by EC Sheedy
She smiled back. “You got it.”
Took her a few minutes. “There you go.” She plunked it on the table. “Anything else?”
“Just coffee, sweetheart, and keep it coming. And a couple of those Danish.”
When she left, he opened the book to the B listings. He cursed. There had to be twenty, thirty Blacks with the initial T. There was always the chance the guy’s phone number was unlisted—or he only used a cell—but still he might luck out.
He was on the fifth Black when the cell phone Braid had given him rang in his pocket. Like he needed him right now. He pulled out the cell. “Yeah.”
“I haven’t heard from you.”
“Got nothing to say, that’s why.” He stuffed the last of the Danish in his mouth and washed it back with some coffee.
“I think you do. My orders were that you work quietly, under the radar so to speak. Do you think your attempt to kill Miss Black complies with those instructions, Henry?” A pause. “I think not.”
“How the hell did you know about that? Who the fuck are you talking to?” Henry darted his eyes around the busy restaurant.
“Spare me the foul language. I don’t like it.”
Henry was about to say he didn’t give a rat’s ass what he liked, but didn’t—maybe because this call out of the blue had him spooked. “What do you want?”
“I want to know if Miss Black is your pipeline.”
“No. A bit player, a piece of the puzzle. Nothing to worry about.” He was talking too fast. Not good.
“And did she tell you what you needed to know?”
Henry wasn’t going there. “Everything’s under control, Quinlan. You can quit worrying.”
“Until this relationship of ours bears fruit, I will worry, and I will watch. Get used to it, Henry. Perhaps if you keep your payday in mind, my presence in your life will be more palatable.” He paused. “Answer my question. Did you get the information we need?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“There, that was easy, wasn’t it?”
“Easy? That bitch made me, and her waking up, blabbing to the nearest blue suit puts me smack on their APB list.”
“Irrelevant. She remains of importance to me—as a piece of that puzzle. And her untimely death would attract attention. And should it come down to your personal safety—may I remind you, you’ll have ample funds to leave the country.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it. You just have to do as I say. Stay away from Miss Black. Is that understood?”
“Sure, if that’s what you want.”
“And from here on I’d prefer to hear from you with more regularity. Twice a day is a minimum—late morning and early evening. I like to hear about the day’s events, particularly as they affect our partnership.” He clicked off.
Henry muttered the word “shit” under his breath and slipped the phone back in his pocket as casually as possible. Again he scanned the restaurant, trying to spot his tail. No way.
Whoever was on his ass blended in with the hodgepodge of tourists and garish yellow and green wallpaper in the restaurant like they were glued there—as elusive as that twenty million promised by the Big Mama slot machine at the casino entrance.
He told himself to calm down, reminded himself he was safe enough as long as Q didn’t get Worth’s name. If Q got that? Henry was roadkill.
Which is why the prick wanted him to stay away from the redhead. Q wanted her to wake up—and talk. Henry’s every survival instinct quivered to life, and a brutal, self- protective rage boiled in his chest. Rusty Black might know where Phyllis Worth was—but she also knew his face. She could nail him for attempted murder.
Which meant she wasn’t going to wake up. Ever.
Which meant he had to find her brother. Fuck Q and his instructions. He went back to the phone book, started dialing.
The third call in: “This is the University Medical Center, can I speak to Thomas Black, please?”
“He’s not here right now. Is this about his sister?” a panicky female voice asked. “Can I take a message?”
Bingo.
By the time Henry got off the phone, he had a direct route to Tommy Black, at the Sandstone casino, downtown Vegas.
Henry was back on track.
On his way out of the restaurant, he dropped the Quinlan phone in a trash can. Q might already be on his ass, but he didn’t intend to make it GPS easy.
He had a brand new plan: Find Phyllis Worth, get her to tell him where the girl was, then kill the bitch. The girl he’d keep alive for a time—as far away from Q as the planet allowed. Yeah.
He smiled, feeling on top of things for the first time since he’d shot the redhead. Had to love it when a plan came together. And he had a hell of a plan.
He would find a hole somewhere, stash the girl, prep her to chat with Q—and then it really got good. Goodbye four mil. Henry was going to bleed that ice-faced fat cat Quinlan Braid until his last red drop.
Then he’d bleed him again.
Chapter 10
“You come into an inheritance during the cab ride?” April was speaking to Joe’s back, because the second he’d tipped the bellboy, he’d started prowling the spacious suite. He looked out the windows, checked the bar and compact kitchen, then headed for the main bedroom. If he’d heard her he was too engrossed in room reconnaissance to answer.
Cornie said, “If he did, there’s no complaints here.” Then she dipped her shoulder and let her backpack slide to the floor, while managing to hold on to the battered box she’d brought from home; the one she hadn’t finished going through before they’d left the apartment.
April watched her disappear into the second bedroom, carrying the box.
Okay . . . Unless she wanted to share a bed with Cornie, which from past experience was like sleeping with an octopus wearing hunting boots, it looked like the sofa for her. At least it was a step up from the one at Phylly’s.
She dropped her bag on the long soft sofa, and followed it with her butt and a sigh. Through the open bedroom door, she saw Joe checking out the mattress with the thoroughness of an engineer checking a launch pad for a space shot. Although she had no idea what made Joe Worth tick—obviously a comfortable bed was high on the list.
What wasn’t on the tick-list was the reason for his sticking with her and Cornie on their search for Phylly. He didn’t give a damn about his mother; he’d made that plain enough. Maybe it was all about his facing her down and having his say, his shot at revenge for Phylly abandoning him. But, frustratingly, whatever his goal was, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to reach it. He was there, with them, but he really didn’t seem to care very much. It was seriously confusing.
Even so, her heart lurched at the thought of what Phylly had done to Joe, the pain it must have caused—perhaps still caused. She never did get the full story on what had happened. Why Phylly let him go like she had. She’d only heard bits and pieces, snippets Phylly doled out when she had a maudlin moment or one glass of wine too many. Neither situation came along very often, particularly in the past few years when, as Phylly said, she’d finally grown a brain that matched her boob size.
Oh, Phylly, where are you?
April leaned her head on the sofa back and took some deep breaths. She knew mentally chewing on Phylly’s bizarre vanishing act was fruitless. Two hours of searching the apartment had netted a big zero. There wasn’t a note, a letter, or any other scrap of paper relating to Canada anywhere to be found, other than the picture Joe had taken from the wall. When she’d asked him what he was doing with it, he’d said he was “checking it out.” How he was checking it out, she had no idea, other than it involved his resident genius, Kit, back in Seattle. Joe would have to talk for her to know the details, and Joe didn’t do conversation. He did one-liners and innuendo.
She lifted her head to see him prowling the main bedroom, exploring it as if he suspected it was seeded with land mines.
Her heart tripped in
her chest, and she rubbed at it, shifted her gaze to the clear bright sky outside the window. A white hot day with no relief in sight.
She really hadn’t expected an answer to her joking question about his having an inheritance—other than an evasive one. Joe, despite his macho flirting and come-ons, wasn’t one for letting anyone get personal. Maybe he was just another “bed-’em-and-beat-it” kind of guy. Having married one—her biggest life mistake so far—she sure as hell wasn’t looking for another.
After that misguided matrimonial adventure at age twenty-two—paid for with two years of hellish regret—she’d graduated from Love Knocks College with a PhD. Since then she’d taken it re-e-al slow when it came to men, a species she had an abiding fondness for but didn’t quite trust.
Points for Joe included his not wasting that sexy mouth of his prating on about himself, but it would be nice if he’d answer a question or two, maybe drop the big-tough-guy facade—and even nicer if she didn’t find herself so . . . amused by him. She wasn’t kidding herself, she knew damn well what it meant when a woman had trouble keeping her eyes off a man and got that jumpy feeling in the stomach when he looked at her. It meant caution, dangerous curves ahead. It meant get a damn grip.
Cornie came back into the room after her quick tour of the second bedroom. “Nice place. But that inheritance question of yours, April? I don’t think so. I think Joe here is doing the credit card mambo.”
“Know the steps well,” Joe said, ambling back into the living room and shrugging off his leather jacket. April marveled again at his shoulders, broad and military straight. And there she was again—looking at him, admiring him—she looked away.
And she hadn’t had sex in—
Goddess where had that come from?
She worked to shove what she recognized as a shot of pure, unadulterated lust back into the brain mist it came from. Talk about bad timing.
“Or maybe there’s more money in muscle than we figured?” Cornie wasn’t going to give up.
Joe arched a brow, then tossed his jacket over the bag April had put on the sofa earlier. “You don’t like it, there’s always a Bugs-R-Us motel behind The Strip.”
“It’s fine,” April interjected, trying to shut Cornie up with a firm stare. “Just fine.” It went way beyond fine, actually. Joe had booked them into one of the luxury suites at the Sandstone: Two bedrooms, a den with a giant- size TV with a bar big enough, and well stocked enough, to alcoholically annihilate whatever team might be playing on its big screen. The suite had a sitting area larger than the apartment she’d abandoned in Portland.
Portland. She leaped to her feet.
“I totally forgot.” April put a hand to her head. “I didn’t pay my rent on my apartment. And I didn’t tell my landlady I was leaving. When Cornie came, told me about Phylly, I just . . . God, she’ll think I’ve skipped.” She headed for the phone on the bar. Her landlady, not one to waste time when it came to collecting money, was probably already showing the place to potential tenants—and April needed that apartment until she finished her theater internship. It was cheap, tacky as hell, not in the best part of town, but it was all she could afford.
“Will you call about Rusty, too?” Cornie said. “See how she is.”
“I will.” April knew Cornie was concerned for Rusty—and anxious to see if she had any word on Phylly. She walked back to where the girl stood and gave her a hug. “Quit worrying, Cornie. Rusty will be all right. Everything’s going to be okay. And we will find Phylly.”
“I know.” She took in a big breath. “Make your call, Sis.’’ Cornie eyed Joe, her expression shifting to mock evil. “And while you’re doing that, Joe and I will bond over Killer Blood Bats.” She waved a CD in front of them. “I brought it from home.”
Joe frowned. “What the hell’s that?”
“Ah, a greenling. They’re the best kind,” Cornie said.
While April dialed and smiled, Cornie walked over to Joe and took his hand. “This way, macho man.” She led him past April to the den, waving the disk again before plugging it into the video game console. “I’m going to beat your as—butt.”
April wasn’t sure, but when she saw Joe look down at their joined hands, she was sure she saw the blood drain from his face.
“I learn fast,” he said.
“That’s what they all say.” Cornie gave him a wicked grin.
Joe returned the grin with an assessing look of his own, and then glanced at April. She nodded, hoping he would see Cornie needed the diversion.
“Chicken?” Cornie goaded. “Afraid to die in a pool of bat blood?”
“Those are fighting words, Cornball.” Joe again looked at April, and said, “You owe me.” How he figured that, she didn’t know.
Cornie gave Joe a few terse instructions, and in seconds the bodyguard and the “kid” were hip deep in red-fanged bats.
When Ellie Mack, her landlady answered, April turned her attention away from the dueling duo. The woman instantly started grumping about the late rent and insisted on a check being sent immediately. Why the woman wouldn’t accept an e-transfer wasn’t worth arguing about. April promised the check and was about to hang up, when Ellie added, “By the way, there was some man here looking for you.”
April’s heart sputtered for a beat or two. She didn’t know a soul in Portland, had arrived barely a month before she’d left again with Cornie for Seattle. “Did he leave his name?”
“Yeah, but I don’t remember. Should’ve wrote it down, I suppose.”
Yes, that would have been good. “What did he look like?”
“Tall. Dark hair. Good-looking on one side, bad scar on the other. Kind of along his jaw like.”
“When? When was he there, Mrs. Mack?” She kept her voice calm, ignored the chill that danced at the back of her neck. Could it be someone was trying to get to Phylly through her?
“Maybe a couple of days after you ran off with that girl.”
“Okay, thanks.” She turned the information over in her mind, didn’t like how it finished up.
“If he comes back, you want I should tell him where you are? I’ve got caller ID, you know. It says you’re in Las Vegas.” She sounded proud of herself, as if she’d mastered the technical universe.
“No,” April said, too quickly. “Don’t tell anyone anything. I’ll be, uh, leaving here tomorrow morning anyway.”
“Right after you send me that check, right?”
“Right. Thank you, Mrs. Mack.” She put the phone down. Joe strolled into the room and headed for the bar; he took out two Cokes. Lifting them, he jerked his head toward Cornie, and said, “The bat demon killer thirsts. I guess it comes with racking up a high body count. That girl has the eye of a sniper and the tactics of a SWAT commander.” Neither of which seemed to displease him.
When she didn’t answer, he arched a brow. “Something I should know?”
“A man was at my place in Portland. A man with a scar.”
“And?”
“I don’t know anyone with a scar.”
He set the two Cokes on the counter, studied her face, his own expression flat, unreadable. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“They’ve connected the dots then—between you and Phyllis Worth.”
“Maybe.” She nodded toward where Cornie sat in the den, immersed in the game. “Or worse . . . they followed Cornie to Portland—and are after Cornie.”
Joe’s jaw set hard, and he followed her gaze to the teenage girl in the den. When his eyes again met hers, they were concerned, protective—and dark with purpose. The kind of eyes you didn’t want to see in a shadowed alley. “Then they’ll be making a big mistake.”
For the first time since Cornie had insisted April find Joe—against what she thought was her better judgment—she was glad she had. If it was Bronze-age female thinking to appreciate having a big strong man in your corner, color her copper. Especially when you had the two people you loved most in the world in that corner with you.
She thought of Rusty clinging to life in the trauma center at University Medical, and wrapped her arms around herself, again feeling cold—almost impossible to do in Las Vegas in August.
“I just don’t get it.” She met his gaze. “Who wants Phylly so much they’re willing to kill to find her?”
He was silent for a long time. “I’m new to the family, remember. But the way I see it, there’s only one person who can answer that question. And that’s the lady herself.” He rested his hip on the sofa back, crossed his arms. “And the person that might help us find that particular lady is—”
“Rusty.” April let out a breath, irritated and impatient. “Who we can’t see until tomorrow.” And maybe not then unless she improves during the night.
“Yeah, so until then, I say we kick back, relax, and enjoy what the Sandstone has to offer.”
Joe’s eyes were still, but she saw the tension in his body, and he was right—given they had no other choice. April took in another deep swallow of air and told herself to take his good advice. She nodded at him. “And for me,” she said, “the first of those Sandstone offerings is a shower, immediately followed by food.”
He gave her an unreadable look, then stood away from the sofa. “While you have that shower, I’m going for a run.”
“A run? It’s a furnace out there.”
“One of the reasons the treadmill was invented—along with air-conditioning and hotel training rooms.” He headed for the door. Once there he stopped. “Put the security lock on, don’t let anyone in, and don’t order room service. I’ll take care of that when I get back.” His eyes skimmed over her, a sudden lick of flame. “Enjoy your shower.” He was gone, stopping long enough to give Cornie, now soloing on the bat game, her Coke and the same instructions he’d given to April.
April had half-expected some double-edged comment from him, about saving water by showering together, but again Joe surprised her. He hadn’t looked the least interested; he’d looked preoccupied. And, no, that was not disappointment stirring listlessly in her chest. It was . . . surprise he hadn’t followed true to form, by being glib and suggestive.
