Reckless Angel

by Maggie Shayne

  Chapter 6

  Toni’s face burned with humiliation as she stared at the door he’d just slammed. She’d made an utter fool of herself. She’d let herself believe in something that was pure fantasy. Like a little girl dreaming of a knight in shining armor, she’d let her imagination twist the truth. She’d seen everything exactly the way she’d wanted to see it. Nick had nailed the reason, in his crude way. She couldn’t allow herself to feel what she was feeling for a criminal, so she’d built him into a hero.

  “How could I have been such an idiot?” She turned from the door, and her gaze darted around the empty room, not really seeing anything. “My God, I almost told him…” She bit her lip, unwilling to complete the thought aloud. Hadn’t he just warned her about listening devices that might be in the house? Who was to say he hadn’t planted a few of his own right here? She’d come perilously close to admitting her alter ego tonight. She’d almost told him she was Toni Rio. If he truly worked for Taranto, that would be suicide.

  She grimaced when she realized she’d mentally injected an if into the thought. Was she still determined to think he was some kind of a saint? Her eyes burned, and a stabbing sense of betrayal twisted inside, even deeper than the humiliation. It made no sense, that feeling. He’d never claimed to be anything but what he was. Yet she’d told him her most painful secrets. She’d bared her heart’s deepest wounds to him.

  He’d seemed to care, she thought miserably. The way he held her and spoke softly…

  So what? Even a morally bankrupt bastard was entitled to noble impulses now and then.

  What about all the other things that don’t seem to fit? What about all the surveillance equipment, and his fear of being monitored by Taranto? Why the hidden apartment—the traveling telephone—the late-night meetings with Joey?

  More than that, her mind whispered. There was his brother, who’d died of a drug overdose. Just the mention of his brother brought Nick extreme pain. How could he be working for Taranto?

  She sighed hard and shook her head. She was at it again, trying to make a case for what was probably no more than wishful thinking. She couldn’t tell if her theory might still be valid. She was too close to it. It was like a work in progress at the moment. She wouldn’t be able to look at it objectively until she was able to distance herself.

  The fact was, she’d allowed herself to begin to care about the big lug. The lines between realistic theory and whimsical fantasy had faded until she could no longer see them. She had to get the hell out of here. Tonight. Before she let herself forget his cruel words and started seeing him as a character from one of her books.

  She paused as she realized that was exactly what she’d been doing. Nick was exactly the type Katrina would go for. Built like Atlas, arrogant and dangerous—that air of mystery about him.

  But she was not Katrina Chekov, she reminded herself. The things she’d seen in him had been different. His inability to hurt her or even let her go hungry. That well-hidden gentleness, which wasn’t nearly as well hidden as he thought. And while she’d exposed her secret pain to him, she remembered that she’d seen his, as well. The pain of being abandoned by his parents and of losing his brother, the pain he pretended didn’t hurt at all.

  Toni shook her head slowly. No, she couldn’t stay here another night. She had to leave before she did something she might regret for the rest of her life.

  He’d only glimpsed the hurt in her eyes briefly before he’d looked away. If he faced her, he was sure she’d see right through his act. He wanted to tell her the truth so badly it was eating him up from the inside out. But he couldn’t. Taranto was an expert at getting the truth out of people. He was damn good, too, at sensing when a person had something to tell or when they were ignorant. If he ever got his filthy hands on Toni, it would be far better for her if she knew nothing.

  Damn, the effect that woman had on him was like a wildfire on a tinder-dry forest. He could still taste her on his lips, feel her small body straining against him. Every move she made, every breath that mingled with his had been a plea. Tell me…trust me…

  Trust her. He couldn’t do that, dammit. Trusting other people had never brought him anything but disappointment. He’d be stupid to trust her when he knew she was hiding something. She had her own agenda. Who was to say she wouldn’t get whatever information she could from him and then just walk away? And why the hell shouldn’t she? Everyone he’d ever cared for had. He’d learned to depend on no one but himself. Leaning on others brought nothing but pain. It made you weak, vulnerable.

  Since Danny’s death, the finale in a series of desertions, Nick had existed in a virtual vacuum. No one got close to him. When he needed sexual release, he found it with strangers. He rarely even asked their names. His encounters with women were always cold, preplanned exchanges. He was consistently sober, consistently protected and never really satisfied.

  The only one to breach his self-imposed seclusion was Joey. But Joey had been close to him before his mother had walked out, before his father had been caught running from that liquor store with a six-pack, a wad of money and a loaded gun, and before Danny had died. In all that time, Joey had never broken faith. He’d always been there. But even with that, Nick lived with the constant certainty that Joey would disappear one day. He tried not to need his best friend. People never abandoned you when you were aloof. As long as you could take them or leave them, they tended to hang around. The minute you needed them, they vanished like a magician’s trick. Poof! Voila`! You’re on your own again, pal.

  “Here it is.” Joey’s voice shook him out of his brooding thoughts. Nick watched the red taillights come closer as the semitrailer backed up to the loading dock. The only other light was a single bulb overhead, just enough so they could see what they were doing. Besides Nick and Joey, three others waited to help unload the shipment.

  Rosco, an old faithful employee of Lou’s who’d never had the ambition to move up through the ranks, stood a few feet away, an automatic rifle gripped in a two-handed, ready-to-fire, hold. He was the lookout. The other two were younger, barely out of their teens, but already loyal lackeys to Lou’s machine. One called himself Sly, the other, Jake. Nick figured their names were something like Howard and Irving.

  When the truck came to a halt, Nick went to it and lifted the lever to release the rear doors. He swung them open and glanced inside. The crates looked for all the world like an innocent cargo of coffee. The cocaine was buried in the fragrant beans. The aroma would help to throw trained dogs off the scent.

  The two kids rushed past him and grabbed a crate each to bring out and stack on a waiting pallet. Joey pulled up on a forklift. When the pallet was filled, he’d pick it up on the tines and take it inside the warehouse. Nick glanced out into the darkness. Somewhere out there police officers must be waiting. Any second the night could explode with muzzle flashes and lethal bullets. Still his mind kept wandering into the zone he’d deemed forbidden. He was thinking of Toni, wondering if his cruel words had caused her any tears. She’d had enough pain in her life. Damn little Gypsy was systematically chipping away at the walls he’d so painstakingly erected…and that scared him.

  When the spotlight blinded him, Nick jerked in surprise, though he’d known it would come sooner or later. The bullhorn-enhanced voice drilled through the white glare. “This is the police. Step away from the truck, keeping your hands—”

  And then Taranto’s men started shooting. The kids dove for the weapons nearby, dropping crates and spilling coffee beans all over the place. Rosco squeezed off the first rapid burst of fire. The police shot back without missing a beat, and Nick knew that the men on the dock, himself included, were sitting ducks.

  He bent low and charged across the dock, slamming into the two kids and knocking them to the ground five feet below. He almost went over the edge of the platform himself. When he whirled, he saw Rosco lying on the wood, unmoving, limp. He must’ve been hit in the first volley. Nick lunged toward him and grabbed up the Uzi he’d
dropped when he fell. He pointed it, squeezed the trigger and held it, straining to keep the barrel from lifting skyward with the incredible force of the recoil. He put the spotlight out.

  Joey had hustled his butt off the forklift and taken cover behind it. He didn’t need to be told that the light above them made them perfect targets. He pulled his handgun and shot the bulb. Nick made his way toward him, bullets flying around him like a rainstorm. At least they had the benefit of darkness now. He and Joey crouched low, raced to the edge and over it, joining the two youths on the gravel-covered ground.

  A searing in his left thigh drew Nick’s hand to it. It came away warm and moist. With the adrenaline pumping, he hadn’t even felt the bullet rip into him, but he sure as hell felt it now. The two kids were still firing back at the cops, but Nick knew they couldn’t see enough to hit any of them. He tapped Joey on the shoulder. “We better try for the car. They won’t wait long to move in.” The unspoken conclusion to the sentence was in both pairs of eyes. And then one of these crazy punks might kill some of them.

  Joey nudged the other two, and the four of them ran for the nearest vehicle. Nick had left his car close for this very reason. They had a precarious three-second start before the police realized what had happened. Nick slid into the passenger seat, and Joey took the wheel without asking why. He slammed the pedal to the floor, sending a shower of loose stones behind them. Seconds later screaming sirens came to life.

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at the two in the back seat. “You two all right?”

  “Yeah,” Sly replied. “Damn, I thought we were all goners! I could feel the freakin’ bullets whizzin’ past me. I could feel ‘em. Damn!”

  Jake said nothing. He sat still, his eyes dilated and his skin pale in the dim interior of the car. Nick had a feeling he’d think twice before he decided to devote his remaining years to working for Lou Taranto.

  Joey’s stream of fluent cursing brought Nick’s head around. “You’re bleeding, Nick. You’re hit.”

  “Just drive,” Nick told him. “It’s nothing.” He looked down now and saw that his pant leg was soaked in blood. The warm trickle along his outer thigh told him it was still flowing. He slipped the belt from his waist, wrapped it around the wounded thigh, just above the injury, and pulled it tight.

  Joey rounded a corner, tires squealing, and came to a rubber-burning stop. “Out, you two,” he ordered the boys in the back. “Stay out of sight for an hour, then get your butts home.” The two clambered out the same door and vanished into a vacant building just as Joey pulled away from the curb.

  “I’m taking you to a hospital Nick. You’re bleeding like—”

  “Forget it!” Nick yanked the belt tighter and held it mercilessly. “It’s stopping. You let Jersey’s finest catch up with us, and we’ll be tied up for God knows how long. I can’t leave that little Gypsy to her own devices for more than a couple of hours. You don’t know what kind of hell she’d raise.”

  “Little Gyps—You mean Antonia? What damage can she do? She’s under lock and key.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  Her plan was simple. He’d open the door, she’d give him a healthy dose of hair spray in the face and then she’d run like hell. She’d wrapped a change of clothes and her notebook in one of his spare blankets, since there was no telling how long it would take her to find help. The bundle rested close enough so she could grab it as she fled. She watched for his car on the monitor, sighing her relief when it finally pulled up at the gate. She’d begun to think something might really have happened to him. She flicked the set off and tossed the remote over the row of books on the shelf. In case her attempt failed, it wouldn’t do to have him aware that she knew about the monitor. She positioned herself near the door, lifted the hair-spray can and waited.

  It seemed to take an unreasonably long time for him to come upstairs. She grew restless. Her feet itched and she shifted her weight back and forth from one to the other.

  Finally the door moved and Toni braced herself. It opened. Her finger touched the knob on the top of the can. Joey came through with Nick’s arm anchored over his shoulders. Nick’s head was bowed. Toni’s eyes widened as her gaze moved downward and she saw the scarlet blood dripping from his pant leg. His head came up. He met her horrified stare, and she could see the strain on his face. The can fell to the floor, forgotten in her rush to his side. She pulled his free arm around her and tried to take some of his weight. “To the bedroom,” she instructed, and she and Joey half carried Nick there and clumsily eased his huge body onto the edge of the bed. Toni released him long enough to tear the covers back, then gripped him again and pressed him down into the bed.

  “What happened?” Toni tried not to look at Nick’s face. Instead, she grabbed up her purse and rummaged for the tiny pair of foldable scissors. She couldn’t stand to see the pallor of his skin, the lines etched at the corners of his mouth. She found the scissors, dropped the purse to the floor and bent to begin snipping the material below the belt he’d twisted around his leg.

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” Nick ground out. He wasn’t lying flat, but holding his head and shoulders off the bed. She could hear the effort he made to keep his voice normal. She could hear the way he struggled to breathe deeply and regularly. The man couldn’t admit to weakness at all, even with a quart of blood soaking his clothes. He was infuriating.

  “He was shot,” Joey finally answered. She realized it had been a stupid question. Of course he’d been shot, what else? She peeled the material away from his skin. A mottled chasm in his flesh still pulsed blood, but at a slower rate. She couldn’t see the wound well until she cleaned some of the blood away.

  Her gaze pinned Joey. “Find something to prop his feet on—they ought to be elevated. Get the wounded leg higher so it’ll slow the blood flow.” She got off the bed. “You can take his shoes off, too.”

  Joey’s quick nod assured her he’d do what she asked. She hurried into the bathroom, dug into the medicine cabinet and gathered everything she thought might be of use: gauze pads and a roll of gauze, a tube of antiseptic ointment, some aspirin tablets, adhesive tape. She carried all of it into the bedroom, dumped it on the nightstand, then rushed back for a basin of warm water, a washcloth and a bar of soap.

  She was faster than Joey—then again, the poor man was shaking so hard it was amazing he could move. She hurried into the kitchen for the bottle of whiskey she’d found there before and a small glass. As she headed back, she glanced out the wide-open bookcase door. A little shudder passed through her. Could the one who’d done this to Nick have followed them? She closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief, then went back to the bedside.

  She had to swallow hard before she could speak. All of this was nearly too much. Seeing that much blood, knowing it was his…She twisted the cap from the bottle and poured with an amazingly steady hand. Leaning over him, she supported Nick’s head with one hand and held the glass to his lips with the other.

  “Hell, I’m not dying.” He took the glass from her and swallowed the contents. Toni poured another shot as soon as he’d emptied the glass. “Will you quit with this, Toni? I’m all right.”

  “Shut up and drink,” she snapped, her fear for him making her voice sharp. “And then you can quit this macho bull and lie back. It’s a strain to sit up and you know it.”

  Again Nick downed the whiskey. But he didn’t lie down. Toni sat on the bed and began gently cleansing the wounded thigh. The blood flow had slowed to a trickle.

  “Joey, go close the door,” Nick said, watching her. “Before my bird decides to fly the coop.”

  She didn’t pause in her removal of the blood with the wet, soapy cloth. “I already closed the door. I was afraid you might have been followed. Didn’t want whoever did this to walk right in and finish the job.” She dipped the cloth and squeezed it several times. God, there was a lot of blood.

  “Your mistake,” Nick said slowly. “I was shot by a cop. If he had followed me, he’d have
been your ticket out.”

  “I’d pretty much figured that out,” she replied. “And if I’d wanted out, Manelli, I wouldn’t be here. Don’t kid yourself about that.” She’d removed most of the blood by now. The bullet’s path had dug a furrow along his outer thigh. He was lucky it hadn’t been fractionally more to the right. It could’ve cost him his leg. She took the whiskey bottle and removed the cap again. “Another shot?” He shook his head. She took a folded towel and slipped it beneath his leg, then she tipped the bottle up and rinsed the wound in alcohol. She felt his body stiffen, heard the air he sucked through his teeth. Joey turned away, clapping a hand to his mouth.

  Toni used a gauze pad to absorb the blood-colored whiskey that ran from the gash, down the sides of his leg, and prepared to pour a bit more over the wound. She glanced at Joey. In another minute he’d be green. “You two left some obvious footprints to this apartment. Maybe you ought to clean them up.”

  “Yeah, right. I hadn’t thought of…” He stopped and glanced at Nick. “If you guys don’t need me.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” Toni told him. “He’ll be fine, and I can handle this alone.”

  Joey’s sigh filled the room. He sought Nick’s nod before he turned and left them alone.

  Toni rinsed the wound again, then began pulling the edges together and taping them to hold them tight. “I know it hurts,” she told him. “Hold on and I’ll get it over with as fast as I can. If you want another shot, for God’s sake say so.” He said nothing. She finished closing the wound, coated it in ointment and then several layers of gauze. She wound the roll of thin material around his entire thigh several times and taped it there tightly. Then she met his gaze.