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Annie’s cheeks had drained of color, and her dark eyes rounded with apprehension.
A muscle jumped in Farrout’s jaw, but he released Annie with an angry thrust. “Watch yourself, Devereaux. I don’t like people sticking their nose where it don’t belong.”
Hell. He didn’t need to blow his investigation by pissing Farrout off. But he damn well wouldn’t sit by and let him rough up a woman, either. He’d done that too often as a kid when his dad was in one of his moods, and the guilt still ate at him.
Annie rubbed her offended wrist and cast a quick, curious glance at Jonah before hurrying back to the lunch counter.
Over the months he’d been working the case, he’d gotten to know all of the waitresses by name. Annie was the most reticent of the waitstaff, but she was also the most intriguing. Though attentive and polite to a fault, she was far less inclined to engage in good-natured banter and flirting the way the other servers did. An air of mystery surrounded her, partly because of her shyness, partly because she wore her silky dark tresses in a style reminiscent of the sultry movie stars of the 1940s—parted on the side with a curtain of hair covering one cheek.
Jonah had caught a glimpse of that hidden cheek once and seen the scars she was concealing. Those scars added to the enigma that was Annie but, in his opinion, didn’t detract from her pretty face. Clearly she thought otherwise, or she wouldn’t work so hard to hide the jagged pink lines.
As Jonah dug his wallet out of his back pocket, Farrout and Pulliam slid out of the booth and sauntered to the counter with their checks.
“Put it on my tab, doll face,” Farrout said, tossing his ticket on the counter and turning to leave.
Pulliam added his bill and clicked his tongue. “Ditto.”
Annie’s brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “But…we don’t—”
The men ignored her as they walked out, chortling to themselves.
From the booth, Jonah seethed over the men’s rudeness. He studied Annie’s crestfallen expression, her drooping shoulders and moue of disgust. She slapped the counter with the rag in her hand and huffed loudly.
When she raised her gaze to him, he quickly shifted his attention to his bill and pulled a twenty out of his wallet. He rose from the bench seat and approached the counter where she wiped up the day’s mess with more vigor than necessary.
Extending the ticket and cash to her, he smiled ruefully. “Keep the change.”
She glanced at the money and frowned. “But all you had was coffee.”
He lifted a shoulder as he returned his wallet to his pocket. “Maybe I want to help your day end on a positive note.”
Annie gaped at him as if she didn’t know what to make of his kindness. As if she’d never encountered generosity before. “But—”
“Annie!” Peter Hardin, the manager of the diner and Jonah’s key suspect in the money-laundering scheme, burst through the swinging kitchen door.
Jonah saw Annie tense as her linebacker-size boss stalked over to her.
“I need you to do an errand for me.” Hardin slapped a bulky tan envelope on the counter.
Annie’s face fell, and she glanced at her watch. “Now? It’s almost midnight.”
Jonah took his time putting on his jacket, unabashedly eavesdropping on the exchange. Annie’s distress around her boss piqued his curiosity.
“Yes, now. This has to be delivered to Fourth Street in the next half hour. It’s extremely important, so don’t be late with it. Guard this envelope with your life.”
Jonah clenched his teeth. Fourth Street was a notoriously bad section of town. This time of night, the area was downright dangerous. What was Hardin thinking, sending a woman on an errand alone in that part of town?
“But—” Annie hesitated, chewing her lip as if debating the wisdom of arguing with her boss. “If it’s so important, why aren’t you delivering it?”
Hardin glared at her. “I have my reasons. You want a job tomorrow, you deliver that package on time. Got it?”
Annie opened and closed her mouth in dismay, then nodded.
Her boss handed her a scrap of paper and hitched his head toward the front door. “That’s the address and the name of the guy you give the package to. Only to him. No one else. Got it? Now, go on. I’ll close up.”
After fishing her purse out from under the counter, Annie tucked the package against her chest with a sigh.
Jonah watched her leave the diner and walk past the parking lot without stopping. He frowned. She didn’t have a car? Walking Fourth Street alone at night could be suicide.
Without giving it a second thought, Jonah fell in step behind Annie. Peter Hardin might not care about his waitress’s safety, but Jonah wasn’t about to let Annie make that delivery unprotected.
Annie’s footsteps reverberated in the dark shadows looming around her. Alone on the downtown street, she clutched the manila envelope to her chest like a shield.
She shouldn’t be here. This part of town was dangerous, especially at this late hour. But how could she refuse her boss’s order? She couldn’t afford to lose her job. She only had a few more minutes left to make Hardin’s delivery, and he had been emphatic about the deadline—and the dire consequences if anything happened to the mysterious contents.
Just make the drop and get out of there. Get home. Get safe.
The sound of her shallow breathing rasped a harsh cadence in the quiet March night, and her heartbeat drummed in her ears like a death knell. She slowed her frantic pace, closing her eyes long enough to gather her composure.
Keep your wits and don’t blow this.
The drop-off address had to be close. She searched for numbers on the buildings, but the dilapidated storefronts and graffiti-decorated buildings bore no identification.
She gritted her teeth. Damn Peter Hardin for forcing her to do this dangerous errand! If she didn’t need her job so much, she’d have told him where to stick his order to do his dirty work. She sighed in disgust, wishing she’d stood up to Hardin.
But she’d always been a pushover. Her ex-husband had known it and taken advantage of that truth.
Squaring her shoulders, Annie kept walking, realizing how this decrepit neighborhood was a reflection of her life. Lonely, scarred and struggling to survive.
She’d had the typical fairy-tale dreams for herself as a girl—love and marriage, happily ever after. Instead she’d found a nightmare—fear and abuse, divorce from a man now serving time for a laundry list of crimes. After six years of unhappiness, at least she was free of Walt. Her job as a waitress at Pop’s Diner barely covered her bills, but her children were safe now. She was safe. That was all that truly mattered.
Yet as she searched for some evidence of where to take the package, she felt anything but safe. A prick of alarm nipped her neck. Though she heard nothing, saw no one, the uneasy sense that someone was following her crawled over her like a cockroach on her skin. She shuddered.
Annie drew a deep breath for courage, her nose filling with the stench of sewage, mildew and despair.
A scuffing noise filtered through the night from an alley just ahead of her. Her steps faltered. Her pulse jumped.
“H-hello?” she called, her voice cracking.
A hulking figure emerged from the black void. The man descended on her before a scream could form in her throat. He wrapped arms of steel around her, and a fleshy palm covered her nose and mouth. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, her attacker pulled her into the dark alley and slammed her against a brick wall.
The collision knocked the air from her lungs. Shock and fear froze her limbs.
No! her brain screamed. Not again! Slow-motion images of her past flickered before her mind’s eye.
“You call this slop dinner?” Walt’s hand cracked against her chin in an upward arc.
Her assailant seized the manila envelope she’d sworn on her life she’d deliver only to Joseph Nance.
Panic surged inside her. Her fingers curled into the package, clinging to it for all she was worth. “No!”
“Give me the money, bitch!” he growled. His fist crashed into her mouth, and a metallic taste slid over her tongue.
Red smears stained the floor. Blood. Her blood.
Walt kicked her in the ribs, and crimson drops leaked from her nose and splashed onto the linoleum.
The man’s beefy fingers bit her flesh. He shook her. “Give it to me, or I’ll kill you!”
Past and present twined around each other. Numbed her. She did what experience had taught her was her best defense. She shut down. Drew into herself. Closed her eyes.
Just endure it. Survive.
Her grip slackened, and the package was ripped from her arms.
Chapter Two
With a frightened cry, Annie slid to the ground, raised her arms to protect her head. Through the haze of her terror, she heard the shuffle of feet. A grunt. A curse.
Opening her eyes a slit, she found a second man in the alley, brawling hand-to-hand with her attacker.
Touching her swollen lip, she scooted farther away from the men who battled in the shadowed alley. She cringed as the newly arrived man landed a solid blow to her attacker’s gut. Her assailant responded with a resounding punch to the other man’s jaw.
Annie curled into a ball, trembling as fists flew. She squeezed her eyes shut and plugged her ears. She’d seen and heard enough violence in recent months to last her a lifetime. Her ex-husband’s abuse was an all-too-present memory that haunted her every day.
Hot tears leaked onto her cheeks, and she conjured a image of her children, Haley and Ben. She prayed she’d survive to see them again. Please, God.
Her kids were all that mattered. The reason she worked the exhausting waitress job at the diner. Her reason to persevere. Her reason for leaving Walt sixteen months ago, despite the horrifying weeks that followed as her abusive ex hunted her, terrorized her, nearly killed her.
A loud, pained shout jolted her out of her protective shell, and she peeked out at the scene unfolding before her. Her assailant was on the ground, the second man rubbing his knuckles. As he stepped back from his opponent, the second man moved through a shaft of light from a streetlamp.
And Annie glimpsed a face she knew from the diner. A regular.
Her gasp drew the man’s attention.
She searched her memory for his name. John? Jacob? No—Jonah.
“Annie, are you all right?”
In those few seconds of Jonah’s distraction, her assailant snatched up the envelope and ran from the alley.
“The package!” Panic wrenched Annie’s chest.
Jonah pursued the thief to the end of the alley but apparently decided against a footrace. Instead, he walked back toward Annie, wiping blood from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “Are you hurt?”
“He took the envelope,” she said, her voice quivering. A sinking disappointment crushed her chest. Though grateful to be alive and to have had Jonah’s help, she dreaded what Hardin would do when he discovered she’d lost his package. Peter Hardin was no gentleman, and she doubted he’d be forgiving about her screwup. She buried her face in her hands as fresh tears puddled in her eyes. “He’s going to fire me. I know he is. Oh, God…”
Jonah crouched in front of her, and she jolted when he stroked a hand down her arm.
Raising a wary gaze, she scrunched a few inches farther away from him. He may have scared the mugger off, but she’d seen his skill with his fists. Experience had taught her to give violent men a wide berth.
“Hey, come on now.” The low, soothing rumble of his voice lulled her. “You won’t lose your job. It’s not your fault you were mugged.” His dark eyebrows drew into a frown, and his tone hardened. “If anyone is to blame it’s that bastard Hardin for sending a woman into this neighborhood alone in the middle of the night.”
Jonah flexed and balled his hand. Annie’s mouth dried, the stolen envelope temporarily forgotten as she focused on the more immediate threat—the man fisting his hand before her.
Taking a deep breath, she eyed Jonah’s clenched fist. “Wh-why are you here?”
He cocked his head slightly and lifted a corner of his mouth. “I’d have thought that was obvious. I followed you when you left the diner.”
So her sense had been right. Her pulse sped up. “Why? What do you want?”
He raised his hands, palms out. “I only wanted to keep an eye on you. I figured something like this might happen and…” He sighed. “I’m only sorry it took me so long to catch up once the jerk grabbed you. I should have stayed closer, but I didn’t want to spook you if you saw me following you.”
Annie furrowed her brow skeptically. “So you were following me to…protect me?”
He grunted. “I heard Hardin tell you to make the delivery, knew the neighborhood…” He glanced away for a moment and swiped at the blood beading under his nose again. “I oughta wring the jerk’s neck for putting you at risk this way.”
“No!”
Her vehement protest snapped his gaze back to hers. “Oh, I won’t. I’m not interested in being arrested for assault.” He held his hand out to her. “Can I help you up?”
Annie hesitated, staring at his large hand. His knuckles were swollen and raw, his palm toughened by calluses. That hand had packed a powerful punch to her assailant.
“Annie?”
Her gaze darted up to his. In the harsh shaft of light from the streetlamp, she studied his face. His bloody nose had a bump at the bridge, as if it had been broken before. A thin, silvery scar bisected his dark eyebrow, and a red blotch on his jaw hinted at a future bruise, courtesy of her attacker.
Yet despite all these visible signs of past and recent fights, his lopsided grin and warm green eyes spoke of a softer side to this man.
“Keep the change.”
“Let go of her.”
Did she dare trust him? He had come to help her. Or so he said.
“If you wanted to protect me…” She paused, second-guessing the wisdom of challenging him on his story. Challenging Walt had earned her more than one beating.
“Go on.”
She took a fortifying breath. “Well, why not just walk with me? Why follow me?”
He rubbed a hand over his battered jaw. “Fair question.” He tugged up the corner of his mouth. “If I had offered to walk with you or drive you to the drop-off address, would you have accepted?”
“I—” She lifted her chin. “Well…probably not. All I know about you is that you like lots of milk in your coffee—skim, not whole—and that you usually sit at the counter. First seat, facing the door.”
His grin was a tad smug. “That’s what I thought.” He offered his hand again.
This time, after a brief hesitation, Annie placed her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. The warmth and strength of his fingers, curled around hers, sent an odd shiver through her. How could a touch be both comforting and unnerving at the same time? The size of his hand, swallowing her smaller one, sent a tingling awareness through her. His height dwarfed her five feet four inches, and he had more strength in one arm than she had in her whole body. Like Walt had.
