The element of surprise was gone. He now knew her skill at self-defense techniques. Could she kick the gun out of his hand? Not before he got off a shot.
“Get down, Cara!” The shout sounded from the distance. Mitch! Cara didn’t hesitate. She threw herself onto the ground, landing uncomfortably on her large purse.
“Sheriff’s Department,” he yelled. How had he gotten here? “Drop your weapon.”
As a blast sounded, she winced but realized she wasn’t her attacker’s target. Mitch was. She reached beneath her into her bag. Groping, she immediately found the thing she sought. But where the heck was her mace?
Too late. The guy ran down the track. Mitch broke through the trees, his eyes narrowed in concentration, his pace sleek and fast and sexy as hell as he followed. Despite his confining uniform and heavy utility belt, his pace was faster than most stripped-down runners probably achieved on the high school course. He looked wild and determined and utterly gorgeous—and he held a gun pointed toward the fleeing attacker.
Cara rose, admiring Mitch even as she kept clicking the digital camera she had pulled from her purse. She’d gotten at least one close shot of her assailant, though with him dressed like that it wasn’t likely to help identify him.
But then Mitch lost his rhythm, yards down the track. Cara blinked before she realized why he’d hesitated.
Kids. Two students in T-shirts and shorts jogged along the path in front of him, between Cara’s attacker and Mitch. He dodged, but his pace slowed as he put himself between the kids and the guy with the gun. When the joggers passed, Mitch stopped and aimed at a car exiting the student parking lot as another car pulled in.
Cara couldn’t hear Mitch’s swearing but sensed it by his body language—stiff, shaking, enraged. He shook his head as he put the safety back on his gun and returned it to the holster at his hip. He reached into his pocket and jotted something into a notebook—undoubtedly the description of the car, a license number, whatever he needed to identify the guy. Then he spoke into a radio slipped from his duty belt.
To no avail, Cara was sure. The guy had a head start. Since he’d set her up, the car must have been part of his plan, and untraceable to him.
Mitch turned and walked back toward Cara, his posture slack and defeated.
“YOU’RE ALL RIGHT?” Ignoring the couple of huge-eyed young runners who’d joined them, Mitch looked Cara up and down. Her skirt was wrinkled, her vest askew, her hair a mass of untamed red curls.
But she was alive. And beautiful.
“I’m fine,” she said, though the raspiness of her voice drew his gaze to her throat. It was red.
“He choked you?”
“Before I elbowed him, then kicked him where it hurt.” Her grin was so delighted that it almost lured him to smile back—though he wanted to kick her butt. Kick some sense into her.
Kiss that adorable, grinning mouth…
“But you’re all right?” he repeated gruffly.
“Of course.” She swallowed, and it was obviously painful. Her smile faded. “Thanks for coming to my rescue, Mitch.” This time her voice quavered. Her eyes widened, and he could tell that the shock of what had almost happened was finally sinking in. Her breathing sped up, her breasts rose and fell faster and she looked up at him fearfully. “He tried to hurt me.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
The urge to comfort her warred with his need to do his job. He nearly took her into his arms before he got control. “What the hell you were doing here?” The words burst from him so angrily that the kids muttered something and stepped back. Mitch was as angry with himself as with her, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Taking pictures.” Her attempt to sound proud as she held out a small camera seemed a huge effort. “I’ll even let you download copies for your report.”
“Hey, cool,” said one of the kids, reaching for it. “You got pictures of that dude with the gun?”
“Sure did,” Cara said, her tone more confident. “Watch tomorrow’s Gazette. First, I’ll want to interview both of you and—”
Good thing a patrol car pulled into the parking lot. Mitch might have done something he’d regret later, like dragging Cara off somewhere to slap her with a sense of reality. Give her a blow-by-blow description of what the suspect who’d grabbed her might have done with her—and that before he blew her brains out. He closed his eyes to absorb the agony the image caused him.
“What happened here, Deputy Steele?” It was Deputy Stephanie Greglets. She stood tall in her immaculate khaki uniform, her hair pulled into a bun at her nape.
Mitch recounted what had gone on. “Anything on the radio about apprehending the suspect in his car?”
Stephanie shook her head. “No one’s spotted him.”
“Damn.” Mitch resisted the urge to slam a fist into something. There was nothing suitable around anyway—a couple of trees, a chain-link fence, some cars. And people.
Including Cara, who watched silently, as if studying him for her next damned article.
“I’ll write up my report later, Deputy Greglets,” Mitch said to Stephanie. “Right now, I’d like you to get statements from these witnesses.” He nodded to the joggers.
“Sure.”
As
Stephanie took the two youths aside, Mitch approached Cara. Her sidelong glance evinced her apprehension. He glanced at his watch. His shift was nearly over. “We’re going to have dinner together, Ms. Hamilton.”
He could have laughed at the surprise that caused her full lips to part. Could have, but didn’t.
Instead he surprised her all the more. “You’re going to interview me for that article you’re writing for your paper tomorrow. Okay?” Not that he’d allowed her to decline. But the curiosity that seemed as much a part of her as her rich red curls obviously kicked in.
“Sure,” she said.
CARA WASN’T SURE what she’d expected of Mitch’s dinner invitation, but it wasn’t this.
They’d brought a large order of Tex-Mex food in from Mustang Valley’s most popular barbecue restaurant.
Now they sat at her kitchen table. She wondered whether her drooling was obvious to him. If so, she’d explain it as a reaction to the wonderful, spicy aroma wafting around a room compact enough that her tile counter and pine cabinets were efficient, yet large enough to fit a small oak table with matching chairs. But what she really drooled over was Mitch.
He had changed clothes. She didn’t remember seeing him out of uniform before. Certainly not in anything as tantalizing as a muscle-hugging black T-shirt and matching black jeans.
He’d made himself at home, helping her put out her bright-red placemats and set the table for two. Now he sat across from her, stripping meat with his teeth from a beef rib bone.
She’d never considered such a thing sexy before. But then, she’d never before sat across a table from a handsome, dark-haired lawman who had saved her life.
That was the sexiest part. That and Mitch’s broad shoulders, seductive golden eyes, large, muscular build…
Everything about the man was sexy! Especially because they were alone here, in her apartment.
That had to be why he’d invited her to dinner; this was part of a planned seduction.
Would she participate? Maybe.
Jerry Jennings had tried to seduce her before he’d stolen her research, but she had been young, naive and unwary then.
“Okay.” Mitch put the bone he’d been holding down on his plate and wiped his hands on a textured paper napkin.
She regarded him skeptically. Was he getting up the nerve for his seduction?
No, Deputy Mitch Steele had nerves of…well, steel. He’d proven that today when he had faced down an armed thug for her. A thug who’d tried to hurt, maybe kill her.
But as enticing as being seduced by him sounded, she might not be ready for it. And that had little to do with Jerry’s attempt at manipulation.
She didn’t have the chance to decide about Mitch. “Okay,” he said again. “I wanted us to be alone when we talk, and dinner’s as good a way to be by ourselves as anything.”
“Talk about what?” Cara asked. But she knew from the seriousness of his expression what the topic would be—what she wanted to avoid talking about. What she wanted to forget but couldn’t.
“First, I want an explanation of how you happened to be on the high school track with that suspect.”
Suspect? Heck. She knew that was police lingo, but the guy had been more than a suspect. He’d tried to kill her.
“You tell me first,” she insisted. “How did you just happen to be there to save me?”
“Because I had a feeling, when you left me this afternoon, that you would do something stupid out of spite.”
“So you followed me?” Outrage swamped her. “Because you think I’m stupid?”
“Foolish,” he said. “Not stupid.”
If her glare had been as razor sharp as she intended, it would have inflicted mortal wounds.
Only, she didn’t want to hurt him. No matter what his rationale for tailing her, he had saved her life.
“Your turn,” he said, his tone mild. Her enraged stare obviously didn’t bother him. “Why did you go there?”
She took a deep breath, got control of her injured pride, then said, “I received a phone call.” She proceeded to explain what she’d done and why. “The thing is, the guy mentioned Ranger Corporation, said he had information for me. Since I’m all but sure Ranger has something to do with Nancy’s death, and the other killings, too, I had to go find out.”
“Without calling me first.” His voice was too low, his golden eyes too blank. He was angry.
And she probably deserved it.
“We’d just argued. Again. And I thought—”
“You thought it would be better to put yourself in danger than to call for backup.”
“If you put it that way—”
“Of course I do!” He stood as he exploded, glaring down as furiously as if he wanted to throttle her. Judging by the way his large hands formed fists on the back of his chair, he did want to throttle her. He looked damned sexy that way. And intimidating.
But Cara wouldn’t let herself be intimidated. Someone else had tried it that day and gotten a jab and a kick where it hurt for his trouble.
“We’d better end our collaboration,” she said coolly. “It isn’t working.”
“No, it isn’t. But if we end it, we’ll both be sorry.”
She felt her eyes widen as she stared. Was he insinuating he was attracted to her, too? There was something molten in his eyes. Desire so wanton that it stoked her own. And yet—
“If we end our collaboration,” he continued in a voice as icy as hers had been, notwithstanding the heat in his gaze, “I won’t help you find information, and you’ll always be in danger of my arresting you for obstruction of justice if anything—” he paused and stepped around the table toward her “—if anything you publish in an article hinders my investigation or apprehension of a suspect in Nancy Wilks’s murder. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sure, but I’ve heard it before.”
“Before, it was a threat. Now it’s a promise.”
She swallowed, studying his face for any chink in his sexy but steadfast armor. She looked down the length of his body, let her gaze linger along the portion of his dark jeans that swelled, then drew her eyes back up again. He was turned on, too. That was obvious. “Look, Mitch,” she said softly, “I’m not trying to get in your way. I just want—”
“Your story at any cost.” His words were blunt, and whatever hint of need she thought she’d seen in his eyes was concealed behind his hard, determined stare. “Any cost. Like getting yourself killed. I’m not going to let that happen, Cara, even if I have to incarcerate you to prevent it.”
“Then you do like me!” she said triumphantly, though she could have kicked herself. This wasn’t the time to tease him.
To her amazement, though, his gaze did soften. “Yeah,” he said. “The hell of it is, I do like you. So here’s what we’re going to do.”
MUCH LATER, after she’d heard him out and given her agreement—as if she’d had any choice—she saw him to the door.
“So, we’re all set?” he asked.
“Sure,” she began, “but you have to understand—”
Apparently he didn’t want to understand, for Cara suddenly found herself in his arms. She looked up, trying to stick both defiance and a promise of limited cooperation in her gaze. All her intentions melted away under the heat of his molten golden eyes. And then his mouth met hers.
Their lips merely touched. Skin on skin, brushing gently, and she trembled as he grew totally still. And then, as if the gentle flame of their kiss had ignited the dry brush of desire within her, she felt herself blaze deep inside.
He, too, must have felt the conflagration. Instead of pulling away, he deepened the kiss, stoking it with the strokes of his searching tongue. He murmured something against her that could have been endearment or epithet, she didn’t care.
She pressed against him, reveling in the hardness of his chest and the bulge against her belly, wanting more. Wanting— He pulled back. His breathing was uneven, but his gaze was so blank she wondered if only she had
been shaken by that kiss.
“We’ll talk tomorrow, Cara,” he said much too evenly. “After the morning’s Gazette comes out.”
MITCH DIDN’T GET the newspaper delivered to his home. It was a small house located only a few blocks off Main Street. Not the best area of town—too close to the honky-tonk strip where places like the Hit ’Em Again Saloon, the bar owned by Wade Lansing, was located. Wade, who, with his new bride Kelly McGovern, the first victim’s sister, had helped to expose that Mayor Frank Daniels had committed murder a couple of months ago. But the Sheriff’s Department was not far away and the neighbors here were friendly, if not well off, and seemed to appreciate having a lawman nearby.
This morning he got up early and threw on jeans. He’d have to change before going to work but wasn’t on duty for a while. He walked to Main Street and bought a copy of the Mustang Gazette from a convenience store. What he was looking for was right on the front page.
Hot damn! Cara had kept her word.
He bought a cup of coffee and stood outside on the sidewalk as he read the article.
The byline was Beau Jennings, but Mitch figured Cara had done all the work. She must have stayed up damn late to write it, while he had lain in bed thinking of her….
The story described what had happened to her yesterday. The account, in journalistic, nonemotional style, still made his teeth ache as he gritted them hard.
Included was an interview with the kids who’d witnessed his futile chase of the suspect. Damn, but that had frustrated him! He’d have at least shot out the punk’s tires if that other vehicle hadn’t gotten in the way.
Next time, the creep wouldn’t be so lucky.
Not that he’d allow a next time with Cara involved.
The article went on to say what Cara and he had discussed: a representative of the Sheriff’s Department had given a statement accusing Ms. Hamilton of interference in an ongoing investigation. Stated that the Gazette was on notice to cease intrusive practices that got in the way without yielding useful information, as evidenced by its shallow reporting so far.
Lawful Engagement - Linda O Johnston Page 12