by Joanne Rock
“So you just hid the evidence and opened a rec center while you waited for…what?” The skepticism in her tone suggested she thought he was off his rocker.
“For the smoke to clear.” Hell, these were details he didn’t want to delve into. Especially not with a woman who’d gotten under his skin the way she had in the past twenty hours. “For my enemies to be made known. Can’t we talk about it in the car?”
He nudged her arm with her mask, ready to make tracks from this lifeless apartment.
“Hell yes, we can talk about it in the car.” The inscrutable expression on her face transformed to obvious anger. “Right after we finish talking about this part of it here. Because I want to know if you’ve ever considered that by keeping your evidence and your secrets to yourself, you are actually protecting a felon.”
“I told you—I’ve been waiting for somebody to make a false move. Reveal themselves.” He stepped over to the window and edged aside the blinds enough to see down to the street. The handful of evacuated tenants seemed to be keeping the pretzel vendor busy while the building superintendent scowled and talked into his cell phone off to one side of the crowd.
Instincts hummed to life, urging him to get out now.
“If nobody ever comes forward with information, the police are left with a damn big burden to piece together information at a crime scene they didn’t personally witness.” Her voice quieted, her flash of anger transforming to a bitterness he didn’t understand. “Maybe if you were willing to share your evidence with the police six months ago, they could have used it in conjunction with their own information to make arrests and serve some justice.”
“Or maybe they would have considered the source and assumed any guy related to Sergio Alteri must be part of a crime family.” She wasn’t naive enough to think he could have just strolled into a cop shop with his disks under his arm and be taken at his word. Was she?
He moved to lower the blind when a police car came into view down on the street below. Slowing, the vehicle came to a full stop when the building superintendent flagged it down.
Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Police are here.” Shoving the headgear on Vanessa, he slid on his own and lunged for the door. “We can take a back exit if we hurry.”
He didn’t need to hear her agree. She launched into action as fast as him, tugging the door shut behind them as they moved into the corridor.
By silent agreement they took the stairs down. Seven floors flew by as they hustled toward street level, the computer disks a reassuring weight in his inside pocket as they smacked against his chest. When they reached the final door to the sunny late afternoon, Alec levered it open and walked briskly toward her car parked a half block down the street.
He kept his mask on to help protect his identity from his neighbors or anyone else inclined to sell him out to the first person who showed up looking for him. The pseudo bomb-squad outfit attracted plenty of attention, however, including a few shouts for information from building tenants who’d wandered around to the other side of the building.
Vanessa picked up the pace the last few steps, sprinting the rest of the way to her car and vaulting inside. She had the engine in gear and the vehicle in motion before he’d completely shut the passenger-side door.
Alec peered into the rearview mirror as she sped away on the relatively quiet side street.
“Only a couple of gawkers saw us leave.” He tossed the exterminator mask into her back seat. “Maybe we should ditch the car in case they do a check on the plates.”
“This is New York, remember?” Vanessa shook out her long, dark hair from the confines of the headgear as they turned a corner. “No one ever turns in any information to help the police.”
Her darkly muttered words called to mind her anger back in his apartment.
“Okay, what gives with all the righteous indignation about submitting evidence?” He settled back into the seat, as she drove uptown toward the Third Avenue Bridge.
The Bronx.
Somehow her unease with the city’s toughest borough came into play here. She’d admitted to being uncomfortable there last night, despite her thorough martial art training and the fact that she carried a weapon. Now today she was getting more on edge with every passing streetlight.
When she didn’t say anything for the long moments they waited for an out-of-towner to figure out how to get around a double-parked delivery truck, Alec knew he’d hit on something.
“This thing—whatever is making you gung ho about submitting evidence—it has something to do with why you hate the Bronx, doesn’t it?”
A CHORUS OF HORNS BLARED at the tourist backing up and pulling forward. Vanessa half wished she could join in the cacophony of frustration. Pound her fist on the steering wheel for good measure.
She couldn’t deny Alec’s observation.
“Why don’t you leave the investigating to me, hotshot?” Wheeling the car around the perplexed tourist who patiently waited to be let into traffic with his blinker flashing, Vanessa maneuvered up Third Avenue and told herself she would not break a sweat in front of the man watching her like a hawk from the passenger seat.
Still, her neck went hot, her pulse pounding with an urgency unusual for her. She’d been called an ice queen more than once around the precinct, and not just because she’d turned down plenty of offers from the guys on the force. She had a reputation for being in control. Cool under pressure.
And yet right now, she seemed to be fracturing at the seams at a question she ought to be able to blow off.
“Vanessa?” Alec reached over the console from the passenger seat to lay a hand beside hers on the wheel. Not taking control, but suggesting it without much subtlety. From his raised voice, she got the impression he might have called her name more than once. “Let me drive.”
“Shit.” She hadn’t realized until he suggested it that she was hanging on by a thread. Old symptoms from five years ago—the flashes of heat, the sudden wash of fear—reared up in small doses. How the hell had that happened? “Okay. I think the close call at the apartment building caught me off guard.”
Lame excuse. She knew it. She knew he knew it. But if she didn’t start reasserting some control for herself, she didn’t know what might happen. No sense ramming her car into a fire hydrant because she was warding off a panic attack.
“There’s a dock by the river up here. Under the bridge.” He pointed to a turnoff, a side street safely on the Manhattan side of the Third Avenue Bridge. East Harlem she could handle.
Pulling out of traffic, she didn’t bother getting close to the dock where a few power-company trucks blocked the way. There was a gap in the parked cars to one side of the street and with no problem she pulled into the vacant space behind a motorcycle.
Finding something intelligent to say to Alec that would make him drop the whole incident—including his question about why the Bronx made her spaz out— now that presented a problem.
Hoping maybe just to blow it off instead, she breezed out of the car and headed around to the passenger side. He held the door for her while she slid into the seat, accepting her sidekick position as if it weren’t a huge slap to her ego.
She attempted to stretch her mouth into a smile, but that might have been a mistake, since her effort only earned her a scowl as he slammed the door and went around to the driver’s side. So much for pleasantries.
When they were locked safely inside the car again, Alec removed the keys from the ignition and threw them under his seat.
“Now that we’re not risking our lives in rush-hour traffic, why don’t you cut the BS and level with me for a change?” He leaned an elbow on the leather armrest between their seats, crowding her even with the console between them. “What is it that’s getting you tied up in knots all of a sudden? And don’t try to give me some crap about the near miss at my apartment. We couldn’t have handled that any better.”
She resisted the urge to swipe a hand across her forehead or maybe m
assage her temples. Instead she concentrated on a messenger streaking past the car on a bicycle, his legs pumping as though his life depended on whatever he carried in his satchel. Why hadn’t she chosen a job with those kinds of clear-cut goals? Deliver the package.
Simple. Focused.
She felt herself calming down a little bit. Until Alec’s voice slid into her faraway thoughts.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass when we get to the Raven Club, by the way.” He reached beneath the seat to adjust the position back several inches. “I’m in no hurry to find out anything about the damn carjacking when all I really want to know is what’s messing with your head, Vanessa.”
He wasn’t going to take them to the Raven Club? Of all the obnoxious ways he could choose to piss her off and interfere with her job…
She might have railed at him, but before she could spit back a retort, her brain simmered down enough to acknowledge he hadn’t said he wasn’t taking her, just that he didn’t care when they went. She was damn well losing her mind from stress and worry and the strange mental collision of her past and present last night.
Ever since she’d been hauled from Alec’s car, she’d told herself that it would not be an act that went unpunished.
Unprosecuted, rather.
She’d find out who’d tried to scare the living daylights out of her last night, and she’d put them on trial for the crime. It would be one small victory to take the place of the bigger battle she hadn’t won. Could never win now.
One way or another, she meant to put her old ghosts to rest.
10
“YOU MAY NOT CARE when we get to this hole-in-the-wall bar, but I do.” Vanessa drummed her fingers on the leather armrest, her impatience tapping his conscience but only until he remembered how much she needed to settle down. Regroup.
Shrugging, he tipped back in the driver’s seat a little more and peeled off his exterminator suit.
“Sorry. I need answers and I’m not of a mind to move until I get them.”
Her silence was deliberate, pointed, but blessedly brief. After her moments of utter quiet, she started tugging off her bug-blaster outfit, too.
“Look, I’ve never shared jack about my past with anyone because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business, but in the interest of a smooth partnership today, I’m going to make an exception for you.” She threw the protective gear in her back seat on top of his and shifted in her seat to face him.
He waited. Hoped he hadn’t made a mistake in pushing her.
“I grew up in the South Bronx. It’s a little piece of me I’ll never fully escape.” She dragged in a long breath. “But my sister was shot in a drive-by on 172nd Street just before I graduated college and I’ve never forgiven the local police, or my long-ago neighbors, for basically doing nothing about it.”
She held her head high, her gaze clear and focused, but Alec couldn’t mistake the pain in her voice. The regret. Anger.
He curled his fingers around hers, at a loss how to comfort a woman who seemed utterly self-sufficient. Defensive.
“I’m so damn sorry, Vanessa.” The words seemed like precious little to offer a woman who’d obviously confronted her share of hardship. They were all he had at the moment, however.
“She’s okay.” Vanessa turned her gaze out the wind-shield, staring out over the waterfront now that one of the delivery trucks pulled out of view in a wake of diesel smoke. “It took a long time to recover the use of her leg, but she fought her way through therapy and she managed pretty well with a cane. She’s so strong—so stubborn—she wouldn’t let anyone help her through the rough times.”
“Did they ever catch who did it?” He asked even though he suspected the answer. Instinct told him Vanessa harbored plenty of anger about the incident.
“No.” Her brows slashed downward in a forbidding frown as she stared out the window. “The only person who came forward with evidence changed his testimony after a local gang got ahold of him. And apparently anybody else who might have seen anything that day knew better than to speak up. Drive-bys used to be a way of life back then, but if I hadn’t been preoccupied…”
“Don’t tell me you blame yourself.” As a cop, she should know better than most people how random that kind of violence could be. “Nobody can be prepared for something like that.”
“You don’t understand. I wasn’t just unprepared. I was oblivious. It was the end of the school year and I was caught up in some new guy I was dating and excited to tell my sister about a new internship available with a high-profile financial adviser…” She trailed off, her voice as far away as her eyes. “Having grown up in that kind of neighborhood, I knew better than to let my guard slip. And I sure as hell know better than to toss my guard to the four winds to indulge my own wants.”
“But she’s okay now.” He needed to repeat it to remind himself of the fact. To remind Vanessa. “Does she still hold it against you?”
“Gena has never blamed me for a second.”
A good thing. Alec would have had to pay her a visit if she did. Vanessa obviously carried around enough guilt for both of them.
“You said your sister is an attorney now. Is she a fearless crime fighter, too?” He wondered if this sibling was as kick-butt cool as Vanessa. Still, he hated to think Vanessa had honed all that strength of hers because she’d watched her sister fall from a gangster’s bullet.
No wonder the carjacking had thrown her for such a loop. It must have been like reliving a nightmare for her.
“She’s actually a public defender.” A wry smile spread over her lips, reminding him how long it had been since he’d tasted her. Touched her.
“Can you imagine? I changed my whole focus in life so I could go after the creeps who shot her down and she takes a position protecting the rights of the city’s worst offenders. Go figure.”
Alec let the words sink in, needing an extra minute to process what he thought he heard as late-afternoon gridlock a few streets over erupted into a steady blast of blowing horns. “You mean you didn’t always want to be a cop?”
“I was almost done with my MBA when Gena…I got the degree even though I didn’t attend the last couple weeks of classes, but my whole life view changed once I started spending every day holding her hand in the intensive care unit.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s hard to give a rip about some fat corporate bottom line when your sister’s struggling for her life.”
“You wanted to go into high finance? Consulting?” He got a quick mental image of Vanessa in a power suit with a short skirt. Very un-PC but still sexy as hell.
“Does it matter?” Shaking her head, she traced the H-shaped pattern on the stick shift. “I was young and naive and I wanted to take on the world with a few good grades and a lot of ambition, but you don’t see me tooling around the world in a private jet while I conduct business with the Japanese markets, do you?”
“I see you succeeding.” Hell, didn’t she get that same visual in her head? She could knock him on his ass with a sweep of her strong legs or even a breathy sigh, and he didn’t fall for many women. For that matter, he didn’t hit the mat in his self-defense class for anyone, yet she’d taken him down by surprising him. “Do you ever wish you were on the corporate jet?”
If his life were different now, if he hadn’t spent the past six months in hiding, he’d whisk her away fast enough to have her sipping champagne before supper. The thought made him more determined than ever to pull the carpet out from under the greedy bastards he called partners.
“No,” she answered a little too quickly as she straightened in her seat. “I’ve found my purpose.”
“It’s more than a lot of people have.” His uncle came to mind. What was Sergio’s purpose? To break kneecaps so he could drive a Cadillac? “What you do is noble. Important.”
“Thank you.” She tightened the band around her braid, her gaze skittering back to the view outside the car where seagulls fought over the heaping refuse in a trash can outside a nearby fish market.
>
“But that doesn’t count for a whole hell of a lot if you’re not happy.”
“Who says I’m not happy?”
“You don’t have to be a detective to figure that one out.” What did she take him for? He had eyes. He could see she wasn’t exactly falling all over herself with spontaneous joy.
“Look. You wanted to know what the deal was with me and my reticence to cavort around the Bronx. Now you know.”
“And you think I’m satisfied? Hell, Vanessa, I wanted to know so I could help you, not because of some stupid intellectual curiosity.” He reached for her, skimmed a hand down her cheek since his every other attempt to connect with her seemed to have failed. But this—the physical thing between them—it kicked in right on cue, igniting a flame that neither of them could ignore. He could see her response in her eyes, feel the subtle change in the rhythm of her breath.
“You can’t help me.”
“Only if you don’t let me.” His fingers slid down the length of her neck, dipping into the collar of her shirt to touch the smooth skin of her shoulder. The satin of one slender bra strap.
“The shooting happened a long time ago. My sister is over it. I don’t know why I can’t seem to lay the whole thing to rest.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
To hold him there? Or to make sure his touch didn’t stray any lower?
Not that he had any intention of undressing her here, on the outskirts of East Harlem in her car, for crying out loud.
“I’m don’t mean to minimize what your sister went through, but she had the grueling demands of physical therapy to work through. A tangible way to sweat out her anger and pain. And on the other side of her effort was healing. Recovery.” He saw her shaking her head, already rejecting his words. He plowed on anyway, determined to give her something. At least prove he was listening and not looking for ways to peel off her clothes. “You didn’t have that. You got to see her whole ordeal up close and personal, with no outlet for the pain, no healing for the guilt.”
