Hart, Catherine

by Impulsive

  Unconsciously, Jess licked her lips. They were still dewy, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming with a come-hither glow, as Blane snapped the photo. Only after he'd caught the shot, did he exclaim huskily, "Damn if I'm not getting hard just listening to you, Corey! Do you have to be so graphic?"

  Corey laughed. "Hey! Don't knock it! It's working, isn't it?" Jess slanted an anxious glance toward the photographer, and Corey chuckled anew. "Don't worry, Jess. Blane isn't going to go ape and jump your bones. He's gay, and proud of it."

  The final few shots were of Jess alternately sitting and lying on a beach lounger in her smiley-face bikini. Blane changed the background to a sand-and-surf scene, adjusted the lighting to give her skin a slightly tanned appearance, and directed Corey to wet Jess down with water from a sprinkling can to give the effect that she'd just emerged from a pool. "I want languid here," he directed. "Slow and easy, sunbathed and sensual."

  "Feel the warm tropical breeze," Corey added softly, "wafting over you like a lover's caress. You're dreaming of him, Jess. Erotic daydreams of the night before."

  Back in the privacy of the dressing room at last, Jess heaved a sigh. "Wow! That's some imagination you have, Corey! You should be writing romance novels."

  "Thanks for the suggestion. A couple of babies under my belt, and I might not be in shape to model anymore. Besides, I'd want to stay home and be a mommy then."

  Jess stripped out of her suit and headed for the bathroom. "Boy, am I glad there's a shower in here. With luck, I can wash all this sweat, makeup, and hairspray off and look halfway normal by the time we meet the guys. If I can remember how I had my hair before Emma rearranged it."

  "Not to worry. If Ty notices the difference, we'll tell him she did your hair while you were waiting for me. You know, Jess, these photos are going to turn out terrific. Much better than those glamour shots in all the malls these days."

  "I hope so, but I still think it's a bit egotistical to give Ty pictures of myself for his birthday."

  "Not at all," Corey assured her. "Besides, Blane is going to enlarge that snapshot of you and Ty and Josh at the zoo. Your first family photo. Ty will love the idea."

  "And Blane is positive he can have them processed by this evening?" Jess fretted.

  "He promised to have them hand-delivered to us at Windows on the World. I've already reserved a table for four for dinner at eight." After a short pause, she asked, "Are you certain you wouldn't rather dine alone with Ty? Gabe and I can duck out, if you'd prefer."

  "No. I'll corner him later, when we get back to the hotel. Oh, and I hope we still have time for a bit of shopping. I want to find a fur-lined jock strap for Ty." She poked her head out of the shower to add, "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a birthday present for a guy who already has everything? Something you can actually put in a box and have gift wrapped?"

  Rain, snow, sleet—they had it all for Sunday's game, enduring four endless quarters of foul November weather, only to go into overtime and lose to the Jets. By the time they dragged their muddy, frozen tails back to the hotel and showered off most of the muck, Ty and Jess were looking forward to a stint in the sauna. Gabe joined them, as did Corey, whose teeth were still chattering from sitting in the stands the whole while. Dressed in men's and ladies' terry cloth wraps provided by the hotel, the foursome trooped into the sauna, fortunate enough to have it all to themselves.

  "At least you guys got to run around and work up some heat," Corey complained. "We spectators nearly froze in place, like so many popsicles."

  "Oh, stop whining," Gabe told her, giving her a swat on the rear. "You didn't take the battering we did out there on the field, slipping and sliding and getting knocked on our butts."

  "No kidding," Jess said, rubbing at her aching posterior through the thick toweling. "I still can't believe I did that. Ran straight for the ball, and wham! Flat on my backside!"

  Ty had to laugh. "You did kind of resemble Charlie Brown with that move, and unlike Lucy, I didn't even have to snatch the ball away. You slipped before you even got to it."

  "I wouldn't laugh if I were you, hotshot," she retorted. "You spent more than your allotted time sucking up slushy mud pies."

  "And I've got the bruises to prove it," he groaned. "Sacked three times! I'm definitely going to have a word with the front line about throwing better blocks and tackles."

  "Ah, but doesn't this feel glorious?" Corey nearly purred. "All this blessed heat, soaking into our bones. I thought my toes would never be warm again."

  "With me, it was my nose," Jess put in. "I had the biggest urge to hide it in Ty's armpit, until I took a good look at his filthy, sweaty self. I figured frostbite was preferable to asphyxiation."

  "You could have borrowed his new jock strap," Corey said with a wide smile, "and worn it as a nose warmer."

  "Uh, uh." Ty shook his head. "I was wearing it. By the end of the third quarter, that was the only warm part of my body—especially thinking about these hot photos." Ty and Jess shared an intimate look.

  "Speaking of hot, isn't it getting a little too steamy in here?" Gabe asked.

  Ty peered around. "Yeah. It's weird, like being caught in a warm fog. Maybe the vents aren't working the way they should."

  "Why don't you go investigate?" Jess suggested lazily, too tired to move at the moment. "And while you're at it, turn the heat down a notch. I was cold before, but now I'm starting to roast."

  "Would you grab me a bottle of spring water from out there, too?" Corey asked. "I forgot to get one on the way in."

  "Sure. Save my spot. I'll be right back."

  The problem was, in order to come back, he had to leave first, and when he pushed on the door, it wouldn't budge. He pushed harder, but the door remained in place.

  "Hey, Gabe. Come over here and help me, will you? Can heat warp a steel door? It won't open."

  Gabe climbed off his perch. "Don't you just love these wimpy quarterbacks?" he quipped. "All brain and no brawn."

  But when he applied his muscle to the task, along with Ty's, the door stayed shut. "What the devil is wrong with this thing?" He inspected it more closely. "No inside knob. Just that pull bar on the outside. And no lock, that I can tell."

  "There'd better not be," Ty grumbled. "I believe there's a law against having a lock on a sauna, and if there isn't, there should be. It's probably just jammed, like I said."

  They rammed their combined weight against it several more times, with no appreciable result. "This is nuts." Ty swiped at the foggy window set in the upper half of the door panel, and peered out. The adjacent room was empty. "Any other time, there'd be people standing in line to use this thing, or stacked three deep in the whirlpool. Where are they now, when we need them?"

  "Can you see the outer handle?" Jess asked, starting to get a little nervous over the situation. "Maybe it's caught on something."

  Ty rubbed another spot clear on the window. "I can only see the top part, but it looks okay."

  "Well, something is keeping that door shut, and it's getting hotter in here by the minute," Corey complained with a worried look. "If I sweat off much weight, all my ensembles for next weekend's fashion show will have to be altered."

  Jess got up to tour the perimeter of the small concrete enclosure. "You'd think they'd have an emergency phone in here, or a shut-off valve, or an alarm button. I don't see anything but bare cement walls, wooden benches, and steam vents." By now she was panting. "Is anyone else having trouble breathing?"

  "Get down on the floor," Ty told her. "Heat rises. It should be several degrees cooler at ground level."

  "Can you break the glass out of the door?" Corey suggested helpfully. "Even if the opening is too small for one of us to crawl through, it would let some cool air inside and make it easier for someone to hear us if we all yelled for help."

  "Honey, that's double-thick tempered glass," Gabe informed her. "We can't pound hard enough on it with our bare fists to break it." He tried anyway, succeeding only in bruising his hand.
/>   "The hinges," Jess declared hopefully. "If we can remove them, we can take the whole door off."

  "That would work if the hinges were on the inside," Ty pointed out. "This door opens outward, and the hinges are on the other side."

  "I'm getting dizzy," Corey said, scooting to the floor to sit beside Jess.

  The guys pounded on the door for several more minutes, shouting at the top of their lungs. Then, their energy fast waning, they too had to seek refuge on the floor.

  "I wish whoever left that boom box on full blast would come back to get it, or at least turn the damned thing down." This from Gabe, who was breathing heavily. "It's no wonder nobody can hear us, with that thing blaring."

  Ty nodded. "Look, I don't want to be an alarmist, but we've got to get out of here, one way or another, before we all succumb to heat prostration, or whatever. We can't afford to wait and hope someone accidentally comes to our rescue."

  Gabe looked around. "What about the benches? They look pretty sturdy, but if we could pry one of the slats loose, or one of the legs, we could use it as a battering ram."

  The fellows edged closer to examine that possibility. "Damn! Not only are they bolted together, but they're bolted to the walls and floor, too," Ty announced disgustedly. "I, for one, didn't happen to bring my wrench along with me."

  Corey started to sob. "Oh, Lord! We're going to die in here, aren't we?"

  "No, by God, we're not!" Gabe exclaimed. "I didn't recover from arsenic poisoning just to croak in a steam bath! There's got to be some way out of here. Now think, guys. Think!"

  That was easier said than done, with the heat steadily robbing them of their power to function, both mentally and physically. Now Jess, despite her effort not to, began to cry, too. "This is just my luck. I find the man of my dreams, get engaged, and check out before I can even select a wedding gown."

  Ty pulled her close. "Don't talk that way, Jess."

  She couldn't help it. Tears flowed down her cheeks, to drip on his chest. "You know what? When Corey first suggested that photo session as a birthday present to you, I thought the idea was ridiculous. Entirely too egotistical. Then I got to thinking that, with everything going on, if something were to happen to me, you and Josh would at least have some nice pictures to remember me by." She gulped back a huge sob. "Oh, Ty! Poor Josh! He loves you so much. Losing you is going to break his heart."

  "No it won't, because I'll be damned if I'm going to go this way, roasted like some Thanksgiving turkey! We're going to get out of here, if I have to claw my way through that metal door!"

  He shifted, rising to his knees. Head hanging, he stopped to gather his energy. "Jess?" he questioned, his tone tentative. "What did you do with that key to the locker where we stored our clothes?"

  She sniffled. "It's right here in the pocket of my wrap. Why?"

  "Give it to me."

  She handed it over. The others watched as Ty began scraping at the caulk around the drain cover in the floor beside his left knee.

  "Ty, what are you doing? Even I'm not skinny enough to slither through the drain," Jess told him, concluding that the heat was affecting his brain.

  "No, but this drain cover is metal. If we can pry it loose, maybe we can use it to break the window. It may not work, but it's sure as hell worth a try."

  "At this point anything is," Gabe concurred, shoving his fingertips through the holes in the grate and tugging upward. A couple of minutes later, with a sucking sound, the cover gave so suddenly that Gabe toppled onto his backside at the abrupt absence of resistance.

  The girls huddled on the floor as the guys crawled quickly to the door. "Hide your faces," Ty advised. "Safety glass isn't supposed to shatter into slivers like regular glass, but you never know."

  It didn't shatter, but it did crack as Gabe hammered the round grate into it. After several whacks, he'd made a large hole in the glass. Abandoning modesty, the men used their terry wraps to carefully pry enough of the shards out of the frame to get a good shot at the second pane. They took turns battering at it until it, too, fractured and finally gave way under the pressure.

  Cool air rushed through the hole in the window. They sucked it in gratefully, in huge gulps, like thirsty nomads at an oasis pond. "Watch the glass," Ty warned, as Jess and Corey crept closer. "Don't cut yourselves."

  After a brief rest, the men attacked the window once more, enlarging the hole. When it was big enough, and enough of the pane had been removed to make it safe to do so, Ty poked his head out. They heard him curse. "There's a long metal rod stuck through the door handle."

  He pulled back inside and stuck his arm out, reaching for the obstruction. On the first attempt, it wouldn't move, but when he pulled the bar in the opposite direction, it slid free. Though it still blocked their exit to some extent, they managed to push the door open wide enough for each of them to wriggle through. Mincing their way past the glass, they collapsed on the nearest bench, a few yards away. Gabe knocked the boom box to the floor, rendering it blessedly silent.

  "I've just about had my fill of this," Ty proclaimed, his wrath tempered only by his weakened body. "This was no accident, folks." He pointed toward the door, and the heavy metal rod still holding it part way shut. Not only had the pole been thrust through the door handle, either end of it had been wedged behind the workshop-style shelves flanking the door. Though filled only with towels, the shelving units were bolted to the walls, creating a firm anchor for the pole, which appeared to be the bar from a weight-lifting set. "I'll also bet my last dime that the heat controls have been tampered with. Put on the highest setting."

  "This really tears it," Gabe muttered, his dark eyes shooting angry flames. "Messing with me is one thing; but now they've threatened Corey's life, and I'm not gonna let it rest until I've found the bastards. Then, they're dead meat, ground and pattied."

  "My sentiments exactly," Ty agreed. "The problem is finding them... before they get to one of us again."

  CHAPTER 30

  Though they hadn't called him from New Jersey, Haggardy was there to meet them when their plane landed at the Columbus airport. "Boy, bad news travels fast!" Ty declared, upon seeing him. "I assume the New Jersey police phoned you? Or did they just put it out on the Internet for everyone's benefit?"

  "No one called me," Haggardy said gruffly. "What happened that I don't know about?"

  Jess answered. "Ty and I, along with Corey and Gabe Rome, got locked in the hotel sauna, to bake like Idaho potatoes. It was deliberate."

  "You can fill me in on the details later," Haggardy said. "At the moment, I have to perform an official duty, and place Ty under arrest."

  "What?" Ty stared at the detective in disbelief. "Haggardy, if this is some sort of sick joke, it's not funny."

  "No joke," Haggardy stated. "Now, listen up. Officer Agerter is about to read you your rights."

  "Wait a minute!" Jess jerked on the detective's sleeve. "What are you arresting him for?"

  "Gambling. Placing bets against the Knights with a local bookie, and failing to pay up."

  The four friends gaped at him.

  "No way," Gabe said. Corey nodded.

  "That's absurd," Jess claimed.

  "You can't believe that," Ty exclaimed.

  Haggardy cuffed him while Agerter read Ty his rights. "Calm down, James," the detective mumbled, leaning close so he wouldn't be overheard. "We've got to make this look good, for whoever might be watching."

  Ty relaxed, and drew a shaky breath. Jess, not in on the conversation, was as riled as she could be. "Haggardy, I'll have you charged with false arrest!" She followed close on his heels as Haggardy and two policemen led Ty out of the terminal, Gabe and Corey in her wake. "You can't do this! Do you hear me?"

  "You're going to get yourself arrested right alongside him in a minute," the detective warned, "for interfering, if not aiding and abetting."

  Jess thrust her hands out, baring her own wrists. "Go ahead. Do it. Even if you don't, I'm coming along to the station with you."

/>   They had reached the police cruiser. One of the officers opened the rear door, placed his hand on Ty's head, and propelled him into the backseat. Haggardy waved her forward. "Get in, Miss Myers. And shut up."

  Only now did she hesitate. "I forgot about my car. It's in the long-term lot. I'll follow you."

  Haggardy speared her with a hard look. "Agerter, take her keys and the claim ticket, and bring Miss Myers' car to the station." He practically shoved her onto the seat beside Ty.

  "We'll be right behind you," Gabe vowed. "Ty, don't say anything until we can get hold of a lawyer."

  Ty nodded, as Haggardy slammed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat. The officer behind the wheel put the car in gear, and they were off.

  "What? No lights and siren?" Jess sneered. "I'm disappointed in you, Haggardy."

  Ty patted her arm. "Ease up, Jess. Let the man explain... if he can."

  Haggardy turned in his seat to face them. "While you two were gone, we got an anonymous tip claiming Ty was betting against his own team. Now, this in itself is bad enough, but when we contacted the bookie to verify the rumor, he confirmed that several bets had been made by Ty. Furthermore, the bookie wasn't pleased that Ty hadn't paid his debts, having lost a few hefty bets. He's in arrears to the tune of ten thousand dollars to date."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake!" Jess exploded.

  Haggardy ignored her interruption, and went on, "Of course, all wagers were made by phone, money paid up front via certified check for the first one, with any winnings left to ride on the next bet. Moreover, the bookie couldn't swear the guy who called them in was actually Ty James, though he thought the calls were legit." He paused. "In essence, you're being set up."

  "I'm relieved to hear you say that," Ty responded wryly. "So tell me. Why? And by whom?"

  "I'm not sure who. As to why, perhaps to get you out of the picture and make Jess a more accessible target. Naturally, if you had both died in that sauna, as you were intended to do, this would be a moot point. As it is, I'm considering putting both of you in protective custody, for your safety's sake. However, if we resort to that, our culprit will probably just lie low until you surface, and the attempts will start over again."