“Nice and slow,” Jack cooed. “Get your fuckin’ hands off her and drop the piece.”
Frank released her. “Whatever you say.”
“Jack. It’s okay.” Kate turned to see the large African American man in a wheelchair, the .380 trained on Frank, his expression as cold as black ice.
“He’s okay,” she said. “He’s . . . with the DA’s office.”
Jack lowered the .380 a hair, his gaze seeking Kate’s. “Looked like he was roughing you up to me.”
“He wasn’t,” she said.
The black man looked down the street where the other two men had disappeared. “What about those other two jokers?”
“They ran.” Frank was standing a foot away from her with his hands up, his expression part anger, part disbelief. “Would someone mind telling me what the holy hell is going on?”
Shaking his head, Jack holstered the pistol. “Kate, damn it, I knew somethin’ like this would happen sooner or later.”
“Nothing happened,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can,” Jack growled. “Could have turned out a whole lot worse.”
The two men exchanged looks, and she sensed a silent communication passing between them. One that said they didn’t think she could take care of herself.
Jack withdrew his identification and flashed it at Frank. “Jack Gamble. I’m a licensed private detective.”
Frank’s questioning gaze went from Jack to Kate. “You a client of his or what?”
Because Kate couldn’t answer that without opening a can of worms she didn’t want to get into, she answered with a question of her own. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying not to get shot.” Bending, Frank scooped up the mini magnum. “Is everyone around here packing heat tonight?”
“Everyone’cept those two jackasses who took off down the street.” A grin spread across Jack Gamble’s face when he looked at Kate. “Their eyes just about popped out of their heads when you drew down on ’em.”
Frank didn’t look amused. “You got a concealed weapon permit for this?” He held up the gun by its grip.
“Of course I do.” But her only thought was that she was going to have to do some fast-talking and creative lying to explain why she was here.
She held out her hand for the gun. “I’ll take that.”
Ignoring her, Frank stuffed it into the waistband of his jeans. But his attention was on Jack. “You look familiar. You ever been arrested?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I know you from somewhere,” Frank insisted.
“Sure as hell ain’t from no rap sheet.”
Kate sighed. “He’s an ex-cop.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed. “That true?”
“Retired in ninety-eight,” Jack said. “You?”
“Last year.”
Kate nearly rolled her eyes as the two men’s demeanors changed. If she hadn’t been so shaken, she might have smiled at the way they were looking at each other. Cops. Jesus.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked.
“Frank Matrone. Northwest substation.” He didn’t offer his hand for a shake.
“Southeast Division.”
“If you two are finished with the male bonding, I have to get going.” She gave Frank a cool stare and for the second time she held out her hand. “My pistol.”
“I’ll keep it for safekeeping.”
“I want it,” she said. “It’s perfectly legal, and I’m leaving.”
“I’ll follow you back to your place.”
“I’m capable of getting home on my own.”
Vaguely Kate was aware of Jack wheeling his chair toward the building and rolling toward the door. She wanted to tell him good night, but didn’t want to alert Frank to just how familiar she was with Jack Gamble. She was still trying to decide how to lie her way out of this.
“Let’s go.” Frank motioned toward the street. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
EIGHTEEN
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 11:01 P.M.
“You were spying on me.” Kate flung her coat over the back of the sofa and spun to face Frank.
“I wasn’t spying on you,” he said, closing the front door behind him.
The realization had struck her on the drive back to North Dallas from Jack Gamble’s office. By the time she’d pulled into the driveway, she was furious.
“What are you, some kind of stalker?”
“Look, Kate, the fact of the matter is something bad might have happened to you if I hadn’t been there.”
“Something bad did happen. You showed up!” Grinding her teeth, she stalked over to him and planted her index finger in his chest. “And now you’ve got some explaining to do.”
“There’s nothing to explain. I was in the area. I recognized your car—”
“That’s a stupid lie.” Shaking her head, she stepped back and took a deep, calming breath. “You had better start talking.”
He shrugged. “I was trying to keep you safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“In case it’s slipped your mind, someone broke into your house the other night. Remember? A frantic 911 call? Flashing red lights? Two cops coming to the rescue?”
“I remember,” she snapped. “That still doesn’t ex—”
“Not to mention the calls you’ve been getting.”
“One call.”
“You told me two.”
“Why do you care, anyway? I haven’t exactly been nice to you since we’ve been working—”
Dread rolled slowly over her as realization dawned. And suddenly she knew why he’d been there. “Mike Shelley put you up to this.”
Frank said nothing.
“That son of a bitch.” She couldn’t believe it. “Of all the underhanded, ineffectual, unprofessional—”
“He was concerned about your safety and, frankly, so was I.”
Kate threw up her hands. “I don’t believe this!”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down? How can you tell me to calm down when I just found out my boss and one of my staff are spying on me?”
“I wasn’t spying on you, damn it. I was keeping you under surveillance in case some pissed-off ex-con tried to get to you.”
That stopped her, but only for an instant. Kate didn’t like having her privacy invaded. She didn’t like her boss going behind her back. She sure as hell didn’t relish the idea of Frank Matrone finding out why Jack Gamble was working for her.
She stared at him, aware that her pulse was pounding, that she was angry and troubled and feeling so edgy she thought she might just crawl right out of her skin. “Mike has no right, and neither do you.”
“He doesn’t want you hurt, damn it.” His jaw flexed. “Neither do I.”
Kate blinked, not knowing what to say, feeling as if he’d just sucker-punched her. “Who made the decision that I should be followed?”
Frank shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Kate, he only had your best interest in mind.”
“Did it cross either of your minds that maybe I should have been included in the discussion?”
“If I hadn’t stepped in when I did, who knows what those two clowns would have done. If you’d stop being angry and think about that for a moment, you might realize it was a good thing I was there.”
“That was random, Frank. Those two losers are not ex-cons. They have nothing to do with any of my cases.”
“You could have been hurt.”
“I could get hurt walking across the street tomorrow.”
Frank stared at her for so long, she wanted to fidget. The anger was starting to wear off and she was getting the uneasy feeling that he knew more about her than he was letting on. That maybe he knew what had happened eleven years ago. That Mike knew. That maybe they felt sorry for her. That they knew about the deep, dark secret she’d never told a soul.
“How long have you been spying on me?” she asked when she could find her vo
ice.
“Kate . . .”
“How long, damn it!”
“Less than a week.”
She shook her head. “You son of a bitch.”
“Maybe you ought to talk to Mike about this.”
“Don’t worry. I will.”
Frank sighed. “What were you doing in that part of town, anyway?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“If either of those two goons had been armed, one or both of us could be lying on a slab at the morgue about now. I’d say that makes it my business.”
But Kate was one step ahead of him. She’d formulated her lie on the drive back to her house. “I was following up on an old case. A closed case. The grand jury didn’t indict. I thought the guy was guilty. I wanted to follow up, so I hired a private detective to look into a few things.”
It was a good lie as far as lies went. She knew Jack Gamble well enough to know that if Frank called him to check up on her, he would never divulge information about a client. She hoped this would be the end of it and Frank would let it go.
“Why didn’t you use one of your investigators?”
“Because I have budget constraints.”
He was looking at her as if he wasn’t buying it. “What case?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Mike is going to want to know about what happened tonight.”
The thought of her boss finding out about Jack Gamble filled her with dread. Like Frank, Mike would have questions. Questions she could not answer. “This has nothing to do with the DA’s office. You have no reason to tell him.”
“You just said this was about an old case.”
“A case I’m looking into on my own time and on my own dime.”
Giving a short, humorless laugh, he lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kate, you’re putting me in an awkward position.”
“You put yourself in an awkward position.”
She jumped when the phone rang, and she was keenly aware that Frank had raised his head, that he was watching her. Even though she’d had her number changed, she suddenly didn’t want to answer the phone. Nobody called her this late in the evening.
The phone rang again.
“Aren’t you going to get it?” Frank asked.
“They’ll call back if it’s important. I’d like to finish our conversation so you can leave.”
“Do you always get calls this late?”
“It’s probably my mother. She always calls around bedtime.” She glanced at the phone, then back at him. “I think you’d better go.”
He didn’t budge. “I think you ought to answer that.”
The answering machine clicked on. Never taking her eyes from his, Kate stalked toward the front door, opened it. “We can finish this tomorrow.”
But Frank’s attention was on the phone.
“You’ve reached 555-8933,” came her voice from the answering machine. “Leave a message and we’ll call you back.” Click.
“Katie,” came a whispered male voice. “You changed your number, you little cunt. Do you think that’s going to keep me from talking to you? Think again.”
Click.
Frank’s gaze cut to Kate. She was standing at the door, her back ramrod straight. Her gaze was level on his and slightly defiant. To a less observant person, she might have looked stubborn and mildly annoyed. But Frank was adept at reading facial expressions and body language. He saw the tension in the rigid set of her shoulders. The way her hands tangled in front of her. The way she’d gone pale all the way to her lips.
“This is just a wild guess, but I’d venture to say that wasn’t your mother.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Neither is your lying to me.” Frowning, he crossed to the door, removed her hand from the knob, and closed it. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
Giving him a withering look, she strode to the living room and sank onto the sofa.
Frank held his ground at the door for a moment, not quite sure how to handle the situation. The call had clearly upset her. Cool, unshakable Kate. For the first time he considered the possibility that the stalker was someone she knew. An ex-boyfriend or acquaintance. That would explain why she was being so secretive.
Sensing he needed to tread lightly, he walked to the living room and took the chair opposite the sofa. “Look, if this is something personal—an old boyfriend or whatever—it doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “I’m here, okay?”
When she looked at him, Frank thought he saw a flash of something he recognized in the depths of her eyes. An emotion he saw in his own eyes when he looked into the mirror. Pain. Self-reproach. The remnants of old wounds that hadn’t healed. That may never heal. And for the first time since he’d known her, he wondered if Kate Megason was keeping secrets. He wondered if those secrets had something to do with her visit to a private detective by the name of Jack Gamble.
“Thank you,” she said after a moment.
“Do you know who it is?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“Is this related to one of your past cases?”
“No.”
“Do you feel as if you’re in danger?”
“No.”
Frank didn’t believe her, and he didn’t want to leave. He had a bad feeling about this. Kate was too levelheaded to put up with this kind of nonsense from some ex-boyfriend. So why wouldn’t she talk to him?
“Will you do me a favor?” he asked after a moment.
She gave a minute nod.
“If you get into trouble, will you call me? Any time. Day or night. No questions asked. Okay?”
She closed her eyes briefly. It was a small reaction, but one that spoke volumes. “Okay.”
Giving her shoulder a final squeeze, he walked to the door and let himself out.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 12:59 A.M.
It was going to be a bad night.
Frank had had a lot of those in the last year. Nights when he was hurting so badly he wished the doctors had taken his leg when they’d had the chance.
His concern for Kate added a cruel twist to the old pain. He’d told her to call him. A lot of help he was going to be when he was stoned out of his mind on painkillers.
But his leg was hurting like a son of a bitch. It had been giving him problems all day. When he’d arrived home and stepped out of his jeans and saw the swelling and discoloration around the old scars, he knew that in another hour he’d be mindless with pain.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
Wearing only his boxer shorts, he went to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the brown prescription bottle of OxyContin.
Take one tablet every twelve hours.
“Yeah, right,” he said and downed two with a full glass of water.
He’d wanted to keep a clear head in case Kate needed him. In case she called. Like that was going to happen.
But there was no way he was going to risk a repeat performance of the other night. Once the pain grabbed hold, the cycle was impossible to break. He had no desire to spend the next twelve hours writhing in pain.
After grabbing an ice pack from the refrigerator, he limped to the study, went directly to his desk and flipped on the computer. He elevated the leg on a padded stool and set the ice pack against the hot flesh, hoping it would hold him over until the painkillers kicked in.
He’d been thinking about Kate all evening. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with her, but his cop’s suspicions had been thoroughly roused. Why the hell was she hanging out with some shady private detective in South Dallas? If she was seeing him about an old case, why was she being so secretive? And why had she been so reluctant to admit she’d been receiving prank calls? What was she hiding?
Picking up the phone, he dialed Rick Slater’s cell phone from memory. The other man picked up on the second ring.
“How’s the graveyard shift treating you?” Frank asked.
“Dandy if I was a freaking vampire. What�
��s up?”
“I was wondering if you could plug a couple of names into the computer and see what comes back.”
“This official or what?”
“Unofficial.”
“Jesus, Matrone. Everything’s always frickin’ unofficial with you.” The other man sighed. “What names?”
“Kate Megason. Jack Gamble.”
A taut silence ensued, then Rick swore. “What the hell are you doing running a goddamn ADA’s name through the computer, bro?”
“Mike Shelley asked me to keep an eye on her.”
“Yeah? So why aren’t you using his computer?”
Normally Frank wouldn’t have revealed any more than he had to, but this was one of those times when the truth was better than any lie he could have made up. “Red tape,” he said and paused. “Some joker’s stalking her and she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Stalker, huh?” Rick made a sound of indecision. “What do you want to know about her?”
“Just plug her in. See if anything pops.”
“What about the other name?”
“Jack Gamble. He’s a private dick here in Dallas.”
“Name sounds familiar.”
“He used to be a cop.”
“You’re going to owe me for this.”
“I already owe you.”
“You’re going to owe me double, then.”
“Just run the names for me, okay? Let me know what you come up with.”
Frank disconnected. His computer had booted so he launched his Internet browser and pulled up a search engine. Aware that the drugs were beginning to fuzz his brain, he typed in Kate’s name and hit Enter.
The search returned ten results. Frank clicked on the first one and began to read. It was a story from the Lifestyle section of the Dallas Morning News: “Dallas County ADA Wins First Case. The First of Many to Come, Legal Eagle Promises.” The story was mostly fluff, but there was a color photo of Kate, and for an instant Frank couldn’t take his eyes off it. Holding a fluted glass, she was smiling at the tall woman standing next to her. Kate looked lovely and elegant in a long blue gown. Frank had seen enough of her through her bedroom window to know the dress didn’t do her justice.
The photo had been taken at a charity ball sponsored by her mother, Isobel Megason, to raise money for a local women’s shelter. Frank skimmed the article, picking up several unimportant facts he hadn’t known about Kate. She and her family, Peter and Isobel, were originally from Houston, where her father had been an investment banker at a Fortune 100 company. She’d never been married. Wasn’t looking for a husband. She liked to cook and ski.
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