He wished he felt better about Toni and their meeting with the mayor, and hoped that the message meant the mayor had come up with an answer—or at least a new assignment that didn’t deal with a pint-size kamikaze pilot.
Half an hour later Adam had his answer. The old prison farm was being staked out for a drug sweep, beginning that night. It was a good thing Toni’s idea about spending the night in the building had been nipped in the bud by the mayor.
Adam left the mayor’s office confident that he’d been right to stop Toni. By now she’d probably have come up with some other scheme just as impossible, but at least she wouldn’t be in danger. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check on her. After all, he rationalized to himself, the mayor had practically made him her bodyguard. He’d arrested her, thwarted her plans, and kissed her. The arrest and the interference had been for her own good. The kiss … The kiss had been for his.
At the corner he stopped at the newsstand and bought a cigar to replace the one Toni had helped him kill. At the rate he was going he would need it. He unwrapped the cigar and jabbed it into his mouth. Since he didn’t smoke the things, it always took a serious problem or two, and a certain amount of use, to customize the fit.
By the time he reached the police parking lot and cranked the engine on his van, he knew the cigar wasn’t going to help. The need he was fighting could only be filled by a wild-eyed jungle girl who lived in a magic house sprinkled with stardust.
Six
The magic teacup was empty and silent in the early-evening light. There was no sign of Toni or Annie. Fred wasn’t in his apartment, and the Swan Gardens residents were strangely reticent about where he might be.
After a casual check of the Omni Hotel and Convention Complex, Adam admitted that all three of his vigilantes had vanished. It was too early in the evening for them to be staking out the park for muggers.
The old prison farm! She’d ignored the mayor.
“Fiddlesticks!” he muttered. Oh, hell. Now she had him spouting nursery rhymes too. He put on his blue light on the roof of his van and back-tracked through the downtown streets until he reached the thicket of trees. Once inside, he pulled behind an old shed, cut the motor, and walked down the broken concrete road to the prison. He’d been right. He’d underestimated Toni Gresham and her determination—again.
There were college students, old men, young boys, all busily attacking the building as though they’d been given fifteen minutes to work, with a prize for the group that made the most progress. They all paused at Adam’s arrival, relaxing only when Dead Fred gave them a thumbs-up sign and walked over to where Adam was standing.
“I didn’t believe she’d to it,” Adam said, staring incredulously at the swarm of activity around the old jail.
“Believe it, Captain. I say to you, our Toni girl is do, do, do!” Fred grinned broadly as he wiped perspiration from the top of his bald head with a large red bandanna, then retied the bandanna around his forehead. Wearing one dangling silver earring and combat boots, he even looked like a member of a street rap gang.
“Who are all these people?” Adam asked.
“Friends. Helping Toni get a head start on her project. Toni figures that by the time we get the public aroused and city hall gives us permission, we will already have a renovation plan underway.”
Adam groaned. He should have known Toni wouldn’t be content to do things in an orderly, legal way. That wasn’t her style.
“Where’d all the kids come from?” He gazed with genuine concern at a pack of boys between about twelve and sixteen hacking away at the kudzu growing wildly up the stone wall of one of the prison’s two turret watchtowers.
“Boy Scouts,” Fred explained, motioning to an older man who’d just driven a van into the yard. An empty pickup truck followed him. “Hey, you guys, thanks. Quitting time for tonight. Turn in your tools.”
After a few arguments the scouts and the students began stacking their tools and climbing into the van.
“These guys belong to Toni’s troop,” Fred added.
“Toni has a Boy Scout troop?”
“They needed a leader. You ought to know by now, if there is anybody who needs help, Toni’s there for them. She took over the troop and helped them earn money for their uniforms. They think she walks on water.” He gave Adam a hard look and added, “So do the rest of us, and we wouldn’t like to see her hurt.”
The van, now full of scouts and college students, pulled around and left the courtyard by the same secluded road Adam had used two nights earlier when he arrested Toni Gresham. The road had been cleared, making it usable while still hidden from the city.
“How’d you get the road widened?”
“Toni has a friend with a motorgrader.”
“Of course. Toni has lots of friends.” Adam thought out his words, careful to make his statement one of concern rather than censure. He knew he had to work fast to get those people out of there before the after-dark stakeout squad arrived. “College students are one thing, Fred, but it isn’t safe for teenage kids to be swarming over a hundred-year-old building.”
“Oh, Toni wouldn’t let them get into a dangerous area. Her ideas may be wild, but she’s an engineer, Adam, a good one. She wouldn’t take chances with anybody else. Besides, I’m keeping an eye on them.”
Adam followed Fred across the yard and into the old prison building. In the back area a grimy, unsteady crew of street people were gamely attacking piles of rubbish.
“More of Toni’s construction crew, Fred?”
“Yep. They pitch in from time to time. All of them owe Toni something. A box house, a free meal, a loan now and again.”
Hard-core homeless or just temporarily down and out, Adam thought, at least these men understood the hazards of vacant buildings. He wondered how long they’d last, then saw the determined expressions on their faces and decided it didn’t matter. They were doing what they could. They were there. Toni had made them feel important, something he hadn’t been able to do.
“Listen to me, Fred,” he said seriously. “I can’t tell you why, but trust me. Please get all the rest of these people out of here now. Quick! While you’re doing that, I think you’d better direct me to your leader.”
Fred stared at Adam, then nodded and strode through the building, dismissing the workers. The men glanced curiously at Adam, still wearing his blue uniform and captain’s hat, and he realized several of them looked familiar. He’d probably arrested most of them at one time or another. The building was swiftly emptied; and the sound of the truck’s leaving threw the area into silence.
It was amazing what they’d accomplished in a few hours, Adam thought, glancing around. He had to admit that he felt a certain pride in Toni’s determination and the loyalty she inspired. All these people followed her like children following the Pied Piper. Why then did he feel like the only rat in her pack?
Fred pointed toward a far corner. “Toni decided to build her apartment back there in what must have been the administrator’s private office.”
“Her apartment?” Adam exploded. Engineer or not, she had been told by the mayor the place wasn’t safe.
“The apartment she’s planning to camp out in,” Fred said. “I’ll tell you, man, I’m worried about this. She’s convinced that if she stays out here alone, the residents over at the Swan Gardens won’t be afraid and the publicity will force city hall to give in. But I don’t know. This place is a real mess.”
“Believe me, Fred, there is no way,” Adam said firmly. “She’s not going to stay here by herself.”
“Sure. You tell her, man.” Fred stepped over a pile of trash and waited for Adam to follow. “I’ll just get Annie and we’ll leave you and Toni to hash this out.”
“Evening, Adam,” Annie called when they appeared in the doorway. She was washing windows that hadn’t allowed the light of day in for years.
Adam stepped into the room and glanced around, casually looking for the woman who’d ruined his peace of mind and turned h
im into a baby-sitter. Toni Gresham was a disaster looking for a place to happen, and this appeared to be as good a spot as any. The world needed protection from her rashness.
The argument started up again, the one he’d held with himself all day. He didn’t need a woman like her in his life, a woman carried away with being a do-gooder. Those people meant well, but they never really changed anything. About the only thing they accomplished was making a name for themselves.
Still, short of kidnapping her, he couldn’t see any way to stop her. Toni thought she was invincible. Maybe she was a real witch, a witch who lived in a teacup. Look at what she’d already done to him. She’d caused him to mutilate and swallow his favorite cigar. Then, after he’d rescued it from the trash can, she’d thrown it over the teacup rail. Now she’d put some kind of spell on him. All he could think about was fairy tales and moonlight kisses.
“Good evening, Annie,” he said. “I see you managed to cut the bars off the windows.”
Annie slapped her hip and chortled. “Yep. Always did want to rip those suckers off. Finally got my chance.”
“You might have been better off leaving them on. At least they might keep out the bad guys.”
“Not likely, Captain. There’s enough holes in the walls of this old place to let an elephant in. You know that Toni’s planning on staying here? I’m worried. Can’t you change her mind?”
“I’m sure as hell going to try. Where is Ms. Gresham? Flying about the city on her broom?”
“In the bathroom, working on the plumbing,” Annie answered with a smirk, waving her hand toward a door in the back wall. “We got the water turned on, but there’s so many leaks in the pipes, we had to cap most of them off.”
“I don’t think I’m going to ask how you managed to get the water turned on.”
Fred slapped Adam on the shoulder. “Good idea, man. Come on, Annie. You and me have to talk.”
The two left the room, and Adam could hear Fred whispering to Annie under his breath.
“Hot damn!” Annie exclaimed after a minute. “But we’ve got no car. We’ll just wait in the woods where it’s cool.”
“Sure, go on, you two,” Adam muttered. “Run out and leave me to face her alone.” But he was talking to the air. “Why do I feel like Daniel going into the lion’s den?” His voice seemed too loud in the sudden silence. He followed Annie’s direction, opened a door in the rear wall, and found himself in a large bathroom.
At first glance, except for some spiders and a cricket singing in the corner, the bathroom was empty in the twilight. At second glance he spotted a pair of bare, well-formed, dirt-smeared legs sticking out from the cabinet beneath a rusty sink.
The body was in there somewhere, and the body was probably clothed, though as far as he could see there were no signs of it. Surely an engineer didn’t come to a construction site in a bikini. Even Jane wore a loincloth in the jungle.
Loincloth. At the mere thought of the word loin, he felt an answering response in his own. He took a deep, calming breath. No way was he going off on a sexual tangent with this woman again. He had to get her out of there and do it soon. There was less than an hour of daylight left. As soon as darkness fell, the sweep team would take their places. Being caught up in a drug bust wasn’t the kind of publicity Toni needed.
Take care of business, Adam, he admonished himself, even if her legs did make Bo Derek’s look like puny matchsticks in comparison. He couldn’t let himself be swayed from doing his duty.
He shook his head. He was delaying the confrontation. It didn’t matter what he told himself. Other than an angry red scab on one knee, Toni’s slim, suntanned legs were just about perfect. He’d bet money that beneath those scruffy Reeboks, her toenails were painted a soft, feminine peach color.
From beneath the sink came a half-muffled, “Fee, Fie, foe, fell!”
“Fell?” Adam cleared his throat. Honest curse words he knew; it was Toni’s nursery rhymes that were foreign to him. His mother had never had the time to read to him as a child. The truth was, she didn’t read well and was too proud to admit it. But this rhyme he remembered. He must have heard it in school.
“Fell! Fell!” Toni exclaimed. “Okay, so it’s fum. FEE! FIE! FOE! FUM! Whoever you are, I bloody well need an Englishman or anybody else with a strong arm down here.”
“Sorry, no Englishman around. An ex—Cabbage Town bum is as close as I can come. Will that do?”
“Adam?” There was a long silence. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. Just say that I’m one of those masochists who needs daily abuse. What are you doing, besides, breaking the law, defrauding the city water department, and attempting to incite men to riot with those legs?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind. What’s wrong under there?”
“It’s these pipes. I can’t get them together. They’re rusty and the sleeve won’t move up and down.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry. You aren’t going to need plumbing because you aren’t going to stay.”
“Oh, yes, I am, and I’m going to need some help. I can’t let go, Adam, not without causing a small flood.”
“Flood? Where is the water cutoff?”
“You’d never find it, Adam. You’ll have to get down here and give me a hand.”
Arguing with Toni took too much time. He’d have to connect the pipe. “All right. Come out and let me have a look. I don’t know how you expect to work in the dark.”
“I have a flashlight in my bag, but I can’t let go or I’ll never get it back together again. Can’t you just kind of slide in here with me?”
Adam groaned. There was just about enough room for Toni. “The only way I can get inside that cabinet to help you, Ms. Gresham, is by lying on top of you or underneath you, and I don’t think either method is going to … get your problem solved.”
“Sure it will. I’ll lift my legs up and you slide under.”
“Toni, I don’t think you quite understand. I’m wearing a navy-blue police captain’s dress uniform. Sliding along on this floor would cost more than hiring a plumber, which is what I recommend you do.”
“Can’t do that, Captain. The water department would shut us down. Besides, we don’t have that much time.”
“Time?” She was right about that.
“It’s getting dark. Hurry, Adam.”
The slight tremor in her voice was enough. He bent down. Beneath the sink he could see that she was grimly holding the tailpiece and the trap together with one hand and the leaking water pipe together with the other. She was right. If she allowed the pipes to separate, she’d get a face full of rusty water.
She was right about something else too. He didn’t have time to argue any further. Glancing around, he shook his head in disbelief and closed the door. “I don’t believe I’m doing this.” He quickly stripped off his tie, his uniform jacket, and shirt. The shoes went next. He left his socks on and rolled up his pant legs.
“I’m sending you the cleaning bill, outlaw.”
“I’ll pay it. Please hurry, Adam. I can’t wait much longer.”
“All right, let me underneath you. I’ll reach around you and see if between the two of us we can fix your pipe.”
The only part of Adam that Toni could see was a pair of muscular, hairy legs. A very sexy pair of legs wearing black, calf-high dress socks. The legs were lowering themselves to a squatting position as Adam sat down, then stretched out on the floor at her feet.
Yep, from her ground-level view she could verify her earlier observation. He was a big man, in every sense of the word. All afternoon she’d managed to keep her conscious mind off the brooding dark man who could have a roguish look of anticipation on his face one minute and the devil of an anger the next. And all afternoon her subconscious had known she was just fooling herself.
Now he was lying on the dirty floor of the prison farm in his dress blues, sliding sensuously beneath her lifted hips. Toni felt his bare chest and his …
She gasped.
The pipe shifted. She jerked her attention back to it. By the time Adam reached around her chest to slip the nut over the coupling, Toni’s breath was ragged. The periodic spray of water was a welcome relief from a heat that was more than the honest sweat of honest labor.
“The sealer is in that can by your left shoulder,” she said in a voice that was too loud.
His large hands quickly applied the gummy adhesive and slid the nut up and down until he was satisfied the two pieces of drainpipe were fastened in place. Working almost by feel, he tightened the nut. Though the leak didn’t completely stop, the threat of a flood was gone. Exhausted, Toni dropped her hands to her chest and cradled the can of sealer.
Adam replaced the top on the sealer and shoved the can out of the cabinet with a force that could be considered overkill at best.
“It needs soldering to do the job right. But I suppose you know that, Madam Engineer?”
“Yes.”
“Now will you listen to me?” Speaking was a strain for Adam, both from Toni’s pressing her backside into a section of his body that was learning new things about togetherness, and from his mind, which seemed stuck in the intimacy of the moment.
“No, I won’t listen now,” she said. “Now we turn it on and see what we’ve got.” She flipped herself over in order to back out of the narrow cupboard. What she hadn’t counted on was Adam’s attempt to help her becoming something entirely different as his arms caught her around the waist.
“Listen, outlaw, the less turning on you do, the better. I’m still sore from our last encounter. We don’t have time for any more of your vamping routine.”
“Oh!” She’d forgotten about kicking him in her mad swing from the tree in the park. “I’m sorry. I’ll be still,” she said breathlessly. “I meant turn on the faucet. Oh, fudge, you’re doing it to me again, making me forget what I’m saying.”
“Yes, and it’s nice.”
She thought it was Adam who’d said it was nice, but she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he was right. It wasn’t her conversation he was affecting. It was body language. Her happy body was lying on top of his happy body, facing him, just as before, lips only a breath apart. This time the closeness was even worse. He wasn’t protected by fatigue pants and a shirt. Turning over in close quarters had shoved her T-shirt up, so that they were skin to skin under the dark, hot cabinet, hidden from the world.
Adam’s Outlaw Page 8
