Dangerous Games

by Marie Ferrarella

  He tried the brakes again.

  Nothing happened.

  The car began to pick up speed.

  There was no reason for the failure. His brakes weren’t wet. It had only been raining for a few minutes and there’d been no deep puddles for him to have traveled through, incapacitating the brakes. What the hell was going on?

  Trees on either side of the road shook their heads in the rising wind like darkly cloaked prophets of doom. Cole tried the brakes again, tapping them in sharp, quick succession.

  The brakes didn’t respond. The incline was becoming more pronounced.

  Cole looked around for somewhere he could safely stop the car. The traffic was light, but at any second that could change. He couldn’t take a chance on crashing into another car.

  Steering as best he could, he spotted a tree up ahead and aimed for that, reasoning that his air bag would take the brunt of the impact.

  Suddenly, Cole saw a boy walking his dog. The boy wore a dark, hooded jacket and hadn’t been visible until just now. Swearing, sweating, Cole twisted the steering wheel to the opposite side, avoiding the collision at the last moment.

  Gaining speed.

  The boy jump out of the way, yanking his dog with him. Somewhere in the background, Cole thought he heard a woman scream, but he couldn’t be sure. His entire attention was focused on trying to find someplace he could use to stop his vehicle. He prayed that the air bag would deploy.

  The road directly ahead of him curved sharply. A row of condominiums, close to the street, was on his left, a well-manicured play area hugging the curve was on the right. The play area was empty.

  Any second now he was going to crash into one of the houses.

  Digging up prayers he could hardly remember from his childhood, windshield wipers slapping time, Cole steered his car toward the play area as best he could.

  Tires hit the curb, flying over it, smashing into the fire hydrant and sending a geyser into the air.

  The car finally stopped.

  The air bag didn’t deploy.

  Chapter 10

  “Ohmigod, are you all right?”

  Bursting out of Shaw’s car the moment her brother brought it up behind the totaled Porsche, Rayne rushed to Cole’s side. He was leaning against what was left of his red vehicle, holding a bloodstained handkerchief against his forehead. The gash he’d received when his head met the steering wheel was still bleeding. He looked unsteady to her.

  He’d called her less than fifteen minutes ago, his voice sounding strained. Strange. The second he’d said he’d been in an accident, she’d fired a single question at him. Where was he? He’d only been able to give her a vague description.

  Ordering him to stay put, she’d called Shaw and told him to meet her at the front door. He was the only one of her siblings still at the police station. She’d seen him at his desk earlier, putting in overtime to finish reports that had been due at the end of the last month. It was one of the things they all had in common. They put off filling out reports until the last possible moment.

  Not waiting for Cole to speak, she answered her own rhetorical question. “Of course you’re not all right. Here, sit,” she ordered, guiding him to the seat behind the driver’s in Shaw’s car. Once she had him down, she held up her hand, wiggling several digits. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “All of them.” It felt as if someone was using a sledgehammer to reconstruct his skull from the inside out. With effort, he waved her hand away. “I’m all right. I just need a minute, that’s all.” He looked at the condition of the car he’d crawled out of once he’d come to. The nose could have doubled as an accordion. It took very little imagination to realize that he’d come very close to being killed. “And a way to get to the hotel.”

  “You’re not going to the hotel, you’re going to the hospital,” she informed him in no uncertain terms.

  With a sigh, Cole looked past her at the man who was taking close scrutiny of the wreckage whose nose was halfway up the lamppost. “Is there any way you could drop me off?”

  “Tell him he has to go to the hospital,” Rayne instructed her brother.

  Temporarily abandoning his perusal of the wrecked vehicle, Shaw crossed back to Cole and gave the man’s wound and his overall state a once-over.

  “You could use a stitch or two, but a tightly applied butterfly bandage’ll do almost the same job.”

  “Shaw!” Rayne cried sharply.

  He shrugged. “Sorry, kid, I call them the way I see them.”

  Cole nodded, or tried to. The interior reconstruction of his head was now being accompanied by the “Overture of 1812,” complete with cannon. “Good.”

  She didn’t think it was good at all. What was it with men? What was this macho thing they felt they had to invoke?

  “You’ll scar,” she pointed out.

  His mouth curved in a semismile. “Won’t be the first time. Besides, I hear scars are supposed to be sexy,” Cole muttered.

  She’d grown up with countless men in her life and knew when it was pointless to argue. Rayne turned her attention to another question. “What happened? Did you swerve to avoid something?” Although he should have seen it, she thought. This particular area was better lit than the rest of the winding road.

  Cole struggled to pull his mind into focus. “A kid and his dog, but that wasn’t the problem.”

  The words were coming more easily now, and the fog was finally beginning to lift from his brain. When he’d first come to, he’d suffered more than a few minutes of complete confusion. Events from his life had all glued themselves together in his head. Past, present, they’d all come together like one giant jumble that initially defied untangling.

  He remembered the onset of panic. “The brakes didn’t work.” The final moment of impact replayed itself in his aching mind. “Neither did the air bag.”

  Shaw was already looking beneath the hood, around the engine. He aimed his flashlight toward where the front and back brake lines ran. “That’s because the brakes have been cut.”

  Rayne turned sharply. “Cut?” She hurried over to see for herself. Shaw shone his flashlight over the telltale area. “We drove to Kathy’s Fallon’s apartment complex and back in that car.” She thought of the sudden stop Cole’d had to come to just before the police station when a car had pulled out in front of them. “The brakes worked fine then.”

  “They’re not working fine anymore,” Shaw said simply. Moving around Rayne, Shaw shone his flashlight inside the crumpled vehicle. From all appearances, the air bag was still inside its case. “Neither was the air bag.” He looked at Cole. “The mechanism to deploy the air bag has been tampered with.”

  An icy feeling passed over her. Rayne exchanged looks with Cole. She didn’t like what she was hearing. Someone had deliberately tried to kill him.

  “It had to have happened while you were inside the station, visiting Eric.”

  “That’d be my guess,” Shaw agreed. Flipping off the flashlight, he tossed it back into his car’s glove compartment. His easygoing manner vanished as fury entered his eyes. “You could have just as easily been in the car with him.” He didn’t bother looking in Cole’s direction, his attention completely focused on his sister. “Somebody doesn’t want you investigating this. Damn it, Rayne, what the hell have you got yourself involved in this time?”

  Her brother was right in everything he was thinking. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. He didn’t have any right to put her in harm’s way like this, Cole thought. “I want you to back off,” Cole told her. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Back off.

  Those were the exact words used to threaten her on her cell. She didn’t take orders very well, never had. That they were now coming from her brother and Cole only served to infuriate her.

  Rayne fisted her hands on her waist. Who the hell did they think they were, deciding what she was going to do or not going to do?

  “If you need someone on the inside,” Shaw was
saying to Cole, “I’ll handle it.”

  Okay, this had gone far enough. She was a police detective, damn it, not some porcelain doll to be placed in the china closet.

  Rayne placed herself between the two men. “Just a damn minute here. Before the two of you form some good ol’ boys club and start making up the charter, there’s something you should know. I am not about to be scared off, threatened off, or told by my big brother to bug off, understand?” She looked from one to the other. “I’m a big girl, I can wipe my own nose and handle my own cases. Got that?”

  “This isn’t your case,” Shaw pointed out.

  “It is now—” Her voice faltered only slightly as she added, “unofficially.” She knew there was no way she could go to her superior and ask to be assigned to it. Her personal involvement at this point disqualified her. “I am not about to drop out and let you take over,” she told Shaw. “This isn’t up for discussion.” That said, she gave getting Cole medical attention one more try. “C’mon, Shaw, we need to take him to the hospital—”

  “Hotel,” Cole said just as adamantly. He wasn’t about to sit in some ER, cooling his heels for half the night, waiting for treatment of something that was far from fatal. “That’s not up for discussion, either. I’ve suffered a hell of a lot worse.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe him. “When?” she challenged.

  “That’s not up for discussion, either,” he repeated. Since he was already partially in the car, Cole shifted in the seat, pulling in his legs. Very carefully, he reached for the door and shut it. His message was clear. He was terminating the conversation.

  With a huff, Rayne got into the passenger side beside her brother.

  “Take him to the hotel,” she said.

  She missed the knowing look that had slipped over Shaw’s face.

  They pulled up a little shy of the hotel’s main entrance, bypassing a squadron of eager valets. Cutting off the engine, Shaw got out on his side, then offered his arm to Cole. Ignoring it, Cole struggled out of the car on his own power.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  Cole’s words seemed to be addressed to both of them. There was no way she was letting him go up to his room alone. His wound needed tending.

  As he began to walk away, Rayne called after him, “Wait for me at the door.” And then she looked at her brother. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll catch a cab later.”

  But Shaw shook his head. “I’ll leave you my car. I can catch a cab.”

  That meant she’d have to go to his place and then have him drive her over to hers. There were too many logistics involved. “But—”

  Shaw considered himself relatively easygoing, but every once in a while, she managed to push him over the edge. Like now. Why couldn’t she be like Patrick’s sister? Patience was a vet. You could go an entire lifetime without worrying about someone pumping a bullet into a vet.

  “Damn it, Rayne, for once in your life, just stop arguing.”

  “I will if you will,” she retorted. “Takes two to make an argument, you know.”

  Shaw blew out a breath. “I’ve just got one question.”

  Rayne glanced over her shoulder toward the entrance. Cole was waiting. He hadn’t made a break for it. That was a hopeful sign.

  “What?” she asked impatiently.

  “How long have you had a thing for Cole Garrison?”

  Her head whipped back around. Coming out of nowhere, Shaw’s question had caught her completely off balance. She let indignation color her cheeks. “I don’t have a ‘thing’ for Cole Garrison.”

  But Shaw merely smiled. “Looked in any good mirrors lately?” She raised her brow quizzically. This time, he grinned. “It’s written all over your face.”

  “Shut up and go home, Shaw.” With that, she shoved the keys at him and hurried over to Cole. After a moment she heard him start up the car.

  It felt good to win an argument once in a while, she thought as she took her place beside Cole.

  He indicated the departing vehicle, taking care not to move his head too abruptly. “What was that all about?”

  There was no way she was going to give Cole a complete narrative, especially not since he’d been the centerpiece of it. “Just a little territorial struggle over who got the car and who called a cab.”

  He saw Shaw turn left onto the busy street that ran past the precinct. He hadn’t thought the man the type to strand his sister. “You lost?”

  Whatever gave him that idea? “I won.”

  Maybe it was the head injury, but he wasn’t following her. “But your brother just took the car.”

  Because he still looked a little unsteady to her, she skipped going through the revolving doors and opened one of the side doors instead. After a beat, he walked through it first. “I know.”

  The quizzical look on his face deepened. “How’s that winning?”

  It was the very essence of winning. Hooking her arm through his, she steered him toward the elevator.

  People in the lobby looked at them oddly. His unbuttoned shirt, stained and torn beneath his soft black leather jacket, was enough cause for hotel guests to move out of his way as he passed. The way they would for any thug or danger to society.

  It occurred to her that although she knew what Cole did for a living now, the man’s life had huge gaps and he was essentially a stranger to her. Questions were breeding questions inside her head.

  “I got him to stop treating me as if I was twelve and in need of supervision.” Reaching the elevator bank, she pressed for a car. The doors opened almost instantly. She looked at him. “Now let’s get you to your room and see about cleaning up the scar in the making.” Because he was waiting, she walked in ahead of him. Nice to know his manners went deep. “And for your information, scars aren’t sexy.”

  He tried to smile and found his mouth was too sore to complete the movement. He forced it to his lips despite the pain. He couldn’t resist looking at her for a long, languid moment. Right now, it was the highlight of a very bad day.

  “That all depends on who’s wearing them and where they are,” he said.

  She decided that it was in her best interest not to touch the remark.

  They reached his room within less than two minutes. Though she’d placed herself almost against him once the doors opened again, an open, silent invitation to lean on her, Cole made the trip from elevator to room on his own power.

  Rayne was quick to take inventory of the small medicine cabinet. It was stocked with everything involved with cleanliness.

  “There’s nothing in here,” she announced in disgust, slamming the mirrored door shut.

  That didn’t surprise him. He lowered himself onto the bed slowly. Cole could feel his bones groaning. He was going to feel like hell tomorrow.

  “I don’t imagine hotels figure you’ll get into a car accident, or a fight,” he said. According to the reflection he saw in the mirrored wardrobe door, he looked like he came back from battle.

  She frowned at him. “Still say you should go to the hospital.”

  “It’s a cut. My head is still attached, although right about now, I’m kind of wishing it weren’t.” He didn’t give in to the temptation to hold it. That way only lay more pain. He saw her heading for the door. “Going home?”

  Why did he want to get rid of her so badly? Rayne asked herself. Was it because he didn’t want her witnessing his pain, or was there some other reason he kept suggesting she leave? “Going to the pharmacy,” she corrected. She pinned him with a look. “You stay put.”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice. He was vaguely aware of the door closing as he stretched out on the bed.

  Walking in a few minutes later, Rayne found her would-be patient lying on the bed, his eyes closed. She recalled something about it being dangerous to fall asleep just after sustaining a head wound.

  Panic reared its head, materializing out of the darkness, assaulting her. Still clutching the small brown bag she’d picked up at the hotel pha
rmacy in one hand, she felt for his pulse with the other.

  Nothing. Dropping the bag, she began feeling around different regions on his wrist, trying to discern any sort of faint rhythm.

  Cole’s eyes fluttered open and then he was looking at her with those big, blue eyes of his. Eyes that held more than a hint of amusement in them. “You could just as easily hold up a mirror to my nose to see if I was breathing.”

  She blew out a breath, not at all happy about the amount of relief she was experiencing. “Couldn’t manage to rip it off the wall.”

  With effort, he raised himself up into a sitting position. The room spun a little as he fiercely tried to pin it in place.

  “You don’t carry a mirror with you?”

  “Don’t need one.” Taking off her shoulder strap, Rayne threw her purse onto the chair. She shook her head. “I know what I look like.” She shrugged. “For the most part, anyway.”

  He watched as she emptied the paper sack she’d picked up at the hotel pharmacy on the bed. A box of butterfly Band-Aids, a small bottle of peroxide and a bag of cotton balls came tumbling out.

  “How about that, a woman who’s not vain. That’s something of a rarity.”

  She went over to the sink to wash her hands. “You’ve been hanging around the wrong women.”

  “No, that’s Eric’s dilemma.” He raised his voice a little to be heard above the running water. It echoed wildly in his head, and he lowered it again. “I haven’t been hanging around women at all. At least, not single ones.”

  Opening up the bag of cotton balls, she doused one with peroxide, then dabbed it against his forehead and watched as he winced.

  “Married women?”

  Was he like his father, after all? She’d heard rumors about the senior Garrison’s lifestyle. It was one of those secrets everyone knew about. Lyle Garrison liked variety.

  Wasn’t peroxide not supposed to sting? Cole found he had to struggle not to make a sound. He wouldn’t have put it past her to have slipped some alcohol into the bottle just to get even with him because he’d wanted her to drop her part in the investigation. But that had been strictly for her own safety. He didn’t want to be responsible for anything happening to her.