Before The Fall

by Patricia Rosemoor

  But first…

  She made certain the saleswoman was occupied with the cranky customer, then slipped across the hall to call Douglas. And her mother. That way she could both assure her mother she was well and find out what Micah had been up to.

  About to pick up the telephone, however, she glanced at the computer screen. Someone had been working the Internet and had left without quitting. The opportunity was too tempting to ignore.

  She hesitated only a moment—in which she realized that again she had to be breaking some law or other. Somehow that fact didn’t seem important when compared to her freedom. Crossing the line was getting easier and easier….

  Angela put her scruples aside and concentrated on recalling the Desert Deals Web site from the tabloid ad; she typed in the address and waited. A moment later she was in.

  Frank Gonnella was nothing if not narcissistic. His face practically filled the home page. She spent several minutes searching his Web site. Page after electronic page displayed his merchandise—both automobiles on the streets of Las Vegas and bigger vehicles at nearby recreational areas.

  Quickly realizing she’d get nothing of value from the computerized advertisement, she quit the site.

  Though she didn’t quit the Internet.

  Still wanting to know more about Micah’s father, she seized the opportunity to do some electronic snooping. With a brother whose life was computers, she’d have had to be pretty dense not to know how to find what she wanted. Using a popular search engine, she requested information on Harold Kaminsky from the Chicago newspapers.

  What she got in return was a capsulized history of a nonviolent career criminal who for decades had mostly burglarized homes in Chicago’s Gold Coast and North Shore suburbs, interspersed with a couple of stretches in the state pen.

  And then she came to the latest article.

  A little more than a year ago, a supposedly retired Harold Kaminsky had picked up his old profession and

  had been caught for a third time…in Las Vegas. He’d been incarcerated in the same prison as her own father.

  Facts that Micah had neglected to share with her.

  Why?

  Remembering Joey Mariscano’s warning, she broadened her search on Kaminsky…then narrowed it down once more. Her pulse was racing as fast as her fingers on the keyboard. When the screen changed, she went very still, only vaguely hearing the voice calling from afar.

  “Miss, are you still in there?”

  What she read shocked her to her very core.

  Unable to move, unable to process a thought, Angela was staring at the screen when the voice grew louder.

  “You can’t be in here!”

  As if in a trance, she turned toward the door. “What?”

  “This is an office for employees only.” The pencils in Thelma’s hair vibrated with her outrage. “I—I should call security.”

  Alarmed by the possibility of official intervention, Angela snapped to. “That won’t be necessary. I needed to make an emergency phone call is all.”

  And almost wished she had. Then she wouldn’t know what she knew now.

  She stood, surreptitiously allowing her fingers to run over the keyboard and get rid of the information she’d summoned.

  “I’m leaving right now. I’m sorry. Really.”

  She made for the door and pushed by Thelma, her chest squeezed so tight she could hardly breathe.

  The saleswoman followed her back onto the floor. “You never did mean to buy anything, did you? I’m going to call security.”

  “No, that’s not true.” Panicked, Angela walked faster. “And I didn’t do anything wrong,” she hedged. At least, not in comparison to what had been done to her.

  “Can I get some service?” a young redhead demanded.

  “I was here first,” an older woman insisted.

  “Says you.”

  The customers distracted Thelma long enough to give Angela the edge she needed to get away.

  But to what?

  To whom?

  A man who’d lied to her?

  No, not lied, she amended. Micah had merely skipped over the whole truth.

  And after she’d trusted him.

  Though she could keep herself from running through the shopping center so she wouldn’t look guilty of something else she hadn’t done, Angela couldn’t keep her mind from replaying every moment she’d spent in Micah’s company.

  Every opportunity he’d passed up to tell her the truth.

  She half expected him to be waiting for her at the car, but the Thunderbird stood deserted. A reprieve. Time to think. To breathe.

  Her gaze strayed to the trunk.

  While Micah had given her the credit card, he hadn’t given her keys. That wouldn’t stop her now. She looked around for something to use and focused on the nearby landscaping with its craggy rocks, some of good size.

  Not caring what any passersby might think, she found the biggest rock she could lift and smashed it into the lock. The alarm went off at contact. The car’s lights began flashing. But the trunk didn’t release. She tried

  again. And again. The metal around the lock crumpled until finally it gave and the trunk opened.

  “Hey, look at that!” some young kid said.

  “Shouldn’t we get a cop or something?” another asked.

  Angela didn’t even glance their way, so focused was

  she on her quest. This time she didn’t care how many

  laws she had to break!

  Micah’s magic hat of a trunk was stuffed. She took it all in. Mechanical tools. Electronic devices. Portable computer. Gadgets she’d never before seen, some whose purpose she could only guess at.

  Dear Lord, unless she was sadly mistaken, Micah was carrying around every conceivable tool a burglar would need to be successful.

  She’d barely processed that fact when a sharp metallic

  click from behind alerted her. She was no longer alone.

  The security guard? A cop? Micah?

  “Turn around easy.”

  Not Micah. She turned.

  No uniform, but an impressive-looking gun.

  The man holding the weapon on her was so thin as to be bony, with sparse brown hair topping a weaselly face.

  Sucking in a shaky breath, Angela suspected it could be one of her last.

  MICAH HAD BARELY SET FOOT outside the shopping center when he heard the car alarm.

  His car alarm!

  The distinctive sound put wings to his feet. Far across the parking lot, Angela stood with a slight man before

  the open trunk of the Thunderbird. Guessing she’d stopped a theft in progress, he wondered why the mis-

  creant hadn’t run for cover. And why Angela wasn’t seething with fury.

  Instead, she appeared frozen, feet rooted to the ground.

  Then he saw why.

  The man trained a gun on her.

  Micah ran faster even as the stranger pulled what looked to be a wallet from his back pocket. Still stiff, Angela took it from him, stared for a moment, then returned it. They spoke as the man replaced the wallet. The next thing Micah saw was him holstering his gun.

  Who in the hell was he? Had he somehow fooled Angela into thinking he was all right?

  “Angela!”

  She spun around, and even from the good distance that separated them, he could tell something was really wrong. And her clothing—she was still wearing what was left of the wedding gown. The stranger touched her arm, and she whirled to follow him, then stopped at a beige sedan parked a couple of spaces down.

  “Angel, wait!”

  Without so much as glancing his way, she slid into the passenger seat of the sedan and slammed the door. Micah pushed to move faster, but he was nearly spent. He caught up to the car as it backed out of the parking spot. Barely avoiding being hit, he rounded the rear fender and pounded on the passenger window.

  When Angela turned to stare at him, he felt sick inside.

  He’d never seen her appe
ar so cold, so devoid of emotion. She looked at him as if at someone who was aggravating her…someone she didn’t know. Her expression reminded him of the one she adopted whenever the subject of her father came up.

  The car surged forward, and for an instant Micah saw behind the cold expression.

  For an instant he glimpsed heartbreak.

  His own heart thundered painfully. What the hell had happened?

  Breath shuddering through him, he raced back to the Thunderbird, intending to follow. But his trunk was a mess and wouldn’t close. Quickly grabbing a bungee cord, he was strapping it down and keeping an eye on the sedan’s progress toward the exit when two kids approached him.

  “Hey, mister, anything missing?” one asked.

  The other added, “Want us to call the cops?”

  “No. He didn’t take anything.”

  Micah used his remote to open the door and start the engine as he raced to get in.

  “Not the man,” the first kid said. “The woman.”

  “You shoulda seen her in action.”

  Digesting the fact that Angela—not the stranger—had done such heinous damage to his beloved car, he said, “I already have,” and jumped inside.

  Taking off, Micah prayed that he would have the opportunity to see Angela in action again.

  “YOU LED US A GOOD CHASE,” said Leon Woerter.

  The bounty hunter had shown Angela his identification—something Micah had neglected to do, she now realized—which was the reason she’d agreed to go with him willingly.

  “Not me,” she said. “Kaminsky.”

  “Who is this Kaminsky?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  He could be anyone, even the mysterious Wily. He’d been clever enough, fooling her as he had. Had he seduced duced her so she would never guess he was hauling her back to his boss, Frank Gonnella?

  Or had he kidnapped her for ransom, which would be a plausible explanation for his calling her mother?

  Whoever, whatever he was, she would have his head once she cleared herself. Glancing in her side mirror, she spotted a familiar dark coupe behind.

  Micah was following them!

  “You don’t intend to drive all the way back to Las

  Vegas, do you?” she asked tensely.

  “You kiddin’? I done enough driving keeping up with you. I already booked us on a flight outta Denver.”

  “We’re flying? Great.” She would fly right out of

  Micah Kaminsky’s life. He certainly wouldn’t follow her onto a plane, she thought wryly. “But why Denver?” The city was probably an hour and a half’s drive away.

  “Not as many flights outta Cheyenne, and we’d of had to wait until tonight for seats.”

  “Then Denver’s fine with me.”

  “I’m glad you’re being so cooperative. I was told not

  to expect anything but a fight.”

  Which would have been true had she not learned that Micah Kaminsky was a low-down, lying scumbag. A career criminal like his father before him. Like her own father.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Charlie Hanson got a tip you were in the area,” he said of the bail bondsman offering the reward. “A couple of us kept driving around this part of the state. When I spotted the Thunderbird and checked the plates, I parked and waited.”

  “Who turned in the tip?” she wondered.

  “Hanson didn’t say.”

  And what did it matter, anyway? Angela wondered.

  Knowing that wouldn’t change things. Not how she felt about Micah. And it wouldn’t erase his record.

  Ten years ago he’d been arrested for burglary. Caught in the act. Sent to the slammer. A six-year sentence with a possible parole after three. And from the evidence in his trunk, he hadn’t changed his act. He’d merely gotten better at not getting caught.

  And she’d been worried about whether he could get them into Joey Mariscano’s house.

  If she never saw Micah Kaminsky again, it would be too soon, Angela thought, wondering how long it took a broken heart to mend. Maybe it was time for one of those mother-daughter talks she’d avoided in the past.

  Keeping track of the Thunderbird through her side mirror, Angela vowed she would get over him.

  Even if it took the rest of her life!

  BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVED at Denver International Airport, traffic was so heavy that they had lost Micah without Leon’s even trying. She wasn’t certain the recovery agent was aware of being followed in the first place, and she hadn’t been in the mood to inform him. Too depressed to do anything else, she did whatever Leon asked of her as he turned in the rental car and picked up their tickets. Not knowing what else to do with it, he left the handgun in a locker.

  “We’d better hurry,” Leon urged, “or we’ll miss our flight.”

  They were within sight of the security check before she realized they hadn’t actually lost Micah.

  “Angel, wait!”

  Depression replaced by fury, she turned to see him pushing his way through the crowd.

  “I already gave you enough time to tell me the truth about your past, you…you crook!” she yelled as Leon nervously tugged at her arm.

  “C’mon, Miss Dragon.”

  But she was just getting started. “You’re no bounty hunter!”

  “I never said that. Your assumption.”

  His contradicting her made her madder. “You’d think a man could whisper a few truths while he’s making love to a woman, right? But no, I had to find out the truth about you for myself!”

  By now, people were stopping to stare at the show she was providing. And Micah had just about caught up to them when Leon pulled her through the metal detector.

  “I can explain everything!” Micah insisted from the other side. “Including how you were set up. I know who Wily is.”

  “I’ll bet you do. So explain to them.” She pointed the security guards at him. “That man is after me. He may be armed. You have to stop him, please!”

  Micah tried rushing through the metal detector anyway. The alarm went off.

  She heard him say, “It’s only my handcuffs, not a weapon” as she and Leon ran down the corridor.

  They arrived at their gate winded. The last of the other passengers were boarding. Stomach knotted, Angela kept watch over her shoulder as Leon presented their passes.

  But Micah didn’t show. The security guards must have detained him. Good. She boarded knowing that even if Micah was free to do so, he wouldn’t follow her if it meant boarding an airplane.

  How in the world could she have fallen in love with a grown man who had a fear of flying?

  As far as she was concerned, Angela thought, angrily wiping tears from her cheeks, she’d seen the last of Micah Kaminsky.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Angela, my love.” Douglas enfolded her in his arms and brushed his mustache against her cheek. “Finally, you’re safe.”

  When she’d air-phoned him to say she was on her way home with the real bounty hunter—using Micah’s credit card to do so—Douglas had insisted on meeting her plane. She hadn’t argued the point.

  “Did you get hold of my family?”

  Angela had tried to contact her mother and Petra. Unable to reach them, she hadn’t had the heart to leave a message on either answering machine.

  “I’m afraid not. They must be out for the day.”

  “Oh.”

  Leon Woerter cleared his throat. “Uh, Miss Dragon, we gotta get going.”

  “Of course.”

  Douglas addressed the recovery agent. “I’ll be happy to offer you two a ride to the police station in my limousine,” he said, taking something from his pocket and pressing it into the weaselly-faced man’s hand. “It’ll give Angela and me a few more minutes together.”

  Woerter surreptitiously checked out the bill and stuffed it into his own pocket. “I guess that won’t hurt nothing.”

  A few minutes later Angela was tucked in the back of the limousine wit
h Douglas, while Leon rode shotgun with the driver.

  “You rented a limo to pick me up,” she said in wonder. “Isn’t this a little extravagant?”

  “Nothing is too much for the woman I love.”

  Not having such feelings for him, she couldn’t meet his probing gaze.

  What was wrong with her?

  Douglas Neff was good-looking and charming and very, very attentive. He cared for her, wanted to protect her. Besides which, a businessman like Douglas was far more suitable for her than some bounty hunter…correction…burglar.

  She didn’t know why she had to remind herself Micah Kaminsky wasn’t what he seemed to be.

  Thinking about Micah made her so upset that she almost missed the man running alongside the limo as it moved off from the curb.

  Her father!

  His graying hair whipped around his lined face. Expression agitated, he was gesturing wildly. He seemed to be shouting…warning her about something. A panicky feeling clutched her insides when he fell back and bent over as though he was suddenly having trouble catching his breath.

  “Wait a minute…my father…”

  “So it is,” Douglas murmured nonchalantly.

  A sense of doom guiding her hand, she reached for the electronic control to open her window. Nothing happened. “This thing is stuck.”

  “I’ll make a formal complaint to the company.”

  Realizing Douglas sounded rather odd, Angela began to get a bad feeling…as if she were his prisoner rather than Woerter’s. Her instincts were on alert. Was that her father’s warning? If she were to try the door, would it, too, be stuck? Not wanting to test it or to make some wild accusation, she grimaced instead and clutched her stomach.

  Noting they were approaching a red light, she moaned, “Oh, no…not again.”

  Douglas frowned. “Something wrong?”

  “That garbage Kaminsky was forcing me to eat…it’s been making me sick.”

  As the limousine slid to a stop at the red light, she flipped a hand over her mouth and made a gagging sound.

  An alarmed Douglas said, “Don’t throw up in here.”