Her breath stopped. Her eyes widened. She recoiled.
There was a man in her car. In the driver’s seat. Bent over, as though he was hiding. Waiting.
For her.
In the split second it took her brain to register what her eyes saw, he moved, straightening, his head twisting as he looked around at her.
Maddie screamed, dropped the handle of her suitcase as if it had suddenly gone red-hot, and turned to run.
And smacked full-tilt into a warm, solid body that grabbed her arms and held on.
Reacting instinctively, screeching so loudly that she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that windows were shattering in Kansas City, she shoved him away as hard as she could and jammed a knee up into his groin.
“Oomph!” He let go and doubled over. She whirled to run.
“Hold on there.”
Strong male arms clamped around her waist, dragging her back into a bear hug that imprisoned her elbows. Heart racing like a NASCAR engine, terror tying her stomach into a cold, hard knot, she screamed and fought like a wild thing as she was swung up off her feet. He staggered sideways with her, his grip all but crushing her rib cage, and her feet found the side of her car. Pushing off with all her might, she nearly succeeded in knocking both of them over. But he held on grimly, somehow managing to stay on his feet while he carted her backward over about a yard of concrete. In a single petrified glance around, she caught just a glimpse of a white panel van, the rear doors of which were being swung open to receive her. Another set of hands reached out to help subdue her....
“Help!” she screeched, even as she was being bundled inside. “Somebody, help!”
The man doing most of the bundling said something, but she couldn’t hear him over her screams, which were cut off abruptly as she was dropped on her stomach in the carpeted cargo area of the van and all the air wooshed out of her lungs.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” a man in the front passenger seat said. Invisible except as a shape because of the darkness, he had twisted around to watch as she was shoved inside the van. He was too far away to reach her, and so she forgot about him as, strengthened by panic, she rebounded onto her knees. Her blood pounded in her ears; her lungs expanded as she sucked in air. Having recovered her ability to scream, she shrieked like a banshee as she tried to dive past her captor to freedom. But he blocked her, shoving her down onto her stomach on the carpet a second time and then yanking her right arm behind her back. He was in the process of fastening something cold and metallic around her wrist as the other man bellowed, in the tone of someone who had said it more than once, “Gomez! Let her go!”
Something about the voice, about the shape of the head and shoulders silhouetted against the windshield, rang a bell of recognition in her head. She stopped struggling, and her head snapped up so fast she nearly sprained her neck.
“But you saw her!” the man holding her protested. “She kneed Hendricks! She ...”
“I said let her go.” His voice was quieter now, probably because he no longer had to make himself heard over her screams. “This is Miz Fitzgerald.”
That drawled Miz was what did it.
“You,” she gasped, staring at him in total disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
But if Mr. Special Agent from New Orleans heard, he didn’t reply. Instead, he swung out of the van and came around toward the back, as the man holding her arm reluctantly released it. Maddie whipped around, rising to her knees. Then, as it became obvious that she was no longer in danger and, in fact, had not been since she’d spotted the man—almost certainly an FBI agent—in her car, all the adrenaline drained out of her like water out of an unplugged bathtub. Her body accordioned and she sat abruptly on her folded legs. Glaring at the wiry guy with the brown brush cut and navy sport coat who had thrown her into the van—he was backlit by a halogen glow that made it impossible for her to see enough of his face to form an impression of it—she transferred that glare to Mr. Special Agent as he joined the party.
“Nice to see you again, Miz Fitzgerald.”
The dry drawl earned him a full-blown scowl, which he probably was unable to fully appreciate because of the darkness in the back of the van. Like his friend, he was backlit, which made him look tall and broad and formidable.
“Give me the key,” he added in a resigned tone to the other man, holding out his hand. It was only then that Maddie realized that a pair of shiny silver handcuffs dangled from her wrist.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She held up her cuffed wrist and looked down at the restraint hanging from it in disbelief. “Handcuffs?”
“I think what happened here was a slight case of mistaken identity.” McCabe took hold of her wrist, held it up, and leaned forward to squint at it.
“Mistaken ...” Her voice trailed off.
She remembered the warmth of that hand. The size of that hand.
“Madeline Fitzgerald, meet Special Agent Pete Gomez.”
Resisting her attempt to tug her hand free, McCabe lifted her wrist higher and turned it this way and that, apparently trying to catch enough light to enable him to fit the key into the cuffs.
“Hope I didn’t scare you,” Gomez said sheepishly.
“I think you can safely assume that grabbing her and throwing her into the back of a van scared her.” McCabe was talking to Gomez, even as his thumb slid over Maddie’s wrist. The tender skin there registered the heat of that hard, masculine thumb, instinctively recording how long and strong it felt, even as her mind rejected the inevitable association.
“Let go of my hand,” she said through her teeth, and jerked her wrist from his hold. The handcuffs jingled as she pressed her hand to her chest.
He shrugged, focused on her now. “Your call. People might think you have odd taste in jewelry, though.”
Maddie’s lips compressed. She really couldn’t go through life with a set of handcuffs attached to her wrist.
“Fine. Get it off.” She held out her arm to him again.
His fingers slid around her wrist. “Just hold still a minute. ...”
This time, Maddie refused to notice how his hand felt and was rewarded just a few seconds later when the key slid into the lock. A turn, a click, and the bracelet fell away from her wrist. McCabe caught it and released her hand.
“You said she was wearing a white skirt suit. How was I supposed to know? And then she kneed Hendricks,” Gomez said, sounding aggrieved.
“You changed clothes,” McCabe said to Maddie. “That would account for some of the confusion, I think.” He handed the cuffs back to Gomez.
Maddie experienced another moment of panic as she realized that she was indeed still wearing the jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers that she’d bought at Dillard’s to run in. But, of course, she reassured herself even as her heart gave a sudden lurch, he couldn’t know why she’d bought them or that she’d meant to run. The Escort had been returned to its garage, the new tapestry suitcase had joined her emergency kit in the trunk, and she’d made her way back to the airport by a route every bit as circuitous as the one she’d used to leave it.
He couldn’t know any of that. He ...
“Wait a minute,” she said, as the full implications of his presence burst upon her. “You were just in New Orleans. Are you following me?”
McCabe stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. If ever there’d been a stance that denoted guilt, Maddie thought, she was looking at it right there.
“It just so happened that we were in the neighborhood,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. Right. St. Louis is definitely in the same neighborhood as New Orleans.” Her brows furrowed. “You are, aren’t you? You’re following me!”
“I’d like to point out here that you found us. We didn’t find you. So tell me how that’s following you.”
“That’s just splitting hairs, and you know it.”
As she spoke, she sat down and swung her legs around in front of her, scooting out of th
e van. McCabe grasped her arm as she slid to her feet, steadying her. That big, strong hand imprinted itself on her skin all over again. Maddie jerked her arm from his grasp with a little more emphasis than was strictly necessary, took a step away from him, and then stopped abruptly as she came face-to-face with the seemingly solid wall of people that had materialized behind him. They curved around the back of the van, making it impossible for her to reach her car without strong-arming her way through them—which she was not entirely certain they were prepared to let her do.
“What is this, a convention? Who are all these people?” she demanded, rounding on McCabe. But her peripheral vision had already picked out the giant at the back of the crowd. The frizzy golden nimbus that the weird light made of his hair was unmistakable. Seeing that her gaze rested on him—Maddie realized then that the lights that backlit them must illuminate her face to a certain degree—he gave her a feeble wave.
“They’re FBI agents, too!”she gasped before he could reply. “Aren’t you?” she said to them. “Aren’t they?” she said to McCabe.
He sighed. “Special Agent Mel Hendricks. Special Agent Cynthia Gardner. And you already know Wynne. And Gomez.”
As he introduced them, McCabe gestured to each one in turn. Hendricks, whom Gomez had identified as the man she had kneed, seemed slightly stoop-shouldered. Maddie didn’t know if that was his natural posture or the result of lingering pain. Gardner, the only woman in the group, was as tall as most of the men. She had opened the doors of the van for Gomez. And replaying the scene in her head again, she realized that Wynne had been the man in her front seat. That cherub-on-steroids look was hard to mistake.
“What were you doing in my car?”she asked him. Then her eyes swung back to McCabe. “What was he doing in my car?”
“Searching it?” Wynne’s tone made it more of a question than an answer.
“Searching it,” McCabe confirmed.
Outraged, Maddie drew herself up to her full height as the wheels in her head began to turn. So many agents in St. Louis for a murder in New Orleans—what was wrong with this picture? Did somebody say “overkill”? Her stomach clenched as the question occurred to her: Did they know? But if they did, wouldn’t she already be under arrest? McCabe had made his fellow agent take the cuffs off....
They didn’t know. They were present strictly for reasons of their own. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what those reasons were. Unfortunately for their plans, however, FBI agents on her tail were the last thing she wanted. Except, of course, a hit man on her tail, but she was relatively certain she’d already taken care of him.
If, however, the Mob were to somehow get wind of their presence and think she was in bed with the FBI, she knew as well as she knew her own name that all bets would be off.
The thought of having her hard-won deal screwed by the meddling presence of the feds she despised maddened her. Her eyes narrowed at McCabe. “Where the hell do you get off searching my car?”
His tone was probably meant to be soothing. “Your plane landed eleven hours ago. You never picked up your car. We were worried about you.”
“Hah!” Maddie glared at him, then let her eyes flash around the circle before her gaze once again fastened on McCabe. “That’s the lamest thing I ever heard. You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You’re following me because you think that guy in New Orleans is going to take another shot at me, and you want to use me to catch him!”
The silence with which that was greeted told her that she was right on.
“Well, you can forget it,” she said, and stormed right through the group, which parted like the Red Sea to accommodate her.
“Miz Fitzgerald ...” McCabe was right behind her. A sizzling glance over her shoulder told her that his fellow agents were following him like a tail follows a dog. “It’s in your best interest to cooperate with us. It seems to me that you don’t fully understand the danger you’re in. I don’t know how to put this any more plainly: There’s a killer out there, and I’m as sure as it’s humanly possible to be that he’s coming after you.”
Maddie bent to snag the handle of her suitcase, which, thanks to the weight of the briefcase secured to the top of it, had fallen over on its side, and to snatch up her keys, which had dropped to the pavement not far from the suitcase.
“So what’s your plan? To follow me until he kills me, and then arrest him?” Opening the Camry’s rear door, she wheeled the suitcase up to the threshold and wrestled it, briefcase and all, into the backseat. “Maybe that works for you, Mr. Special Agent, but it doesn’t work for me.”
Slamming the door, she shot poison darts at McCabe with her eyes.
“Actually, we were kind of counting on arresting him before he kills you.”
“No.” Maddie opened the driver’s-side door.
He caught her arm, his long fingers gripping hard as he stepped close, so close that she had to look up to meet his gaze. His eyes were dark and intent. “You’re not hearing me. You need us. You’re in danger.”
Maddie snorted. “The only dangerous people I see around here are you”—she hit McCabe with another venomous glance—“and you”—the next one was for Wynne, who was right behind him—“and the rest of you.” As a finale, she shared the wealth.
“Miz Fitzgerald ...”
“Let go,” she said through her teeth, jerking her arm from his grasp. “And step back.” She sketched an area around herself with her index finger. “This is my personal space. Stay out of it.”
She slid into the driver’s seat and reached out to pull the door closed.
“Miz Fitzgerald ...”
“No,” she repeated, pausing to glare up at McCabe. “I don’t want you following me. I want you to leave me alone. I refuse. So go away.”
She slammed the door and started the car. After a glance in the mirror to make sure that McCabe and the rest of them were out of the way, she backed out of the parking spot. McCabe, with his henchmen behind him, had regrouped behind the open-doored van, which, not coincidentally, was parked directly behind the spot her car had just vacated. Reversing past them, she shoved the transmission into drive and glanced their way again. The halogen glow coupled with the lightening sky permitted her to see them all more or less clearly now. Gomez looked young, Hendricks looked grumpy, Wynne looked tired, and Gardner had spiky, red hair. They were all watching her, and so was McCabe. His arms were folded over his chest and his feet were planted slightly apart as he tracked the Camry’s progress. From what she could tell, he was still wearing the same grungy jeans and T-shirt that he’d had on the previous day, he needed a shave more than ever, and his eyes were so narrowed and hooded beneath the thick, black brows that were drawn together over them that if she hadn’t known who and what he was, he would have won her choice for best candidate for hit man hands down.
He was also wearing that sardonic little smile of his again.
She didn’t like that smile. She didn’t trust that smile.
Pulling even with them, she braked and rolled down her window.
“I mean it,” she said forcefully when he raised his eyebrows at her. “I refuse to have you following me. So back off.”
“The thing is,” he said, his drawl more pronounced than she could remember hearing it, “we don’t really need your permission.”
He smiled at her. She scowled at him. Then she rolled up her window and peeled rubber toward the exit.
TWELVE
Maddie wasn’t really surprised to glance in her rearview mirror some few minutes later and discover the white van behind her. She was, however, furious. Her jaw clenched, her hands tightened around the steering wheel, and she muttered something not very nice under her breath. Then she came to her senses and jerked her eyes back to the road. The very last thing she needed was to have a wreck because she wasn’t paying attention to her driving.
Having told McCabe to leave her alone, and having been ignored, she didn’t see exactly what else she could do to rid herself of he
r escort.
Except fume. And ignore them.
This she set herself to do. Breathing in deeply, she relaxed her grip on the steering wheel and turned on the radio. The soaring vocals of Christina Aguilera’s rendition of “Beautiful” filled the car. That was good. Easy to listen to. Humming along, she deliberately did not look in the rearview mirror again, instead concentrating on easing around the U-shaped entrance ramp that emptied out onto I-270. It was still not quite full dawn, and besides her Camry and the van several discreet car lengths behind it, only a few vehicles were on the road. Lights from cars going in the opposite direction flashed through her windows as she headed south.
She lived in Clayton, a moderately upscale older suburb that contained a mix of housing, from huge old single-family homes to square brick apartment buildings and commercial buildings. Convenient to shopping and other amenities, it was about fifteen minutes from the airport. Once she was safely inside her apartment, she planned to shower and fall into bed. She’d now been basically without sleep for almost forty-eight hours, and she was so tired that her eyes burned. It probably wasn’t even safe for her to drive.
It then occurred to her that if the FBI was planning to stake out her apartment, which she assumed was the next step in their plan, one good thing might yet come of their meddling: She should at least be able to catch a few hours of decent sleep. With the feds providing multiple eyes to watch and ears to listen, at least she would feel safer inside her apartment in the short term. On her own, she certainly would have slept, because she was too exhausted not to. But she would have been afraid. She would have had nightmares. And every squeaking floorboard in a building with lots of them would have startled her awake.
Just in case.
As she turned off the expressway onto Big Bend Boulevard, she noticed that the sky was growing lighter. The entire eastern horizon was limned with fiery orange now, and she was able to see, with help from the dimming illumination of the streetlights that lined the road, dew shining on the grassy median. She turned left, into the residential section where she lived, and eased around a garbage truck parked by a curb. The trashman was in the process of dumping the contents of a can into the back of his truck as she passed. The clank of garbage being emptied into the big green crusher compartment rose above the rushing sound of the commuter train just blocks away as it headed into the city.
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