by Chris Rogers
Hearing a hum that could be the elevator ascending, she jogged to the right. The hotel’s main dining room on the twenty-seventh floor offered some of the best food in the city. If the brunette was registered here, she and Coombs might be planning to catch dinner while he romanced her into inviting him back to her suite.
Dusky blue carpet muffled Dixie’s footsteps as she sprinted down the hall, hoping the elevator was the old-fashioned kind with lighted numbers to show where it stopped. She came abreast of the second meeting room, and the door opened.
A hand snapped around her wrist, yanked her into the room.
“Looking for me, darlin’?”
Coombs’ blue eyes stared down at her.
Uh-oh.
“Don’t flatter yourself, jerk.” Dixie twisted away, but his hand on her wrist was like a steel band. When she tried to knee him, he spun her around and enveloped her with his body, his arms pinning hers like baling straps.
“Heard somebody was asking about me this afternoon,” he drawled softly. “Guess that must be you.”
He smelled of Aramis, one of Dixie’s favorite men’s colognes. Until now.
She brought her boot heel down hard on his Italian loafers. He flinched, but his grip remained as tight as ever, and suddenly she could feel his wet breath in her ear. A shiver went through her. She wondered briefly about the brunette, figured it’d been her in the elevator.
“The judge missed you this morning, Coombs.”
He chuckled low, his mouth still at her ear. “The judge will get over it. Had to visit my sick mother.”
“Sure you did.” Expecting merely to finger Coombs for the HPD, Dixie had entered the hotel unarmed, except for the Kubaton, a six-inch hard-plastic rod, always on her key ring. If she could reach it…
“You have the tightest, roundest little ass under those jeans. Don’t you darlin? Tight, round … hot.”
His hand snaked between her legs.
Dixie used the motion against him, tucking quickly to flip him over her shoulders onto his back. He knew the right moves and rolled as he landed, one arm reaching out to grab her ankle. He jerked her off balance.
She hit solid on her rump, jarring her spine all the way up. Pain laced through her teeth and skull.
Then he was on top of her, pinning her arms beneath her, slamming his fist into her right breast. Dixie’s breath flew out of her as pain rushed in. She arched, trying to force him off, trying to free her hands, but his weight was like lead.
“Look at me, darlin’,” Coombs whispered. “Look at me.” He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked. “Let me see the pain shining in those sweet brown eyes.”
His other hand worked at the front of her jeans.
Dixie twisted sideways and shouldered him into a chair. The chair fell, bounced off Coombs, and landed like an iron fist on the side of Dixie’s face.
Her vision wobbled. She tasted blood, felt it dribble from her mouth. She tried again to twist beneath him, but he was too strong, too heavy.
“Since you were so hot to find me, pretty lady, I’m going to give you a treat. I’m going to bury my cock right up to your belly.” He licked the blood off her mouth.
Dixie clamped her teeth on his lower lip and bit down, jerking her head side to side like a pit bull.
Coombs grunted, loosening his hold on her hair.
She slammed a knee into his groin, but the angle was all wrong. Blood flowed from his torn lip into her mouth. She could feel her teeth click together in the thin skin beneath his lip, and the thought that she might bite it off sickened her.
Finally freeing one of her hands, she gouged at his eye. Her thumb had barely connected when a hammer blow of his fist hit her face. Pain lashed through her cheekbone, splintering into bright red shards of light inside her head.
But she refused to let go of his lip. His whiskey breath filled her nostrils.
How can this be happening in a busy hotel? she wondered lamely. Can’t anyone hear?
But it’d been only a minute, maybe two, since he surprised her in the hall. And how much noise had they actually made?
Her ears rang. She’d go for Coombs’ eye again, but she wasn’t sure where her hand was or how to make it work.
She felt his thumbs on her jaw, prying her mouth open. With one abrupt thrust, she heaved him off, releasing his lip. She scrambled away, spitting blood.
“Casey!” she yelled—knowing the Parrot Lounge was too far away. Her vision had cleared, but her head felt ready to explode. Spotting the fallen chair, she grabbed it and swung upward, striking Coombs’ hip. He barely noticed.
“So you like it rough, do you, babe? Let’s see just how rough.” He scooped up a chair by its legs.
Dixie backed away, her chest screaking pain where Coombs had pounded it. She could hold her own against a lot of men, but at five-two, 120 pounds, she was no match for this man. He hadn’t built those muscles at a piano bar.
“Casey!” Dixie yelled again. “Casey!”
Coombs swung the chair. Dixie dodged, but the metal frame cracked against her foot and ankle. As the blow sent her sprawling, she heard herself scream. Fury burst inside her like a Fourth of July rocket.
Hobbling to her feet, she dove at Coombs, shoving him into the wall, and this time her knee connected with his testicles. When he doubled over, Dixie butted the top of her head into his face. Blood spattered her shoulders. She kneed him again, fury driving her leg like a piston.
The door crashed open.
“There she is!”
Through her rage, Dixie saw Casey James rush through the doorway, blue uniforms crowding behind. For a furious instant, Dixie was only mildly grateful. Another minute alone with Coombs and she’d have stomped his bastard balls into a bloody pulp, nullifying any future rape plans.
“Are you all right, honey?” Casey’s camera flashed in Dixie’s face. “Truth, woman! When you promise a story, you deliver in spades!”
Chapter Three
“Aunt Dix, when you get your cast, I’m the first to sign it. Okay?” Ryan, Dixie’s twelve-year-old nephew, watched intently as a doctor probed her ankle.
She lay on a narrow emergency-room bed, stoic face firmly in place. Her family had gotten wind somehow of her scuffle with Coombs and had rushed to the hospital, insisting on crowding into the tiny treatment cubicle. Ryan’s slender neck stretched forward, taking in the doctor’s every move.
Dixie’s bouts with danger fascinated the boy when he heard about them thirdhand, but actually seeing his aunt injured had stiffened him up like boiled starch. Dixie wished he’d relax and not worry about her. Hooking a finger in the back pocket of his jeans, she tugged him toward her, wincing at the pain that laced every muscle in her body.
“Sorry, kid, you’ll have to sign my Ace bandage.” Her jaw didn’t want to work right on its hinge, slurring her words a bit. “No cast. The ankle’s only bruised. Right, Doc?”
“Mmmmmm … possibly.”
“Just wrap it up and let me go home.” She hated such fuss over a simple injury that never would’ve happened if she hadn’t been such a dumbass, letting Coombs spot her. Now she’d have to endure another round of family lectures on choosing a less dangerous profession.
But she felt a pang of selfishness, seeing the pallor of her sister’s face as Amy fluffed up the bed pillows like giant marsh-mallows. When a hospital aide approached, Amy snatched a blanket from the young man’s arms.
“There you are! You people keep this room way too chilly.”
“Thank you,” Dixie mumbled to the aide.
Amy never meant to be rude, but on mother-hen duty she developed tunnel vision. Blond bob frazzled above a woolly lavender sweater, she had rushed in worried and clucking, demanding the blanket as soon as she saw Dixie’s skimpy paper coverlet.
“I don’t understand a hospital that insists on stripping you down to nothing,” she said, “then freezes you blue.” Now she snapped the blanket in the air, spread it, and patted it into place. “Ryan, do
n’t get in the doctor’s way. He needs that light you’re blocking.”
“I’m not in his way, Mom. Just watching. You’re going to need X rays, Aunt Dix.”
“X rays!” Amy tucked the soft washed cotton around Dixie’s neck. “That’s a good idea. Don’t you think so, Doctor?”
Tiny silver bells on Amy’s charm bracelet tinkled in Dixie’s ear. Amy had worn silver bells on the day they met, Dixie recalled, the day Amy’s parents, Barney and Kathleen Flannigan, brought Dixie home from the halfway house, ink barely dry on the adoption papers. The bells had dangled from Amy’s ears that day, glinting in the sunlight, framing a broad welcoming smile. Nearly three years older than Dixie, Amy had been the best big sister any girl could want. Sometimes, though, her patting and tucking got tedious. Dixie pulled the blanket away from her chin.
“Yep.” The doctor straightened and scribbled on Dixie’s chart. “Well take a few pictures, see what’s going on in there. Are you planning to be a doctor, young man?”
“No, sir. An airplane pilot. But I might need to set a broken bone, in case of a plane crash.”
“Ry-an!” Amy’s bells tinkled nervously as she waved aside her sons comment. “Parker said the plane is perfectly safe.”
Parker Dann, bold as a pirate and solid as steel—the man who made Dixie’s toes curl every time he smiled—stood a few feet from the bed, talking to Amy’s husband, Carson Royal. Parker had promised to take the whole family flying next weekend. Amy still had the flutters about going up.
“Isn’t it safe, Parker?” she insisted.
“Safer than the Parrot Lounge, anyway.” Parker’s dark brows hooded fierce blue eyes as he studied Dixie, thick mustache tracing a narrow smile.
His gaze hadn’t left Dixie’s face since he stormed into the emergency room like a knight on a white charger. A girlish part of her—a part Dixie scarcely knew existed—felt as maidenly as Guinevere. Nevertheless, she’d turned her stoic face on him, declaring she was fine.
“Aunt Dix can still go flying on Sunday, can’t she?” Ryan looked worriedly at the doctor. “And teach our self-defense class?”
The doctor, pushing the cubicle curtain aside to wave in a nurse with a wheelchair, cocked an eyebrow at Ryan.
“Why don’t we wait until after the X rays to talk about what your aunt can do?”
He winked and walked out whistling. Dixie wasn’t sure whether a whistling doctor was a good thing.
A buzz of activity had greeted her when she arrived at the hospital shortly after Coombs. Apparently, Casey James had spread the word that Dixie was responsible for the damage to Coombs’ face. His nose and lip had swelled, turning his handsome features grotesque. Seeing the teeth marks, the doctor had immediately ordered blood tests. Until that moment, Dixie hadn’t considered the possibility of AIDS. Another dumbass move, biting him.
The nurse positioned the wheelchair close to the bed. “Can you sit up, Ms. Flannigan?”
“Sure.” Dixie’s entire left side objected screamingly, but for Ryan’s sake she bit back the cowardly moan that threatened to spill out.
With the nurse’s help, Dixie eased off the bed and into the wheelchair. A tone chimed outside the cubicle. The nurse frowned toward the sound, glanced back at Dixie, then turned to leave.
“We’re a bit shorthanded,” she explained, “but I’ll send someone to take you upstairs.”
Parker grasped the wheelchair handles. “I’ll take her. Where do we go?”
The nurse paused, as if considering. The chime sounded again.
“Radiology. Second floor. Just follow the signs.” She dashed away.
As Parker wheeled the chair around and aimed it toward the cubicle opening, her brother-in-law stepped forward to hold the curtain.
“This is precisely why I’m saying she ought to think about missing persons,” Carl told Parker, making himself skinny for the wheelchair to pass. “Friend of mine says everybody’s looking for somebody these days. Missing mothers, fathers, kids.”
Parker didn’t answer, but in the silence Dixie could sense his agreement. The only time he turned bearish and surly was when Dixie’s job got her into a scrap, which in the past weeks—and she’d barely known Parker three weeks—had happened more frequently than she cared to think about.
“I like Carl’s idea,” Amy said. She’d whipped the blanket off the bed, and now she settled it on Dixie’s lap, tucking it around her legs. “All those missing kids, somebody needs to find them, Dixie, and you’re good at that. She found you quick enough, didn’t she, Parker?”
“Like I had a red beacon blinking on my tail.”
Dixie looked up to find him smiling. He hadn’t thought it humorous at the time, though, her bringing him back from North Dakota after he’d skipped out on his trial. Parker’s case had made Dixie reevaluate her conviction that innocent suspects don’t run.
“Problem is,” her brother-in-law persisted, “police departments don’t have enough manpower to look for missing persons. Opens up a whole new industry—runaways, divorced parents stealing their own kids. What I’m saying, Parker, there’s a need out there that’s not being filled. Your sales ability, Dixie’s street sense, the pair of you could rake in a bundle.”
“Keep talking, Carl,” Parker told him. “Sooner or later some of it’s going to land between her stubborn ears.” He pointed the chair toward an elevator bank and kept moving.
“Guess this was another of your quick, safe, simple jobs,” he muttered to Dixie. “Did you see the size of that bruise on your face?”
“I’ve been needing a new hairstyle anyway.” She drew a strand of her short hair over the bruise, then continued, speaking gingerly around the pain in her jaw. “Maybe I’ll get one that swings over my cheek, all sultry like that actress from the thirties. What was her name?”
Parker jabbed the elevator button. Behind them, Ryan was bumming vending-machine change from his parents. Maybe that meant they wouldn’t all follow her upstairs.
“Tallulah Bankhead. And stop changing the subject. Carl has a point this time. If this missing persons investigator needs a partner—”
“I don’t need a partner to find lost kids or lost parents.”
The elevator doors opened. Parker pushed the chair into the empty car and punched a button for the second floor. Dixie could feel his frustration pulsing behind her as he stood waiting for the doors to close. When the car began to move, he leaned over, captured her hands for a gentle squeeze, and kissed the top of her head. Then he held on, as if drawing her energy inside him. His breath escaped into her hair. The warm scent of him enveloped her.
“Dixie, do what you have to do. But don’t expect me not to worry about you.”
She turned her face up to meet his lips. Instantly, all the pain and frustration of the past few hours began to dissipate, like ashes on a lake. Much too soon, the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors slid open. A white-coated technician stood in the hall.
“Ms. Desiree Flannigan?”
“Its Dixie Flannigan.” Her blood mother, an incurable romantic, had christened her Desiree Alexandra, which Dixie promptly shed at the age of twelve, except on legal papers.
“The doctor wants pictures of your foot. My, that is swollen, isn’t it?”
Twenty minutes later, after being x-rayed, turned, x-rayed some more—feeling a whole lot like a piece of microwaved beef—Dixie eased into the wheelchair again, and Parker maneuvered her back down to the ER. Ryan bounded up beside her.
“Is it broken?”
“Don’t know yet.” Dixie hooked an arm around his scrawny neck and pulled him down to eye level. “What’s with all the enthusiasm? Are you trying to get a school paper out of this?”
He grinned sheepishly, wriggling in her grasp as they continued down the corridor. Her escapades had gained Ryan at least one A in creativity and a lot of attention from his classmates. She planted a loud kiss on his cheek, then whispered in his ear, “You can claim it’s broken, if you want.”
; She dropped several more wet kisses on him while he squirmed, finally freeing himself.
“That reporter lady said the man you beat up is in jail.” He scrubbed a hand over his damp cheek.
“Let’s hope he stays there.”
“What’d he do?”
They’d reached the treatment cubicle, where Carl and Amy loitered outside the curtain, along with a new visitor, Brenda Benson, prosecutor on the Coombs case.
Small but sturdy, Brenda was striking without being pretty, with amber eyes, a strong jaw, and magnificent yellow-gold hair that made you think of sunny beaches, even on the stormiest winter day. In grade school, Dixie recalled, her hair had invoked taunts—“Hey, Straw Head,” “Hey, Mellow Yellow,” or even “Hey, Pee Brain.” But the jibes bounced off Brenda like water off a hot griddle, and now, at nearly forty, her yellow hair looked as lustrous as ever, despite the unforgiving hospital lights.
As Parker coasted the wheelchair to a stop, Brenda raked back a long strand that had escaped its clip. Dixie wondered if her friend had torn herself away from a prosecutor’s crushing workload just to check on a sprained foot. Probably. Compassionate, aggressively single, stubborn as a dripping faucet, Brenda had once snipped off her own beautiful locks to support a classmate who was humiliated for having a case of head lice. Afterward, without the golden mane waving above her coarse features, Brenda was frequently mistaken for a boy. Any other girl would’ve been insulted. Brenda had seen both humor and opportunity in the situation, encouraging the misconception anytime being a boy offered advantage.
Tonight her amber eyes shone with the same intensity as when she and Dixie, as ten-year-olds, had shared their darkest secrets. She wore a smart camel suit, somewhat wilted, simple alligator pumps, and an expression of intense worry.
To ease her friend’s concern, Dixie flashed a grin.
“Hey, Mellow Yellow. Next time a worm wriggles off your line, I want a bigger net to catch him with.”
Brenda’s weary smile barely lifted the corners of her thin lips.
“From what I hear, you gaffed the sonofa—” She cut her eyes toward Ryan, and the smile brightened a watt or two. “To answer your question,” she told Ryan, “Lawrence Coombs committed as many rotten, dirty deeds as any videogame monster. Your aunt zapped the sucker, thus doing the women of Houston a supreme justice.”
