Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  Still, counting on it would have been just plain stupid. With the cruiser just a few yards away and closing fast, Mick barreled through the drift lining the road, skidded on the blacktop and hit the brakes. The snowmobile slithered to a stop at the same time as the cruiser stopped just a few feet away.

  “Goddammit, Mick,” Jason said bitterly as she cut the engine. Throwing her leg over in front instead of behind so as not to have to deal with what she was sure would be his obstructionism, she hopped off the snowmobile, drew her weapon and turned on him.

  “You’re under arrest. Give me your gun and get off the snowmobile.” Her voice was her professional one, cool and crisp. Not for an instant did she mean to allow herself to remember how she had kissed him, or the hot magic of the chemistry that had sprung up so unexpectedly between them. This was the real world again. She was all business, this was all business, and whatever had happened between Mick and Jason had no bearing on this denouement between cop and thief.

  He didn’t move, just sat there on the back of that snowmobile with his arms folded on the suitcase in front of him, looking at her. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Freeze! Police! Put down your weapons and get your hands in the air.” The shout from behind her caused Mick to glance over her shoulder. Two uniforms were out of the car, one on each side. Guns drawn, they were taking no chances, using the cruiser’s open front doors for cover.

  “Investigator Micayla Lange, Detroit PD,” she yelled back, pulling off her ski mask so that they could get a good look at her. Her hair tumbled around her face, and she impatiently shook it back. “I am in the process of arresting this man. I was being chased by armed men who are still in the near vicinity, on snowmobiles in the forest here.” She waved her hand toward the section of forest they had just exited. “At least four, probably more. Call for backup now.” She switched her attention back to Jason, whose blue eyes, she saw as she met them, had narrowed and hardened. “Get off the snowmobile and give me your gun. And the suitcase.”

  “So this is the way you want to play it, huh?”

  “Absolutely.”

  His Sig was in his hand. Since he wasn’t handing it over, she reached out, took it and pocketed it. He didn’t resist. Not that she had expected him to. With two cops plus herself pointing weapons at him, to say nothing of Uncle Nicco’s crew in the forest behind him more than ready, willing and able to take him out if he even thought about running, he was trapped between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

  “Investigator, can you show us your badge?” One of the cops came up behind her, stopping a cautious few feet away. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her that he was covering her as well as Jason.

  “I don’t have it on me. You can call my precinct. Thirteen,” Mick said. The cop yelled the information back to his partner, while she turned her attention back to Jason. “Get off the snowmobile. Do it.”

  His lips compressed. “You’re making a mistake,” he said, but he slid off.

  When his feet were on the ground, she said, “Turn around,” and he did.

  Then she cuffed him, officially making him her prisoner. If she felt a little bad as she snapped the bracelets closed around his strong wrists, she shoved the feeling away with the thought that as the arresting officer she had control over what would be done with him. Far better that it be her rather than any other cop.

  Apparently feeling safer now that he saw that Jason was cuffed, the uniform joined her.

  “Officer Ben Friedman,” he identified himself. He was probably around twenty-five or so, clearly new to the force. About five foot eleven, average build, average looks. “If you could tell me what’s going on here, I’d appreciate it.”

  Having been keeping a wary eye on the forest for any sign of the snowmobilers, who might have run away as far and fast as they could have, but then again might not have, Mick wasn’t comfortable with just standing around talking.

  “Let’s get him in the back of the car first and get out of here.” Mick put her hand on Jason’s arm. She could feel his tension in the rigidity of his muscles, but as he still wore the ski mask, it was impossible to see his expression. Still, she had no doubt that she’d fallen way off his favorite person list. “I’ll fill you in on the way.”

  Officer Friedman nodded. “Walk toward the cruiser, pal,” he said to Jason, motioning with his weapon.

  “He’s my collar,” Mick reminded him crisply. At her words, Jason shot her a glinting look but started to walk. A moment later he was secured in the back of the cruiser.

  Just as she slammed the door shut, Mick heard it: the roar of snowmobiles. Heart leaping, she whirled to see the two big white machines hurtling over the ridge toward them and closing fast—and saw also that both Officer Friedman and his partner had their weapons trained not on the approaching killers but on her.

  “Give me your gun, Investigator,” Officer Friedman said.

  Chapter

  17

  He wanted to wring her neck. He wanted to redo the last fifteen minutes and leave her handcuffed to that tree. He wanted to go back even further, to the robbery, and shove her in Marino’s safe and take his chances escaping on his own.

  Sitting there in the back of that police car, his hands cuffed ignominiously behind him, his immediate future looking several degrees less than bright, Jason watched Mick through the open door as she talked to her fellow cops. He thought of that old story about the frog and the scorpion: The scorpion begged the frog for a ride across the river because he couldn’t swim. The frog was wary, but the scorpion promised he wouldn’t sting him if the frog would help him out. In the end, of course, the scorpion stung the frog anyway, because, as the scorpion said, “That’s my nature.”

  Mick was a cop. Despite everything they’d shared, the danger and the intimacy, despite the relationship that he’d thought had turned into something kind of rare and special over the last few hours, she had reverted to form the first chance she’d gotten. And the short version of why she’d done it was that she was a cop and it was her nature.

  Justified or not, he felt a burning sense of betrayal. And the fact that he felt it so strongly told him that he had been liking her just a little too much.

  He had been a fool to be attracted to her, a fool to kiss her, a fool to almost make love to her, and three times a fool to even begin to think he could trust her.

  And now it was starting to look like he was going to pay for that lapse in judgment by going to jail. The good news was, he hadn’t been shot, the car he was sitting in was warm, and his suitcase was in the front passenger seat. The bad news was, he had never been especially good at picking handcuff locks, the key was in Mick’s pocket, and, just to complicate things more, his movements were limited because he was fastened in with a seat belt.

  At least he’d had the good sense to ask her to pull his ski mask off before she’d put him in the car. He could see, and breathe.

  Moodily watching Mick through the window as she slammed the door on him, annoyed at himself for registering that she was smokin’ hot in his way-too-big-for-her black coat with her auburn hair rippling in the wind, and pissed off at feeling a twinge of sexual attraction toward her despite everything, he was just vaguely registering the typical cop car smell of coffee and stale sweat when he saw her whirl around as if something unexpected was happening.

  Alarm caused him to sit up straighter and take a good, hard look outside. Mick was facing her fellow cops now, which meant her back was turned to him. But her body language screamed that something was wrong. He saw Friedman speaking to her but couldn’t begin to hear what was being said. In the same instant, he saw that both cops now had their guns pointed at Mick. Then he heard a muffled rumble that it took him less than a heartbeat to identify: snowmobiles.

  His gut clenched.

  Shit.

  The two machines that had been chasing them roared into view. He would recognize the gleaming white vehicles and the bastards he’d been exchanging gunfire
with anywhere: there was no mistake. Instead of whipping around to confront the four armed newcomers, though, the cops barely glanced over their shoulders as they kept their weapons trained on Mick. Jason felt sweat start to prickle to life between his shoulder blades as he realized that the only explanation for that kind of indifference was the fact that the cops had to have been expecting them to show up. Friedman’s mouth was moving. Then the other cop said something. Jason still couldn’t hear what was being said, but he could tell that whatever it was both frightened and infuriated Mick.

  Never mind that he was ticked off as hell at her. Watching, he felt a quick stab of fear on her behalf. She was out there on her own. Cuffed and strapped in and trapped behind a locked door as he was, if something bad went down he wasn’t going to be a damn bit of use to her.

  The maddening thing was that he even cared. For a man who not so long ago had vowed that the only person he was looking out for from there on out was number one, he was doing a piss-poor job of it.

  The snowmobilers shut off their vehicles and dismounted. As Jason had already determined while they’d been shooting at him, they were four good-size guys whose marksmanship wasn’t even above average: in other words, your typical burly street thugs. However, shooting somebody—say, Mick or him—at point-blank range didn’t require marksmanship: all that was needed was the will to do it and a gun, both of which the snowmobilers obviously had. Jason didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he was able to make a pretty good guess. Either the two cops weren’t cops at all but had been sent out as a decoy to lure Mick to them, or they were fucking dirty-ass cops.

  However it turned out, it was looking like Mick—they—might be in real trouble.

  The knowledge hit his stomach like a rock.

  “Hey!” He kicked at the door, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to force it open—cop cars were a bitch like that—but aiming to attract attention. “Hey!”

  Angry as he was at her, he discovered to his annoyance that he wasn’t constitutionally able to just leave her at the mercy of six armed men. Whether she was armed, too, and a veritable ninja assassin to boot, didn’t seem to matter with how he felt.

  “Hey! Hey, assholes!” He kicked the door some more. The cruiser, a Crown Vic, was built like a tank, then modified to police specifications. Not so much as the glass in the window shook. If anything he was doing penetrated beyond the interior of the car, he couldn’t tell. Not one of them so much as glanced his way.

  Cursing under his breath, Jason did the only thing he could: arrive at an instant Plan B. Torturing his shoulder muscles, he stretched his cuffed hands down toward his back pocket while trying to look as if he wasn’t doing any such thing in case somebody—read a bad guy—happened by some mischance to look his way. In his back pocket was his wallet, and in his wallet, clipped to the plastic window that held his (fake) Michigan driver’s license, was the professional thief’s most basic tool: a bobby pin.

  With that bobby pin, he hoped to be able to pick the lock on Mick’s handcuffs before the two of them ended up dead.

  He could tell from watching Mick that she was agitated, that she had not yet accepted the ugly truth, that she and the men—all six of whom, weapons drawn, were surrounding her in a semicircle now with the car at her back—were arguing. It looked to him like they were demanding her gun. Having aimed it squarely at one of the snowmobilers, the one he would have chosen as the boss guy, too, Mick was refusing to hand it over.

  He knew what game she was playing: yes, you can shoot me, but not before I take this guy down with me.

  Jesus, Mick, he thought, clenching his teeth in fear for her as he watched, that’s a dangerous game.

  But even as his fingers touched the ripstop nylon of his wallet, even as he started trying to work it out of his pocket, he succumbed to a quick glimmer of admiration for her. There was no denying the girl had big brass balls. Who would have guessed he liked his women like that? Not him: his last girlfriend, like most of the ones before her, had been of the stacked blond bikini babe variety, and if she’d found herself in a dangerous situation she naturally would have turned to him to protect her, which of course he would have done. Mick was nothing like that. Sexy as all hell, but tough, too, and able to kick plenty of ass on her own. Of course, if he was right about what he suspected was happening now, Mick’s ass-kicking abilities weren’t going to help. Bottom line: if Mick handed over her gun, they were both dead. Problem was, they were probably both dead if she didn’t, too, only she might die a little sooner.

  Bang. That’s all it would take. Out of the six guns trained on her, one itchy trigger finger, one shot.

  He didn’t like what his pulse did at the thought.

  Jason had the wallet out and his fingers on the bobby pin when, just like that, Mick dropped. Crumpled like a discarded towel and disappeared from view.

  His heart spasmed.

  “Mick!” he cried, catapulting up toward the window so fast that the seat belt locked to hold him in place. “Goddamn it, Mick !”

  But once again none of the crew beyond the cruiser appeared to notice, or hear. They were all looking down at the ground, at a spot he couldn’t see.

  At Mick.

  Jesus, had they shot her? He broke into a cold sweat at the thought. He hadn’t heard a shot, but then the snowmobilers’ weapons had silencers. Was she already gone, while he sat there and fiddled with a bobby pin? Was she even now bleeding out in the snow?

  Remembering her account of how her mother had died, a tingle of dread ran down his spine. Like mother, like daughter? Mother Mary and Joseph, please no.

  “Mick!” But yelling her name was useless, just like kicking the door was useless; the sound clearly didn’t carry outside the car. And the terrible truth was, she was probably in no condition to hear.

  His blood ran cold.

  Stay calm, he warned himself as his heart banged in his chest and his breath tore out of his lungs and his muscles bunched with the urgent need for action. Whatever had just happened, the best, smartest thing he could do was work to get himself free. Not to attempt an escape—and it was a sad commentary on the state of his sense of self- preservation that that should be the case—but to help Mick.

  Resisting the urge to try to kick his way out through the window because he knew it would be wasted effort, Jason took a deep breath and eased back in the seat so that the seat belt loosened and gave him a little room to work. He jockeyed the bobby pin into position and started manipulating it. He was sweating bullets, so rigid with terror for her that it was hard to do anything but stare out the window at the gathered knot of men in hopes that she would somehow get back up. His fingers were so stiff and clumsy with the need for haste that he cursed himself with every breath.

  When Friedman ducked out of sight and straightened up again with Mick in his arms, Jason went light-headed.

  She hung limp as a rag doll, her arms and legs dangling, her head lolling back so that the vulnerable white curve of her throat was exposed. Snow frosted the ends of her long hair, clung to her back, fell in clumps from her boots. Her skin, leeched of all color, was every bit as white as the snow.

  She had to be either dead or unconscious, because in no other state could this possibly be his fighting Mick.

  As Friedman headed around the front of the cruiser carrying Mick’s motionless body, for one of the few times in his life Jason was actually dizzy with fear.

  Was it her corpse Friedman was carrying?

  Forgetting all about the bobby pin, about what he was trying to do, Jason could do nothing but watch with bated breath. His eyes never left Mick until Friedman, with his partner following, reached the side of the car and stepped briefly out of his view. Pulse quickening, Jason was in the process of slewing around to try to keep tabs on Mick when the rear passenger door was jerked open without warning. The sheer surprise of it made him start, and he half expected the partner to lean in with a gun and blow him to hell, too. There wasn’t a thing he could have done about
it if that was what was going to happen, and the truth was that he was so jazzed with fear for Mick that he didn’t have a lot to spare for himself. His pulse slowed way down, and he gritted his teeth in anticipation of taking a bullet. But instead of a gun appearing, Friedman ducked his head and shoulders into the opening with Mick in his arms, shoving her in sideways and depositing her on the seat with about as much care as if she had been a sack of feed. A gust of cold air blew in with him, ruffling Mick’s hair, causing it to flutter against Jason’s sleeve, making him certain for one heart-stopping instant that she was alive and moving. Then Friedman let her go. Collapsing sideways, she slumped against Jason. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, but she was still warm and there was no blood that he could see. Her bright head fell against his shoulder, heavy on her limp neck, and then she slithered bonelessly down his side. He could feel the slight weight of her brushing against him. Was she dead after all? In about the space of a heartbeat, he sent more prayers than he’d said in years winging skyward, begging that she was not.

  “Goddamn you, what did you do to her?” he demanded fiercely of Friedman. Behind his back, his fists were clenched so hard that the bobby pin—Jesus, he’d forgotten all about the bobby pin—stabbed into his palm like a stiletto. A few more minutes, and he might have been able to get free. But a few more minutes was just what he hadn’t had.

  “Shut the fuck up, or I’ll blow you to hell right now,” Friedman said, shoving his gun—a Glock like Mick’s—in Jason’s face. Beneath a light brown crew cut, Friedman’s eyes were hazel, his nose pug, his chin square. The all-American kid with a murderous glint in his eyes. If Jason had been able to get a hand free, he would have smashed that face into a bloody pulp.

  Their eyes met, and Jason was left in no doubt that as far as Friedman was concerned, he was a dead man. Which was fair enough, because as far as he was concerned, Friedman was a dead man, too. The only difference was, as he forced himself to remember, that right now Friedman was the one with the gun.