Cowboy Protector

by Patricia Rosemoor

  But as he turned back, something dark and soft between the garbage containers seemed to jump out at him. He reached behind and pulled out a piece of formed knit material. Inspecting it closer, he noted the face holes—the ski mask Nickels had been wearing.

  Wondering what Detective Wexler might make of it, Neil jogged back to Annabeth’s place.

  He found her awake, making coffee. She startled at his reappearance. He also found her quite alluring in a buttercup-yellow nightshirt and a pair of athletic socks bunched at her ankles. Her long legs were bare and kissed with a golden glow that appeared to be natural.

  A sudden image of him kissing those legs—tasting her skin—stopped him cold.

  “I thought you’d left.”

  “I was looking around outside.”

  Her eyes widened and her knuckles whitened on the coffee can in her hands. “You saw someone? Or heard him?”

  Sensing her impending panic, he was quick to reassure her. “Not at all. I was doing some investigating on my own. I’m an early riser.”

  “And?”

  “And I found this.”

  Without moving, she stared at the ski mask in his hand. Her nostrils flared and her unbound breasts strained against the nightshirt as if she was having trouble breathing.

  “Where?”

  “At the end of the alley. Nickels must have tossed it when he figured he was safe.”

  She set down the coffee can. Then, with a trembling hand, she reached out to take the ski mask from him. The moment their fingers touched, tangled in the knit material, Neil lost all sense of the present…

  Darkness falls as he walks down a main city street where old buildings, attached one to the other, rise several stories on either side.

  Stopping to light a cigarette, he is vaguely aware of the rumble overhead and the streets filled with more oversize vehicles than compact cars. At a newsstand on the corner where triangular-shaped buildings stand sentinel over a six-corner intersection, an old black man hawks his wares. He stares at the stacks of newspapers and racks of magazines, the black lettering nothing more meaningful than a jumble to him. Then he switches his gaze to the magazines with X-rated eye candy and grins appreciatively before moving on.

  A handful of young men with pierced ears, nose and eyebrows pass. Young artist-types meander along the streets in their gaudy, trendy outfits. He sneers at them. Then stares at the breasts on one of the passing women—a small lump, maybe a nipple ring, presses through the thin material of her tube top.

  His reaction is swift and intense.

  His gaze narrows to her spandex-clad bottom as he turns to follow the action. As if aware of his stare, she glances over her shoulder and with engorged red lips, kisses the air in his direction. When he waggles his tongue at her, she giggles, flips her hair and says something to her friend. They both laugh and hurry down the street.

  He snorts and adjusts himself. Takes a drag on his cigarette. A cloud of smoke puffs before his face as he turns back to his original direction and saunters on.

  A moment later, he turns into a doorway and glances briefly through the window with its neon sign-age advertising beer and booze. As usual, the bar area is mostly empty. The action is in back, around the pool table.

  “What are you seeing?” Annabeth asked.

  …snapping Neil straight back to the present.

  “Seeing?” he echoed, struggling through a cloud of confusion to find Annabeth staring at him, her forehead pulled into a frown.

  “You were having one of your visions, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So what was happening to me this time?”

  Slowly, he shook his head. “Not you. Nickels. I think.”

  Neil looked down at the ski mask now solely in his hand. The vision must have collapsed the moment Annabeth had let go of the knit material. And him.

  “You saw Nickels?” she asked, her voice low and anxiety-ridden.

  “No. Odder. I was him. I saw what he saw. Not like the other times. Keelin can do that.” He said of his Irish cousin, “Only she sees through the eyes of those in trouble. And she does so in her dreams, not when she’s awake.”

  He puzzled over this new twist.

  “The ski mask must have changed things,” Annabeth said. “We’ve never held on to the same object before. Let’s try it again.”

  Neil held the mask out to her. Annabeth licked her lips and grabbed hold of the knit.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe we’re doing something different,” she muttered, her forehead furrowed.

  “We were touching before.”

  Annabeth tossed the hair over her shoulder and reached out again, this time grasping his fingers as well as the knit material.

  Nothing—at least not of the precognitive variety.

  Still staring at the spot where her hair cleared her neck, Neil shifted uncomfortably and blinked. He almost dropped his gaze to her breasts but he curbed that dangerous impulse. One good look at the more intimate parts of her anatomy might be too much to bear.

  “It’s not happening, is it?”

  “No vision, no.”

  Other things were happening though, no matter where he set his gaze.

  Her neck…her mouth…her eyes…all were becoming dangerous territory.

  Damn The McKenna Legacy—it was making a sex-crazed idiot of him. That and the vision. Nickels would be a horny bastard. Neil could still sense the man’s reaction as he surveyed the luscious attributes of the young woman sauntering down the street.

  Making a sound of frustration that he could relate to, Annabeth backed off and crossed her arms under her breasts, which only served to bring their size and perfect shape to his attention.

  Remembering the feel of her nipple as it grew long and hard between his fingers, of the weight of a full, womanly breast, gave him an instant erection.

  Clenching his jaw, Neil turned and looked away toward safer territory. “Listen, Annabeth, maybe you’d better try calling Detective Wexler again.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Step in the, uh…other room for a minute, if you don’t mind.”

  He thumbed toward the bathroom.

  “Oh. No, of course not.”

  Annabeth went for the phone and Neil whipped into the bathroom, thankful for a moment’s privacy.

  What he’d like to do was take a cold shower. But he confined himself to washing his hands and spraying his wrists and face and neck with cold water.

  Several times.

  When he emerged a few minutes later, he was relieved to see Annabeth fully dressed in jeans and a loose shirt. The telephone receiver was at her ear.

  “Detective Wexler? Annabeth Caldwell. I think we need to talk,” she said, then paused for a moment. “No. In person.” Another pause. “Your place or mine?”

  It seemed Wexler wanted out of the office, for he agreed to meet them at Annabeth’s apartment.

  Now the problem was…how much should they tell him?

  “YOU’RE SLIPPING, amigo.”

  His failure to shut down Annabeth Caldwell permanently already eating at him, he paced the broken-down space that served as a hideaway in the midst of a trendy neighborhood.

  “Slipping, my ass.” He stopped to glare at the Hispanic. “No way could I have predicted that she wouldn’t be alone.”

  “He get a good look at you?”

  “That’s the one thing. My saving grace.” With a feral grin, he informed the other man, “That ski mask of yours came in handy. Thanks.”

  The Hispanic man’s face drained of color. “What you do with it?”

  “What? You think you need it now, in the middle of summer? I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “You got rid of it?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Where?”

  “In the alley.”

  “Near her place? They got all this sophisticated testing now. You ever heard of DNA? They already got me before. You crazy—!”

  He ha
d the Hispanic by the throat before the man could finish, saying, “If I’m crazy, then you had best watch your back.” For good measure—and just because he felt like it—he threw the smaller man against a wall. “Don’t underestimate me, pancho, that would be a mistake.”

  He stared hard, but the Hispanic didn’t flinch.

  “Watching your back goes two ways, amigo…”

  NEIL RODE EARLY. Though he roped his calf in an excellent time, he didn’t stay to see if he had won the night’s round.

  Instead, he searched out Annabeth who was waiting for him on the sidelines.

  Wexler had called back—a more important case was breaking and he promised to get to her as soon as he was free. Apparently not yet. Annabeth wasn’t about to wait and Neil couldn’t talk her out of it, so he conceded and they made plans of their own. They would start their own hunt for Nickels now, just before dark, just as it had been in the vision.

  Perhaps if they found the neighborhood and the bar, they would find the thief.

  To “disguise” themselves, they both wore baseball caps. Neil had also donned one of Skelly’s Bulls T-shirts.

  Annabeth already had her hair tucked up out of sight. That, added to a pair of lycra pants and a halter top, and she looked totally unlike herself.

  But great, Neil thought.

  Sexy.

  Certainly not the wholesome farm girl he’d gotten used to.

  Neil wasn’t sure he liked her going out in public so blatantly sexual, especially considering the way Nickels had slobbered after the girl on the street. Annabeth was even more tempting, and Neil was having a difficult time getting his mind off the fact.

  But he was her shadow, Neil reminded himself. He would see that no harm came to her.

  He cleared his throat. “So you think this Bucktown-Wicker Park area is the one?”

  They were cutting across the Loop, the business office-shopping-theater district, ringed by the elevated track that literally made a loop. All was comparatively quiet now.

  “It fits the description. Probably several neighborhoods do to some extent,” Annabeth admitted. “But offhand, I can’t think of another with six corners and the elevated structure.”

  She guided him out of the Loop and onto Milwaukee Avenue, an angled street that led right into the heart of the Bucktown-Wicker Park neighborhood. Altogether, it was a mere fifteen-minute drive from the rodeo grounds. As they approached the intersections at North and Damen—their destination—traffic clogged the streets and slowed them to a crawl.

  “I could get a horse through here easier than a truck,” he groused.

  “Yeah, but how would the horse feel about it?”

  Neil merely grunted.

  At least the traffic gave him plenty of time to look around. The people on the streets certainly could have been the ones in his vision. But having to keep half his mind on driving wasn’t the best way to identify anything. He would have to park his truck and they would have to canvass the area on foot.

  Parking was a seemingly impossible task in this particular city, but he found a spot two blocks past the main intersection. Of course it wasn’t legal. But if they didn’t take it…

  Neil parked.

  “Kind of deserted out this way,” Annabeth murmured as they left the truck.

  Neil noted a couple of old manufacturing buildings and some new construction.

  “Except for the vehicles, of course,” he said. “Plenty of those.”

  Undoubtedly the drivers were all in the hot spots ahead—restaurants and clubs and coffeehouses. As they walked along the lonely street, Neil had plenty of time to take in his surroundings. A rapid-transit train sliced overhead even as they crossed under the elevated tracks.

  Annabeth shivered.

  “You’re not cold?”

  “Anticipation,” she murmured.

  He knew what she meant. His sense of certainty grew as they approached the six-corner intersection.

  “That building.” He pointed to the pale triangular shape across the street. “I recognize that one.”

  “The Flatiron Building.”

  Annabeth’s knowing the structure’s name probably meant it was some kind of landmark, Neil decided, his gaze settling on a small structure on the corner.

  “There’s the newsstand,” he said with satisfaction. “This is it, then. We’re on our way.”

  A sense of triumph filling him, Neil wrapped an arm around Annabeth’s shoulders and led her across the street. Now if only everything else fell into place so smoothly.

  “There’s a bar ahead,” she said.

  He looked it over. “Nope. Too fancy. Look for an old-time place. Lots of neon advertisements filling the windows.”

  Neil hung on to Annabeth as they struggled through the crowd gathering around a doorway from which blaring hip-hop issued.

  As they waited to get into the club, most dressed in black and wearing platform shoes, body parts pierced and/or tattooed, hair spiked or braided and dyed bright colors, the young people chattered so loudly their voices competed with the so-called music.

  Two doors down an elegantly dressed couple most likely in their late thirties exited a limo and headed for the door of a fancy restaurant.

  Quite an eclectic neighborhood.

  Suddenly, Annabeth grabbed onto his arm, asking, “Did the bar look something like that one?” She pointed him to an establishment farther down the block.

  “Exactly like that one,” he murmured, hurrying her along the crowded street.

  A moment later, they were peering through the windows. Neil caught sight of a familiar-looking pool table in back. A couple of guys, wreathed in smoke, were playing.

  “Ready?”

  Annabeth nodded. “Let’s go inside.”

  They’d found the neighborhood. They’d found the bar. Now if only three really were a charm, they would find Nickels, as well, and have him arrested.

  Then he and Annabeth could relax.

  Get back to their lives.

  Separately.

  As he swung open the door, Neil tried to ignore the twinge that last idea caused him.

  CASUALLY, NEIL LED Annabeth past the bar toward the back. She kept her gaze covert rather than forthright, but she didn’t miss a thing. Two guys and one lone woman sat at the bar. Several more people sat or stood around the pool table. No one she recognized.

  None of them Nickels.

  “I don’t see him.”

  “That would be too easy,” Neil said in a low voice. “You get a table over there and I’ll get us something from the bar. Any preferences?”

  “A beer would be fine. Lite.”

  While Neil ordered their drinks, she gazed around the room. Dark and a little seedy, the place was a throwback to the old neighborhood. PG—pregentrification. The patrons were throwbacks, too. People who hadn’t yet been forced out by the high prices.

  Only a matter of time, she thought, her mind wandering a bit to her family homestead that had been eaten up by a corporation. She wondered if she would even recognize the place now.

  A fact that brought her good mood down a notch.

  “Here you go.”

  Startled, she realized Neil had set down a beer right in front of her. And he was sliding into the chair with his back to the wall, undoubtedly so that he could see anyone who entered from the street.

  She took a sip and asked, “You don’t think Nickels could have been here and gone already?”

  “It’s just getting dark now.”

  She glanced toward the windows, dusky smudges with pinpricks of light shining through as vehicles passed on the street.

  “How long do you think we have to wait?” she asked.

  “Can’t say. No way for me to know if today is even the right day.”

  At least he was honest.

  Sighing, Annabeth took a slug of beer. Her anticipation turned a bit sour. She had been hoping so much that she would nail Nickels, and this anxiety would be over…

  Then she could
get on to building a new life for herself.

  The only drawback being that Neil would finish out the week and return to South Dakota, and she would never see him again.

  A fact that saddened her more than it should have, she thought.

  She gave him a sideways glance and wondered if he was thinking something similar himself. He was staring at her again. He seemed to do that a lot. Warmth crept through her, but she blamed it on the beer.

  And yet she wanted to acknowledge the man. “Neil, thank you for agreeing to help me.”

  “You didn’t leave me much choice.”

  “I didn’t wrestle you to the ground to force you,” she said with a laugh.

  “I couldn’t let you flounder around on your own. The legacy,” he quickly added. “My grandmother Moira wouldn’t have approved.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of my abandoning you.”

  She widened her eyes. “Then you’re saying she would have approved of me?”

  “I think she would have approved of you just fine.”

  His mellow tone skittered along her skin, made the short hairs along her arms and down the back of her neck stand to attention.

  “What about you?” she asked, a tad too breathless. “I mean, I know you’re attracted to me, but that’s just physical.”

  “That makes me sound shallow.” Which made him sound a bit indignant. He leaned in toward her. “I’m attracted to more than the way you look.”

  The breath caught in her throat. “As in?”

  “As in your soft heart.”

  “There’s no way for you to know that.”

  “Of course there is. You’ve told me about your family, remember. I hear your heart in your voice when you speak of them.”

  She knew family was important to Neil. What she didn’t know was why his responses were so important to her.

  His smile was crooked when he looked away from her at the back room where a pool game was in session.