скачать книгу бесплатно
Grey had handled her divorce. He was one of California’s most successful divorce lawyers, his skill at securing his female clients generous settlements earning him the nickname the Spago Ladies’ Lawyer. Bitsy’s divorce hadn’t earned him his usual fabulous fees since she had wanted none of the Dumont fortune. Grey had also done his best to keep the entire affair out of the press, although most big-time divorce lawyers would have taken the case for the publicity alone. Even still, Jumpin’ Johnny Dumont, known for his lavish lifestyle and bad-boy antics, was a media favorite, and his divorce from his small-town Cinderella had made as good cover as when he’d married her eighteen months earlier in a whirlwind romance.
“They don’t put you behind bars for breaking hearts, Grey.”
He said nothing. He had mentioned the bruises only once. She had asked him never to mention them again.
“Come on.” Grey made his voice light. “I’ll buy you a tofu omelet.”
She made a face. “Bean curd isn’t my idea of comfort food.” She stopped a few steps from her car, turned and faced him. “Besides, I’m beat.”
“All right, I’ll accept that, but only because I’ve got some tax records to go over before I drive down to meet a client this morning.”
“Beverly Hills?” she guessed.
“Malibu,” Grey answered with a toothy smile. “I’m driving up to the lodge next weekend. You come, too. Try a little rock climbing.”
“Rock climbing?” She shook her head. “I like to keep my feet on the ground nowadays.”
Grey looked down at her. “That’s not my ‘two Scooter Pies’ Bitsy talking.”
She looked up at her friend. “No, it’s not.” Tiredness was tangible in her words.
“I’m calling you next week, and you better be ready to scale some peaks.”
She was too exhausted even to try to think of an excuse. She touched Grey’s arm. “Thank you again for coming.”
“No problem. It’ll give me an amusing story to tell in chambers.” He leaned down and gave her a light kiss on her forehead. “Go home. Get some sleep. Wash off that makeup. I keep waiting for you to say, ‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.’”
She smiled. “I love you, Grey.”
Grey straightened and regarded her with a similar smile. “Don’t think that’s going to scare me away. You know I don’t give up easily.”
“I’ve got the cavities to prove it.”
She went to her car, unlocked the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Through the side window, she watched Grey walk back to his car, turning his collar up against the early morning chill coming in from the coast. She started the engine and waved goodbye as he reached his own car. He was a good man. A lousy tree climber, but a good man.
She pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward home, trying not to think about last night, trying not to think at all. The day’s light had erased the night, but, in her mind’s eye, she still saw the man with the slow smile and the eyes of a storm.
She’d been so careful this time. She’d arranged her life neatly, forced herself to stop and look before leaping. Truth be told, her current vampire vixen getup was the wildest thing she had allowed herself since her divorce. And considering it had been Halloween in Canaan, she had still been among the conservative faction of the town’s population.
For months, she had bitten her tongue, ignored desires, walked calmly away instead of rushing head-first into the flames. It hadn’t mattered. Michael James had made her realize what she’d feared deep down all along was true. She was not safe.
She shook her head to clear the man’s image from her mind, releasing a sigh of relief at her close call. The man was a criminal, for goodness sake, reaffirming her belief she couldn’t trust her own faculties of attraction. Desire clouded the mind, sent logic and common sense scurrying.
She took a deep breath, hands steady on the wheel, and moved the car forward at a reasonable speed. Her composed world had been threatened, but it wouldn’t be toppled by one smiling stiff. Last night was already on its way to becoming an anecdote for Grey’s colleagues. According to the police, Michael James was probably heading to the border. And she was on her way home to take a long, hot shower, crawl into bed with the latest Mary Higgins Clark novel and dismiss the brief, disturbing appearance of Michael James in her life.
She reached for the radio’s buttons, the quiet she usually sought seeming unnaturally still. As she clicked the radio’s on button, she heard a voice, but it did not come from the speakers. It came from directly behind her. A voice she’d heard before. A voice she’d never expected to hear again.
“Beautiful day to be alive, isn’t it, darling?” Michael James observed from the car’s backseat.
Chapter Three
The hell with control. Bitsy screamed so loud the windows vibrated.
In the rearview mirror, the man winced. “Is that necessary?”
She screamed again, louder and longer.
The man rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s not really helping matters.”
She slammed on the brakes and grabbed the door handle. At the same time, the man’s broad hand snaked from behind the seat and snapped down the lock button.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She twisted her head, meeting the man’s eyes.
“I’m one of the good guys,” he said. His lips parted in a thin smile, the mouth sensual with a touch of cruelness.
Her fear intensified. “Not according to your APB.”
His smile faded, leaving his features gray and drawn. “Just drive,” he ordered.
She faced front. Her hands gripped the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver. He was scared, too, she realized. A tiny bit of her fear slipped away, making room for rational thought. After her marriage, she had bought a weight bench and a set of weights, and lifted every other day. She’d taken self-defense seminars and had gotten up to a green belt in tae kwon do until a torn hamstring had set her back. She had promised herself she would never be a victim again.
She would keep that promise.
She looked through the windshield, hopeful for any sign of life in this small square of the City of Death. All was quiet.
“Where do you want to go?” She asked. Better, she thought. Controlled. Calm. She had to stay cool. If she gave in to the panic coursing through her, the man would win. And she could lose her life.
She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw his gaze nonchalantly lift to hers. She could taste her fear. Like bile, it rose in her throat. She looked away. Damn him.
He leaned in close behind her until she could see the sharply drawn lines of his features in her peripheral vision. His fingers rested on the side of the seat right near her shoulder. One inch closer and those at-ease fingers could wrap about her throat; those nails with their pale half moons could line up like little soldiers along her jugular.
“To your house,” he whispered. A bolt of ice darted up her spine.
The man sat back, the pressure along her seat relenting. Still, his hand remained, deceptively lifeless, on the side of the seat. She slid her foot off the brake to the gas pedal. She released the clutch, not realizing the car was still in third gear. The engine seized. The car bucked. The man swore as he was thrown into the back of her seat. Bitsy was slammed into the steering wheel. She straightened, her hands clutching the wheel as if in spasm.
“Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one. Never did meet a woman who could handle a stick.”
She wrapped her hand around the black knob of the shifter, its hardness beneath her palm. No give, no take. She shifted into first, eased up on the clutch and gently pressed down on the gas. The car moved forward as smoothly as hot fudge melting on French vanilla ice cream. Control.
The street was empty. People were sleeping. Dream now, she told them, as the car passed house after silent house. Dream sweet, illicit dreams.
The police station was in the opposite direction the car had been heading. If she could keep the man preoccupied while taking a series of lefts and rights, he might not notice they were turning around.
“How’d you avoid the police?” she asked. She sounded good. Efficient, in charge.
When he didn’t answer her, she glanced up to the mirror and saw his fingers rake through his hair, a gesture that was becoming too familiar.
“There was an APB issued—” she began again.
The man leaned forward. Bitsy stiffened.
“That was a mistake.”
The breath of his words moved past her. She knew he’d seen her body tense.
“That’s what every criminal says.”
“Criminal?”
She couldn’t believe the man actually sounded disgusted. “You’re a wanted man.”
“I’m the good guy.” She heard the bitterness in his tone.
As she slowed the car to turn left, she glanced in the rearview mirror. The man had taken the sheet from the funeral home, wrapped it around his waist and slung one end over his shoulder toga-style. Only now he had pants on, at least.
“You slipped out, put the sheet over your head and joined last night’s Halloween festivities?” she guessed, trying to keep his attention.
The man was looking out the window. “Nah, I crawled into a casket. Took a little nap.”
She glanced up and saw the man’s easy grin. Not exactly her idea of a cold-blooded criminal. Then again, her character antennae had been whacked out since her first adolescent hormonal rush.
She took another left. “So, if you’re the good guy, Mr. James, why are you being chased by the SFPD?”
“Call me Mick.”
“Okay, what’d you do to upset San Francisco’s finest, not to mention our local boys in blue, Mick?” She bit down on the hard K. “Nothing?”
His eyes, as unclouded as a child’s, met hers in the mirror. “I’m in danger.”
Bitsy steered right, looking away from those eyes. Eyes lied as easily as lips.
“And so are you.”
Bitsy looked in the mirror before making another turn. “That’s pretty obvious to me, Mick.” Again, the cutting K.
His eyes were steady and dark blue in the reflection. “I was set up. Soon I’ll be charged with a crime I didn’t commit. Except I’ve got an alibi—you. So now, when they learn I’m not dead, they don’t only have to find me and kill me. They have to kill you, too. And this time the deaths will be real.”
“For an innocent man, you certainly seem to attract your share of enemies, Mick. First, the police. Now, murderers.”
“One man is dead already. Another was almost killed last night.”
“And you’re innocent.”
“I don’t know any man who’s innocent,” her captor said. “But I didn’t do the crimes they’ll say I did.”
Bitsy knew those blue eyes were looking at her in the mirror, asking her to believe him. She kept her gaze on the road.
Behind her, Mick swore. He’d seen the parked black-and-white sedan with the row of red lights across the roof the same time she had.
She checked the mirror. She didn’t see Mick. Instead she heard, “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll use this if I have to.”
A hard point jabbed her through the back of her seat. He had a gun. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe. All her control dissolved. Her life was reduced to a half-inch circle at the base of her spine.
He jabbed her again, low at her back, and she felt fear flow from that point right up her backbone. Adrenaline overwhelmed her brain, her body. Everything seemed to speed up, yet slow down at the same time.
“You better pray they didn’t see me,” she heard him threaten.
She’d dealt with death every day, foolishly thinking she’d forged a pact with its unreasonableness. But here it was, the ultimate master of ceremonies. Let me live, she prayed.
She glanced in the mirror, not expecting to see the man. But could he see her if she tried to signal the police? Taking a chance right now could be deadly. So was not taking one.
“Keep your gaze straight ahead,” Mick ordered. “Don’t even think of looking to the right.”
The gun bore into her back. She pulled even with the police cruiser, then past it. The chance was gone.
“Are we close to your house?” he asked.
“Yes.” The word came out anguished.
“For your sake, I hope so.”
She arched her lower back, moving her slim vertebrae away from the focused pressure on her back. In her mind, she could see the hole formed by a bullet, a perfect polka dot piercing her skin, her spine, her organs. Her terror fed on itself now, widening, overtaking her.
She forced herself to concentrate.
She couldn’t risk going to the police station. Maybe if she got him inside her house, she could find a weapon or call the police. “Won’t be but a minute,” she assured the man, her voice June Cleaver surreal.
The man said nothing.
Did he have a full clip in his gun, she wondered. She slowed down and took a right, then another and another until the car was turned around again, heading back to her house. In mute panic, she watched the police car grow smaller until it disappeared from the mirror.
“Are we almost there?” the man asked after a few silent minutes.
“Yes,” Bitsy replied. There was a warm, metallic sensation in her mouth. She’d bitten into her own lip and drawn blood.
The man stayed down, said nothing. She heard his even breathing, his steady, too quiet threat. She smelled the lingering chemical odor from the embalming room. The fluid of death. Her stomach roiled. She feared she’d get sick. She felt the touch of death at her backbone and prayed desperately for another day.
They pulled into the driveway of the stucco bungalow she rented in a quiet neighborhood of similar stucco and clapboard bungalows. She saw the delicate scalloped line of the eaves. She saw the tangle of rosebushes along the trellised front porch. They’d been pruned, in preparation for winter. Still, several thorny trailers continued to grow. She stared at those stubborn tentacles of new green. Tears filled her eyes. Control. The word came like a mantra. Control, Bitsy.
She pushed the garage-door opener on the visor, waited while the door rose, steered inside. She turned off the car’s engine, but clung to the steering wheel to keep her hands from shaking. Still the tremors seized her, and her body trembled.
“We’re here,” she said, sounding like the gracious hostage.
“Shut the garage door.”
She did as he said. The door dropped, sealing her farther off from salvation. After its final rattle, she saw the shock of blond hair first, rising cautiously. His eyes, alert, canvassed the inside of the garage, the side door. The pressure against her back stayed. “This is where you live?”
