by Linda Howard
The car pulled alongside; it didn’t come to a complete stop, simply slowed with a jerk that barked the tires a little. Jaclyn opened her eyes and jerked her head around, but even with the streetlights shining the driver was kind of a dark blob. What she did see was the light reflecting off something metallic that was pointing toward her. There was a split second of incredulity before she recognized the metallic thing for what it was: a gun.
There was a loud crack and the window beside her head literally exploded, sending kernels of shattered safety glass raining over her. A concussion of hot air seemed to slap her in the face. Instinctively she ducked and threw herself to the side, across the center console. Another shot boomed, the sound much louder now with the window broken out. Again she felt hot air slapping at her, and she pressed her face hard into the smooth leather of the seat as if that would keep a bullet from hitting her. She could hear screams, and dimly realized that she was the one screaming.
Oh God, she was a sitting duck here! But if she tried to scramble out of the car she’d have to lift her head and give the shooter a target—and what if the shooter was even now getting out of the car and walking to the blasted-out window? She was caught; there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go. She was going to die in some senseless drive-by shooting. A nauseating tide of regret swamped her, because she’d never get to tell Eric—
“Jaclyn!” That was Diedra’s voice screaming her name, the sound rising high and sharp above her own screams. There were other sounds, too, a man shouting, a door slamming—then, instead of the third shot that she expected, she heard the squealing of tires as the would-be killer peeled out and sped away.
Time slowed to the speed of cold molasses. Jaclyn heard the rasp of air in her throat, felt every beat of her heart thumping in her body. The smell of leather filled her nose, mixed with the sweetness of flowers and the sharp scent of gunpowder.
Slowly, as if she had aged seventy years in the space of a few seconds, she levered herself upright and looked around. To her surprise, the shooter’s car was still fishtailing in the street in front of the church as the tires fought for traction. What felt like minutes had actually been no more than a few seconds. Feeling numb and oddly detached, she thought about getting the car’s license number, or at least a partial, but it didn’t have a tag. Then the driver finally got the car under control and it shot forward, tires squealing again as it reached the corner, took a right, and disappeared from view.
Diedra was sprinting across the street, still screaming her name while she punched a number into her cell phone. A couple who hadn’t pulled out of the church parking lot yet was several feet behind her. The couple that had walked across the street in front of Jaclyn had already begun driving away, but when they heard shots they’d stopped and the man had pulled the car back to the curb. He and his wife were now both hurrying toward her. Lights were coming on up and down the block, doors were opening, people were spilling out into the night.
“Are you all right?” the man yelled, which struck her as odd, because if she hadn’t been how could she have answered?
Her lips were numb, but laboriously she shoved the car door open and got out. Every move felt as if she were underwater, pushing against a strong current. Shock made chills roughen her skin. Oh, God, that had been so close.
Atlanta was a big city. The shooting could have been random, or she might have been mistaken for someone else, though the Jag made that kind of unlikely. She could have been the victim of a vicious prank, or a gang initiation.
But she didn’t think so. Whoever had been in that car had been gunning for her, specifically, and she had no idea why.
Eric’s heart was still hammering when he arrived on the scene. When he’d gotten the call he’d jumped naked out of bed and already had his keys in one hand and his weapon in the other and was heading out the door before he realized he didn’t have any clothes on. Cursing, he pivoted and returned to his bedroom to get dressed—in the first clothes that came to hand, which happened to be the pants he’d worn the day before and a dark gray T-shirt he wore when he was working out. Underwear hadn’t figured into the scheme of things, so he was commando and sock-less, but at least he had a belt he could clip his badge to, and he’d grabbed his shoulder holster as well.
During the hair-raising drive into Atlanta, he’d called a buddy of his with the Atlanta P.D. and talked to him. They knew he was on the way, and he knew Jaclyn was all right, which were the two most important things. For one thing, he slowed down to a fairly reasonable speed. The second thing, the Atlanta cops weren’t alarmed by the arrival of a half-dressed man who was apparently crazed and armed. A lot of the guys who’d been around awhile knew him from when he’d been on the Atlanta P.D., but they knew him with his hair combed and all his clothes on. The newer guys might well have shot him if they hadn’t been looking for him.
He turned on his blue light, just to be on the safe side. By the time he arrived on the scene, it was the zoo he’d expected to find. When he got out of the car, he looked around until he spotted Jaclyn in the church parking lot, surrounded by her mother and friends, civilians he didn’t know, and several cops, both uniformed and not. Even from a distance he could tell they were all talking at once. Madelyn had a supportive hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and the other two stood close, offering moral and physical support. Spotting her car was easy; it was parked at the far curb in the center of a cluster of cops, the driver’s side window shattered.
Of the four women, Jaclyn was the calmest as she talked to the Atlanta cops, but even from this distance he could tell how pale she was. He began threading his way through the tangle of hastily parked cars toward her. He had to remind himself not to run. She hadn’t been shot. She was fine.
As he neared, her head snapped around in his direction, as if she had some built-in radar where he was concerned. “What are you doing here?” she said with open hostility.
“Hello to you, too. I hear you’ve had a little trouble.”
“How did you hear?” she asked suspiciously. She narrowed her eyes at the detective she’d been talking to. “Did you call him? How would you even know to—”
Peach sighed. “I called him,” she confessed. “I was worried out of my mind, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Why would you think that?” Madelyn demanded in a mixture of bewilderment and indignation.
“Well, why would anyone try to shoot Jaclyn? It had to be the same person who killed Carrie; it’s just too much of a stretch to think the two incidents aren’t related.”
She was right. Eric already had his money on the gray-haired man, who probably thought Jaclyn could identify him.
“How did you even know his number?” Madelyn’s voice was getting louder as she tried to make sense of what she obviously considered nonsense.
Peach threw Eric a beseeching, step-in-here-any-time look. “His card was in my purse, and—”
“Where did you get his card?” Madelyn half-yelled, throwing up her arms.
“Your trash can,” Peach admitted without shame. “The card was right there on top, and it seemed such a shame to waste it that way.”
Yeah, like people didn’t throw his cards away all the time. While the older women argued, lowering their voices, Eric caught and held Jaclyn’s gaze. He could tell she was tired and scared, and he almost stepped forward to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, let her lean on him for a while. Yeah, like she’d go along with that. He did ask, “Are you okay?”
She answered with a nod, not that he believed her. She hadn’t been shot, but she was far from okay.
Eric introduced himself to the Atlanta officers, stepped to the side with the senior investigator, and explained that Jaclyn was a witness in a Hopewell murder investigation. The Atlanta detective said, “She’s all yours, buddy. I’ve been trying to find out what she saw, but the witnesses are a tad muddled, to put it lightly. The only two who haven’t been drinking are Ms. Wilde and Ms. Kelley, but the
y’re the two who were most scared. While you’re talking to them, I’ll interview the others.”
“Muddled” was definitely putting it lightly. Jaclyn and Diedra, occasionally talking over each other, explained what had happened. The explanation didn’t take long, and they agreed on the main points. As Jaclyn had been leaving, someone had pulled alongside her and fired two shots. Diedra and a handful of other witnesses who were also leaving the wedding could confirm what Jaclyn said.
When he thought about her sitting there, a clear target, his heart climbed into his throat.
“Tell me you saw the car,” he said, aware there was a faint hint of pleading in his tone. One of the officers ruefully shook his head, so Eric had a good idea what was coming.
“It was a car,” Diedra said, “not a truck or an SUV. It was black.”
“I think it might’ve been more of a blue,” Jaclyn said.
One of the officers spoke up. “According to the other witnesses, who were really too far away to be positive about anything other than there was a shooting, the vehicle in question might have been green.”
“Make?” Eric asked hopefully. He knew Jaclyn couldn’t provide the information, but maybe one of the other witnesses—
Again the officer shook his head.
Un-fucking-believable. “Surely you two can come up with some detail about the car,” Eric said, looking from Jaclyn to Diedra and back. How could both of them be so car-blind?
Jaclyn just shrugged her shoulders as Diedra said, “Well, it wasn’t a Mustang. I would’ve recognized a Mustang. I think.”
“That’s it? Not a Mustang?”
“All the midsized cars pretty much look alike,” Jaclyn said. Her voice was a little thin; he could hear a faint tremble in it. “That’s something, isn’t it? It was midsized, not a huge car or a Mini Cooper.”
“We can put out an all-points bulletin,” he muttered. “Not a Mustang or Mini Cooper. We’ll collect everything else, then sort them out. I don’t suppose you got a tag number?”
“There wasn’t one,” Jaclyn said. “I did think to look.”
The implication was chilling. Shooting at her hadn’t been an impulse; the shooter had planned for this, had removed the car tag in case there were any witnesses. “What about the driver?”
Jaclyn shuddered, and her mother put her arm around her shoulder and hugged. After a minute Jaclyn took a deep breath, stood up straighter as if she’d braced herself. “I think he had something over his face, like a ski mask or a hood. I couldn’t see any features at all, just the gun pointing at me. Right-handed. Dark sleeve. Um … gloves, too.”
Diedra nodded. “I think so, too; when he went by me, I couldn’t see a white blob where the face would be, so he had to be wearing a hood. But—” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “Come to think of it, the driver wasn’t all that big. It could be a small man, but it might have been a woman. It’s hard to tell when someone is sitting in a car, but I didn’t get the sense it was a big person.”
Jaclyn thought about that. “You’re right,” she said. “Looking through the window, I think I might be a hair taller than the driver.”
Neither of them recognized any make of car, evidently, other than a Mustang and a Mini Cooper, but when it came to everything else, their sense of detail and proportion kicked in. At least that was something to go on.
“The shooter definitely fired right-handed?”
“Definitely. The car pulled away from the curb behind me, and I was watching it in my rearview mirror, letting it get past before I pulled out. It was weaving back and forth in the lanes, so I thought the driver might be drunk. Then he—or she—stopped beside me, right arm extended like this”—she demonstrated—“and fired twice.”
He left her for a while to check out her car. The driver’s side window was shot out, the interior covered with tiny cubes of safety glass. He also learned that no shell casings had been recovered, which didn’t necessarily mean that the weapon had been a revolver. It could have been an automatic, but the casings had ejected inside the shooter’s car. With luck, they’d find one or both slugs buried in the car’s upholstery.
Her car was drivable, but he had it impounded so it could be searched for evidence. Rather, the Atlanta P.D. impounded it, on his suggestion. None of this happened fast. Crime investigations were, by necessity, extremely painstaking. Time wore on, past one-thirty, then past two. It was rocking on toward three in the morning when things began winding down. Eric kept an eye on Jaclyn, because her face was getting more and more pale.
She wasn’t happy about losing her car, but she didn’t argue, either. Someone had shot at her; it was in her best interest to find out who. “I’ll arrange to rent a car until mine can be repaired,” she said, then gave a rueful little smile. “At least this will stop Jacky from asking if he can borrow it.”
“Who’s Jacky?” Eric asked before he could stop himself, annoyed with himself at the slight burn of jealousy. Jaclyn just looked at him as if she couldn’t figure out why he was asking such a dumb question.
Madelyn frowned at him. “Jaclyn’s father,” she said abruptly, the full stop in her tone telling him she wouldn’t appreciate any further questions in that direction.
Huh. Okay. That explained Jaclyn’s name, at least: it was a blend of Jack and Madelyn.
Madelyn turned back to her daughter, gently touched her arm. “I’ll see if it’s okay for you to leave now. You’re exhausted.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I’ll take her home,” Eric said firmly.
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” Jaclyn said coolly. She was handling this well enough, but the night was far from over and the adrenaline overload hadn’t quite hit her yet. When it did, the exhaustion would knock her on her ass.
“I want to ask you a few more questions,” he promptly lied. Well, it wasn’t a lie, because he did want to ask her some things, but it was more like the same questions he’d already asked, just phrased differently. Sometimes a little change in a sentence could trigger a memory. “I can do that on the way back to Hopewell, or I can follow you home and we can talk there.”
“Fine,” she said wearily. “I’d just as soon get this over with.” She planted a kiss on Madelyn’s cheek. “I’m glad you were here. I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll be late, because I have to arrange for a car, but I’ll be there.”
“You should take the day off,” Madelyn said, but Jaclyn immediately shook her head.
“No, I’m better off at work, where I’ll have things to distract me. Besides, tomorrow’s another hectic day. Remember my rehearsal tonight? You wouldn’t believe. I have to tell you all about it.”
Having been there, Eric completely, but silently, agreed with her.
Madelyn pressed her lips together. “You call me when you’re safely home.”
“I will.” She thanked the others for being there, thanked the Atlanta officers and detectives, thanked the witnesses, apologized for the disturbance to the people who lived in the neighborhood. Recognizing the signs of impending collapse, Eric finally put his hand on her elbow and led her to his car.
She was stumbling slightly, and he provided more and more support as they walked. She said, “I’m not sure what questions you think you have, but I don’t know anything I haven’t already told you. Not about Carrie, not about tonight.”
“Once you start talking, something of interest might occur to you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then we’ll talk about cars,” Eric said as he opened the passenger door for her and she slipped in. She fumbled with the seat belt and he bent down, fastened it for her. He rounded the car, got in beside her, and clipped his own belt. “I swear, when this is over I’m taking you to a car show.”
“When this is over, I’m never going to see you again,” she responded.
“Every woman should know the difference between a Ford and a Toyota and a Cadillac.”
“They have four tires and a steering wheel
. Other than that, who cares?”
“If it makes you feel better, we can take Diedra, too. Not a Mini Cooper, my ass.”
Chapter Twenty-one
A HARD, WARM ARM SLIPPED AROUND HER, TUGGED HER sideways against a rock-solid shoulder. Half asleep, she sighed and nestled closer, because he was so warm and felt so secure, and she was almost boneless with fatigue. “You’re home,” he murmured, using his other hand to tilt her chin up. He slanted his mouth over hers in a leisurely kiss that slowly deepened until his tongue was in her mouth and sheer heat began to chase away her fatigue.
Yes, she was home, she thought vaguely. Jaclyn sighed again, slipping her hand around his neck and up into his hair. God, he smelled good, man smell mingled with heat and sweat and night air. Skin was skin; why did men smell so different from women? But they did, and his smell made something in her purr like a kitten.
His left hand slid over her breasts, rubbing and finding her nipples through her layers of clothing, catching them between his fingers and lightly pulling so that they tightened and stood out. Pleasure slowly grew, like a tide coming in, washing over her in incrementally higher waves and pushing the fatigue aside but still leaving her boneless. Her body knew his, knew the weight and heat of him, knew how he moved, knew the things that made him groan and the sounds he made when he climaxed. She shouldn’t be kissing him, shouldn’t let him touch her the way he was touching her, but she was tired and she’d almost been killed tonight and she wanted him even more than she had when they’d first met.
But this was exactly what she’d done wrong the first time, leaping before she looked, and that had turned out to be an emotional disaster. Throwing caution to the wind just wasn’t how she operated—at least, how she operated most of the time. Eric jarred her out of her comfort zone, goaded her into saying and doing things that she would normally never say or do. The thing about comfort zones was that they were, well, comfortable, and getting out of them wasn’t.
