On Thin Ice

by Susan Andersen

  It was time to stop playing games.

  Two minutes later, he was down on the next floor, pounding on Morrison’s door. He waited a moment, pounded again, then turned away. Damn. Okay, think. Where else might he be?

  Corselli’s room? Alerting a possible suspect by pounding on her door wasn’t exactly recommended procedure, so he went down to the lobby and used the house phone to dial her room.

  No answer.

  Swearing viciously under his breath, Mick banged the receiver into its cradle and crossed the lobby to the lounge. He stuck his head in the door and looked around, not expecting much by this time.

  Morrison was sitting by himself, nursing a beer at a table in the corner.

  Mick walked over, pulled out a chair and sat down. He dug his ID out of his hip pocket, but a waitress materialized before he had a chance to show it to the other man. “Club soda,” he said without taking his eyes off Morrison.

  “I’m set,” Lon told her. He crossed his arms over his chest and lounged back, eyeing Mick sourly as she walked away. “To what do I owe the honor, Vinicor?”

  Mick flipped open the ID and slid it across the small tabletop. Lon sat up and leaned forward to read it, squinting to make out the words in the dim lighting. Suddenly, he swore and snapped upright. “DEA?” he said hoarsely. “You’re fucking DEA?”

  “That’s right.” Mick snapped the wallet closed and slid it back into his pocket.

  “Does Sasha know about this? Ah, hell yeah, of course she does . . . and I know to the day when she found out. You son of bitch! Coming out of his chair, Lon lunged across the table at him. Grabbing a handful of sweater in both fists, he started to haul Mick to his feet, but Mick brought his hands up under Lon’s wrists and snapped them wide, breaking the hold. Gripping Lon’s shoulders, he surged to his own feet, using the momentum to shove Morrison back into his seat. Leaning across the minute cocktail table, he thrust his face into the other man’s and said between gritted teeth, “Sit the hell down and shut up!”

  “You used her, you—”

  “And you didn’t? ” Mick’s fists twisted in the material of Lon’s shirt and yanked, hauling him halfway to his feet. They stood nose to nose hunched over the table. “Don’t get sanctimonious on me, you sorry son of a bitch. You got a job here by using her. She vouched for you and you were willing to destroy everything she’s put together since the last time you fucked her over by going back to doing the same old shit that got you tossed in the pen in the first place. You think that won’t affect the way the people she works with regard her?” Breathing heavily, he loosened his grip and flicked the backs of his fingers disdainfully against the material. “Between the two of us we’re chipping away at her life piece by freakin’ piece, but you aren’t any more fit to lick her goddam shoes clean than I am, so don’t talk to me about using her.”

  Lon sank back into his seat. He picked up his beer, drained it, then set the glass carefully back within the same condensation ring on the tabletop. He looked up at Mick, saw the fury and the anguish. “She’s gonna dump you, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, the minute I get this case solved.” The look Mick gave him was bitter. “That should make you happy.”

  “I guess that depends on whether you love her or if this was all just a game or a job or whatever to you.”

  “I love her all right, but it doesn’t matter to her. She’s tired to death of being lied to.”

  “Oh, I imagine it matters a whole lot more than you think. And if it makes you feel any better, you’re right about me. I’m a loser and Sasha’s better off without me. But you got one thing wrong. I haven’t sold since I was sprung. I’ll admit I considered it when I got out and discovered that everything had changed, that Saush had you and Nakamura and didn’t need me—that she’d grown up and got on with her life. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, Vinicor.”

  “But you do have a partner who’s pressuring you?”

  He gave an unamused snort of laughter. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Who is it?”

  Lonnie plowed his fingers through his hair. “Ah, man, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I will if you say it’s Karen Corselli.”

  Lon’s head jerked up. “You know? ” A short, sharp bark of incredulous laughter exploded out of his throat and he leaned forward on his forearms, pinning Mick with a look of such intensity it made Mick blink.

  “Jesus,” Lon said hoarsely, “I didn’t think there was a person in the world who would give a lick of credence to the word of an ex-con over that of a Bible-thumping, upstanding citizen like Miss Corselli. How did you figure it out?” He waved the question away. “Never mind; it doesn’t matter.” He got right down to business. “She’s got a gun, Vinicor. I found it this morning before we left Cheyenne. I bought some blanks as soon as we hit town, but I only had time to replace about three-quarters of ’em.”

  “Does she suspect you?”

  “No.” Lon shook his head. “But that’s not going to last because I haven’t been able to . . . uh . . . perform. Not this morning and not this afternoon, either. At least that time I picked a fight to disguise the fact that I wasn’t getting it up, but she’s not stupid—she’s going to put two and two together sooner or later.”

  The waitress came up with Mick’s club soda and he waved her away with an impatient, authoritative gesture. Turning back to Lon he demanded, “Give me aprofile on this woman.”

  “She’s a control freak. A power junkie. And she’s the most accomplished woman in bed I’ve ever met. That’s how she reeled me in originally—with the promise of riches the likes of which I’d never seen on the west side of Kells Crossing and sex that I thought only existed in wet dreams. Some of the stuff she could do? Oh, man . . .” He shook his head dreamily, then sat up straighter, shaking off the memories. “You know something, though, Vinicor, I don’t think she really likes it. Most women who are good in the sack, it’s because they truly love sex or there’s a real strong chemistry with their partner or both. But with Karen . . .” He shrugged. “I think it’s a power thing, but she’s so damn good you don’t notice for the longest time.”

  Mick got a brief flash of Lon as he must have been as a randy, small-town twenty-one-year-old, and he had to purposely block it out. He didn’t want to feel empathy for the man. “You want her off the streets?” he demanded coolly.

  “Yeah. Sometimes I really like her, and there’s something about her at times that I almost feel sorry for, but . . . yeah. I want her off the streets.”

  “Would you be willing to wear a wire?”

  “If you think it would help Saush.”

  “Okay, then,” Mick leaned forward to lay out the plan, but he’d barely said three words when they were interrupted by the waitress determined to serve the drink he’d ordered. The instant she walked away, both men immediately became involved in the details of the plan. More alike then either was willing to acknowledge, they passed ideas back and forth beneath the hum of surrounding chatter.

  A furious voice suddenly interrupted them. “There you are, you two-faced, lying jerk,” it said with low-voiced venom, and both men’s heads snapped up. Connie Nakamura stood beside the table, hands on her diminutive hips, and she was the picture of outraged fury as she glared down at Lon Morrison.

  TWENTY

  If looks truly could kill, Lon would have been the dead man he’d yesterday informed Connie he was. She drilled him with her eyes, and they glittered with unleashed temper. There was no doubting her very real willingness to annihilate him where he sat.

  Intrigued with her as always, Lon sat up and gave her his undivided attention, but Mick barely gave her a second glance. “Not now, Connie,” he said impatiently and flapped a hand at her.

  “Butt out, Vinicor,” she snapped. “No one was talking to you.”

  That got his attention but hers had already reverted to Lon. “You are some piece of work, mister,” she said with low-voiced bitterness. “Where do you get off comin
g on to me when you’re sleeping with Karen Corselli?”

  Both men snapped upright. “How did you find out about that?” Mick demanded at the same time that Lon snarled, “Goddammit! Sasha gave me her word she wouldn’t—”

  “Oh, that’s beautiful.” Slapping both hands down on the tabletop, Connie leaned her weight on them as she glared down at them. “You guys really are two of a kind,” she said, drilling them with a look filled with contempt. “When all else fails, I guess you can always put the blame on Sasha.”

  She knew she was being unfair but didn’t care. Leaning down she thrust her face aggressively close to Lonnie’s and said through clenched teeth, “I do not accept other women’s leavings, Morrison. This may come as a big surprise to you, but I . . . don’t . . . have to.”

  “To the contrary, my fragile little cherry blossom, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “I am not your little anything!”

  “Much to my dismay.” Then Lon dropped the bantering and said soberly, “Look, Connie, it isn’t what it seems.”

  “Oh, right.” Her laugh was bitterly unamused. “You weren’t really coming from Karen Corselli’s room when I first saw you.”

  “Well, yeah, I was, but . . .”

  “And you didn’t actually go right back the minute my elevator departed for the lobby.”

  “Well, okay, I did, but . . .”

  “Listen,” Mick interrupted irritably. “Could you two carry on this conversation some other time? We’ve got more important matters . . .”

  “Butt out, Vinicor!” Both parties snapped in unison, but then Lon said to Mick in a more reasonable tone, “Look, just give me a minute here, will ya? I’d do the same for you if it was Saush you needed to straighten things out with.”

  “Like hell you would,” Mick mumbled under his breath but nevertheless climbed to his feet. He gave them both a disgusted look and snapped, “Ten minutes, Morrison. I’ll be up in my room.” Tossing a bill on the table, he strode away. Connie watched him go, then turned back to Lon.

  “Well, aren’t you two cozy all of a sudden,” she snarled, feeling a sudden vulnerability now that it was just the two of them with no third party to act as buffer. Then her backbone snapped her erect. Oh, no; no more. He was through getting away with making her feel that way. “I won’t keep you,” she said with hard-won dignity. “I just stopped by to let you know that I’m on to you, and to tell you to keep your damn distance.”

  “Well, I’ll tell ya, Connie,” Lon said. “I sure wish I could oblige you, but I’ve got a little problem with that.”

  “Yes?” she challenged coolly. “And what might that be?”

  Lon shrugged. “I don’t want to keep my distance,” he said. Lightning fast his hands whipped out and wrapped around her forearms, jerking her onto his lap. She instinctively started to struggle but he exerted upward pressure with the thighs she sat on, downward pressure on the arms he firmly held, and put his lips next to her ear to murmur, “You can continue to do that, of course, but this table has already provided the entire bar with a whole lot of entertainment this evening and I gotta warn you, you’re only adding to the show.”

  Connie glanced over her shoulder and saw that the lounge patrons were indeed watching them with unconcealed amusement. She stilled, straightening her spine and sitting with rigid dignity upon his knees. “So, when did you and Vinicor get so chummy?” she demanded quietly, determined to maintain her dignity no matter what this clown subjected her to. And if her position here on his lap caused her heart to beat just the tiniest bit faster, well, that would be her secret. “I thought you hated each other’s guts. Isn’t that one of the weapons you’ve both been using to twist Sasha’s guts into knots?”

  Lonnie winced. “There’s not a whole lot I can say in response to that, is there?” he answered equitably enough. “Except perhaps to say that after we’ve taken care of another problem we’re working on, maybe we can do something to rectify that.” Then his eyes narrowed on her. “Just how much do you know about Vinicor, anyway?” he demanded.

  Connie looked him straight in the eye. “Enough to know that you could alleviate a lot of Saush’s danger by telling him the name of the person pressuring you to resume pushing drugs.”

  It belatedly occurred to Sasha that she probably shouldn’t have allowed herself to be manipulated into a situation that left her stranded with someone on Mick’s list of possible suspects. She considered herself a reasonably intelligent woman under ordinary circumstances, but let’s face it, circumstances had been far from ordinary for some time now and this wasn’t the shrewdest decision she’d ever made.

  It wasn’t that Karen was doing anything overt to make her nervous; there was just a hint of menace that she sensed. It was not a feeling she could quite pin down, and it certainly wasn’t rational. Nevertheless, it stuck with her, fueling a little kernel of unease.

  She cast a sidelong glance at the woman beside her, taking note of the gleaming hair and the translucent skin that glowed beneath overhead lights. Karen turned her head and caught her eye, giving her a sweet smile. Talk about your imagination running amok, Miller. What next, conspiracies involving Salvation Army bellringers? This feeling was most likely nothing more than the realization that some of her own reasons for being here were a bit more convoluted than she cared to admit.

  She took such pride in her own honesty, in her refusal to fool herself. Yet she had to admit, as she skated with Karen slowly over the ice, that a desire to take an action diametrically opposed to whatever she thought Mick or Lon would deem acceptable had probably played a role in her decision to stay behind tonight with a woman she didn’t particularly like. It might not have been a consciously acknowledged desire, but it was one that most likely had guided her as surely as her inherent willingness to lend a hand to a fellow skater. Just one of her dirty little secrets, she thought wryly, and having exposed it to the light of day, had to wince. Good God, Saush. How immature can you get?

  A slight smile pulled up the corner of her mouth. Oh, trust me. Much more immature than this.

  Karen mumbled something at her side and Sasha’s smile dropped away, her unease returning. This wasn’t the first time Karen had said things that sounded as if she were responding to an unseen third party, but where she’d displayed a sort of endearing embarrassment about it earlier, now she didn’t even seem to notice. It was almost as if she were perhaps just the slightest bit out of touch with the real world.

  “Here’s the spot that probably tripped you up,” Sasha said, pointing to small hump of ice and dropping an orange pylon over it to mark the spot for the crew to take care of tomorrow afternoon. “The rest looks pretty good.” Testing the last quadrant, she executed an unambitious single lutz that ended with her gliding back to Karen’s side. “That should do it,” she said. “You ready to go?”

  “Yes.” The little smile that played around the corners of Karen’s mouth was chilling. “Oh, yes, indeed. I would say that it’s definitely time.”

  Sasha’s return smile was wary. Why did she get the feeling they were speaking on two different levels here? Well, never mind. With a shrug she skated up to the balustrade, hauled herself up, and swung her legs over to the spectator seating side. She began working her skates off. With luck, they’d be back at the hotel in ten minutes and she could put this entire eerie little episode out of her mind. It was probably just the poor lighting in here that was making her so jumpy.

  The only real illumination in the otherwise dark and cavernous arena came from the overhead lights directly above the ice. Gloom edged the peripheries where they sat and except for a weak bulb burning down by the end of the corridor where they would exit, total darkness encompassed the back hallways and the wings. Wiping off her blades, Sasha slid on their guards and tossed the skates into her case; then she pulled on a pair of thick socks and her old Weejuns. She was aware of Karen doing the same next to her. Easing off the balustrade, she efficiently straightened her skate case, closed it up, pull
ed on her jacket, and turned back to Karen, who was still sitting cross-legged atop the railing that divided gallery from rink. “Ready?” she started to inquire.

  But the word died with a froglike croak deep in her throat. Her eyes widened and then refused to look away as Karen’s hand came up and leveled a pistol straight at her chest.

  Where the hell was she? Mick paced his hotel room, pausing to listen whenever he heard someone pass by in the hallway.

  When he’d first arrived to find their room empty, he hadn’t even questioned Sasha’s absence, so accustomed was he to being avoided by her these days. But after a few moments it had occurred to him that when she wasn’t safely ensconced with him he could count on her being in Connie Nakamura’s company. And at this very moment Connie was downstairs in the lounge with Morrison.

  Sans Sasha.

  The hell with this waiting business. That had never been his style and he saw no reason at this late date to go changing methods that had worked for him in the past. Mick picked up the room key and stuffed it in his jacket pocket, heading for the door. In any case, the ten minutes he had granted Morrison were up.

  And he wanted to know, if Sasha wasn’t with him and she wasn’t with Connie, then just where the bloody hell was she?

  The barrel of the gun pointing at her chest looked big enough to drive a train through. Sasha stood very, very still. She found it necessary to lock her knees to prevent them from audibly knocking together, but she was proud of the calmness of her voice when she spoke. “This is a joke, right?” she demanded. “Karen, put that thing down. You’re making me nervous.” It was a wonder her voice functioned at all, never mind managed to sound so coolly incredulous. Her hands gripped each other by her waist. She might find the situation incomprehensible, but she knew in her gut that it was no joke. Her instincts had been trying to tell her otherwise for the past hour.

  Karen wasted no time in letting her know that assumption was a valid one. “No joke,” she replied coolly. “And you should be nervous, Sasha. Very . . . very . . . nervous.”