Laurey blinked. A newspaper truck? Whatever for?
"We'll pick it up at Fourth and Ventura at zero four hundred," Kit went on, tapping her pencil on the pad. "Cruz, you'll be driving." She grinned. "You'll be less conspicuous than Ryan would be."
"What," Ryan said, feigning hurt feelings, "you think Indians can't throw newspapers?"
"I think you'd give everybody on the route heart failure, for one reason or another," Kit said, her grin widening. "Especially the ladies."
Ryan scowled at her, but Laurey saw the corners of his mouth twitching. Amazing, she thought, how they could joke. They were obviously all intensely worried about Gage, but still the humor was there. She remembered what Gage had said, that they had to joke or it would eat them alive. She was seeing that in action, now.
"They'll have the route written out, Cruz, so you can keep to the normal schedule as much as possible. You'll just stop a bit longer than usual in one place, while your … passengers depart. But hopefully, when they hear the papers hitting, nobody will even look, knowing it's just the paperboy," she ended with a wink. "Hope your throwing arm's in good shape."
"Great," Cruz grinned. "My family used to joke about my blue eyes coming from the paperboy. Never figured I'd actually be one."
Laurey found herself smiling; Cruz's bright blue eyes were an unusual contrast to his nearly black hair and the slight bronze tint of his skin.
"You're sick, Gregerson," Gage muttered, clearly still unhappy with the proceedings. She wondered why, when it was obvious the threat had become more immediate, and more dangerous. And after all, getting killed would stop his work completely. And permanently.
Cruz's grin widened. "You'll need a pet for company," he said. "And I just happen to know where you can get one. Quiet, clean, doesn't need to be walked—"
"Oh, no," Gage said. "You're not palming off that snake of Sam's on me."
Cruz shrugged, still grinning. He was clearly teasing, and Laurey knew he wouldn't take even that hated pet away from his beloved little girl.
"Can't blame a guy for trying." Cruz glanced at Laurey and winked. "Besides, Laurey's going to need someone to talk to, for when you get in one of your moods."
Laurey blinked. "What?"
"He gets that way, sometimes," Kit said in a confiding tone that was—obviously intentionally—loud enough for all to hear. "Moody. Hard to talk to. The snake would be easier, trust me."
Laurey shook her head, thinking that somewhere along the line she'd missed something crucial. Her gaze flicked from Kit to Ryan to Cruz to Gage. At last she glanced at de los Reyes, wondering if her expression was as confused as she felt at the moment.
"It won't be for long, Ms. Templeton," the chief said kindly. "We'll put an end to the immediate threat as soon as possible, so you can get on with your life. And in the meantime, we'll make you as comfortable as we can."
"Me?" she nearly yelped.
They all looked puzzled, but no more so than she felt.
"Ms. Templeton," de los Reyes said quietly, "you're a witness. A crucial one."
"But—"
"You saw him, Laurey," Ryan said. "Well enough to give a full, thorough description."
"I know I said I could recognize him again, but—"
"That's just it," Kit said, reaching out to put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"But nobody's trying to kill me!"
"Nobody was," Gage said grimly.
Laurey's gaze shifted to him. He was sitting in the chair opposite her, his elbows on the arms, his hands clasped in front of him. The nails of one hand were digging into the flesh of the other, the only outward measure of the extent of his inner tension.
"What does that mean?"
"You got a good enough look at him to recognize him again." Gage's voice was tight, and there was an undertone to it that she couldn't name. "That means the opposite is true, too."
"The oppo—" It hit her then, and her eyes widened. "You mean … he can recognize me?"
She saw the answer in his eyes. Or, rather, in the way he looked away from hers.
"It won't be for long," Kit promised her. "Really."
Laurey sank back in her chair, stunned.
"You're the only one who really saw him. Laurey," Ryan said, his deep voice a rumble that would have been comforting were it not for what he was saying. "Gage only got a glimpse as he drove by."
"It's for your own protection," Cruz said. "Just until we get this wound up."
Her? In a safe house? Like on TV, locked away, with guards, unable to leave?
"Laurey," Kit said, something in her tone making Laurey realize she'd unknowingly begun to shake her head, "I know it sounds scary, but really, it's necessary."
The irony of it struck her then. Mere days ago she'd bristled at the very thought of Gage Butler. And now she was going to be locked up in a house with him. Then, it would have infuriated her. Now…
Now she wasn't sure how it made her feel. A lot had changed since then, including, she admitted, her view of Gage. She no longer thought of him as the ogre of her senior year of high school, even conceded that he was a rather admirable person. She no longer blamed him, not really, for what he'd done. Although she doubted she would ever approve of the tactics, she was also willing to concede that he hadn't had a lot of choice. So she knew how she didn't feel. What she didn't know was how she did.
Especially after that unexpected—and unexpectedly hot—kiss they had shared.
The memory made her cheeks flush. And suddenly the idea of being locked up in a house with Gage took on a whole new and different intensity.
She stole a glance at him. He was still staring down at the wood grain table in front of him, his jaw set, his forehead furrowed beneath the fall of hair that kicked forward to his brow. He was not happy about this. Not at all.
That Gage seemed as resistant to the idea as she was, maybe even more, somehow didn't alleviate her nervousness. She couldn't believe he didn't see the necessity of this—never mind that she didn't quite see it for herself—so that left only one explanation: It wasn't that he didn't want to be locked up, it was that he didn't want to be locked up with her.
She supposed she couldn't blame him, she hadn't been the nicest of people to him. But she'd hoped they had put most of that behind them. Especially now that she'd discovered how much he'd helped her, getting the charges dropped, helping with the record sealing process, and she'd never known. But perhaps she'd been … naive to think that.
But then, it was a long jump from simple forgive and forget to what had passed between them. She couldn't help thinking he regretted what happened, regretted that hot, startlingly passionate kiss. She wasn't sure how she felt about it herself, but the idea that he wished it hadn't happened, even though he had instigated it, rankled.
Was he afraid it would happen again?
Or was he afraid she would expect it to happen again?
Neither explanation comforted her much.
* * *
Chapter 11
« ^ »
"This is not," Laurey said emphatically, "how I'd planned to spend my vacation."
Gage sighed. She'd been pacing since she'd awakened this afternoon, when Kit had arrived with her belongings, packed up from her hotel room. And she showed no sign of slowing any time soon. He thought of telling her to stop and sit, relax, but he had a feeling he knew exactly what kind of answer he would get.
They'd both fallen into bed, exhausted, just as the sun was coming up, Laurey in the larger master bedroom at the back of the house, Gage in a smaller one closer to the front door. He'd been grateful then for how tired he'd been; it had kept him from lying awake thinking about things he shouldn't be thinking about. Like whatever had possessed him to kiss Laurey Templeton.
He knew all about adrenaline. He'd lived with it for years, and occasionally run on it for days on end; sometimes it had been all that had kept him going. He knew about the crash afterward, and how it sometimes affected your thinking.
&nbs
p; He knew all about brushes with death, too. Knew more than he cared to know, and had known for longer than he cared to remember. He knew how crazily people sometimes acted as a result, even those to whom it was, if not usual, at least not uncommon.
Either one would be a nice, tidy explanation.
If he believed either one.
As it was, he didn't know what he believed. Right now, what he didn't know far outweighed what he did. Like why he kept on in this crazy job. Why he kept trying when it seemed like such a hopeless battle. But most especially, why Laurey hadn't slapped him for that kiss.
Unless, of course, one of those nicely logical and convenient explanations did apply in her case. Which made, he told himself, a lot more sense than thinking she hadn't slapped him because she had enjoyed it.
He nearly laughed aloud at that idea. She'd been caught off guard, that was all, and she'd been too scared to think of anything other than the fact that she was still alive. How many times had he heard or read about such instances? How many times had he actually been involved in them? He remembered more than once when a frightened but grateful female citizen he'd saved in one way or another had thrown her arms around him and kissed him. Hell, he'd had rough, tough, grown men hug him, crying on his shoulder.
But never, ever, had he been the instigator. It was a line he knew you didn't cross, and he never had.
Until now.
And he'd done it with a woman who just days ago had attacked him at first sight. If that alone wasn't a sign that something was out of whack, he didn't know what was.
True, she had apologized for that. And rather nicely, too. And while holding a grudge this long was a bit silly, he couldn't deny she'd had reason to develop that grudge in the first place; he'd never been completely comfortable with the assignment himself. Fooling adults who'd made the choice to walk on the wrong side of the law was one thing; fooling kids who might be just victims of adolescent confusion was something else. True, it often worked—Laurey herself was proof of that—straightening out a kid who had just taken a wrong turn or two, but that didn't quite erase the memory of the looks of betrayal he'd seen.
And that memory only reminded him of that other little problem. That little matter of intense guilt regarding Laurey. If she hadn't been with him last night, she wouldn't be here with him now. If he'd taken this more seriously and thought about her instead of focusing only on the fact that he didn't want his ability to keep working up until the last moment on the Martin case compromised, she wouldn't be facing spending her vacation under house arrest.
Not to mention that she'd twice come too damned close to being shot by bullets intended for him.
He watched her pace the length of the living room one more time before he finally said, "It won't be long. The best people are working on it, and they'll have this guy wrapped up in no time."
"Anybody at Trinity West being the best?" she said, still sounding a bit sour.
"They are the best," Gage said simply.
"Maybe," she said, glancing at the room, which was sparsely furnished with a single, rather garish sofa, a scarred table, a couple of lamps, and a TV/VCR combination next to a CD player in a wall unit, "But they're not going to get themselves in House and Garden."
Gage grinned, glad to hear even a sarcastic joke from her. "Probably not. The Trinity West budget doesn't run to luxury. Most of this stuff came out of unclaimed or appropriated property, anyway."
She looked toward the window at the sound of a lawn mower starting up. She glanced back at Gage. He shrugged.
"Beresford's trying to blend in," he said, referring to their guard for the evening shift, a one-year-past-rookie patrol officer who wanted the overtime. "He's taking Ryan's shifts, so Ryan can be home with Lacey. She's due any second, I think."
Seeming diverted for a moment, Laurey nodded. "She told me at the shower that the doctor said this weekend."
Gage nodded. "And Ryan's a wreck."
"And rightfully so," she said, stopping and sitting at last, to his relief. Even if she did sit carefully on the other end of the sofa, leaning forward as if she wanted to be ready to leap up at any moment. "Caitlin told me what happened when they lost their first baby."
"He was pretty strung out. To look at them today, you'd never believe how far apart they were after that."
"Second chances," Laurey murmured, apparently staring at nothing while idly tracing the rather garish flowers of the sofa's fabric with one long, slender finger.
Gage had no idea what that meant and decided not to press his luck; she was, after all, finally sitting down instead of pacing like a caged tigress. One he was responsible for caging.
When she turned on him then, eyes narrowed, expression intent, he thought the analogy rather more apt than he was comfortable with.
"Why am I here, Gage?"
He took some small—very small—comfort in the fact that he hadn't been relegated back to "Butler," but her words struck close enough to his earlier thoughts to be very uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry, Laurey. I never meant for this to happen. I should have thought about what might happen after the first time, but all I could think about was that I couldn't keep the heat on Martin if I was under house arrest."
She gave him a rather odd look, then said, "That wasn't what I was talking about. I don't blame you for what happened. But what do you mean? Didn't Kit say he was already in jail?"
"That's just the first step. He's going to do his best to buy his way out of everything. He's already tried."
"He has?"
"He tried to bribe me, several weeks ago. To stop the investigation."
"He did?" Laurey said, eyebrows raised in surprise.
"Not personally, of course. He hired some street punk go-between. He never gets his own hands dirty."
"But you kept going."
"Of course. But I'm sure the judge, the DA and the jury will be next on his shopping list. His kind just don't believe there isn't somebody they can't buy. And too often they're right. So I have to make damn sure it won't do him any good. A tight case isn't enough, not with slime like him. It has to be perfect. It's the only way to be sure he goes down, and hard."
She looked at him consideringly, and as his words—and his vehemence—seemed to echo in the room, he wished he could take them back. But before he could dwell on it, she made the logical jump he'd been afraid she would make.
"Is he the one who wants you dead?"
He thought of saying he didn't know for sure, which was in fact true, but he didn't think it would go over particularly well.
"Maybe."
Even that didn't go over very well; Laurey's chin came up swiftly, and her tone became more than a little sarcastic. "Maybe? I gather a lot of the case is going to depend on your testimony, and your answer is 'maybe'?"
"Okay, probably."
"Why? Doesn't he know he'd be the logical suspect? And isn't it a little late, now that he's already in jail? And isn't killing a cop just going to make things even worse? And won't it just make him look even more guilty if—"
She stopped when he threw up his hands in a halting gesture. "I can't discuss a pending case," he said.
That, he realized instantly, went over worst of all; she leapt to her feet and glared down at him from her not inconsiderable height. The sound of the lawn mower outside seemed an appropriate backdrop for her obvious fury.
"Excuse me? I've been shot at twice, spent the night in a police station, and now I'm spending a vacation I've been waiting for for two years in involuntary confinement, and all you can say is you can't discuss it?"
Gage opened his mouth to answer. Then he shut it again, because there was no answer. It was a violation of procedure to involve any civilian beyond what was necessary for the success of a case. But she was also absolutely right, and he knew it as well as she did. Her entire life had been disrupted and threatened; she had the right to know why.
Besides, he had the distinct feeling that if he didn't tell her, she would walk o
ut of here, and neither he nor the young cop outside would be able to stop her short of throwing a rope around her and tying her down.
"I … it's hard to explain," he began, stopping when her brows lowered.
"Then let's start with something simple," she said, far too sweetly. "What's he in jail for?"
He sighed. "Rape."
The dark, delicately arched brows came up, and a thoughtful expression crossed her face. "Is this … Caitlin's case? The one she told me about?"
In for a penny, he thought. "Yes."
"She's … just a kid?"
He nodded. "Sixteen. She's a juvenile, so I can't say any more about her. Except that she's a sweet, good kid, bright … and a little too trusting. That's what got her into trouble."
"Did she have … a boyfriend?"
He looked at her for a moment. "If that's your way of asking if she was … untouched…"
"That doesn't matter," she said hastily. "It never should. I just wondered where he was when this happened."
"She doesn't have one. Never has. She's very … religious. Works a lot at her church. And volunteers at charities."
Laurey shivered. "But I still don't understand. If he's in jail, how could he do this, try to have you killed?"
"A man with his kind of power can easily arrange things if he's got people crooked enough to do it for him. Which I don't doubt he does. Or he could have started it before we picked him up. It was hardly a secret that he was my primary suspect."
"But … murder?"
He sighed. "There's a chance he may have found out about the warrant coming down. We're checking on it. That might have spooked him."
"But … he was already in jail."
"He could have set it up before and only given the go-ahead when the arrest was made."
She still looked puzzled. "But my original questions still stand. Why would he try to kill you, when he'd be the logical suspect? And if—"
Gage held up a hand. "You have to understand Mitchell Martin. He's … beyond arrogant. He's never had to work a day in his life. He's rich. He was born to it, raised thinking the world was his playground and everybody in it subject to his whim. Including the police. Laws are meant for the peons, not royalty. And he considers himself no less than that. If he wanted, he took. And he never, ever paid."
GAGE BUTLER'S RECKONING Page 13
