Police Business

by Julie Miller

  Her chin perked at an indignant angle, as if she was surprised she’d won the argument. “Thank you.”

  A.J. finally let himself smile. “Now go out there and be the best damn cocktail waitress you can be.”

  “Smart-ass.”

  Man, he hadn’t been called that in a lot of years. Her teasing subtracted at least a decade of life experience off his conscience.

  “You know, Kiki,” he emphasized her alias to let her know he was playing, “I don’t think your hearing loss is your biggest handicap. I think it’s that temper of yours.”

  Her mouth opened to argue; he silenced it with a kiss. Then he gave her curvy rump a little swat and sent her back onto the floor.

  Too many years on the force still had him scanning the club for anything or anyone that looked out of place. But he couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

  Undercover work had never been this much fun.

  CLAIRE LIMPED into the women’s dressing room after using the toilet and sank with a groan into the first empty plastic chair she could find. Who knew that after all those years of dance training, she would be too out of shape to survive one seven-hour shift on her feet?

  Toeing off the tennis shoes she’d borrowed from A.J., she curled a foot into her lap and rubbed the swollen arch. Her first night as Kiki the cocktail waitress had been more of an ordeal than she’d expected, and it had given her a taste of both the allure and constant tension of undercover police work. She hadn’t solved any crimes. But no one had tried to kill her, either.

  It had been interesting to see a whole new part of Kansas City. And though a couple of touchy-feely customers had spooked her a little with their suggestive gestures and comments, she’d learned how a friendly smile or an extra wiggle of her hips could turn a dollar tip into five. The spilled beer and mixed-up drinks had been embarrassing. Flirting with A.J. had been fun. And—ow! she stretched out her leg and pointed her toes—running on her feet all night had been painful.

  But Claire was as proud of the thirty-two dollars she’d earned in tips tonight as she was of her college degree. Because she’d earned them both completely on her own.

  One of the exotic dancers who’d performed onstage in little more than a thong and some feathers waltzed into the room on her three-inch heels, pulled on a white terry cloth robe and slipped into the chair beside Claire. “I said, aren’t you the new girl?”

  Claire hadn’t heard her come in, didn’t know she’d spoken, but she could see the greeting reflected in the lighted mirror over the dressing table in front of them. “I’m Kiki.”

  “Debbie Dunning.” Debbie peeled off her metallic silver wig and shook a plain brown ponytail down the center of her back. She misinterpreted the reason Claire kept watching her in the mirror. “Demure’s my stage name. I figured it was a pretty good joke. Nothing about what we do here is demure.”

  Claire nodded. She got the joke.

  Debbie surprised her by suddenly turning and leaning over to inspect Claire’s foot. “Problem?”

  “I don’t know how you do it, dancing all night. My legs and feet are killing me.” She’d carefully avoided difficult sounds, and articulated as clearly as she could without hearing her own speech patterns.

  “Here. Try this.” Debbie dug through an oversize tote bag on the counter and tossed Claire a tube of eucalyptus-scented foot lotion. It was one hundred percent easier to read her words straight on instead of backward in the mirror. “The right size of shoe would help, too. Who do those big boats belong to?”

  “A…” She’d almost slipped and said A.J. “A friend. Joe.”

  “Your boyfriend, the bartender? He’s a cutie.”

  More like a sexy demigod, but that opinion was for her own private fantasies. “Yeah.”

  Not terribly eloquent, but apparently sufficient to keep the conversation going. Claire missed bits and pieces of it because Debbie kept looking in the mirror to remove false eyelashes and what looked like a week’s worth of makeup. Claire pretended to concentrate on massaging the soothing lotion into her feet to cover her seeming inattention.

  “…your own shoes?” A.J. had said there wouldn’t be a lot of questions in a place like the Riverfront. But she didn’t feel any threat from Debbie. The dancer seemed to be making an effort to be friendly, so Claire answered in kind.

  “I, uh, lost my shoes.” Stretching the truth was a new experience for her. “I left them at…the last place I stayed.”

  Apparently, it wasn’t unheard of in Debbie’s world for a person to not own her own pair of shoes. Sad.

  “What size are you? In shoes?”

  “A six.”

  Debbie got up and disappeared through another door. When she reappeared a minute later, she wore a pair of jeans and a tank top, and carried a pair of white running shoes. She handed the shoes to Claire. “Here. One of the girls who used to work here left them behind. They should work for you.”

  “Are you sure?” With a wave of her hand, Debbie gave her the go-ahead. As soon as she tied them on, Claire felt the arch supports kick in. “Heaven. Thanks.”

  “No problem. We girls have to look out for each other down here on the riverfront.” She suddenly looked away. Claire missed the words, but she understood the “hold on a second” gesture. Debbie fished a cell phone out of her bag and answered it.

  Girls lookin’ out for each other, huh? Had Claire just made a friend? She tried to think back to another time when she’d hit it off so quickly with another woman. Certainly not with her stepmother. And she and Gina’s lifestyles were so different, they barely passed as friendly acquaintances.

  She liked this independence. She liked Debbie.

  Debbie waved her fist in the air, startling Claire from her reverie. The other woman was pleading with the person on the phone. Tension radiated from her posture as she collapsed into her chair and stuffed her phone back in the bag.

  Claire hadn’t caught any of the conversation, but something had clearly upset her new potential friend. After waiting what she thought was a polite length of time, she asked, “Are you okay?”

  Debbie nodded, but the reflection of red-rimmed eyes in the mirror told Claire the truth.

  “What happened?”

  “That was the professor from one of my classes.” She looked at Claire, debating whether or not she could be trusted. With a heave of her shoulders Debbie stood. Claire got up, too, trying to keep Debbie’s face in view as she started to pace. “I failed my chemistry test…. me retake it. But if I didn’t have enough time…when will I have time to study for the retake? I’ll get behind in everything else and…work every night.”

  A stripper in a chemistry class? It sounded about as farfetched as an heiress serving drinks in a strip joint. Maybe she and Debbie had more in common than either of them realized.

  “What are you studying?”

  “Nursing. I’m close to getting my practical nursing license. I’d like to go to school full-time and become an RN, but that takes money.” She threw up her hands. “So I work every night and don’t have time to study.”

  Claire had never had to work before tonight. Of course, there had been a lot of firsts in her life this week. First murder scene, first car bomb, first kiss from a man who could make her forget everything else except that kiss.

  Her blood heated at the memory of that passionate affirmation of life in A.J.’s apartment. That needy admission of fears and reassurances, that volatile exploration of mutual hunger.

  She felt as if she’d spent twenty-three years living in a plastic, baby-doll world. But like Debbie Dunning, she was learning about living in the real world. She loved it. She felt richer out here. More alive. More aware of everything she stood to lose if Dominic Galvan found her before KCPD found him.

  Hating how that man could get inside her head and erase the joys and textures she was just now beginning to discover about living, Claire fought to recapture the camaraderie she’d felt with Debbie. “Is there anything I can do to help? You know, girls loo
kin’ out for each other?”

  Debbie seemed surprised that Claire had asked. But she shook her head and pointed to the clock on the wall. “Look. Sorry I dumped all that on you.” She pulled on a denim jacket, slung her bag over her shoulder and retreated toward the club’s rear exit. “I have to run to get to the bus stop before the line stops running. See you tomorrow?”

  Without her makeup and costume, Debbie looked more like a co-ed than an exotic dancer. She felt more like a friend. “Sure.”

  She stopped with her hand on the doorknob and waited. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Claire frowned at the question. Debbie glanced to a point behind Claire’s shoulder. “Your boyfriend?”

  “Oh.” Claire spun around and found A.J. standing in the open doorway behind her, wearing his leather jacket and carrying the hooded sweatshirt he’d loaned her. She wondered how long he’d been knocking and whether or not Debbie had picked up on her inability to hear him. “Joe.”

  “Everything okay in here?” He looked from her to Debbie and back to her, the look in his eyes telling her that he’d stood outside the dressing room door long enough to be concerned.

  “Fine,” Claire reassured him. “Debbie and I were just getting acquainted.”

  There must have been some sort of exchange because A.J. nodded. “Same here. Good night.”

  Then he closed the distance between them. He draped the sweatshirt over her shoulders and held it together at the neck while she pushed her arms into the overlong sleeves. But he wasn’t being gallant or solicitous, he was getting close enough for her to read his warning without him being overheard. “Be careful who you make friends with. There’s a price on your head, remember?”

  “Debbie isn’t the enemy. She wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “All she has to do is mention to the wrong person that she saw a woman who looks like Claire Winthrop at the club where she works. The fortune hunters will show up in droves and Galvan will be right there with them.”

  He hooked his fingers around her upper arm to lead her out of the dressing room. But Claire dug in her feet.

  “Wait. You have to walk Debbie to the bus stop.” A.J. glared. She glared right back. “It’s the middle of the night. This isn’t the greatest neighborhood. She isn’t safe by herself.”

  “Did you hear anything I said?” He planted his hands on his hips and ignored the pun. “You are my responsibility. Not anyone else. I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

  “Then I’ll walk with you.”

  “I don’t want you out after dark.”

  He’d run out of choices. “If I was in Debbie’s place, you’d want someone to escort me, wouldn’t you? Please?”

  For all of about two seconds, Claire questioned whether or not A.J. was the hero she thought he was.

  She’d never doubt him again. With a muttered phrase she suspected was both Spanish and graphic, he grabbed her hand and headed for the exit. “C’mon.”

  Ten minutes later, they were waving goodbye to Debbie as she climbed onto the well-lit bus and found a seat.

  As soon as the door closed, A.J.’s strong arm settled around Claire’s waist and urged her into step beside him. “Now we get you home safe and sound.”

  Claire skipped to get a step ahead of him, then turned and blocked his path. Impulsively, she braced her hands on his chest and stretched up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Thanks for being a good guy.”

  “Yeah, well don’t let that get around, okay?”

  He tried to look so tough. But the crinkling of laughter at the corners of his eyes gave him away.

  His hands had crept beneath the sweatshirt to the bare skin at her waist, searing her with his heat. The leather of his jacket was soft beneath her palms, and he was harder underneath. It seemed the most natural thing in her brand-new world to haul herself up by a handful of leather and meet him halfway as he bent his head to kiss her again.

  His lips moved over hers in a sure possession that warmed the night and kindled a longing deep inside her. Less explosive than the kiss at his apartment, more deliberate than the quick peck inside the club, this kiss spoke of intent.

  He tasted warm and male. The rasp of his beard stubble tantalized while the stroke of his tongue soothed.

  But the fumes from the bus, shifting into gear and pulling away, stung her nose, breaking the spell.

  With a self-conscious laugh at their public display of affection, Claire ducked her chin to her chest and pulled away. That embrace would go a long way toward convincing any onlooker that “Joe” and “Kiki” were a real item. But the hour was late, the sky was heavy with rain, and A.J. had said he didn’t want her outside after…dark.

  The heat that had drizzled through her froze and locked up the rhythm of her heart.

  The corner streetlight was on. A.J. was beside her. But suddenly Claire was awash in goose bumps, afraid of that unseen thing or person in the dark.

  She felt the eyes. She felt him.

  He was watching.

  “How…?” She spun around. The bus was already a block away, the faces on board mere silhouettes in its well-lit windows. Was it one of the passengers?

  “Claire?”

  She looked across the street to spot a wino in the alley. But the only thing he was watching was the inside of his crumpled brown sack.

  “Claire.” A.J.’s hands were hard on her shoulders.

  She lifted her gaze to the black and broken windows of the warehouses on either side of the street. But brusque fingers grabbed her chin and forced her to look into golden eyes instead. “Talk to me right now,” A.J. ordered. “What is it?”

  “I can feel him watching me. Us. He’s here.”

  Chapter Nine

  “What do the symbols stand for?”

  Claire sat in the bed, the pillows propped against the wall behind her since there was no headboard. She’d thumbed all the way through the year-old catalog of collectible knives and swords that passed for reading material in the tiny, one-room apartment. There was no TV, no deck of cards. The clock on the bed stand glowed nearly 3:00 a.m., but she was restless and couldn’t sleep.

  By far, the most interesting thing in the furnished walkup was the man sitting at the table near the window. Like Claire, A.J. had stripped down to basic clothes for the night. She wore his T-shirt and her panties; he wore his unsnapped jeans and nothing else she could see.

  He’d been sitting there, facing the door, his back to her, working with machine-like diligence for the past forty-five minutes. He’d cleaned all three guns, holding them up at arm’s length and checking his aim against the chair he’d wedged beneath the doorknob. He wore a small, silver gun in a Velcro strap around his ankle. He’d stuck another in the gap at the back of his jeans. He was clipping the big black gun—the Glock, he’d called it—into his holster in the middle of the table.

  “Are you expecting an invasion?” But the lame attempt at a joke bounced off his shoulders as if he was the one with the hearing loss.

  “The tattoos on your back—” beside the scar on his shoulder that was too round and perfect to have been anything other than a bullet hole “—they look Chinese. What do they mean?”

  It was a beautiful back. Muscled and golden and smooth. Framed by broad shoulders and sturdy triceps, and adorned by three blue-green hieroglyphs of skin art.

  While she could appreciate the aesthetics of that back, and feel intimate parts of her respond to his blatant masculine beauty, what struck Claire most was how hard and unyielding that back had become. And how cold she felt that that was all he allowed her to see.

  “What does A.J. stand for? Dad said he knew your father. Antonio. Are you Antonio Junior?” She tossed the catalog onto the floor and pulled her legs up beneath her, pretzel-style. She tucked the sheet and blanket up over her lap and wondered how air, so thick with tension, could feel so cold. “I’ve never had a good nickname. My stepbrother calls me pipsqueak, but I don’t really care for that. My middle name is Landers, after my mother’s mai
den name. But C.L. doesn’t roll off the tongue very well. And Claire, well, you can’t shorten that into anything, so I’ve always just been…Claire.”

  Though not quite a storm, the hard, steady rain falling outside muffled what sounds she could hear. But she didn’t think there was anything to listen to.

  “Dammit, A.J.! Are you even answering me?” Frustration, fueled by fear, erupted inside her. “I can’t see what you’re saying. I can’t hear you.” Too strong to be contained by patience or decorum, her emotions flashed along every nerve, then burnt out just as quickly, leaving her weary and cold and shaking. “All I can feel is him watching.”

  After a long, endless moment when she thought he might be cruel enough to leave her alone in her soundless world, A.J. turned in his chair. Above the grim lines of his unshaven face, he looked at her, but without the golden fire she was used to seeing in his eyes. “They stand for peace, strength and honor. I’m Antonio Joseph, like my father. Now go to sleep, Claire.”

  “I can’t. You’re scaring me. Working with all those guns. Not talking.”

  “You should be scared. I’m losing my edge. Galvan’s already gotten to you twice. He killed a good man who stood in his way. Tonight, we were out in the middle of the sidewalk, with at least a dozen vantage points for Galvan to get a shot at you. And what was I doing?”

  Being a nice guy? Celebrating life? Loving me?

  Apparently, none of those things.

  “I was standing there like a horny street punk, feeling like I’m all that, thinking about getting laid, instead of getting you out of sight and keeping you safe. That should have been my first priority. That should be my first priority. Always.”

  The idea that he’d been thinking about having sex with her stunned her, pleased her. The idea that he hated having had that thought destroyed her pleasure.

  “You can’t stay up all night,” she countered, trying to argue with reason instead of her battered emotions. “You can’t be on watch twenty-four hours a day.”