Justice

by Karen Robards

  Her head swam so sickeningly that if Mark’s shoulder hadn’t been close enough to rest her forehead against, she would have had to lie back down.

  “Damn it, Jess.” His arm came around her, steadying her. “There’s a knot the size of a ping-pong ball on the back of your head. You were out cold when I got to you. The last thing you need to be doing is moving around.” When she didn’t reply, he added grimly, “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  She started to shake her head before the pain that shot through it made her think better of it. Tell Mark about the pain in her ribs and he’d be ripping off her jacket to check her out. She knew him.

  “That’s it, I think.” Her voice had a thready quality now. She really shouldn’t have moved, he was right about that, but at the thought of how exposed she had been, just lying there in the dark, fear had tightened her throat, churned in her stomach. And they were still exposed, the two of them. Her attacker could be anywhere. Without lifting her head she tried to look in every possible direction at once. Even moving her eyes hurt, she discovered. “Is he gone? Are you sure?”

  The arm around her tightened. “I’m sure. He threw you down and ran like hell. I never even got a shot off. And I wasn’t about to leave you, so the bastard got away. For now.”

  She latched onto the part she found most comforting. “You have your gun?”

  “Of course I have my gun. I’m a federal agent, for God’s sake.”

  Okay, she definitely felt better. But she didn’t say it aloud. What she did say was, “We have to catch him.”

  “I’ve got people on the scramble looking for him right now. Did you recognize him?”

  “No.”

  “Any chance you can describe him?”

  “Six feet, muscular. Smelled of cologne. A deep voice, no real accent. That’s all I got. He was wearing a ski mask, and a long-sleeved T-shirt and long pants. All black or some other dark color. How hard could it be to find somebody dressed like that in this heat?”

  Heat or no, at the memory she shivered.

  “That jives with what I saw. That’s the description I called in. Jesus, you took ten years off my life tonight. One minute you’re standing on the sidewalk in front of your apartment. Safe enough, I thought. My phone rings, I answer it, then I look back and you’re gone. Poof! I drive down the street, and some piece of shit’s dragging you behind a tree.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Were you following me?”

  “Of course I was following you. You didn’t really think I was going to let you walk home by yourself, did you? Anyway, you left your stuff in my car.” He looked around impatiently while she leaned against his shoulder and concentrated on getting her brain fully functional again. “What the hell’s taking that damned ambulance so long?”

  Good question. Mark’s gun or no, the fear that her attacker was out there somewhere in the dark made the hairs prickle to life on the back of Jess’s neck. Not that she really thought any harm could come to her while Mark was with her, and clearly Mark would not have put away his gun if he’d anticipated trouble, but if the guy was armed and chose to come back, he could shoot them both from a distance, maybe. Or if there was someone else around meaning to mop up the mess … Cold chills chased down her spine as possibility after hideous possibility occurred to her.

  We need to move.

  Cautiously she lifted her head from Mark’s shoulder. The resulting stab of pain made her wince. A wave of dizziness hit her. She fought against collapsing against Mark again, instead taking careful breaths as she slowly sat up. Her ribs hurt, but it was more of a dull ache now that made her think they were bruised rather than broken.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m not waiting out here like this for a stupid ambulance to show up. If the guy comes back, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “You think I’d let somebody get to you?”

  “Not if you could help it. But you never know, they might get to you first. Anyway, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  The grass felt cool and prickly beneath her legs. She realized that she was just noticing, which told her how out of it she had been. Now she also registered the hard strength of Mark’s arm around her, the sultry scent of the magnolia, the rattling hum of a nearby central air-conditioning unit. Her skirt had ridden up almost to the tops of her thighs, leaving her legs bare. They looked slim and pale amidst so much darkness. Her eyes had adjusted to the night enough now to allow her to make out Mark’s features fairly well. His jaw was hard and set and his mouth was thin, which was never a good sign.

  He was worried, too.

  “Fine,” he said.

  Then he stood up, scooping her up in his arms, catching her completely by surprise. He lifted her easily: he was strong, she was light.

  “Hey, I can walk,” she protested despite the fact that the world suddenly seemed to be doing a slow spin around them. In his arms was the last place she wanted to be. They felt too much like home.

  “Just for the record, you are a royal pain in my ass.” His tone had an edge to it. His expression was anything but loverlike.

  “Oh, thank you very much. You can just put me down anywhere along here.”

  “You talk too much.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Maybe later. If you ask me nicely.”

  She eyed him with what venom she could muster but didn’t say anything more. Quarreling with Mark took too much energy, and she didn’t have any to waste. Anyway, the way she was feeling now, in any war of words she wasn’t going to win. Putting her arms around his neck was tantamount to giving up, but she did it, albeit with poor grace.

  Doing her best to ignore the pounding in her head, fighting off the dizziness that made the world seem to shift in and out of focus, she tried to concentrate on finding answers.

  “You think this had something to do with what happened to Leonard Cowan?”

  He slanted a look at her. “The thought had occurred.”

  The memory of Tiffany Higgs being accosted outside the metro popped into her head.

  “Or maybe it’s somehow connected to the Phillips case.”

  “Maybe.”

  Various other scenarios started revolving through her mind.

  “I did some pro bono work for the domestic violence shelter in Anacostia before I got pulled into this case.” The possibilities started coming fast and thick. “Some of those men were pretty violent. And before that I helped Cates win an acquittal for an accused embezzler. There were a lot of unhappy plaintiffs on that one. Then there’s one of Grace’s ex-boyfriends—I had to file a restraining order to keep him away from her. Maybe he still hates me, although I think I would have known if it was him. Or—”

  “Wait a minute. Jesus, just how many enemies have you collected over the last few months, anyway?”

  That earned him a frown. It might well have become a full-blown scowl, but twitching her eyebrows together hurt, so she stopped.

  “The thing is, I don’t think this was just a random attack. He didn’t try to rob me. Didn’t demand money or anything. He just grabbed me and …” She broke off as a shudder racked her. This tremor was too obvious for Mark to miss. His arms tightened around her and his mouth went hard by way of a response. Well, he had always had a protective streak a mile wide.

  It was one of the things she had loved about him. Most of the time, anyway. When he hasn’t been crossing the line into overprotective, and that overprotectiveness hasn’t been driving her nuts.

  “Could have been an attempted sex crime.” There was no inflection at all in his voice. Which, if you knew Mark, spoke volumes.

  “Maybe.” Jess thought that over. It was possible, although that hadn’t been the vibe she had gotten from her attacker. But then again, maybe murder had been the second thing on his agenda.

  Mark had left the Suburban in the middle of the street with the motor running and the driver’s door hanging open, she saw as they neared the curb. She could hear the muted throb of the
engine. The soft glow of the interior light lit up the night like a lantern. It was both comforting and scary. If someone lurked in the dark with a gun, she and Mark made perfect targets.

  “Where’d he come from, anyway? I watched you walk down the sidewalk, and I’m willing to swear there wasn’t anybody anywhere around you.”

  “He was already at my building. Behind the tree. I think he was waiting for me.” It was all she could do to keep her voice steady. Lightning memories of the attack kept flashing through her mind like quick cuts from a movie. Deliberately closing her mind to the images, she fought to keep her breathing steady and get her heart rate under control.

  It’s over. I’m safe now. A beat later, that was followed by, Thank God for Mark.

  “From now on, you don’t even think about going anywhere alone.”

  There he went, being all dictatorial again, which, since it gave her something to think about besides the attack, was actually kind of a relief. Jess would have called him on it, but she figured it was a waste of her breath. Number one, that was just Mark being Mark. Number two, since she was no longer with Mark, his attitude wasn’t her problem. She concentrated instead on keeping an eye on their surroundings as he walked around to the passenger’s side door with her. It took a little juggling, but he managed to get it open without dropping her and deposited her in the seat.

  “Forget the ambulance. They’re too damned slow. We’ll go down to the clinic on Virginia instead.” He was still leaning over her. His eyes darkened as they moved over her face. “You’re going to have a bruise.” His fingers brushed her temple, their touch gentle. “Right here.”

  “He punched me.” Her hands were trembling, so she clenched them before he noticed, too. And her ribs ached every time she tried to take a deep breath. Although she still wasn’t about to tell him that. The last thing she needed was to have him fussing more over her. Having him there and concerned already felt too good, too right.

  Mark’s face hardened. Without another word, he pulled her seat belt around her, clicked it shut, closed her door, walked around the front of the car, got behind the wheel, and put the Suburban into drive. They were almost to the stoplight when a cop car came careening around the corner, lights going crazy, siren blaring.

  “They’re playing our song,” Mark said, and flashed his lights.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The ambulance arrived almost on the heels of the cop car. Turning Jess over to the paramedics, Mark talked to the uniforms and to the occupants of an unmarked car that rolled up while she was being examined. Discovering that her injuries basically consisted of a couple of bruises and a bump on the back of her head, the paramedics were unimpressed. D.C. was a city in which crime was rampant, murders occurred hourly, and the convoluted freeway system spawned grisly accidents by the dozens. For these rescue workers, blood and gore were a staple of daily life. It was clear that in their opinion what she had suffered was little more than a boo-boo that was hardly worth their time.

  After shining a penlight in her eyes, having her track an upheld index finger, and checking her vitals, they gave her a couple of Advil and an ice pack and left. The cops took a cursory statement from her and shoved off, too. Their stated intention was to patrol the area, hunting for the UNSUB. Without, Jess thought, much real expectation of apprehending anyone.

  Jess put more faith in the occupants of the unmarked car. A single glance at them had been enough to tell her that they were some of Mark’s alphabet soup buddies, and she suspected him of calling in favors on her behalf. Not that she really wanted to know the details. To date, she’d had about as much involvement with the shadowy world he slid in and out of as she ever wanted to in her life.

  “So where to?” Mark asked as the cop car pulled away. They were in the Suburban again, which was double-parked near the streetlight, and she was busy holding the ice bag to her head. A quartet of gawkers, all of whom seemed to be neighborhood residents with their dogs in tow, had gathered on the corner to watch the excitement. As Mark put the Suburban in gear and pulled off, they started to drift away.

  “My apartment.” She was surprised he’d asked.

  Mark turned left, heading, Jess presumed, around the block to her apartment. She figured he was opposed to making his usual illegal U-turn given that the patrol car was still within sight.

  “Just so we’re clear, I’m spending the night.” He said it as if he expected her to argue. Good call.

  She sat up straighter. “I don’t think so.”

  “You weren’t listening, were you? My job is to keep you safe. And for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right and you weren’t attacked at random. If the guy had a motive, like, say, it’s now open season on everybody who knows anything about Annette Cooper’s death, then you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be back.”

  Jess experienced a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach as she faced the horrible truth: Mark was right. A shiver snaked down her spine, and she had to fight a tendency to let her eyes dart fearfully in every direction. Which would be useless. If one thing was more certain than anything else, it was that she wasn’t going to spot her attacker just standing there in somebody’s yard waving at her. Whoever he was, whatever his motive had been, he was long gone, at least for tonight.

  She said as much.

  “You willing to bet your life on that?”

  “I don’t want you to spend the night. You’re not spending the night. Anyway, I won’t be alone. Grace’ll be home.” Sometime, she added silently. Or not.

  “No, she won’t. She called and said she’s spending the night out.”

  After a surprised moment in which she simply blinked at him, Jess remembered that while she had walked home he’d had her cell phone. Since Grace, who was one hundred percent sister-loyal although she had once liked Mark a lot, wouldn’t have called him in a blue million years, she realized what must have happened.

  She glared at him in outrage. “You answered my phone.”

  “I thought it might be important.”

  “You fished my phone out of my purse and answered it.”

  “It was actually in a side pocket. No fishing involved.”

  “What about the fact that it’s my phone—mine, not yours—are you missing?” Then something even more surprising hit her. “Grace actually talked to you?”

  “You say that like I’m Public Enemy Number One. We had a very nice chat. She said you’d missed me.”

  “She did not!”

  He grinned a little. “All right. She called me a liar and a scumbag, among other things. That was after I explained you’d left your phone with me and I was in the process of returning it to you. Finally she calmed down enough to give me the message. Actually, it was talking to her that made me take my eyes off you long enough for that bastard to grab you.”

  “I can’t believe she gave you a message to give to me. Hate to burst your bubble, but you are definitely not on her list of favorite people.”

  “I got that. She probably wouldn’t have if she hadn’t been going into a nightclub with her date. I got the impression she expected to lose the connection momentarily.”

  It took Jess a moment to regroup. “I don’t care whether Grace is going to be home or not. You can forget spending the night in my apartment. Not gonna happen. We broke up, remember?”

  “Baby, if you think there’s anything personal about this—” Before he could finish, his phone rang. As he fished it out and answered, their eyes clashed.

  “Hang on a minute,” he said into the phone, then covered the mouthpiece, his eyes still on hers. “You’re not spending the night alone and that’s the end of it. I can come to your place with you, or you can come to mine with me. Your call.”

  Actually, neither worked for her, as she started to make very clear. But she knew Mark, knew she wasn’t getting rid of him short of calling the police, and she really wasn’t up for the fruitless argument that was getting ready to ensue if she persisted. Also, the idea of sittin
g sleepless in her empty apartment until dawn broke and she could legitimately go to work was starting to hold less and less appeal the more she realized that that was exactly what she would be doing. Whether she liked it or not, the attack had left her feeling frightened and vulnerable. It was going to take a while for her to get over it.

  “I’ll stay at my mother’s.” Her tone was almost sulky. “So I won’t be alone, okay?”

  He acknowledged that with a curt nod, then turned his attention back to the phone. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  Jess looked out the window as he turned right instead of left at the next intersection and headed north, toward where her mother lived with Maddie in an aging neighborhood that they called the BBB (Big Bad Boonies), because it was so far on the outskirts that D.C. had given up and spilled over into Maryland.

  “I’m not surprised.” Mark’s tone was grim as, a moment later, he replied to whoever was on the other end of his phone call. “Yeah. I have no idea. It’s out on WALES, right?” He listened again, said, “Keep me posted, would you?” and disconnected.

  “Wales?” Jess asked as he tucked his phone into his pocket again.

  “Washington Area Law Enforcement System.”

  “They didn’t find him,” Jess surmised.

  “Nope.”

  “They’re not going to, are they?”

  “At a guess, I’d say no.”

  Jess’s shoulders slumped a little. Not that the answer wasn’t exactly what she’d expected. The ice pack had frozen her scalp solid and was starting to feel clammy, so she gave up on it, dropping the thing into the footwell.

  “You don’t think whoever attacked me will show up out here, do you?”

  “If he’d wanted an audience, he wouldn’t have been lurking in the dark waiting to catch you alone.”

  “But I got away. Maybe he’s desperate now.”

  “Maybe. But it would still be easier to wait and catch you alone. Your mom’s house is a zoo.”

  “Good point.” Jess felt relieved. The last thing she wanted to do was endanger her family. But she didn’t want Mark playing bodyguard either, and even if she managed to get rid of him, she was (face it) too scared to spend the rest of the night alone. Which left her mother’s by default. And as Mark had said, the place tended to be a zoo, with people coming in and out all the time and no telling who was there at any given moment. No killer in his right mind would come after her there.