Deadly Reunion

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She saw him check his watch, then frown. “Do you have be anywhere in the next hour or so?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then lock your car back up and let’s walk down to the harbor for something to eat. Nothing fancy—just some takeout. We can walk and talk while we stuff our faces. I skipped breakfast, and my stomach’s damn near digesting my backbone.”

Lindsay hesitated, her thoughts skipping from what people would say, to what John would think, to what her mother would feel. And then to what she felt. Finally she nodded, hit the remote lock on her key chain again and slipped her keys into the pocket of her khakis. She wasn’t hungry, but something he’d learned might change her mother’s mind about the search. Because beneath all the bravado, attitude and irresponsibility, her brother had been a good kid at heart. She was convinced that he could’ve changed in time, especially with Ike’s guidance and his dogged insistence that Ricky shape up. They owed it to themselves—and her brother’s memory—to find out what had really happened.

Twenty minutes later, with gulls wheeling and calling raucously in the clear sky over the docks, they strolled along, Ike alternately speaking and washing down his breakfast croissant with a foam cup of black coffee.

Lindsay found herself studying the full, masculine slope of his mouth too often, remembering things she shouldn’t. Feeling things she shouldn’t. At least she’d agreed to let him buy her an iced tea, and that had given her something to do with her hands. She’d had them in and out of her pockets a dozen times since Ike’s fingertips had grazed hers earlier and a jolt of pure, shivery electricity had shot up her arm, then detoured south. She didn’t need any more chemistry today. She needed information.

“In the end, all I got was attitude,” Ike continued. “They’re either too connected, scared spitless beneath all their cocky speeches, or they’re as clueless as we are.” He paused. “But even if they don’t know who’s at the top of the heap, they do know something.”

That disturbed her because on Thursday night, he’d said that the narcotics officer who’d arrested Ricky believed her brother had been involved with a minor organization. “When you say ‘top of the heap’ are you talking about mob connections? Because I just can’t see Ricky getting involved with people like that.”

“I’m talking about the person pulling the strings, whoever he is. There are enough drug peddlers in this area and the surrounding states that the head guy doesn’t have to have a last name full of vowels.”

Frowning, he pulled his sunglasses from the breast pocket of his blue knit shirt, offered them to her, then, when she shook her head, slipped them on. “When I was at the gym this morning, Tank gave me a couple of names I hadn’t heard before. I’ll check them out tonight—unless your mother has a change of heart.”

“Tonight? Why do you have to do this in the dark?” Old fears returned, the same fears she’d had to deal with whenever he left home with a fugitive contract in hand. “Why can’t you talk to these people during the day?”

He seemed amused by that. “Because these aren’t the kind of people who surface during the day. Tank gave me their street names and told me where they hang out.”

“But they have to live somewhere.”

“I’m sure they do, but I don’t have their addresses, and Ma Bell doesn’t list names like Ace and Creamer in the phone book.”

“Ike, I don’t like this.”

“I’m careful. You know me.”

Yes, she did know him. Too well.

Water lapped at the pier pilings and tethered rowboats bobbing outside one of the rental shops as they left the harbor and started up the asphalt path to the main street.

He glanced down at her, then laughed. “Relax.”

Lindsay glared at him and sipped her tea, remembering the scar from a gunshot on his left side. Recalling the night she’d nervously prowled an E.R. waiting room while a doctor sutured a cut over his right eye. It was healed now, reduced to a fine white line mostly hidden by his dark eyebrow. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again.

Still…he was strong and fit, every bone, muscle and sinew in his body ready for whatever came along. He also owned most of the crime-fighting paraphernalia police officers did—handcuffs, weapons, body armor—and his SUV was equipped with leg shackles for transporting skips.

The fact remained that in her opinion, he didn’t always use sound judgment.

She glanced up at him again. “Are you taking someone with you?” When he was on a recovery job, he generally partnered up or phoned the police for backup.

“Hardly. This is personal.”

“Then wear your vest if you go to Old Port tonight. Don’t leave it in your car.”

Grinning, Ike drained the rest of his coffee, then deposited the foam cup in a trash receptacle they passed by. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Linz. I’ll start thinking you care.”

Lindsay sent him a withering look. Just once, she’d like to have a postdivorce conversation with him without Ike baiting her or ticking her off. “Just sympathizing with my fellow medics and EMTs. They’re the people who have to rush to a scene when some idiot forgets to use common sense.”

“Nag, nag, nag,” he drawled, but there was an easy humor in his tone and she had to smile.

Her smile wobbled a bit, however, when they reached her car, and she set her drink on the roof before slipping her keys from her pocket. Because suddenly, she didn’t want to say goodbye. She sensed that he felt it, too, that old connection they’d always had, kicking in. If she didn’t count the last few stressful minutes, her walk to the docks with him had been…almost nice.

“Call me,” he murmured seriously. “You have my cell phone number. I’ll hang around for a while. Tell your mother I’ll do it any way she sees fit. But make her understand that no matter what she thinks of me, she owes this to her son.”

“Ike, all I can do is try.”

He removed his glasses and his darkly compelling gaze held hers. “Try hard. I think the clock could be ticking on this one.”

She was just opening her car door when he touched her, his callused hand warm on her upper arm. “Linz?”

Lindsay turned around to meet the question in his eyes. Then in a flash, whatever he was about to say vanished in the wake of something more basic. More elemental. Her pulse quickened and an age-old heat surged in her veins.

A split second later, his mouth was on hers, her heart was pounding, and Lindsay was clutching his broad shoulders and kissing him back for all she was worth.

Chapter 4

Floating. She was floating. Lindsay’s breasts flattened against Ike’s chest as he crushed her in his arms, and their hungry mouths celebrated the discovery that nothing had changed for them in this. Every exquisite taste and tingling response was the same as it had been two years ago. Their tongues met and tangled. Their sun-warmed bodies strained against each other, even though it was impossible to get any closer. And inhaling deeply, Lindsay pulled his musky male scent into her nostrils, into her throat, into her quivering stomach. Groaning her name, Ike slanted his mouth over hers and went back for more.

It was almost as though they’d suddenly been given the power to turn back time, almost as though the years and the tears hadn’t happened.

But…they had.

Lindsay stopped kissing him. Stopped moving her hands through the soft, thick shag of hair at his collar.

Then slowly, with embarrassment stinging her cheeks, she slid her arms from around his neck and pressed her palms to his chest. She had to put some space between them.

It took a moment for the murky desire in Ike’s dark eyes to fade. Then they regarded each other for what seemed like an eternity, acutely aware of their labored breathing and runaway pulses, painfully conscious that something dangerous had just occurred without their willing direction.

The startling slam of a car door and the quick turn of an engine gave Lindsay a jolt, and she stepped back against her car, appalled. Dear God. The driver at the far end of the lot had to have walked right past them on the way to his vehicle—there was no other entrance. Yet Lindsay hadn’t heard a thing but the rush of blood in her ears. For those few reckless, irresponsible seconds, her world had been Ike and everything beyond her closed eyelids had ceased to exist.

Flustered, she glanced away to comb her fingers through her hair and study her sandals. How on earth did they get past this?

“I—you were about to say something,” she stammered.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I was.” He didn’t go on until she looked at him again. “I was about to ask if you wanted some help varnishing your woodwork since I’d be sticking around for a while.” His heated gaze dropped to her lips and lingered a bit too long before he went on in an uneasy tone, “But maybe that’s not such a hot idea right now.”

Or maybe it was too hot, Lindsay reflected, her blood still pumping hard.

The car she’d heard approached. Quickly, she turned her face away then sent the driver a veiled glance as the car passed. Her heart sank when she recognized the woman behind the wheel of the green Chevy Impala as one of her mother’s Red Hat Society friends. Madeline somebody. She and her mother weren’t terribly close, but Lindsay knew the woman by sight, and the woman knew her.

“Wonderful,” she said, expelling a sigh. “My name will be on everyone’s lips by sundown.”

Ike nodded in the Impala’s direction. “I take it, that woman’s going to be a problem?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Lindsay shook off her uncertainty, then said firmly, “No. She won’t be a problem.”

She wasn’t a child. She was thirty-two years old, and it was senseless to worry about what people—even her mother—thought about her swallowing a man’s tongue at one o’clock on a sunny afternoon in a public place. She couldn’t change what happened. She could only make sure that it didn’t happen again.

Gathering her sensibilities, she returned to his earlier comment. “Thank you for offering to help, but I have errands to do, then I want to stop by my mom’s house to talk to her again. Whether you believe it or not, I’m as committed to this search as you are.”

His brow lined beneath his wind-tossed hair. “Good. Call me. I’ll hang around until four, but then I’m going back to the city. There’s someone I have to see before I head down to Old Port tonight.”

The flippant question leaped off her tongue before she could call it back. “Heavy date?”

He wasn’t amused. In fact, he looked annoyed. “What do you think?”

She thought that even though she’d asked, she didn’t want to know. Not when his kiss still burned on her lips and her nerve endings still hopped like jumping beans beneath her skin. Not when it would hurt to hear him say yes.

“I’ve been asked to serve a summons on a deadbeat dad,” he said when she didn’t reply. “I got a lead that he’ll be coming in on an early flight, and I need to serve him before he takes off again.”

Lindsay grimaced inside, wishing she’d learn to think before she spoke. Funny how that particular shortcoming only cropped up when Ike was around. Pulling her car door open wider, she climbed inside and slid behind the steering wheel. She met his eyes again. “Where will you be until four?”

He took her iced tea from the roof of her car and handed it to her. “Millie’s. I brought my laptop with me, so if she doesn’t have a full house, I’ll commandeer a back booth and catch up on some work while I wait to hear from you.” He paused, his expression warming a little and faintly nostalgic. “She’s curious about us.”

“I know.”

“If she asks?”

Lindsay put her drink in her cup holder. “If she asks, tell her the truth.”

But what was the truth? she wondered. There was the truth about her brother. But there was also a truth about them—two people who’d been so wildly, joyously in love it had been impossible to keep their hands to themselves as they’d gobbled hot wings at Millie’s, then rushed to their secret spot on the shore to snuggle and watch the sun set. Their current truth was that, while love was gone, they still wanted each other with the same passion and desperation they always had.

“Ever think about those nights on the beach?” he asked quietly, almost as if he could read her mind.

“Sometimes,” she admitted, because she wouldn’t lie to him. But that didn’t change anything. “Be careful at Old Port tonight.”

Then he nodded, and she shut her door.

But as she left the lot, Lindsay looked into her rearview mirror and watched him walk to his SUV. And back came the breathless tingle she’d felt in his arms. They’d done well ignoring that kiss, she decided, her spirits suddenly sinking again.

How amazingly skilled and civilized of them.

At eight-fifteen that night, Ike ambled wearily up the hall of his apartment building, unlocked the door to his efficiency and stepped inside. He tossed his keys on the cheap end table beside his cheaper sofa. The room was furnished in Early-American Attic, but it was fine for his purposes. He was out on jobs so often that all he needed was a clean place to flop when he was in town. Now, with the summons served and still no call from Lindsay, he dropped his duffel on the brown tweed couch, glanced around and saw the glaring difference between his place and hers.

There were no flowers, no framed prints on the walls, no lacy doilies on antique tables, no ivies spilling from window-hung pots. But that was fine. He had a nineteen-inch TV, a bed, table and chairs, and the utensil drawer in his tiny kitchenette wasn’t sticking shut this year. Good enough.

Crossing to his painted-white cupboards, Ike picked up the note his cleaning lady had left taped to the coffeemaker. He read it, half grinned, then opened his refrigerator and took out the large margarine container with the masking tape on the lid. Printed in Leona’s strong hand were the words: MINESTRONE SOUP—THROW OUT AFTER TUESDAY. Next to it was a loaf of homemade bread.

Counting himself lucky to know Leona Parlavecci, he emptied half of the soup into a bowl, popped it into the microwave and went to the phone on the wall.

“You don’t have to feed me, Leona,” he said when she picked up.

The short graying woman with the thick Italian accent chuckled. “And you don’t have to overpay me when I clean your place, but you do. You like the bread?”

“Haven’t tried it yet. I just got in. But the soup you left is warming, and I’ll be cutting the loaf any minute.”

“Good! When I emptied your wastebasket, it was full of fast-food trash. You need a good woman to take care of you, Michael.”

Ike smiled. Leona was the only one who called him Michael anymore. The day they met she told him that Ike was a gangster’s name, and she didn’t clean house for gangsters. Michael, on the other hand, was an archangel. She never recanted, even when he told her he came from a long line of good guys—cops.

“I’ve looked for a good woman, Leona. There’s no one out there like you, and Frank would get royally ticked off if I moved in on his bride.”

Her merry laughter flowed through the phone line. “If you can’t find a nice girl, you’re looking in the wrong places. Go to church. We have beautiful young women at St. Joe’s.”

He grinned. “I’m not a Catholic.”