by Gina Wilkins
Two very large, very strong arms came around her from behind, and before she could react, she found herself pinned against someone big, solid, and unmistakably menacing.
2
A HEAVY HAND covered Tara’s mouth before she could cry out. She resisted automatically, futilely struggling to break free from the man’s shackling arms.
“Who the hell are you?” a gravelly voice demanded in her ear. “And what are you doing here? What did he say to you?”
She managed to turn her head and look him straight in the face. She memorized his features in one searching glance before he cursed and turned her head away from him again.
“I guess it doesn’t matter what he said,” her attacker muttered. “You won’t be telling anybody.”
She couldn’t breathe. His massive hand covered her nose as well as her mouth, effectively blocking her air. Her vision started to blur. Tara clawed at his hand, but he hardly seemed to notice her frantic movements.
Silently, she screamed Blake’s name.
Someone rushed at them from behind. She heard something solid smash against the head of the man holding her. He fell like a boulder, nearly taking her down with him. steadying hands caught her arms. “Are you all right?” Blake demanded, holding her on her feet.
Gasping for breath, she nodded. “What—?”
The sound of running footsteps made Blake stiffen.
“Let’s go,” he said, pushing Tara somewhat roughly toward the door. “Now!”
“But...”
“Tara, move.”
Something in his voice made her respond without further argument. She allowed him to take her hand and pull her out of the office. A man in a dark suit stood at the left end of the hallway, blocking their path to the main gallery. He held something shiny in his hand.
Blake turned right, almost dragging Tara after him as he ran down the hallway and through another office. He shoved open a door, which led outside to an alley.
“Blake—”
He didn’t hesitate. “Run!”
Stumbling in her high heels, Tara tried to keep up with him. Something hit the wall of the building next door to the gallery. A shard of brick seemed to explode from the wall, missing Tara’s cheek by inches.
Blake cursed and yanked at her arm. “Hurry!”
Tara told herself it couldn’t possibly have been a bullet. She tried to convince herself that she’d watched entirely too much television during the past two weeks. But the urgency in Blake’s voice and the cold fear in her own chest propelled her to run faster.
They rounded the front of the gallery, emerging in the parking lot, which was crowded with vehicles and people either arriving late to the art show or leaving early. Never slowing down, Blake zigzagged through the obstacles toward his own car. He unlocked the doors with a remote device and had the engine running and the car in gear almost before Tara had crawled into the passenger seat.
He pulled out of the parking lot with a burst of speed, just missing a black Lexus that was turning in at the same time and a BMW coming from the other direction. Tara closed her eyes tightly as horns blew and tires squealed. She felt the back of Blake’s car fishtail for a moment, but he steadied it almost immediately and sped away from the gallery.
“We’re being followed,” he said before Tara could catch her breath to demand explanations. “Fasten your seat belt and hang on.”
She obeyed his curt instructions with shaking hands.
She didn’t dare ask what would happen if whoever was following them actually caught up with them.
IT TOOK BLAKE less than five miles to lose their pursuers. Driving through a neighborhood of built-toimpress mansions in one of the more exclusive Buckhead neighborhoods, he checked the rearview mirror repeatedly, until he was finally satisfied that he’d eluded the other car. Only then did he turn his attention to Tara, who’d been sitting in absolute silence, her hands twisted in her lap as she waited for an explanation.
He wished he had one to offer her. He had no idea how a case that was supposed to be so simple, so safe, had gone so very wrong. His assignment had been simply to accept an envelope of information from an anonymous contact. If he’d had any inkling that there would be danger involved, he never would have invited Tara to go with him.
“Are you all right?” he asked, reliving the shock of finding her struggling for her life in that back office, a dead man at her feet.
She countered with a question of her own. “Are they still chasing us?”
“We’ve lost them,” he assured her.
She nodded, though she didn’t look particularly relieved. “Will you please take me home now?” she asked, her tone just a bit too polite.
Blake winced. “I wish I could.”
Tara gave him a look that he suspected had made hardened IRS agents quail on occasion. “What do you mean? Why can’t you take me home?”
“Where’s your purse, Tara?” he asked gently.
“I...er...” She looked around for a moment, then grimaced. “I dropped it When I saw that man lying on the floor.”
Blake nodded. “That’s what I figured. The guy who grabbed you must have fallen on it when I hit him with the bronze.”
She swallowed. “Did you... Was he...?”
He understood what she was trying to ask. “I didn’t kill him. Probably just stunned him.”
In fact, the guy had probably been in the car that had followed them out of the gallery parking lot.
Tara drew a shaky breath of relief. “Thank God.”
Blake thought it best not to tell her that his first instinct, when he’d seen the jerk with his hands on Tara, obviously hurting her, had been to kill. The fury that had crashed through him had been powerful and violent. And since Blake didn’t consider himself a violent man, that had shaken him.
“They have your purse,” he said grimly, turning to more immediate concerns. “Which means they have your address, and even your keys. If we go to your apartment now, someone will likely be there waiting for us.”
“Someone?” Tara’s voice had gotten higher, tighter. “Someone will be at my apartment, waiting for us? Can you be a little more specific?”
He made another sharp turn, checked the rearview mirror again, then tried to answer her. “I’m afraid I’m a little short on details right now. Trust me, Tara, I have no more idea of what’s going on than you do. This was supposed to be a safe, easy assignment. Something went wrong.”
“Obviously,” Tara retorted with heavy sarcasm. “Someone tried to shoot us!”
He remembered the sound of a silenced bullet striking brick, only inches from Tara’s face, and his anger threatened to choke him again. But he managed to speak fairly normally when he said, “I’m afraid so.”
He turned onto an entrance ramp for I-75, headed northwest—the opposite direction from Tara’s apartment.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
“Somewhere safe,” he replied. “Someplace where we can talk.”
“Who are they, Blake? The man who was lying on the floor of that office. The man who grabbed me. The one who shot at us. What do they all have to do with your case?”
He didn’t know. And he knew she would find no reassurance in his ignorance. “We can talk more easily when I don’t have to concentrate on my driving,” he said, taking the easy way out.
Taking the hint, she fell quiet. But he knew his respite would be a brief one.
BLAKE TOOK TARA to a little motel in Marietta. The place was old, probably built in the early fifties, and the “rooms” consisted of individual small stucco cabins clustered around the office in the center. The paint was faded and peeling, and all the windows needed a good cleaning, but at least the motel didn’t seem to be in danger of imminent condemnation.
Blake didn’t bother to stop at the office, but pulled into a parking space in front of the cabin farthest from the others, at the very back of the compound. He slipped a key from his pocket and nodded toward the cabin door. “We�
�ll be safe here while I make some calls,” he said.
Tara looked doubtfully from Blake to the secluded motel cabin. He expected her to go inside with him, a man she hardly knew, after all that had happened to her because of him?
He shot her a quick glance. “Surely you know that you’re perfectly safe with me.”
No, as a matter of fact, she didn’t know that. Because of him, she’d been at the wrong end of a gun for the first time in her life. “I want to know what’s going on.”
“So do I,” he answered grimly. “But we aren’t going to get any answers sitting out here in the car. Trust me, Tara.”
She bit her lip as she considered all her options. All the reasons she shouldn’t trust him, considering everything. And then she reached for the door handle.
Maybe she was making a big mistake listening to him, trusting him at least a little...but it wouldn’t be the first mistake she’d made in the past few weeks.
The room was surprisingly clean. A double bed took up most of the floor space. In front of the single window sat a round table with two chairs. A long dresser was pushed up against the opposite wall, a small TV bolted to one end of it. A door at the back of the room probably led into the bathroom.
“This is where you’ve been staying?” Tara was a bit surprised that Blake, with his expensive-looking car and wardrobe, would choose such modest accommodations.
“Occasionally,” he answered with a shrug. “Are you hungry?”
She stared at him, wondering how he could possibly think she was hungry, under the circumstances. And then she scowled, wondering how she could possibly be hungry, under the circumstances. Because she was.
“A little,” she admitted.
“Me, too. There’s some food in the other room. Want to grab something for us while I make a call?”
He was acting as if they’d simply stopped off here for a snack after a pleasant outing at an art gallery, Tara thought in amazement as she watched him perch on the edge of the bed and reach for the telephone on the single nightstand. She wondered if being shot at was commonplace for this enigmatic P.L She wasn’t feeling nearly as calm about it as he looked. But then, she supposed it wouldn’t do any good for both of them to fall to pieces.
Trying to emulate his composure, she opened the door at the back of the room to find an unexpectedly roomy dressing area that led into the bathroom. A small refrigerator sat beneath the counter. Opening it, she found soft drinks and fruit juices, a package of lunch meat, cheese, mustard, bread, a jar of pickles and another of olives. A basket on the counter above the refrigerator held bags of chips and dried fruit, individually packaged pastries, paper plates and plastic cutlery .
This wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d agreed to have dinner with Blake, Tara thought with a sigh.
She gathered a few things to make a sandwich and carried them to the table in the other room. Blake hung up the phone just as she walked in.
“No answer,” he muttered.
“Who were you trying to call?”
“Information.” Without looking at her, he started dialing again.
Tara set to work making dinner, though most of her attention was on Blake, who seemed to be having no success reaching anyone by telephone. He finally slammed the receiver down with a muttered curse, and sat for a moment gazing into space, obviously lost in thought.
Tara couldn’t help staring at him. He seemed so different from the man she’d known at the law firm. She’d never seen him without his lazy grin, or a mischievous glint in his bright blue eyes. With his laid-back manner and light-colored, loose-fitting clothes, she’d always considered him the antithesis of the grim-faced, steely-eyed private investigator of fiction. She’d certainly never thought of him as tough or dangerous.
Looking at him now, she rapidly revised that innocuous mental image. Something in his expression made her pulse race a bit faster. She told herself it was only nerves.
He glanced her way, and she watched him make a deliberate effort to summon one of his easy smiles. But it was too late—she would never view him in quite the same way as she had before. She’d seen the menace in him when he’d taken out the big man who’d grabbed her, and the determination in him when he’d all but dragged her to his car and then efficiently evaded the men who’d pursued them from the gallery.
She knew now that there was much more to Blake than the smiling charmer she’d known on and off for the past couple of years.
“You—er—can’t reach your client?” she asked.
“No. The number he gave me has been disconnected.”
“What’s going on, Blake?”
He sighed. “I don’t know.”
That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.
He picked up the phone again.
“Who are you calling now? The police?” she asked hopefully.
“No. Not yet. What’s your phone number, Tara?”
“My number?”
He nodded patiently, his finger hovering above the number pad.
Though she couldn’t imagine why he wanted to hear her answering machine, she recited the number for him.
He dialed it, waited a moment, then scowled and slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Damn.”
“What?” she asked warily.
His eyes held an apology when he answered. “A man answered.”
She went cold. A strange man was in her apartment, going through her things, rummaging through her life, monitoring her calls. The feeling of invasion was sickening.
“Call the police,” she insisted. “Tell them there’s someone in my apartment who has no right to be there. Damn it, Blake, do something!”
He stood and caught her forearms in his hands, looking steadily into her eyes. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down?” She gaped at him in disbelief. “We were supposed to be going out for dinner. That’s all, dinner. And now a man has been shot, someone grabbed me and tried to smother me, someone else tried to shoot us, and we’re stuck hiding out in this dingy motel in Marietta while some strange guy helps himself to whatever he wants in my apartment. You tell me that you don’t know what’s going on, but you won’t call the police. And you want me to calm down?”
“It was only a suggestion,” he answered mildly. “Feel free to get hysterical if it will make you feel better.”
That brought her chin up. “I’m not going to get hysterical.”
“Good choice.”
“Don’t start patronizing me, Blake,” she warned him quietly. “Considering everything, I think I’ve handled this evening very well.”
“Tara, you’ve handled this evening beautifully, considering everything. And I’m not patronizing you. I’m trying to apologize for getting you into this mess in the first place.”
His blue eyes turned dark with self-recrimination. “If I’d had any suspicion that things would go this badly, I’d never have taken you with me to the art gallery. All I was supposed to do was to meet someone in the men’s room, accept an envelope from him, and then leave. I thought you could provide me with a good cover during the evening, make me look less suspicious for being there, and then we could have a nice dinner afterward. I never anticipated the rest of this.”
For some reason, she believed him.
“Was the man with the toupee the one you were supposed to meet?” she asked. “The one named Botkin?”
Blake grimaced. “I really hate to keep saying this, but...I don’t know. My guess would be that he was.”
“what...?”
Blake interrupted her next question. “Why don’t we eat our sandwiches and I’ll tell you what I know so far? And then I’ll try again to find out what the hell went wrong.”
She nodded. “All right What do you want to drink?”
His smile was a bit crooked. “A double bourbon, but I’ll settle for a cola. Sit down, I’ll get it. What would you like?”
“I saw some single-serving cans of orange juice. I’d like one of thos
e, please.” Considering how jittery she was already, Tara didn’t think caffeine was a good idea.
Blake nodded and headed for the refrigerator while Tara set their dinner of sandwiches, pickles and chips on the small, round table. The drapes were closed over the window beside the table, giving an illusion of intimacy within the little cottage.
They took their seats and opened their drinks. Blake looked glumly at his plate. “I was going to take you someplace really nice,” he murmured ruefully. “I had rather hoped to impress you this evening.”
“Well, you’ve certainly made an impression,” she responded, her tone dry.
He winced. “Not exactly the one I had in mind.”
She picked up her sandwich. “Tell me about your case.”
Between bites, Blake filled her in.
“I got a call from someone in an insurance company I work for sometimes—the same way I occasionally conduct investigations for your law firm,” he began.
“Former law firm,” Tara muttered.
He nodded. “Anyway, the person who called me wasn’t my usual contact, but since I don’t always talk to the same person, I didn’t find anything odd about that.”
“You said he asked you to meet someone at the art gallery and pick up an envelope?”
Instead of directly answering her, Blake asked a question of his own. “You’ve heard of C. Jackson Willfort?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t heard of him?”
The billionaire industrialist was a prominent figure in Georgia society, parlaying old family money into a lavish, high-profile life-style. He had a luxurious condo in Atlanta and an opulent, fortress-like compound outside of Savannah, and was almost as well known for the parties he threw as for his outspoken conservative political views and his generous philanthropy.
As Willfort approached his fiftieth birthday, there had been rumors that he was considering a run for office—governor, perhaps, or senator. Tara had even heard whispers that he was eyeing the Oval Office.
“You know that he’s an avid art collector?”
She nodded. “Didn’t he have some valuable paintings stolen from his collection recently?”
