by Susan Sey
She frowned at him, then said slowly, “My mind.”
“Why?”
“None of your damn business.”
Patrick considered her. “You’re really not going to tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
He gazed at her, then sighed. “Then there’s nothing to discuss. Let’s make that phone call.”
FRIDAY NIGHT found Patrick reliving one of his fonder memories from this latest sojourn in the Midwest, only with a nightmarish twist that sucked out all the fun.
In preparation for his latest meeting with the Great and Powerful Oz, he and Liz were once again alone together in the abandoned brewery adjoining Cargo. Goose was off tinkering with her radio or something, and he was taking his shirt off at Liz’s command. But this time, he wasn’t the predator. This time, he was the prey.
Liz smirked at him, her eyes going hot and vividly blue. “Shirt,” she said. “Off.”
He frowned at her. “I think I know the routine by now,” he said. “Surely I can wire myself this time?”
She moved toward him, her lips pursed into a moue that did odd things to his pulse. “Nope. This job doesn’t come with many perks, but wiring you is one of them.” She smiled then, widely. “It’s my job and I’m keeping it. Stop whining.”
“I’m hardly whining,” he said, then caught the pleading note in his own voice. God. He was whining. “Fine. Have at it.” He made short work of the buttons, dropped his shirt onto the desk and threw his arms wide.
Liz gave a happy sigh and Patrick braced himself against the feel of her small, warm hands moving leisurely over every inch of the skin he’d bared for her. He swallowed down a hum of pleasure at the drift of her fingers over his abdomen, the clean scent of her hair as she bent her head toward his chest to affix the tiny microphone. She circled him, dragging her fingers deliberately over his skin as she did, and he shuddered at the touch, at the waft of her breath against his shoulder blades. Everything in him demanded that he turn, snatch her up in his arms, crush her between his body and the nearest flat surface and claim her in every way a man can claim a woman. Standing on principle suddenly seemed like an extremely bad idea.
She smoothed adhesive tape into the small of his back and nestled the transmitter into place, her hands lingering warmly. His blood heated a few degrees more, and he knew suddenly that he’d reached the absolute limit of his control. He’d wanted Liz for longer than he could remember, wanted her more intensely than he’d ever wanted another woman. Why exactly was he denying himself what he wanted more than anything, what she was so clearly willing to give him?
He turned slowly, his fists clenched and rigid by his sides, but she didn’t back away. She swayed into him instead, reached up and threaded her fingers through his hair. Her eyes were heavy lidded and sparkling with that disturbing combination of desire and calculation that had been eating at him for the past few days. Her mouth was close enough to kiss, her breath warm on his lips. He clung with a superhuman strength to one last shred of self-control and didn’t close the gap. He held himself immobile, apart. God, it was killing him.
In the end, it was Liz who moved.
“For luck,” she said. His own words, he thought, and it was the last thing he thought for some time because then she was kissing him. She kissed him with all the frustration, the need and the raging, edgy want he’d gotten used to living with. Patrick’s already tenuous grip on his self-control slipped and he banded his arms around her. He pushed her back onto the desk, boosted her up until he was between her knees, pressing himself mindlessly into the consuming fiery center of her.
Her mouth opened under his, her knees came up to grip his hips and she pulled him even closer. Closer. God, that’s all he wanted to be. Closer and closer until there was nothing left between them. No secrets, no space, no history. Nothing that could divide them.
“Liz,” he said finally, breaking the kiss. He didn’t open his eyes, just leaned his forehead against hers and tried to control his ragged breathing. “You win. I don’t care anymore. I want you too much. You can keep your secrets. I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me.” He pulled back to look into her face. She was flushed, her lips rosy and plump from his kiss. “But one way or another, I’m taking you home tonight and I’m finishing this.”
“Thank God,” she said with a catlike smile, but there was something else in her face, too. A sort of terrified relief. He tried to focus but it was gone in an instant and she was all business again. All cop.
“You have a meeting,” she said, glancing at her watch. She handed him his shirt. “Do you want to go over the setup again?”
He shoved his arms into the shirt. “Not much to go over. I present myself at the DJ booth as usual, only this time I ask about buying some weed from Oz.” He grimaced. “Since I can’t avoid sounding like an idiot, I’ll at least try not to look like one.”
“Yeah.” She gave him a sideways smile. “Good luck with that.”
“WHAT’S YOUR name, kid?” Patrick asked as he followed the teenaged DJ’s very wide shoulders through a steel door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The noise level dropped dramatically as it clanged shut behind them, and the kid stopped to scowl at him.
“Do I look like anybody’s kid?” he asked.
Patrick made a production of looking him up and down. The guy was a good six feet and solidly built. The lank hair was thick but in desperate need of a wash, he smelled powerfully of cigarettes and his jaw was covered with a very authentic stubble. But the indignation in his eyes over being termed a kid told a different story. Patrick put him at sixteen. Seventeen at the outside.
But all he said was, “Sorry, man.” He put just a hint of boredom into his voice. “Habit, I guess. In Hollywood, everybody’s looking to shave a few years off.”
“Yeah?” An avid curiosity lit his eyes, but he turned away to lead Patrick down a narrow set of stairs lit only by a couple of bare bulbs. “Must be some kind of crazy place.”
“Can be.”
“You’re a big shot, though, huh? A celebrity?”
Patrick chuckled. “You think?”
The kid threaded them through a dank hallway barely wide enough to accommodate his shoulders. “Why else would Oz be looking for you?”
“What makes you think he’s looking for me? Maybe I’m looking for him.”
“Nobody finds Oz unless he’s looking to be found.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.” The kid smirked. “What do you want him for, anyway? You don’t look like the dime-bag type.”
“I’m writing a new screenplay centered on a rather brilliant counterfeiter. I find my criminal education a bit spotty on the topic,” he said lightly. “I need a primary source.”
“A what?”
“A real live counterfeiter,” he said. “A good one would be nice. A brilliant one would be better. Somebody to walk me through the whole process, from making bills to making a profit. I’ve heard that Oz is quite good.”
The kid paused at a darkened intersection, a door before him, hallways leading into blackness on either side. “Is there good money in being a, what did you call it? Primary source?”
Patrick smiled slightly. “Depends on what you think is good. Better than DJing, probably.”
The kid squinted at him in the dim light. “How’s the pussy in Hollywood?”
Patrick’s smile spread. This kid was all brass balls. Damn if he wasn’t starting to like him. “Again, probably better than what you get DJing.”
“Fair enough. Well, listen, this is where I get off.” He turned and ambled back down the hallway from which they’d come. “Best of luck, dude. Good chat.”
Patrick’s entire system revved with adrenaline, but he kept his voice smooth when he called after him, “Oz is in here then?”
The kid just lifted a meaty hand in farewell and disappeared around a corner. Two impulses rose up inside Patrick—one counseling rapid and immediate flight versus one that wanted desperately
to know what, or who, was on the other side of this ugly door.
He deliberated over his options for the space of two heartbeats. Then all pondering was cut short by the fist that flew out of the darkness to his left and crashed into his jaw like a speeding train. He went down, first to his knees, then to the floor when another punishing blow landed on his cheekbone.
Fuck, he thought as lights flickered in his head and went dim. Please let Liz have the good sense not to charge in like the cavalry.
“FUCK!” LIZ leapt up, banged her head on the hollow ductwork in which she was crouched. “What the hell was that?” She keyed Goose on the two-way. “You get that?”
Goose crackled back, “Didn’t sound good for our boy.”
“Shit,” Liz said. Villanueva, she thought. Had to be. She dropped out of the ductwork onto the dented steel desk in the brewery office and hit the ground running.
She shoved her way through the line outside Cargo, flipped her badge at the indignant bouncer and plowed into the sweaty darkness of the writhing crowd. She was dressed for work this time—sensible shoes, a disposable black suit and a prominent badge—but she didn’t have Patrick’s gift for parting crowds like a hot knife through butter. She made vicious use of her elbows and stomped mercilessly on countless insteps before she arrived at the DJ station, out of breath and out of patience.
She grabbed the guy by his fashionably wrinkled shirt, dragged him over the console and into her face without regard to the fact that he had her by a foot and a good hundred pounds.
“Patrick O’Connor,” she snarled, shoving his headset off. “Where did you take him?”
The guy’s eyes were wide and wary. “Who?”
“Six feet, black hair, blue eyes, wanted to buy some weed.”
He eyed the badge on her belt and licked his lips. “Are you going to arrest me? Because, I swear to God, I’ve never smoked pot in my life. I just get a phone call so I can tell people where to meet the guy, right? I’m not—”
“I don’t give a fuck how you use your anytime minutes, all right? But I’ll be happy to put a bug in the DEA’s ear about it if you don’t tell me everything I want to know in the next two seconds.”
“Um, boiler room,” he said quickly, pointing toward a set of doors at the back of the cavernous room. “Through there. Down the stairs.”
“Hang around. I’ll want to talk to you later.” Liz gave him a hard look before she released his collar. He nodded quickly and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. She fought her way to the doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Goose met her there. They both had their weapons drawn and Goose looked to Liz calmly. “High or low?”
Liz looked her over and said, “You’re taller. I’ll go low.”
“Fine.”
Liz kicked through the door, went into a deep crouch and swept the hallway with her weapon and her gaze. She could hear Goose doing the same above her. Nothing. Christ. Her pulse was even, her hands steady, her brain was clicking through procedures on autopilot. But in her chest there was a sucking pit of terror. The kind of numb panic that put cops out of commission.
She pounded down the hallway with Goose on her heels. If anybody had asked what her goal was, she’d have said Villanueva. She wouldn’t have hesitated. It was true. She wanted that collar so badly she could taste it. But it wasn’t her primary goal.
She needed Patrick. Needed him safe. Needed him whole. Because after two weeks of waiting, after two weeks of agonizing indecision, Liz finally had her answer. This wasn’t a friendly overture to renew an old partnership. This was a sneak attack, the opening volley in what could rapidly degenerate into an old-fashioned bloodbath. Patrick’s blood.
She shoved back against the panic and ran.
Chapter 17
PATRICK DRIFTED out of the blackness. His jaw ached like a bitch and his cheekbone didn’t feel much better, but he didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t stir, shift or give any indication that he was anything but good and unconscious. He needed a minute to orient himself to this latest development.
An ungentle hand slapped his cheek. “Come on, now, O’Connor. I knew you had a glass jaw, but this is ridiculous.”
Villanueva. Christ. Why couldn’t his instincts ever be wrong?
He let his eyes drift open slowly, let them stay unfocused for a minute.
“Ah, there you are,” Villanueva said. He was crouched over Patrick in the filthy hallway looking as lean and dangerous as a jungle animal. He was older, his skin a few degrees darker and tougher than Patrick remembered and a deep web of lines fanned out from the corner of each eye. All those years in the baking Central American sun, Patrick supposed. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d gone softer than I’d thought.”
Villanueva extended a polite hand, and Patrick took it. He sat up and worked his jaw gingerly back and forth. “Christ, you’ve got a fist like a brick, Villanueva. And you sucker punched me.”
“Well, yes.” He smiled, but his eyes remained flat, cold. “I apologize for that, but my time is limited, and I needed to make a point.”
Patrick rose lightly to his feet, lifted his brows in question. Villanueva smiled, as if pleased with his former protégé’s resilience. “You owe me a great deal,” he said, “both monetarily and otherwise. And I’m a dangerous man to owe. Neither you nor your loved ones are entirely safe while you have debts to discharge. It’s time to pay up.”
Patrick slipped his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels and considered him. “I pay my debts,” he said finally. “And I know I owe you. Where will I find you when I’m ready to make good?”
Villanueva smiled again, and it was chilling. “Be ready soon. You’ll hear from me,” he said, then disappeared down the hallway from which he’d first appeared.
Patrick was still standing there, pushing his tongue against a particularly sore spot on his jaw when Liz and Goose came barreling around the corner, hair flying, guns drawn. He smiled at them in spite of everything. One more hot girl cop and they’d be Charlie’s Angels.
Liz swept down the left hallway, Goose down the right.
“He’s gone,” Patrick said helpfully, though they could already see that for themselves. Liz shoved her gun back into its holster. She stalked up to him, grabbed his chin in one hand and jerked his head toward the light. Patrick hissed.
“You’re going to have a shiner,” she said, then released him. “You want to take him through the debrief?” she asked Goose. “I’m going to clear the building and shoot a description to the local authorities.”
Goose shrugged. “Sure.” She took Patrick tenderly by the arm. “You feeling up to the stairs, ace?”
Patrick scowled at Liz’s retreating back. “I could’ve been killed,” he said. “Is a little sympathy too much to ask?”
“She was very worried about you.” Goose chuckled. “The DJ nearly wet his pants when she came after him.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
Patrick smiled, mollified. “All right, then.”
“PLAY IT back again.” Liz stalked to the far end of the room as she listened, her hands laced together behind her neck. She couldn’t hear Villanueva’s voice linger lovingly over his threats and stay still. So she paced.
“Neither you nor your loved ones are entirely safe while you have debts to discharge.”
“Got to say, I don’t like the sound of that,” Goose said when the recording clicked off.
“You know what debt he’s talking about?” Liz asked Patrick.
“I assume he’s talking about his share of the take from our last job together.”
She frowned at him. “There wasn’t a take from that job.”
“Well, no. Not technically.” He spread his hands reasonably. “But that wasn’t his fault. That was on me. I chose to spring my sister rather than honor my commitments, and he paid for it with no score and six years on the run. His wife’s remarried, their kid probably doesn’t even know the guy’s not his real father. It’s not a stre
tch for him to decide that somebody owes him something, and I’m the logical choice.”
“And you were sure Villanueva was in town when, exactly?” It made her feel ill even to ask, but she forced herself. He might lie to her, but she had to ask. Had to allow him the chance to tell her the truth. To trust her.
“About the time his fist met my face. Until then, I wasn’t sure.”
“But you suspected.”
He inclined his head.
“And yet you didn’t share that information with your team.”
“I didn’t see how it applied to the case,” he said simply.
A hot retort was burning on Liz’s tongue, but Goose cut her off. “I don’t think any of us could have foreseen that a cold case would suddenly go live and intersect with an active like this,” she said. “And I think it’s counterproductive to dwell on who knew what when. We need to focus on the next steps.”
“I agree,” Patrick said, sliding a glance at Liz.
She sucked in a breath, shoved back against the panicked fury that had been dogging her ever since she’d heard Patrick hit the floor over her transmitter. “Fine,” she said.
In truth, she wasn’t anxious to dig too deeply into the subject either. She’d known that Villanueva was back in the country, too, though she’d been under orders not to share the information. Would she have told him if she’d been able? Would she have trusted him that far? Did she trust him now? She didn’t know. She only knew what she’d felt when she heard the thud of his unconscious body hitting the floor.
“This thing about your loved ones not being safe, that bugs me,” Goose was saying. “What does Villanueva know about your personal life? If he wanted to hurt you by hurting somebody else, who is he most likely to target?”
PATRICK SHRUGGED, but the blood turned to ice in his veins. He forced himself to speak calmly, to not even look at Liz. “My sister, most likely,” he said. “Our parents are both dead. Private plane crash, en route to Monte Carlo two years ago. Villanueva never met Mara, but he knew she existed. I’m sure he knows she’s why I fucked him.”
