by Diane Kelly
Some type of chrome and canvas contraption sat in front of her desk. I assumed it must be a chair and took a seat on it, changing positions several times in a futile attempt to find a comfortable position.
Kira took a sip of her drink and eyed me. “I’m guessing Josh sent you.”
“He’s heartbroken, Kira. He thought things were going well. He doesn’t understand why you broke up with him.”
She sighed. “You saw the nose ring, right?”
I nodded. “He did that for you.”
“I don’t know why.” She rolled her eyes. “I never asked him to do anything like that. That was the last straw for me, honestly.”
“What do you mean?”
She set her cup down on the desk. “When we met he was this adorable little dork, all shy and geeky. Then he changed. It started with a leather jacket and a chain on his wallet. The next thing I know he’s putting holes in himself.”
“Wait a minute. You liked Josh better when he was a dork?”
She threw her hands in the air. “Yes!” She leaned forward over the glass. “I don’t want to date a guy like me. If I did, I wouldn’t have responded to his ad on the dating site. I want someone different, someone who will keep me grounded, someone who might make a good husband and father someday.”
Wow. “What if he was just himself again? The annoying little dweeb you fell for?”
She skewered me with a look. “I didn’t say ‘annoying little dweeb.’ I said ‘adorable little dork.’”
“Right. Sorry.” My ass had fallen asleep and I shifted on the chair. “So, what about it? What if he goes back to being the old Josh again?”
She grabbed her cup and tossed back the remainder of her espresso. “I guess I’d be willing to give him a second chance. I’ve been out with a few other guys I met on the dating site and it’s been brutal.” She jotted something down on a notepad, folded the paper, and stapled it shut. “Here.” She handed it across the table. “Give this to Josh.”
“Will do.” I wiggled myself loose from the chair and stood. “See you around.”
* * *
On my drive home from Kira’s office, my cell phone rang. The readout indicated it was Daniel calling.
I jabbed the button to accept the call. “Hey, jerkface.” I might be rude, but I’m also fiercely loyal. He deserved to be called names after hurting my best friend the way he did.
Daniel ignored my insult. He was a lawyer, after all. He was probably used to being called names. “How’s Alicia?”
I chuffed. “How do you think? She wasted the last three years living with a guy she thought she’d be with forever only to learn he’s a weenie.”
“I’m not a weenie, Tara.”
“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to do,” Daniel said. “But I need your help.”
He sounded not only sincere but desperate, too. Still, I wasn’t going to give in easily. I was going to make him work for it. “Why should I help you?”
“Because I love Alicia,” he said, “and so do you.”
Damn! He’d gotten me. Alicia and I might not agree on everything, but we shared a tight bond. She was the sister I never had, minus the sibling rivalry, hand-me-downs, and childhood illnesses most real sisters shared.
I changed lanes to ditch the eighteen-wheeler that had been riding my ass for the last two miles. “What do you want me to do?”
“Bring me one of her rings,” he said. “I need to take it to a jeweler to figure out the size of her ring finger.”
I nearly sideswiped the concrete barrier that divided the regular road from the car pool lane. “Daniel! Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m having an exact replica of Alicia made and I need to make sure I get her measurements right.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re going to ask her to marry you!”
He chuckled. “I am.” He was quiet a moment before speaking again. “Being without her has been pure torture, Tara. That whole thing about not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone is true.”
Whoa. A rare moment of emotional honesty from a man. Would wonders never cease?
Daniel’s words got me thinking. Brett was gone now and, though I was aware of his absence, I didn’t feel tortured. Sure, I missed our dinners out and missed watching BBC America with him by my side, imitating the actors in a horribly faked accent. I also missed the sex. I hadn’t had an orgasm in days. I think I was going through sex withdrawal. I’d felt shaky and light-headed. But did I feel tortured? No. Then again, maybe I’d been too busy with my investigations and the arrests and my parents’ visits and Alicia shacking up with me to have time to feel the pain.
“So?” Daniel asked. “Will you do it?”
“All right,” I agreed. Stealing her ring would be sneaky, but all in the name of love, right?
“Thanks, Tara.”
“No problem,” I said, feeling myself tear up at the thought of losing my best friend, once again, to this man. “Alicia’s a pain in the butt anyway. She uses up all the hot water, complains about the cat hair in her food, and refuses to wash my dirty laundry. I’ll be glad to see her go.”
Lies. Every word of it. It had been great having her around, and not just because she cooked and cleaned and generally served as my surrogate wife.
Daniel knew it, too. “You’re a good friend to her, Tara. She’s lucky to have you.”
I blinked to try to keep the tears at bay. “Once you get her back, you won’t have to sniff her pillow anymore.”
“Wait,” Daniel said. “How did you know I’d been doing that?”
Let him wonder. “Gotta go,” I said, disconnecting the call and slipping the phone into my cup holder.
I eyed my rearview mirror again. Given that it was nearly full dark now, drivers had turned on their headlights and it was difficult to distinguish one car from the next. Still, there was an SUV behind me with a set of fog lights on in addition to the headlights. If I wasn’t mistaken, the car had been behind me before the eighteen-wheeler had cut in between us.
Was I being followed? I wasn’t sure. But there was one way to find out, wasn’t there?
I put on my signal and eased over two lanes to the right, as if preparing to take an upcoming exit. A few seconds after I’d made my move, the SUV moved over, too, though the driver failed to signal the lane change and seemed to have slowed a bit, putting a little more distance between us as if to avoid detection. A freeway interchange came up shortly, and I exited from the north–south highway onto another running east–west. The car with the fog lights exited, too. Hmm. Still, it could be mere coincidence, right?
I took the first exit and, so as not to look suspicious, pulled into a fast-food drive-through. I stopped at the menu board and ran my eyes over it. The place served seasoned curly fries. Score!
I placed my order for a large fries and a soda at the drive-through speaker and pulled up to the service window. As I waited for my food, the SUV turned into the dark parking lot of an adjacent donut shop that was closed for the night. The driver parked at the back of the lot and cut the lights on the vehicle, though the exhaust cloud told me he’d left the engine running.
No doubt about it now. The car was following me.
Given that the last time I’d been followed someone had tried to end my life and Eddie’s with a bomb, I wasn’t going to take any chances. Once I received my food, I drove back onto the freeway. I pulled my Glock from my purse, inserted a clip, and laid the gun in easy reach on the passenger seat. The next step was putting in a call to 911. I was tough, sure, but I was also smart. The smart thing to do when followed by a violent terrorist was call for backup.
When the dispatcher answered the phone, I explained who I was and told her I was being followed, very possibly by a terrorist adept with explosives.
“We’ll get someone out there right away,” she said. She took my cell number so the officers en route could communicate direc
tly with me.
A minute later an officer called. “I hear you’ve got a tail. What’s your exact location?”
I activated the cell’s speaker and set the phone in the cup holder. “I-Thirty heading west,” I told him, “approaching the Westmoreland exit.”
“Keep heading west,” he said. “Don’t exit unless absolutely necessary. We’ll see if we can sneak up on the guy.” He explained he’d approach from the rear while another patrol car would lie in wait ahead to assist.
I continued driving, keeping an eye on my rearview mirror. Yep, the SUV was still behind me. A mile later, a wall of red brake lights reflected off the road ahead. Highway construction caused several lanes to be closed, forcing all of the traffic into the two right lanes. I slowed and moved into the right of the two open lanes, while the car with the fog lights pulled into the lane on the left. With a concrete barrier to my right and vehicles both in front and behind me, I was trapped, a sitting duck.
Damn.
We approached the work zone, bright overhead lights illuminating the dusty air and men in hard hats working heavy machinery. A green sign overhead indicated the next exit would come up in half a mile. A potential means of escape should I need one, assuming I’d get that far before the terrorist pulled up and attempted to turn me into flesh confetti.
“I’m in the construction zone,” I told the cop on the phone, feeling myself grow warm with adrenaline. “The car that’s been following me is coming up on my left.”
“Uh-oh. That’s not good.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
I rolled down my window and grabbed my gun, holding it ready on my lap in case I’d need to put a bullet in the bastard. My lane slowed to a complete stop, but the lane next to me was still moving. With me trapped in traffic and the exit ramp only twenty feet ahead, my follower would have the perfect opportunity to take me out and make a quick getaway.
Better beat him to the punch, huh?
My breaths came fast as the SUV inched up next to me. A quick glance told me the driver had unrolled his passenger window. Clearly he planned to lob an explosive at my car or shoot me. With cars and construction boxing me in, I’d have no way of escaping an explosive. And what about collateral damage? I’d been crazy enough to sign up for this job, but the people in the cars around me didn’t deserve to be injured—or worse.
I crossed my fingers, hoping for a gun rather than a bomb. I hoped, too, that if I was blown to smithereens Nick would wait a respectable amount of time after my demise—say a decade or two—before returning to the dating scene.
As the car drew up beside mine, I looked over to see a thirtyish Arab man at the wheel. He raised a semiautomatic, but I’d raised my gun faster.
Neener-neener.
The man emitted a cry of surprise and reflexively threw up his hands to shield himself while simultaneously pulling the trigger. A stupid move.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!
He ended up shooting out his own windshield and sending a few bullets through the top of his car. As the shattered glass rained back in on him, he involuntarily jerked the wheel, swerving head-on into the blunt end of a concrete barrier protecting the construction zone. His hood crumpled with a metallic crunch and the air bag deployed with a powdery poom!
“Shit! Was that gunfire?” the cop hollered through my phone speaker.
Sure as shootin’. “Yep.”
The cop activated his siren, the woo-woo coming both through my phone and from his spot in traffic somewhere behind me.
Taking advantage of what would be a short window of opportunity, I whipped into the lane ahead of the SUV, shoved the gearshift into park, and ran to the driver’s window. The guy flailed in the seat, fighting the air bag and screaming in Arabic. I yanked my cuffs from the pocket of my blazer, grabbed his left arm, and snapped the cuff onto it, jerking his arm up and out of the window, clicking the other end of the cuffs to the vehicle’s luggage rack. Unless this asshole could drag the entire car with him, he wouldn’t be going anywhere.
The air bag deflated and sagged down now, revealing my stalker. A quick glance inside told me he’d dropped the gun onto the floorboard at his feet during the chaos. Cursing, he yanked on his shackled arm and, when he realized he’d have no chance of escape, turned a death glare on me.
I gave him a big smile as I aimed my gun at him. “Howdy!” I hollered over the approaching siren.
He threw an ineffective swing at me with his right hand, managing only to get his body turned cockeyed in the seat.
“Sit still,” I ordered.
He didn’t obey. Instead, he righted himself and jerked his head around, desperately seeking his semiautomatic.
“If you reach for your gun,” I warned him, taking a step closer, “I’ll shoot you.”
He ignored me again, apparently spotting his gun and reaching down to the floorboard with his free hand.
At this point, I had a couple of options. One, I could do as promised and shoot the guy, fill out yet another firearm discharge report, and face yet another internal inquiry. Or two, I could figure out another way to keep the guy from reaching his gun.
I went for option two. I’m nothing if not resourceful.
With his left arm cuffed to the luggage rack, the man’s armpit was exposed. I reached out and tickled him. He shrieked, twisted in his seat, and slapped my fingers away. The instant he reached down for his weapon again, I tickled him a second time. He shrieked and slapped again. Say what you will about this rudimentary method, but tickle torture was an effective technique and far less controversial than waterboarding. Maybe they should add the tickle torture technique to the special agent manual.
The cruiser pulled to a screeching stop behind the wrecked vehicle, lights twirling. The officer cut the siren and leaped from the car, his gun drawn.
As he approached I cut my eyes his way for a quick second. “I’m good here. We just need to get the gun out of his reach. It’s on the floor by his feet.”
“I’m on it.”
While I continued to offer the driver an occasional corrective tickle, the cop exchanged the gun in his hand for his baton. He opened the passenger door and leaned inside, exhibiting his nightstick at my would-be killer. “No funny business or this baton goes up your ass. Comprende, kimosabe?”
The officer reached across the space to retrieve the gun. Despite the threats of a baton enema, the man kicked at the cop and stomped down on his hand as he grabbed the gun. The officer treated my stalker to a well-deserved elbow strike to the gut, followed by a nightstick to the face. The seasoned curly fries in my stomach churned when I heard the unmistakable thwop of metal meeting flesh.
Our captive grimaced in pain, a diagonal red welt forming on his cheek. “Death to you!” he cried. “Death to you all!”
How rude. Clearly he had never attended class at Miss Cecily’s Charm School.
* * *
An hour later, I was sprawled out on my sofa, the man who had planned to end my life was on his way to jail, and the man who made my life worth living was on the phone, congratulating me on a job well done.
“You’re quite a woman, Tara Holloway,” Nick said. “Are you sure you don’t have a big pair of balls hidden somewhere?”
“Quite sure,” I replied. “Just a pair of steel-plated ovaries.”
Nick was quiet a moment. When he spoke, his voice had become serious. “Need some comfort?”
I’d have loved nothing more than for Nick to come over and hold me all night like he did the last time I’d faced down a violent attacker. Hell, I could barely hang on to the phone with my hand shaking so uncontrollably. But no, I shouldn’t take him up on his offer. Not until I gave Brett fair warning. If Nick took me in his arms, I’d have a damn difficult time resisting him. “I’ll settle for a big glass of sangria instead.”
“All right,” Nick said, frustration in his voice. “But if you change your mind, the offer stands. Just call me back. It doesn’t matter what time it is.”
&
nbsp; “Thanks, Nick. You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.”
I let his dig slide. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t much blame him for feeling frustrated and unsure. Hell, I felt the same way.
I phoned Eddie next and gave him the rundown.
“A semiautomatic?” my partner said. “I would’ve shit myself.”
“Ew,” I said. “But, yes, I managed to remain unsoiled throughout the encounter.” Thank heaven for my outstanding sphincter control.
“You sound exhausted,” Eddie said. “Want me to get in touch with Wang and Zardooz for you?”
The adrenaline crash had indeed kicked in, leaving me totally wiped out, physically and mentally. “That would be great.”
We ended the call and I headed for the pitcher of sangria in the refrigerator.
chapter thirty-three
Petty Theft and Heartbreak
Friday morning, I took a shower and rummaged around in my nearly empty underwear drawer for a pair of clean panties. The only remaining pairs were my Monday and Thursday panties. I opted for the Monday pair, slipped them on, and finished dressing.
As Alicia took her shower shortly thereafter, I snuck into my guest room and looked around for her jewelry. I found it in a small case on top of the dresser.
She often wore a gold birthstone ring her grandmother had bought for her birthday years before. I rummaged around in the case until I found it and slid it into a small cardboard box that had earlier contained a pair of costume jewelry earrings I’d picked up at the mall. I went downstairs, slid the box into the inside pocket of my purse, and zipped the pocket safely closed.
My petty theft now completed, I wandered into the kitchen to make coffee. I found a brand-new canister in the pantry, between a fresh loaf of bread and a large can of organic tomato soup. Alicia had been grocery shopping again, God bless her. Now if I could just convince her to do my laundry before she moved back in with Daniel …
Alicia wandered down a few minutes later while I was feeding my cats. “Good. You found the coffee I bought.”
