Laura and the Lawman

by Shelley Cooper

  “No,” Antonio replied with exaggerated patience, “I don’t. But obviously you do.”

  “I do indeed.”

  “You know I’m not into long-term relationships. My job doesn’t permit it.”

  “That’s what Marco said, and look at him.”

  “I’m not Marco.”

  “No, you’re not.” Carlo’s tone turned reflective. “Maybe this woman who fascinates you so isn’t what she appears to be. Have you ever thought of that?”

  “And maybe,” Antonio replied, “that’s just wishful thinking on your part.”

  “You going to tell me you haven’t wished the same thing a time or two?”

  The door of the lounge opened, and a man sauntered over to one of the cars parked in the lot. Antonio didn’t want to be standing there, in plain view under the convenience store’s lights should Ruby be the next patron to exit. Nor did he want to continue the current conversation.

  “Look, Carlo,” he said hurriedly, “I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again as soon as I get the chance. Tell everyone I said hello.”

  “Take care, brother. And watch your back.”

  “I always do.”

  Antonio crossed the street to the lounge. Choosing a window that was off to the side and away from the parked vehicles, he framed his face with his hands and peered inside. Whether by luck or by internal radar, the first person he saw was Ruby.

  She was sitting in the rear of the room, well away from the crowded bar, whose patrons were mostly men. Her back was to the wall, and her attention was focused solely on her plate. The plate itself held a half-eaten steak, a large portion of broccoli and a baked potato. Even through the grimy window and the cigarette smoke filling the air inside like a low-lying fog, he could see the sour cream overflowing the slit that had been cut into the top of the potato. He licked his lips and even imagined he could taste it.

  Contrary to popular belief that exercise released chemicals in the body that blunted hunger, his stomach growled. Loudly. And his mouth actually watered. Pavlov’s dogs had nothing on his response to the sight of Ruby O’Toole digging into her dinner.

  The way she was eating didn’t help matters. As she had at lunchtime, she attacked her food with a gusto and an appreciation that made it hard for him to look away.

  How could any one person enjoy eating so much?

  His stomach growled again, and he had his answer.

  Why had he told her he wasn’t hungry? Because he had been desperate to get away from her, that was why.

  He could always head inside and announce he had changed his mind. He could even pretend he didn’t see her and sit at another table, if he didn’t think he was ready just yet to handle her company. But he had something else to do, a task far more important than feeding his empty belly. He had a box of Baby Ruth bars stashed away in his truck. And, if he got desperate, there was always the convenience store.

  Antonio was about to turn away, when he saw the two men approach her. He tensed and drew in a harsh breath. There was no mistaking their intent, just as there was no mistaking their youth and the cocky swaggers that life hadn’t yet knocked out of them.

  He didn’t know what to think as he watched them flank her on either side before leaning toward her to deliver their spiel. He had a fair idea of what they were saying. He should; he’d uttered similar words, quite successfully, often enough himself.

  Hey, gorgeous. What you doin’, sittin’ there all by your lonesome? The night’s young. We’re young. What say, after you’re finished with your meal, the three of us cosy on up to the bar for a drink or two?

  A part of him wanted to shoulder his way in there, grab them by the scruffs of their necks, then toss them out the door. Another part—the more sane part—waited breathlessly to see how Ruby would react.

  To his surprise, she barely looked up from her plate. She didn’t smile, and she didn’t preen. Instead, she said something around a mouthful of steak that had the men heading straight back to the bar. They didn’t even protest, just turned on their heels and walked meekly away, like scolded puppies with their tails between their legs.

  What on earth had she said to them?

  Even more interesting, the incorrigible flirt was no longer flirting. At least not tonight. The woman who had said she needed a man to take care of her had more than adequately taken care of herself.

  Carlo’s words echoed in Antonio’s head. Maybe this woman who fascinates you so isn’t what she appears to be. Have you ever thought of that?

  He was thinking it now. Big-time.

  There was a logical explanation for what he had witnessed, Antonio told himself. After all, she was a woman on her own in a strange town. Incorrigible flirt or not, she’d been around the block enough times to know that picking up two strangers in a bar was a fast ticket to getting raped. It was one thing for her to flirt outrageously with a man while in the safety of her lover’s company. It was another thing altogether to do so here, while on her own.

  As far as any relief he had felt when she’d sent those two jerks packing, it was simply gratitude that no action had been required on his part. Because if they had given her trouble, he would have had to summon energy he didn’t possess to straighten things out.

  Antonio turned away from the window and headed back to their rooms. He had work to do, and time was running short. He had no idea that he was whistling.

  He took one look at the still-unopened suitcases on the spare bed in Ruby’s room and sighed. He sure as hell hoped she would order dessert, because it wasn’t going to be easy going through all that.

  Thank goodness she’d left her lights on. At least he wouldn’t have to worry that she’d see them from the lounge and come to investigate.

  The first suitcase he opened was filled with lingerie. Antonio made his mind a careful blank as his fingers sifted through slippery, silky underthings. Jaw clenched, he uttered a few choice epithets. For Pete’s sake, he thought, gritting his teeth, did the woman have to order every item in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue?

  It was with more than a sense of relief that he moved on to the second suitcase. The items it contained were intriguing in a different way. He puzzled a bit over the worn pair of jeans and the sketch pad he found. Why had she brought them along? Both seemed out of character for her. When he found the book, he sat down hard on the edge of the other bed. What was Ruby doing reading The Grapes of Wrath?

  If he had to imagine her reading material, he would have limited it to the area of glossy fashion magazines, maybe Reader’s Digest. But a classic like The Grapes of Wrath? No way, no how would that ever have occurred to him.

  When his fingers encountered the gun, he forgot all about the jeans, the sketch pad and Steinbeck.

  Disbelieving, he raised the .44 to the light and examined its crudely shortened barrel. It was not a weapon typically preferred by women, or, for that matter, by any self-respecting cop. Nor was it for amateurs. Had Joseph given it to Ruby so that she could protect herself? Did the perceived threat come from the people Joseph was dealing with?

  Did Ruby know how to shoot? It was hard to picture her at a shooting range. After all, she might break a fingernail. But she was, in all likelihood, involved in a dirty and dangerous business. And she was—appearances aside—a survivor. She would do what she had to do, even if it meant using this gun.

  He’d be a fool to forget that.

  Antonio was already in bed when he heard Ruby return. He knew he should record his thoughts and impressions in his journal, but he was simply too exhausted. Switching off the light, he fell into a restless sleep.

  He woke once, around 3:00 a.m., and saw the lights blazing beneath Ruby’s door. Was she still awake? He strained his ears for any sound coming from her room, but heard nothing. Too tired for further speculation, he closed his eyes.

  When he got up at five-thirty to write in his journal, her lights were still on.

  Chapter 7

  S he was gone. Ruby was gone.

&nb
sp; After knocking on her door and calling her name for a full five minutes without a response, and after receiving an earful from the couple he’d awoken two doors down, Antonio went back in his room and picked the lock to the connecting door.

  As they had been all night, her lights were on. The bathroom door stood ajar, its lights also ablaze. Her suitcases were open on one bed. Ruby was nowhere to be seen.

  Had she been taken against her will? But by whom? And when? He hadn’t left his room all night. If she had been abducted, it had to have been shortly after six, while he was in the shower. He certainly hadn’t slept soundly enough to have missed the entrance of an intruder, and he couldn’t believe that Ruby would have gone anywhere against her will without putting up a fight.

  He’d been working undercover for too long, Antonio told himself. That was why he was jumping to such crazy and sinister conclusions. Ruby was absolutely fine. She had to be.

  Yet no matter how many times he repeated the words, he couldn’t quite make himself believe them. These weren’t ordinary circumstances. Ruby was involved with Joseph, and Joseph was involved with some very nasty characters. Who knew what they were capable of? If she wasn’t part of the scheme, all it would take would be for one of them to think she had seen or heard just a little too much, and her life would be in jeopardy. She would “disappear,” the way his predecessor had.

  They were certainly in the perfect location to make someone vanish. Excluding the town and its outskirts, they were surrounded by untold miles of undeveloped forestland. A person or persons could hide a body in the midst of that land and feel fairly confident it wouldn’t be found.

  Antonio drew a shaky breath and pulled the emergency brake on that train of thought. He absolutely wasn’t going to go there. Not yet. Not until he’d exhausted every other alternative. He was a cop. It was high time he acted like one. His first order of business was to analyze the scene of the crime. If, indeed, a crime had been committed.

  There was no evidence of a struggle, which was a good sign. Another good sign was that Ruby’s bed had definitely been slept in. The sheets and the pillow she had used still bore the imprint of her body and her head, although they were no longer warm to the touch. Her nightgown was tossed haphazardly across the foot of the bed, and the clothes she had worn yesterday lay in a heap on the floor.

  The bad signs, and there were two of them, were ominous. Her gun was still in the suitcase, where he had found it the night before. And her purse sat smack in the middle of the dresser, wallet filled with money, credit cards and identification still inside. Though he looked, Antonio couldn’t find her room key.

  He tried to convince himself there was a logical explanation for her absence. Maybe she had gone for an early-morning walk, although she hadn’t struck him as the early-morning walk type. Maybe she was a sleepwalker, and this very minute was out wandering down the middle of the road. Did sleep-walkers change out of their nightclothes and into other attire before setting out on their nocturnal journeys? Not to mention, it was nearing seven-thirty and the sun was up.

  Maybe, despite her assertion of loyalty to Joseph, she hadn’t blown off those two men from the lounge. Maybe she had arranged to meet them under cover of darkness, when no one else would see, and she was having such a good time she hadn’t yet returned.

  That thought left an extremely nasty taste in his mouth.

  Maybe—and it galled him to admit she had so easily succeeded—she had simply snuck out on him. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she had scheduled a meeting with someone she didn’t want him to know about. In all likelihood, instead of meeting those two punks, she was out doing Joseph’s work.

  Still, the point of sneaking out was to return before the person you were sneaking out on discovered your absence. So if Ruby did have an early morning assignation, surely it was only logical to assume she would have returned by now. And surely it was only logical to assume that, at the very minimum, she would have taken her purse with her. Ruby was not the type of woman to go anywhere without her purse.

  Antonio’s stomach growled. Nor was she a woman to ignore her appetite.

  Her appetite. He experienced one of those ah-ha! moments that had him shaking his head at the depth of his own stupidity. Of course. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it first.

  After closing and locking the connecting door, Antonio headed for the lounge. Even though they were supposed to meet at seven o’clock for breakfast, considering her hunger the night before, it wouldn’t surprise him if she hadn’t been able to wait for their appointed hour to eat. As to why she hadn’t informed him of that decision, all he could suppose was that she hadn’t wanted to wake him if he was still asleep. It would have been nice if she’d slipped a note under his door, but they were work colleagues only. Ruby didn’t owe him an explanation as to her movements.

  The lounge was filled to capacity, the aroma of frying bacon and eggs overpowering the cigarette smoke that perpetually hung on the air. Ignoring the painful growling of his stomach, Antonio allowed his gaze to run over the seated diners. Ruby was not one of them.

  His earlier dread came back full force after he’d asked at each table, and no one had seen her. He was ready to race back to his room and load his gun—to do what, he had no idea—when a man emerging from the rest room told him he’d seen a woman fitting Ruby’s description headed toward town. On foot. And, thank heavens, alone.

  His tires spun as he raced the truck out of the parking lot. After leaving the vehicle in front of the haberdashery, Antonio ran down the empty main street. Where was she?

  He finally found her in the park, sitting on a bench. Her back was to him, her head bent over something in her lap, and she didn’t see him approach. Chest heaving from exertion, Antonio braced a hand against a tree and watched her in silence. Funny, he thought, how relief really could leave your knees weak. This was a new experience for him. As was the panic he had felt when he’d thought someone had harmed her. The strength of that reaction didn’t bear analysis. Not yet, anyway.

  Ruby was safe, and that was all that mattered. Still, he had never wanted to strangle anyone more than he did at that moment.

  When his emotions were under control, he moved closer. As he neared, he began noticing things he had missed in his first giddy rush of relief. Incredibly, Ruby was sitting cross-legged on the bench, and her feet were bare. She had on the worn pair of jeans he had seen in her luggage, and the sketch pad that had so puzzled him lay on her lap. A piece of charcoal was lodged between her smudged fingers, and a pair of high heels sat on the bench beside her.

  He felt his lips twitch at the thought of her hobbling all the way here on those heels. No wonder she’d taken them off. Her feet had to be killing her.

  Careful not to make a sound, he stood directly behind her. What he saw on the sketch pad literally took his breath away. On the surface, it was a simple charcoal rendering of the park itself. But there was a confidence in each stroke of the charcoal across the page, a depth to the images portrayed there, that drew the eye and held it, refusing to let go. Ruby had talent. Real talent.

  He leaned forward, and his shadow fell across the sketch pad.

  Ruby turned her head to peer over her shoulder. There was a faraway light in her eyes, and Antonio realized her thoughts were miles away from this quiet, peaceful place. It was almost as if she were in a trance.

  Her face was bare of makeup, the angle of her cheekbones and her obstinate chin as sharply defined as the lines she had drawn across the page. There was a streak of charcoal on her cheek that he found highly alluring. She looked, somehow, in the early-morning light, incredibly young and vulnerable. He got a lump in his throat just staring at her.

  It took a minute or two, but the unfocused light faded from her eyes. Slowly she came back to earth. Back to him.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning.”

  He moved to the front of the bench so she wouldn’t have to
crane her neck to look at him. “Mind if I sit here?”

  She inclined her head, then eyed him cautiously as he settled his body next to hers.

  “What are you doing here, Michael?”

  “Looking for you.”

  She frowned. “For me? Why?”

  “I thought we had a date.”

  “A…d-date?” she stammered, her eyes widening.

  Lord, but she was lovely. She had the most incredible skin. It was a crime to ever put makeup on that face.

  “I might be mistaken, but I distinctly recall you agreeing to meet me at seven o’clock.” When she still looked blank, he prompted, “For breakfast.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost eight.”

  “Eight!” She jumped to her feet, and the charcoal and sketch pad fell to the ground. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’ve made us both late for work.”

  “Not a problem,” he dismissed. “We’ll just stay a little later tonight.”

  He leaned over and picked up the sketch pad. “I was worried about you.”

  That got her attention. “You were worried about me?”

  “Yes. What would I say to Joseph, if anything happened to you?”

  Her eyes went blank of all emotion. “Of course,” she said dully. “That would be put you in a difficult spot, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he was forced to agree, although his immediate response was to wish he could take the words back. Anything to return the light to those incredible eyes of hers. “It would.”

  He was about to extend the sketch pad to her, when something caught his attention. Down at the bottom of the page, almost hidden by the drawing itself, were the initials LL, along with the date.

  “What’s this?” he murmured.

  Ruby snatched the sketch pad from him and clutched it protectively to her chest. “Nothing.”

  “The initials at the bottom of the page,” he pressed. “LL. What do they stand for?”

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “LL is a pseudonym I use when I sign my drawings.”