Most Wanted Woman

by Maggie Price

  The dread inside Regan built. There was no way she could get away from Yost as long as he chose to sit at her bar. She was going to have to deal with him, the same way she’d dealt with McCall. Which, in retrospect, had only heightened his curiosity.

  “All right, Mr. Yost, I’ll give you a comment. First, my heart goes out to the families of those two teenagers. Second, it’s time the Sundown city council does something about Wipeout Curve. You should research how many accidents have occurred there, find out how many people have been injured and/or died in those accidents. Your running articles on that in the Sentinel could prevent more deaths.”

  Yost made a note on his pad, remet her gaze. “An exposé on Wipeout Curve won’t appease the curiosity of my readers, Regan. They want to know about you—where you’re from. How you wound up tending bar in Sundown. Why you’re doing that instead of working in the medical field.”

  In a finger snap of time her thoughts shot back to Josh. Don’t you know that the less you tell someone, the more they want to know?

  Until this moment, she hadn’t realized, not fully, the repercussions of what she’d done today. Having the attention of both a cop and a reporter focused on her was the last thing she needed. Both had the potential to discover she was using a fake identity. If that happened, the next logical step would be to try to find out her real name. Armed with that, the murder warrant would pop up on some computer run.

  She took a slow, deep breath to try to control the adrenaline spewing through her system. She could almost feel Payne Creath’s hot breath on the back of her neck.

  “You’ve got my comment.” She tightened her unsteady fingers on the rag in her hand and wiped it across the bar’s scarred, polished wood. “It’ll have to do.”

  Yost tossed a couple of bucks beside his mug, flipped his pad closed and slid off the stool. “We’ll talk again soon, Regan.”

  At closing time Regan dealt with her duties, then said good-night to Howie. If the cook wondered why this was the first night she’d declined to help with his janitorial chores, he didn’t comment on it. He just kept sweeping up peanut shells while assuring her he would lock up when he left.

  Upstairs, she went through the motion of checking the doors and windows, then booted up her computer to see if she had an e-mail from Langley. There was nothing in her inbox from the P.I., which told her Creath was still in New Orleans.

  For a year that had been enough to assure her, to afford her breathing room. Over the past twenty-four hours, she’d lost even that small comfort. She had McCall and Yost curious about her. Watching her. She could maybe get by with one or the other, but not both.

  She flipped off the lamp beside the couch. The weak light from the fixture on the balcony seeped in through the French doors and her bedroom window, guiding her way into the bedroom.

  There, she changed into a camisole and silky boxers. The way she’d exposed her background at the accident scene—topped by Yost’s visit to the tavern—convinced her she had to leave Sundown. Had to turn her back on the small apartment that had begun to feel like home. Say goodbye to the people she’d come to care about.

  Etta, she thought, her throat tightening. She couldn’t just pack her meager belongings tonight and leave without saying goodbye to Etta.

  First thing in the morning, Regan resolved. By this time tomorrow night, Sundown would be just a memory for her.

  With exhaustion and despair overwhelming her, she didn’t bother to pull down the pink chenille spread, just toppled onto her bed.

  Seconds later, she dropped off the edge of fatigue into sleep.

  With a scream stuck at her throat, Regan shot up in bed. She sat unmoving in the inky darkness, her heart hammering.

  Her trembling fingers clenched into fists, she gulped in air. Thinking she must have clawed her way up through the slippery slope of a nightmare, she tried to pull back some memory of it.

  Nothing. She remembered nothing.

  If she hadn’t had a nightmare, what had woken her? She shoved her hair away from her face, then glanced down. Her watch didn’t have a luminous dial, but she should be able to see the hands.

  The realization hit her that she was shrouded in total darkness. When she’d fallen asleep, there’d been light seeping in the window from the fixture out on the balcony. There was no light now, just darkness.

  From somewhere came a creaking sound.

  Her pulse rate shot into the red zone. Downstairs, she thought, straining to hear past the roar of blood in her head. Had someone broken into the tavern? Creath?

  No, she countered instantly, shoving back a wave of paranoia. Langley was watching him. If the homicide cop had left New Orleans, Langley would have sent her an e-mail.

  Another creak had her swallowing a lump of fear. She slid out of bed, her knees almost giving out as she groped her way into the pitch-black living room. She felt her way to the couch, grabbed the phone on the end table. The dial wasn’t lighted; she didn’t want to waste time fumbling for buttons, so she stabbed redial.

  After three rings, Etta answered, her voice thick with sleep.

  “Etta, it’s Regan,” she said, keeping her voice whisper soft. “Someone’s broken into the tavern. I need you to call the police.”

  “Lord, child, where are you?”

  “Upstairs. If I try to leave, I might run into whoever it is.”

  “You stay where you are and keep the doors locked. I’ll get the police there.”

  In less than ten minutes, a car pulled to a stop at the rear of the tavern where Etta’s car and Regan’s Mustang sat parked. Inching back the sheer curtain that covered one of the French doors, Regan narrowed her eyes when she realized the vehicle wasn’t the Sundown police car she’d expected.

  In the bright headlights that reflected off the tavern’s rear wall, she made out the sleek lines of a convertible. And the tall, lanky form of the driver who climbed out without bothering to open the driver’s door.

  “McCall,” she murmured as the headlights went out, plunging the building’s exterior back into darkness. Her hand moved up to rub at her throat where her nerves had shifted into over-drive. Great. Just great. If she’d thought Etta would have called him instead of the Sundown PD, she’d have opted to take her chances with the burglar.

  She could almost picture McCall keeping his back snugged against the wall as he moved soundlessly up the wooden staircase. When he gained the top step, he clicked on a flashlight, swept its beam toward the far end of the balcony.

  She waited to unlock the French doors until he reached them. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  He slipped through the door as silent as smoke, the edgy violence in the set of his body making her mouth go dry. The knots in her stomach tightened when she saw the automatic gripped in his right hand.

  For a moment, no more than a blink of the eye, the image of him coming for her, arresting her for murder clawed in her brain.

  “The Sundown cop on duty is on the other side of the lake, handling a domestic disturbance that involves a shooting,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Chief Decker’s there, too.”

  In the beam of the flashlight the rugged lines of his face looked as if they were set in stone and he had a cop’s intensity in his dark eyes. “When the dispatcher told Etta it’d be at least an hour before a Sundown cop could get here, Etta called me.” He took a step closer. “Tell me what you heard.”

  “A creaking noise. Footsteps. I heard them twice.” Fear crimped her voice, but she couldn’t help it, not when she was afraid of so much more than just the sound she’d heard.

  “From downstairs?”

  “I think so,” she said, brushing her bangs aside.

  His gaze ranged across the small living room. “Is that the door to the interior staircase that goes down to the tavern?”

  “Yes. The door at the base of the stairs is locked. I’ve got the key.”

  “Give it to me. I’ll check things out.”

  She moved to the cof
fee table, retrieved her key ring, found the key in question. “It’s this one.”

  He stepped to her, his fingers brushing hers when he accepted the key ring. “Lock this door behind me.”

  “All right.” She struggled to steady her heartbeat. It took all her control to keep her voice low and even. “This isn’t your job. You don’t have to do this.”

  Pausing, he flicked the flashlight’s beam over her, his gaze traveling the length of her. “Seeing you in that outfit makes up for any inconvenience,” he said, then turned and strode toward the door.

  Realization came with a quick jolt, followed by a rush of heat into her cheeks. Her brain had been so muddled by sleep, then fright, it hadn’t occurred to her to grab a robe. From the gleam she’d glimpsed in Josh’s eyes, she had a good idea what she looked like, standing there in an air-thin camisole and silky boxer shorts.

  She watched him unlock the dead bolt, then shift to one side before he eased the door open. In one smooth move, he aimed his weapon and the flashlight’s beam down the steep staircase.

  He glanced at her across his shoulder. “Lock this behind me,” he repeated, then slipped like a shadow into the stairway and pulled the door shut.

  Swallowed again by darkness, Regan moved to the door and engaged the dead bolt. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the door while the look that had flashed in Josh’s eyes replayed in her brain. In that heartbeat of time, it hadn’t been a cop gazing at her, but a man. And the rapid surge in her pulse that she felt even now had everything to do with hot-blooded desire and nothing to do with fear.

  She pressed her shaking hands to her lips. She was walking a tightrope between passion and danger, but the knowledge didn’t lessen the need.

  If she’d wanted any convincing that her decision to leave Sundown the following day was the right one, her own body’s response to Josh McCall was it.

  Ten minutes later, Josh had completed his check of the tavern’s interior and had done a full sweep around the outside of the sturdy brick building. The night was pitch-black, the humid June air warm against his face as he reached the wooden staircase at the building’s rear.

  In addition to his ’Vette, there were two other cars parked there. One was Etta’s. The older model Mustang with its trunk held shut by wire clearly belonged to Regan.

  Convinced that any intruder was long gone, he reset the safety on his automatic and reached behind him. The weapon slid snugly into the holster clipped inside the waist of his jeans at the small of his back. As he’d already done once that night, he followed the sharp slashes of his flashlight’s beam up the wooden staircase. This time he didn’t bother keeping his footsteps quiet.

  Pausing at the French doors, he rapped lightly while aiming the beam at his face so Regan would know it was him.

  When she pulled open the door, he acknowledged an instant flare of disappointment when he saw she’d changed into jeans and a white T-shirt. “You can turn on the lights now,” he said, stepping past her.

  He kept the flashlight on until she walked across the room and clicked on the table lamp beside the sagging plaid couch.

  “Was there anyone downstairs?” Her face was pale, tight with strain.

  “No.” He laid his flashlight on the coffee table. “The front and back doors to the tavern were locked. I couldn’t find any sign of forced entry on the windows.”

  “It wasn’t my imagination,” she said, shoving her hand through her hair. “I know I heard something. Someone.”

  He gave her a mild look. “Since preservers of the law aren’t your favorite people, I doubt you’d have reported this if there was any question in your mind about that.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, stabbed buttons. “I need to get some details from you, but first I want to call Etta. Tell her you’re okay.”

  Regan rubbed a fingertip against her right temple, as if a headache had settled there. “I should have thought to do that.”

  “You’ve got other things on your mind.” More, he thought, than just what had happened tonight. Something that put a haunted look in those gold-flecked eyes.

  While he spoke to Etta, Josh watched Regan step into the small alcove that served as a kitchen. She pulled a bottle of aspirin out of a cabinet, shook out a couple, washed them down with water. Then she mixed two mugs of instant coffee, and slid them into the microwave. As she moved, he could almost feel the nerves crackle inside her.

  He ended his call to Etta just as Regan carried both mugs into the living room. “Is Etta okay?”

  “She is now that she knows you’re all right.”

  “I wish I hadn’t had to call her. But it was pitch black in here, and I didn’t want to fumble around trying to dial 911. I just hit redial.”

  “Understandable.” He lifted a brow. “Is one of those mugs of coffee for me, or do you plan to drink both?”

  She blinked. “Sorry. It’s instant,” she warned as she handed him a mug.

  “That just means it’ll be fifty percent better than the sludge that gets brewed in the squad room.” He waited until Regan settled on the couch, then he lowered onto one arm of the chair.

  He sipped his coffee. It was strong enough to cause a nose-bleed. “Tell me exactly what you heard.”

  “Creaking. Footsteps.” She cradled her mug in both hands as if savoring the heat. “At first I wasn’t sure what woke me. I thought maybe I’d had a bad dream, so I waited. Then I heard the noise. Twice.”

  “Coming from downstairs?”

  “Yes. At least that’s where I thought it came from.”

  “What time did you wake up?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to check my watch, but the bulb in the light fixture on the balcony must have burned out and my bedroom was pitch-black.”

  Josh frowned. “When did the bulb go out?”

  “I don’t know.” She raised a shoulder. “It was on when I went to sleep.”

  He glanced at the French doors, then looked back at her. “How long has that bulb been in the fixture?”

  “It was there when I moved in six months ago.”

  “I need to check it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a hunch. Do you have a plastic baggy?”

  “Yes.” She carried her mug into the kitchen, rummaged through a drawer. “Here.”

  Josh set his mug on the coffee table on top of the latest edition of the Sundown Sentinel and snagged his flashlight.

  “I’m going to need your help.”

  “With what?”

  She met him at the French doors where he traded her the flashlight for the baggy. “Aim the beam at the light fixture.”

  Outside, the night air was leaden with heat and as still as death.

  While Regan aimed the beam as instructed, he slid the baggy over his hand and touched the lightbulb. It was loose. Two twists, and it came on. Almost instantly, an air force of small bugs swarmed around the light.

  He looked over at Regan. “I’ve got an idea who you heard.”

  “Who?” Her voice was barely a whisper on the still air.

  “Sundown’s infamous Peeping Tom.” While he spoke, he unscrewed the bulb, then pulled the edges of the baggy over it, sealing it in plastic. He had no idea if the local cops would get any useful prints off the glass, but it was worth a shot.

  “Why do you think it was the peeper?” Regan asked as they stepped back into her apartment.

  “Because that light fixture is right outside your bedroom window. With it on, he wouldn’t have been able to see in.”

  She handed him the flashlight. “The curtains are lacy. With the outside light off, he could see…everything.”

  “Basically.”

  She wrapped her arms around her waist. “I hate knowing someone was out there. That he stood there, watching me sleep.”

  Her words touched a chord in him. He’d dealt with a lot of victims of sex crimes. Although voyeurism wasn’t on the same scale as physical rape, the victim was still violated.

  “That image, t
he feeling of being watched, is going to stay in your head for a while,” he said quietly as he followed her back into the apartment. “Why don’t you pack a few things, let me drop you by Etta’s before I hook up with Chief Decker?”

  “I don’t want to wake Etta up again. And I doubt I could go back to sleep, no matter where I am. Anyway, there are some things I need to do around here.”

  He heard the tension in her voice, saw it in the way she held her shoulders, the strain about her eyes. She’d had a bad day, he thought, his mind returning to the young girl who’d died that morning.

  He angled his chin. “Did Burns Yost come here after he left my place and hit you up for an interview? Ask you what sort of medical training you’ve had?”

  Something flickered in her eyes, then was gone. She walked to the kitchen, picked up her mug and dumped her coffee into the sink. Keeping her back to him, she said, “He came in a couple of hours before closing time.”

  “Did you talk to him about the wreck?”

  “No. I told him he should do an exposé on Wipeout Curve.”

  Shift the subject away from you, Josh thought as his gaze swept the small apartment void of pictures, knickknacks and personal items. Even the vase of daisies had disappeared. The place had no more personality than a motel room.

  He stepped into the kitchen, laid the baggy and flashlight on the counter. “Regan.”

  “It’s late,” she said, keeping her back to him. “You should go.”

  “First off, things go smoother if people look at each other when they talk.” He settled his hands on her shoulders, felt them stiffen beneath his palms when he turned her to face him. “Second, there’s a look I’ve seen in your eyes—”

  “It’s called fatigue.” She pressed a palm against his chest. “It’s been a long day, McCall. Like I said, you need to leave.”

  “In a minute.” She smelled of lemony soap. Clean, fresh and simple. “This morning in that car, while you worked on Amelia, I could almost see whatever it is inside you that you want to keep hidden. All day, I’ve been thinking about what that might be. Wondering where you’ve been. Where you’re going. Asking myself how many pieces do I have to find to solve the puzzle that’s Regan Ford.”